Dave Brubeck is one of those artists that whenever I’ve delved into the recordings just a bit, I’ve thought, “Wow, this is wonderful stuff . . . gotta explore this more,” but for some reason, perhaps pocketbook-related, just never did. Sure I have the greatest hits . . . . Continue Reading »
Oh, what a tangled web did Obama weave, When first he “composited” Genevieve. Vanity Fair has published extracts from a forthcoming biography of Barack Obama featuring letters he sent one of his college girlfriends, Alex McNear, and journal entries written by Genevieve Cook, a girlfriend . . . . Continue Reading »
Rock and disco, the typical middle-class alternatives to Afro-American popular music, are inferior forms of music; however, as Pete Townsend helped us to see in the last Songbook post , it may usually be too difficult, and is (arguably) inauthentic anyhow, for middle class persons to play . . . . Continue Reading »
One of the reasons my blogging has been light of late is I’ve been trying to catch up with Ralph Ellison. Here at Washington and Lee University, where I currently teach, professors Marc Conner and Lucas Morel put on a fabulous conference this weekend , commemorating the 60th anniversary of . . . . Continue Reading »
Martha Bayles is the author of the best book on pop music I know, Hole in Our Soul: The Loss of Beauty and Meaning in American Popular Music . For its final chapter, she borrows the title of a William Bell song, You Don’t Miss Your Water ‘til the Well Runs Dry , so as to refer to the . . . . Continue Reading »
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