Bessie Smith’s death was the result of a car accident outside of Memphis, according to This Day in Music. Here is more on Smith from The Red Hot Jazz...
Category - Historical
Sea Chanties are great. Rob Ossian’s Pirate Cove has a wealth of good information. Wikipedia defines them well: A shanty (also spelled...
Hazel Dickens’ song Fire in the Hole is the title track from the 1987 John Sayles movie Matewan, which tells the story of a coal miners’ strike in...
Acoustic Guitar Masters John Fahey: On the Sunny Side of the Ocean Bert Jansch: Reynardine/Angie Leo Kottke: Vaseline Machine Gun/Last Steam Engine Adrian...
Here is the beginning of Encyclopedia.com’s profile of the multi-talented Paul Robeson, one of the most important figures — musical and otherwise — of the...
It’s a long time until Election Day in New York City, but clearly the best candidate is Jimmy McMillan of The Rent is Too Damn High Party. McMillan ran...
Here is a rather odd line from Wikipedia’s bio of Leon Redbone: According to the Toronto Star report in the 1980s, his birth name is Dickran Gobalian, he...
It all leads–at least to this point–to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Alabama Shakes, with stops at Fats Waller, Tony Bennett and all the others along the...
Documentary filmmaker Les Blank–many of whose films had musical subjects–died on April 7. Here is Blank’s Wikipedia entry. The film-maker Les...
A few years ago I read a very interesting book about the early evolution of baseball. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the title. One point the author...
