Tag Archives: Popular and Standards

I’ve been waiting for a good Maria Muldaur CD retrospective for a long time now, and the folks at Shout! Factory (“Music, movies & video for the discerning pop culture geek.”) have delivered the goods at last: 30 Years of Maria Muldaur: I’m A Woman. Charting the former jug band …

Another irreplaceable great is gone: Ray Charles at 73 of liver disease. The news and thoughts: Ray Charles and Reagan The most exalted brother in the world played for Reagan’s big re-nomination coronation. Posted in Blogcritics on June 15, 2004 01:57 AM Ray Charles Mastermix It was often said that …

The great Ray Charles died today and I had to come up with angle quickly for an article. After fretting for a bit, I did the obvious and put on a few songs – the angle was obvious: he absorbed more forms of American music than anyone and made them …

Peripatetic (Austin, New Orleans, Vancouver, San Francisco) co-founder of the Be Good Tanyas, Jolie Holland’s literally timeless second album Escondida just came out on Epitaph’s roots music subsidiary Anti. Holland, an unholy but appealing blend of Norah Jones and the Squirrel Nut Zippers’ Katharine Whalen, similarly combines the sound and …

The Dells were just indicted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The archetypal R&B vocal harmony group began recording doo-wop in 1953 and carry on to this very day with one lineup change in 51 years. Led by the appealingly gruff lead of Marvin Junior and the sweet …

The great film music composer, conductor and performer Henry Mancini, whom Donald Fagen called the “High Priest of Hollywood Cool,” has now been gone for ten years. In commemoration of this and the 80th anniversary of his birth, this is the Year of Mancini. The U.S. Postal Service will issue …

An excellent holiday collection leaning toward standards and the gospel-R&B end of the spectrum is Ultimate Christmas. Out of 17 songs only two really don’t work and unfortunately one of them leads off the disc: Boyz ll Men turn in an a capella version of “Silent Night” that combines the …

I vacillate between Tom Waits’ early L.A.-folky, mid jazzy-pop, or later avant-noise periods as my favorite. I guess I just like Tom Waits, but if I had to nail it down to one disc, I would go with his Used Songs (1973-80) collection, featuring the best of the (mid jazzy-pop) …

I find myself inexplicably in the company of Elvis Costello cultists – you know who you are. Now please don’t get me wrong (a nice Pretenders song, by the way), Elvis is a major talent in every category, belongs absolutely in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and will …

The great-but-totally-unpretentious Rosemary Clooney (1928-2002) is generally thought of as having had two singing careers: a semi-schlocky pop period in the ’50s under the thumb of Columbia’s svengali Mitch Miller, typified by the megahit “Come On-a My House” (with lyrics, perplexingly, by playwright William Saroyan), and then after a lengthy …