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Off the charts
Raphael Saadiq: “It’s Just Soul”
When it comes to the past 35 years of soul music, much of the sound and style has been shaped by producer and musician Raphael Saadiq. While his influence in...
Darlene Love: Blossoming Into R&B Greatness
Darlene Love is one of those artists who took much too long to gain fame on her own terms. The first half of her career is so closely intertwined with...
Christian McBride: A Master of Jazz Bass and Be...
At the age of 50, bassist Christian McBride already has eight Grammy Awards and over 300 album credits. It helps that he got an early start. He was playing in...
The Bangles: Hitmakers from the Paisley Undergr...
Susanna Hoffs, Vicki Peterson, and her sister Debbi Peterson started a band in 1981, adding Annette Zilinskas on bass. They first called themselves the Colours and then the Bangs. But...
DeFord Bailey: The Harmonica Wizard
Back when the Grand Ole Opry was just a one-hour radio show called “WSM Barn Dance,” one of the greatest harmonica players of all time was tapped to be a...
The Cranberries: Time Was Ticking Out
When Dolores O’Riordan died suddenly in 2018, the blow reverberated around the indie music world. She was more than just the lead singer of the Cranberries; her ghostly, emotional voice...
The Byrds: Folk-Rock Originators
They recorded Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” and hit No. 1 with the single before Dylan himself had a chance to release the song. That early triumph represents the Byrds...
Daft Punk: They Were the Robots
When Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo were in high school in Paris in 1992, they started a band called Darlin’. It was a guitar-based indie trio with a friend...
Dwight Yoakam: Country Music, His Way
Dwight Yoakam fans are mad. Not at him, of course. They’re frustrated that, five decades into his career, Yoakam has still not been inducted into the Country Music Hall of...
Barbara Lynn: Electrifying R&B Pioneer
There was never anything ordinary about Barbara Lynn. A Black woman playing electric guitar professionally in 1960s Texas was extraordinary enough. And her technique was surprising: she plucked the melody...
Pet Shop Boys: The Pulse of Electronic Pop
Together, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe have a distinct, even quirky approach to music. As just one example, every one of the 14 albums by their synth-pop duo, the Pet...
Lou Reed: Street Poet
Lou Reed was a poet. Like Leonard Cohen, Reed just happened to sing his poetry. There was nothing conventionally beautiful about his voice, but it was the ideal vehicle to...
The Chicks: Country Music Chart-Toppers
They may have shortened their name, but the Chicks are still as long on talent as they were when they started their country band in Dallas more than 20 years...
The Elusive Del-Vikings
You’d think the Del-Vikings would be pretty simple to research. The popular doo-wop group, formed in 1955, had a few hits over ten years. What could possibly be complicated? As...
Buffalo Springfield: Progenitors of Psychedelic...
There was folk. There was rock and roll. There was blues, coming back home via the 1960s British scene. But thanks to innovative groups like Buffalo Springfield, all those genres...
Martina McBride: Empowered By Country Music
Martina McBride has always been a spokesperson for the downtrodden, particularly women. The Nashville star defied stereotypes that said country music was centered on the perspectives of men and a...
Amy Winehouse: Soulful Supernova
Once when R&B legend Ronnie Spector was shown a picture of Amy Winehouse, for a moment she thought she was looking at a picture of herself as a young woman....
Talk Talk Talking About the Psychedelic Furs
Part of post-punk’s essential nature was to acknowledge that musical genres were not generated spontaneously but developed through history. The Butler brothers – Richard on vocals and Tim on bass...
Oh No, It’s Devo!
When they were Kent State University students in the late 1960s, Gerald Casale and Bob Lewis developed the sarcastic theory that mankind was de-evolving rather than evolving. They surely never...
Kitty Wells: Queen of Country Music
Before there was Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn, there was Kitty Wells. The singer was the first woman to become a major star in country music, and only the third...
Paul Butterfield: Rockin’ the Blues
Have harmonica, will rock. That could have been Paul Butterfield’s slogan. Blues is at the root of rock and roll, but Butterfield’s commitment to the two genres benefited both equally....
Rufus Wainwright: Personal Songs With Universal...
Rufus Wainwright’s childhood must have been wall-to-wall music. Both his parents and most of his aunts and uncles were folk singers. But thanks to an obsession with opera that gripped...
The Staple Singers: Soul Originators
When Roebuck “Pops” Staples was growing up on a plantation in Mississippi, he wanted to be a blues guitarist. He learned his technique by listening to musicians like Barbecue Bob,...
Mary Gauthier: Songs in Motion
Mary Gauthier thinks the best songs are ones that contain “a little movie,” songs that don’t just have their own story but also a sense of motion. The veteran songwriter...
The Everly Brothers: In and Out of Harmony
With their boyish good looks, energetic and hummable tunes, and perfectly-matched voices, the Everly Brothers enraptured the American public and the world. While they were at it, they turned the...
