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Another big, sprawling topic – more than one post can handle. And another cheap excuse to share a few of my favorite examples of the form. But what is jump blues, exactly? Some would describe it [...]

This is really just a cheap excuse to share a few samples of some pretty cool tunes I’ve been listening to lately. So if you’re one of those Northern Soul nuts from the UK, don’t expect me to [...]

How’s that for a blowhard title? The operative word being “moments”… which speaks to one of several fundamentally different ways that we experience music. Some folks like it in the [...]

Ah, the life of a trucker. Got me a hot rod rig with 10 forward gears and a Georgia overdrive, and I’m double-clutchin my way through this here mountain pass. There’s a tombstone every mile… I’m [...]

I recently read that Jack White (White Stripes, Dead Weather, Raconteurs) produced a new album by rockabilly queen Wanda Jackson. Sounded like the perfect deal to me – love White and love Wanda. [...]

My cousin Robert Quine was a bona fide guitar hero (number 80 on Rolling Stone’s list of “The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time” – right after Cliff Gallup of Be Bop a Lula fame and before [...]

It’s hard to imagine Saturday night in America without the corner-bar blues hero. Even harder trying to imagine said blues hero making it through the night without playing standards like Sweet [...]

My mom grew up on a farm in central Georgia. She was the youngest of 10 children, and her family spanned generations in a way that was unusual even for the Deep South. Her father, Wirt Little, [...]

I’m a blues hound… won’t deny it. Love the form’s many sub-genres and permutations. Hate most attempts to slap a little rouge on its cheeks and make it more presentable to [...]

Consider this the final installment in our Substance Abuse Trilogy (I’ll blame another brutal winter in the Rubber City): Athens, Ohio, was an interesting place back in the late-Seventies. [...]

I grew up listening to a lot of jazz. Not the edgy stuff. My dad mostly liked straight-ahead piano players like Oscar Peterson, Erroll Garner and Earl “Fatha” Hines. He also had those “can’t [...]

I’m guessing the first drinking song was written not long after the first alcoholic beverage was served. Something about draggin’ stone for the pharaoh – and my baby left me too. In other words, [...]

Think of the greats in any musical genre, and you’re usually thinking of a signature sound that gives the artist a distinct presence or personality. In jazz, it’s the difference between Dexter [...]

Time to dig through the old mail bag and respond to a few comments about previous posts… Most of these comments show up on the blog, but a few others take a more direct route – either via email [...]

Brother James returns with more photographs taken during several visits to Cuba over the past decade.  He provides his usual commentary under each photo, and I’ve decided to weigh in with a [...]

Several posts ago, we waxed poetic about Cincinnati’s King Records – home to legendary American artists ranging from the Stanley Brothers to James Brown.  But King wasn’t the only act in town.  [...]

Here’s another “Editors’ Pick” from blogcritics.  It asks the important questions: Would Don Draper approve of the Big-O jingle?  And, can one company bring happiness and [...]

I have this theory about the Beach Boys… that people who live in northern, land-locked areas, where it’s brutally cold nearly half of the year, have little patience for their well-crafted odes to [...]

Every year I get together with five or six of my high school buddies – as well as assorted spousal units and special guests – for a party at my friend’s alpaca farm just outside of a small town [...]

In the early 1980s, I lived in Cincinnati and edited one of those free entertainment newspapers you see blowing through the streets of big cities throughout the country.  The following piece [...]

‘Tis the season for holiday music playlists.  As “the guy who collects music,” I’ve received a number of Christmas-mix CDs over the years from friends, co-workers and family members.  And, sad to [...]