photo by Glenn Cook Pretty soon Congress will be in session. Marty Stuart is raising funds for his new museum in his hometown of Philadelphia, Mississippi. There’s a chance to have your own name on a pew in what will be known as Marty Stuart’s Congress of Country Country Music Museum. A visit to the […]
From a career standpoint, Sam Cooke’s Keen Records period bears comparison to Elvis Presley’s days at Sun. Presley made seminal recordings at the latter label before his new manager, the hard-driving Colonel Tom Parker, signed him up for stardom at the much larger RCA. Similarly, Cooke spent an important transitional period at Keen before another […]
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In the historic Sixth and I synagogue and arts center in downtown Washington, DC, Amanda Shires was looking up to the balcony, recalling the year she left her newborn daughter home with her husband and took to the road to promote My Piece of Land, albeit with a heavy heart of guilt. Traveling around in […]
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What would happen if many of the country’s leading musicians, singers, and songwriters lived within a few minutes of each other and regularly dropped into one another’s homes to play their latest tunes and trade ideas? You don’t have to guess at the answer because that’s what happened in Southern California’s Laurel Canyon in the […]
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By Bill Bentley Terry Allen and the Panhandle Mystery Band, Just Like Moby Dick. If there is a renaissance person alive in the world today, better make it Terry Allen. Between his paintings, plays and music, Allen has whacked out his own swath the past 50-something years in all kinds of directions. He made most […]
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Perhaps it was the holiday season that inspired them. Or maybe it was the venue—Asbury Park, New Jersey, where some of the participants have roots. Possibly it was the fact that the concerts were for charity. Or that so many talented and like-minded musicians had gathered on the same stage. Maybe it was all of […]
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“In the same way the Bible is divided into the Old and New Testaments, Marty Stuart’s musical career is divided into everything that came before 1999 and everything that came after. The dividing line is The Pilgrim, Stuart’s 10th studio album.” So writes music historian Scott Bomar in a preface to the book that accompanies […]
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The latest evidence that 1998’s The Complete Hank Williams is erroneously titled is Pictures from Life’s Other Side, a six-CD, 144-track collection of performances from the country legend’s 1951 radio show on Nashville’s WSM. (These are commonly known as the Mother’s Best recordings, because the Mother’s Best Flour Company sponsored the 15-minute programs.) Much of […]
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The booklet that accompanies a new anthology from the Honeycombs begins by noting that they are “best remembered” for their 60s hit, “Have I the Right?” In fact, if you recall this British Invasion pop group at all, it is probably solely for that number, which in mid 1964 topped U.K. charts and made it […]
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While 2020 hasn’t really turned on the musical heat yet, have no fear because there is a handful of releases from the latter months of last year to ensure no one is going asleep at the wheel anytime soon. From every style comes a boisterous ability to make sure nothing slows down. Music will always […]
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