Cecil “Big Jay” McNeely passed away Sunday from prostate cancer. The last surviving link to Los Angeles’ thriving Central Avenue jazz and R&B lifeforce was 91. McNeely was born in Watts in 1927, when it was rural and milk was […]
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Chuck Berry was a walking contradiction. An inquisitive and highly intelligent student, born into a stable middle class family, who found himself incarcerated at 19 after an armed robbery spree with a broken pistol. A black man in his thirties […]
Kris Kristofferson takes a final pull from a bottle of beer and tosses it at the trash. It misses. The glass bottle hits the concrete floor with an echo loud enough to turn heads, but it doesn’t break. He shrugs, […]
Jerry Lee Lewis knows he is going straight to hell. So he plays. And he stays alive. Jerry Lee Lewis is a self-proclaimed stylist. According to the Killer himself, there are only four original American voices: Al Jolson, Jimmie […]
The secret to happiness lies in the extent to which one can manage expectations. It’s a delicate trick. Expect too much, and you will surely be disappointed. Trudge through life expecting nothing, and that is what you will find. The man […]
This is the second installment in a continuing series each St. Patrick’s Day, using modern and traditional Irish music to explore Irish history (the first entry, Songs of Hunger, can be found here). Artists featured in this article include Van […]
The brothers Alvin ceased playing music together, for the most part, in the 1980s when Dave left the Blasters. Dave forged a rich and acclaimed solo career, while Phil continued with various incarnations of the Blasters, and released two excellent solo […]
The Spanish Gothic United Artists Building, the current Ace Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, was the perfect setting for the Vidiots Foundation’s inaugural Harry Dean Stanton Award – presented to its nonagenarian namesake Sunday evening as the first in an […]
“Those in power write the history, those who suffer write the songs.” – Frank Harte All across America on March 17 people will don Leprechaun hats of cheap green plastic and drink cups of cheap green beer and otherwise carry […]
Wake up, wake up little Betty What makes you sleep so sound When the highway robbers are a-comin’ They’ll tear your playhouse down The little cabin in Ridgetop, Tennessee hadn’t held a soul in over twenty years. The crime scene […]
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