You’ve heard of Donald Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill? This writer would rather talk about big, beautiful box sets. Here (listed alphabetically, by artist) are 21 of popular music’s most spectacular gargantuan anthologies, each featuring 10 or more discs. Mildred Bailey, The Complete Columbia Recordings of Mildred Bailey (2000, 10 CDs). You’re probably wondering who the […]
Bentley’s Bandstand: April 2026 Leeann Atherton, GOOD GOD. Roll back all the music since the Earth welcomed humans walking uprighht all those centuries ago, and there’s a good chance that gospel exhortations would be among the earliest. As soon as voices rose high, it was thankfulness that cracked open the spirit. Now, all these years […]
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Singer, songwriter, and guitarist Dale Watson has been railing against mainstream country music for decades. In a 1995 number called “Nashville Rash,” for example, he complained that “I’m too country now for country, just like Johnny Cash.” Added Watson: “[It] breaks my heart to see my heroes fadin’ away / Shoulda known it when they […]
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You’ve likely never heard of Dan Penn and, if that’s the case, one reason is probably that you’re not the sort of person who reads songwriting credits. If you were, you’d know this Alabama native from the many popular songs he has written or co-written—the Box Tops’ “Cry Like a Baby,” Janis Joplin’s “A Woman […]
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Lacking clout when he entered the music business, John Mellencamp acquiesced to his manager’s insistence that he change his name to the ostensibly more marketable Johnny Cougar. But after he began to score hits, the Indiana native started billing himself as John Cougar Mellencamp before finally reverting to John Mellencamp. A new two-CD set called […]
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Buddy Holly and his band released The “Chirping” Crickets, on Nov. 27, 1957, about 14 months before he perished in an Iowa airplane crash. The record, their debut, turned out to be the only album they would make together. But what an album it is. Among the tracks on this LP are the chart-topping “That’ll […]
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BENTLEY’S BANDSTAND: March 2026 Hank Alrich, BROKEN RIVER. When it came time to build Austin, Texas into a musical capital of the world, there were a dozen true believers there in 1970 that took on the task. And no one did more than Hank Alrich. He helped bring to life the Armadillo World Headquarters, which […]
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Steve Forbert’s 2015 album, Compromised, has recently been remastered and reissued with a new title, a new mix, a new bonus track, and a few musical embellishments. Now called The Things That I See, the set features strong material and complementary backup from a talented quartet that includes NRBQ co-founder Joey Spampinato (bass) and Spampinato’s […]
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In 1978, 11 years after psychological problems caused Brian Wilson to begin withdrawing from music-making, the Beach Boys recorded a Mike Love song called “Brian’s Back.” The track didn’t surface until 1979 (as a single’s B side) and wasn’t widely heard until two decades later, but even if it had been released immediately, the message […]
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Music Reviews: Talking Heads’ Tentative Decisions, plus Mississippi Sheiks, Jesper Lindell, and James Houlahan You can point to obvious antecedents for many new wave and punk bands. In Blondie’s music, for example, you can hear the influence of so-called girl groups from the 1960s. You can also draw a straight line from the Ramones to […]
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