ALL THE RAJ: HOW ‘NORWEGIAN WOOD’ UNLEASHED THE ‘INDIAN INVASION’
Once George Harrison picked up the sitar to add exotic sounds to John Lennon’s “Norwegian Wood”, the...
John Kruth
RICHIE HAVENS REVISITED
Brooklyn born and raised, Richie Havens (1941-2013) began hanging out in Greenwich Village in 1959, as a street...
IN THE KEY OF LIGHTNIN’ HOPKINS: THE MAN & HIS MUSIC
Texas bluesman Lightnin’ Hopkins (1912-1982) played, sang and lived by his own rules. When a sideman once asked...
THE SKY DON’T HAVE NO ROOF: THE LAST ORNETTE COLEMAN INTERVIEW
Ornette Coleman (1930-2015), undoubtedly a great musician and composer who freed jazz from nearly all constrictions, was also...
ON THE WAY TO PARADISE: MY TRAVELS WITH JOHN PRINE
John Prine hit the ground running with his debut album in 1971, a seamless masterpiece of what seemed...
AL KOOPER REMEMBERS PART II
He was a participant in some of the great musical moments of the past half century, as musician,...
AL KOOPER REMEMBERS, PART I
He was a participant in some of the great musical moments of the past half century, part of...
THE MYSTERIOUS BARD: PETE BROWN’S JOURNEY FROM THE BEATS TO CREAM
Before Beatlemania and the British Invasion, Pete Brown was one of the UK’s few professional poets who made...
RAHSAAN ROLAND KIRK: A TORTURED LOVE AFFAIR WITH ROCK ‘N’ ROLL
Rahsaan Roland Kirk, the blind jazz visionary, inspired a who’s who of rock music, including Jimi Hendrix, Frank...
SHEL TALMY’S SONIC ODYSSEY
Shel Talmy. Just the sound of his name evokes a time when London was on the verge of...
ELLIOTT SHARP AT 70: STILL DOING THE DON’T
‘Musician’ seems a paltry way to describe Elliott Sharp because he is so many things—multi-instrumentalist (sax, clarinet, guitar),...
‘MOTHER’: WHEN JOHN LENNON SCREAMED FOR JULIA
On Plastic Ono Band, the debut album by his post-Beatles group, John Lennon bared his soul and relocated...
THE ORIGINAL GANGSTA: LEAD BELLY AND HIS LEGACY
Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Lead Belly, was a folk-blues giant whose music and persona transformed American culture....
ERIC ANDERSEN: BEAT SENSIBILITY IN A FOLKSINGER CROWD
Eric Andersen came to music through Rimbaud, Baudelaire, the Beats, and his own inveterate wanderlust. After a teen...