By Matt Shedd Originally published at A MISSING AMERICA: American Entertainment Blog and Monthly Online Magazine AMA Magazine launching this March at www.amissingamerica.com. Stay tuned! In 1977 that black cloud famously gathered over Memphis when the world was scandalized […]
Charlie Parker recorded his completely unique take on George and Ira Gershwin’s Embraceable You for Dial on October 28, 1947. Returned to New York after 16 month haze in California, which included a stay at Camarillo State Mental Hospital, a […]
Charlie Parker is the eternal now that dries metaphysics into dust. Careening between elation and nothing-at-all, a virile intoxication, a force of nature with gold streaming through his veins. Going out West and just staying, spending his airfare home on […]
A well-written song caught on record always sounds effortless. Before the final product is presented though, like any craft, it’s usually nothing but damn hard work. Arthur Alligood’s songs convey this sense of ease about writing and recording, but a careful […]
A well-written song caught on record always sounds effortless. Before the final product is presented though, like any craft, it’s usually nothing but damn hard work. Arthur Alligood’s songs convey this sense of ease about writing and recording, but a careful […]
At age 26, less than three years before dying, Hank Williams released “Long Gone Lonesome Blues” in March 1950 and became a #1 Hot Country Single. “My Son Calls Another Man Daddy” (another Hank original) was pressed as the […]
John Hammond was one of the early connoisseurs of black music. A visionary who recorded, produced, scouted, and was one of the undisputed giants who shaped 20th century music history. A man who could set you up to be king […]
“The musicians in Moonsville Collective know their songs are always coming up through the landscape–the tradition. They negotiate their way through the ghosts of American history. That struggle we all feel fighting against the isolation of the rootlessness in an […]
BOOK REVIEWS: Tosches, Nick. Hellfire. New York: Grove, 1982. and Tosches’s Country: The Twisted Roots of Rock ‘n’ Roll. New York: Da Capo, 1984. If you are interested in the history of American music–country, blues, hillbilly ballads, minstrelsy, jazz, rock […]
by Matt Shedd In his excellent liner notes to Tell Tale Signs, Larry “Ratso” Sloman quotes Bob Dylan on religion: “Those old songs are my lexicon and my prayer book. You can find all my philosophy in those old […]