Warren Zevon: Exceptional Boy
Warren Zevon could never have been a standard, mainstream rock star. His life started out with too many extraordinary elements to allow him to be mainstream. He was fated to...
Emerson, Lake & Palmer: Lucky Men
It was called progressive rock, but when Emerson, Lake & Palmer played this genre, it looked as much back into music history as it did forward into the newest reaches...
Marty Stuart: His Superlative Country Music Career
For most country musicians, long stints touring first with Lester Flatt and then Johnny Cash would add up to a fulfilling career. But guitarist, mandolinist, and singer Marty Stuart was...
Everything but the Girl: British Sophisti-Pop
On Beverly Road in Hull, England, there used to be an old furniture shop called Turner’s. Its slogan was painted across the front awning: “Everything but the girl.” Two young...
Yusuf/Cat Stevens: Soundtrack of the Seventies,...
His folky, insightful songs, brimming with humor and pathos, helped create the soundtrack to the 1970s. And then Cat Stevens left the field, changing his name and devoting himself to...
Patty Loveless: Neotraditional Country Hitmaker
It’s impossible to deny that country music has changed drastically since the days of Hank Williams and George Jones. But not every successful country artist plows ahead into the new...
Yeah Yeah Yeahs: Big Apple Avant-Punk
Drawing comparisons to Siouxsie and the Banshees, Blondie, and other female-led, punk-influenced bands, the New York-based Yeah Yeah Yeahs have been making artsy garage rock for over twenty years. They...
U2: Dublin Rockers
Four teens at a Dublin high school, fans of the Sex Pistols and the Clash, wanted to play music themselves. In 1976, these boys – Paul Hewson, David Evans, Adam...
Mary Wells: Motown Originator
It’s hard to imagine, but there was once a time when the Motown sound did not yet exist. Thanks to the expressive, blues- and gospel-influenced singing of people like Mary...
Bobbie Gentry: Enjoying Fame…and Solitude
Born in 1942 as Roberta Streeter, country singer Bobbie Gentry was raised by her father and grandparents in rural Mississippi. She wrote her first song, about the family dog, when...
Hall and Oates: Hitmakers With Soul
With 16 Top-10 singles, including six that reached No. 1, Daryl Hall and John Oates proved that combining two genres can be a real moneymaker if it’s done right. Their...
The Many Facets of David Bowie
From the gaunt, alien Ziggy Stardust through solid-colored, big-shouldered suits on MTV to a philosophical album about death at the end of his life, David Bowie had so many personas...
Bonnie Raitt: Someone to Talk About
For two decades, Bonnie Raitt was no big star but just a talented, hard-working singer and guitarist, making solo albums in a mix of blues, country, folk, and rock and...
Mumford & Sons: New Folk Revivalists
The term “folk revival” usually conjures up images of Joan Baez and the Kingston Trio in the 1960s, but there’s a much more recent manifestation of folk music making inroads...
Pretenders: The Real Thing
On September 7, 2021, Chrissie Hynde turned 70 years old. Granted, the lead singer, songwriter, and co-founder of the Pretenders was young when she started turning punk into something brainy,...
Isaac Hayes: Soul Chef
Isaac Hayes had an inauspicious start. Born in 1942 in rural Tennessee, he was raised on a farm by his sharecropping grandparents. He would go on to become one of...
Lefty Frizzell: Country Music Bedrock
Everybody knows who Hank Williams is, but somehow Lefty Frizzell is not a household name. In the early days of country music, however, the two men were equally important in...
Creedence Clearwater Revival: Kings of Swamp Rock
They’re known for singing about the bayou with a Louisiana twang, but the members of Creedence Clearwater Revival all came from a suburb of San Francisco. But that’s showbiz, and...
Garbage: Staying Fresh for Decades
The number of successful bands that have lasted at least twenty years and never changed personnel is very small. Garbage is one of them. The band is also rare for...
The Animals: Don’t Let Them Be Misunderstood
In the town of Newcastle upon Tyne in northeast England, keyboardist Alan Price invited the energetic and big-throated Eric Burdon to sing with his Alan Price Rhythm and Blues Combo....
Tanya Tucker: Delta Dawn Never Sets
Child stars have a way of losing their luster in adulthood, but country singer Tanya Tucker is a rare exception. She had her first hit single in 1972, when she...
Pump It Up: Elvis Costello
In the early 1970s, some young musicians in London were getting tired of the fancy productions being pawned off as rock music. They made an effort to get back to...
Indigo Girls – The Bards of Athens
It’s rare for someone you met in elementary school to become a lifelong friend, let alone the key to your professional success for decades. But that’s what happened with Amy...
The Doobie Brothers: Long, Slow Burn
Sometimes a goofy gag turns out to be a brilliant idea. The name “The Doobie Brothers” was supposed to be a puerile reference to the amount of pot the band...
Sam Cooke: Legendary Soul
Sam Cooke was only two years old in 1933 when his family moved from Mississippi to Chicago. Lucky for us that they did, since it gave young Sam plenty of...