Quantcast
Channel: Ed Ward
Browsing all 34 articles
Browse latest View live

The Forgotten Story Of Memphis' American Studios

Memphis has been a music town since anyone can remember, and it's had places to record that music since there have been records. Some of its studios — Sun, Stax and Hi — are well-known, but American...

View Article



Out Of Industrial Wasteland, The English Beat Was Born

In 1978, it seemed that every kid in Britain wanted to be in a punk band. But in Birmingham, that blighted industrial scar in the middle of the island, there wasn't much punk to be seen. The oasis was...

View Article

More Than This: The 'Complete' Roxy Music

Roxy Music's eight studio albums have just been collected in one box set, titled The Complete Studio Recordings 1972-1982.Roxy Music is the only band I can think of that had an oboe player in it, and...

View Article

The Big Man Behind 'Shake, Rattle And Roll'

Big Joe Turner's hardest-hitting singles have been collected on a new compilation, titled Big Joe Turner Rocks.Here's how it would work, night after night in Kansas City. The band onstage would start a...

View Article

The Insect Trust: An American Band Deconstructed

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXPkG8M0fT4http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NLr7XSHrgs

View Article


Turning Up The Volume On The Electric Blues

Blues is so much a part of the fabric of American music and American culture — not only as a defined musical form, but also as a springboard for all kinds of creativity — that it seems crazy to try to...

View Article

The Unsung Pioneer Of Louisiana Swamp-Pop

Southern Louisiana in the early 1960s was a hotbed of musical creativity among youngsters who'd been raised listening to French-language country music and Fats Domino. They combined those — and other —...

View Article

Aretha Franklin Before Atlantic: The Columbia Years

Aretha Franklin made her first record when she was 14, singing some gospel standards in the church of her father, Rev. C.L. Franklin, an easygoing Detroit pastor who was friends with Martin Luther King...

View Article


The Moving Sidewalks: Where The British Invasion Met Texas Blues

There must be something in the water — or the beer — in Texas that caused the huge eruption of garage bands and psychedelic bands in the mid-1960s, because there sure were a lot of them, and their...

View Article


Johnny Cash's Columbia Catalog Out Now — As A 64-Disc Box Set

In 1955, John R. Cash was a sometime auto mechanic, sometime appliance salesman who liked to play the guitar and sing, mostly gospel songs. The "R" in his name didn't stand for anything — and, in fact,...

View Article

Jerry Lee Lewis: Live, Singing As If Life Depended On It

It was April 4, 1964, and Jerry Lee Lewis had officially bottomed out. He hadn't charted a record in years, and now, on tour in England and Germany, he was getting paid so little that he couldn't...

View Article

Arctic Records: Drafting A Blueprint For The Philly Sound

Arctic Records opened for business late in 1964. The label was the brainchild of Jimmy Bishop, the program director of WDAS — at the time Philadelphia's No. 1 black radio station. If that sounds like a...

View Article

Fame Studios And The Road To Nashville Songwriting Glory

Wallace Daniel Pennington grew up singing. His father played guitar and his mother played piano, and by the age of 9, the young man had a guitar of his own. The family attended church on Sunday and...

View Article


The Dawn Of Sun Records: 15 Hours Of Blues

Sam Phillips is famous for saying that if he could find a white boy with the authentic Negro sound and feel, he'd make a billion dollars. Seeing Phillips in his striped sport coat and tie in 1950, you...

View Article

Bumpy, Bikers And The Story Behind 'Leader Of The Pack'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faIlLD61Okghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW_rYLoIR08

View Article


A Nostalgic — But Bumpy — Journey With The Beach Boys

All it takes is two seconds of hearing "Round round get around / I get around" and you're there — in the sun, on the beach, in the '60s. The Beach Boys vaulted up the charts while branching out from...

View Article

When Memphis Made A Move On Nashville's Country Monopoly

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2u94Feswfwhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al6P75kscBwhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Orz0jU8pcP0

View Article


The Soul Singer Who Never Quite Made It

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysdrbd3LeGM

View Article

The Animals: The British Invasion That Wasn't

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDlrRQ6Yzishttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxNEiZhpinY

View Article

Johnny Cash's Columbia Catalog Out Now — As A 64-Disc Box Set

In 1955, John R. Cash was a sometime auto mechanic, sometime appliance salesman who liked to play the guitar and sing, mostly gospel songs. The "R" in his name didn't stand for anything — and, in fact,...

View Article
Browsing all 34 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images