Music preservation efforts go beyond strictly archival functions. They challenge our understanding of certain genres that have been historically associated with just a few major cities. For...
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Zeb LarsonAmassing rare and forgotten music is a peculiar sort of hobby — one that slowly transforms into an addiction. It’s not that I don’t love mainstream music. It’s just that the thrill of listening to some forgotten gem that...
Musicians tend to attract quirky nicknames, and more than a few of them stick for life. Louis Armstrong was Satchmo, Coleman Hawkins was Bean, Charlie Parker was Bird, and Lester Young was known as Prez or Tickle Toe. Sometimes they take over an...
>When it's summer, I want to hear blisteringly hot dance numbers or mellow jams from the torrid regions of the world. I've based this mix on artists from Latin America and the Caribbean; some of it's hot, some of it's mellow, and all of it is good...
Folklorists like to romanticize blues music as being a pure expression of culture, but recorded blues music was carefully marketed to its intended audience from its very beginning. As early as the 1920s, music aimed at African-Americans was labeled...
I spent a long time thinking about how to write this album review of Linda Perhacs’ new album, The Soul of All Natural Things, the follow-up to Perhacs’ 1970 album Paralellograms and her first new record in 44 years. Paralellograms is a...
The “blind bluesman” is perhaps the dominant image of the genre, and one that evokes a number of associations. As noted by scholar Joesph Witek, the idea of the “blind genius” dates at least as far back as Homer. Given that...
This newest list of musicians includes the Blues musician who probably did more than any other one person to jump-start my interest in older music: Big Bill Broonzy. The fun of listening to somebody who recorded seventy years ago is that you can...