Friday, March 29, 2024

Song of the Fathers

by Michael Corcoran for AAS 2014 Ray Wylie Hubbard made his debut on “The Late Show With David Letterman” in January 2014 by singing the story of a notorious Dallas rock club with an underage girl at the door checking IDs. Weaving through the lyrics of “Mother Blues” is a tantalizing guitar and its continued […]

Souls On Fire: Gram and Emmy

He wore the sequined Nudie suits favored by the classic country singers, but Parsons had his decorated with marijuana leaves, pills and naked women where the glittery cacti, wagon wheels and lariats usually went. He was the original cosmic cowboy, recording songs by Merle Haggard and George Jones with the International Submarine Band way back in 1966.

The Real Sonny Curtis Story

West Texan Sonny Curtis could very well be the Bo Jackson of songwriting. Instead of excelling in two sports, the 84-year-old Curtis penned two classics that are as different as football and baseball. As a Lubbock sandstorm howled outside his window in the summer of 1958, he wrote “I Fought the Law,” one of the […]

Aretha Franklin from A- Z

May the letters of the alphabet spell out the story of a preacher’s daughter who sang sanctified rhythm and blues like none other and became the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. A: “Amazing Grace.” Franklin grew up deep in the church, which was the concept of this 1972 return […]

Stax Records: The ABA to Motown’s NBA

MEMPHIS – There’s almost nothing in this world cooler than driving down McLemore Avenue blasting “Green Onions,” the 1962 hit by Booker T. and the MGs that let the world know there was an imposing musical force coming from a South Memphis neighborhood. It was a time of racial upheaval in the South, but a […]