Singer Benjamin Moore, Jr., a lifelong musician who spent 14 years as a member of the gospel group the Blind Boys of Alabama, died last week on May 12. He was 80.
Reps for the Blind Boys of Alabama confirmed Moore’s death, adding that he died of natural causes at a hospital in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His bandmate, Ricky McKinnie, said, “The Blind Boys family is deeply saddened by Ben’s passing. He was an integral part of our group, not just as a talented singer but as a kind and dependable friend.
Reps for the Blind Boys of Alabama confirmed Moore’s death, adding that he died of natural causes at a hospital in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His bandmate, Ricky McKinnie, said, “The Blind Boys family is deeply saddened by Ben’s passing. He was an integral part of our group, not just as a talented singer but as a kind and dependable friend.
- 5/18/2022
- by Jon Blistein
- Rollingstone.com
Bobbie Gentry and Steve Earle are among the composers who will be inducted as the newest members of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. The five inductees will be honored during the NaSHoF Gala on November 1st, 2021, along with the yet-to-be-named inductees for next year — the 2020 ceremony was canceled due to the Covid pandemic.
Gentry’s iconic and mysterious “Ode to Billie Joe” would be enough to merit her inclusion in the Hall of Fame, but she also wrote and recorded “Fancy” and the Glen Campbell duet “Mornin’ Glory,” as...
Gentry’s iconic and mysterious “Ode to Billie Joe” would be enough to merit her inclusion in the Hall of Fame, but she also wrote and recorded “Fancy” and the Glen Campbell duet “Mornin’ Glory,” as...
- 11/3/2020
- by Jon Freeman
- Rollingstone.com
Songwriter Dan Penn doesn’t put out albums under his name very often. The celebrated co-writer behind numerous Memphis/Muscle Shoals-era soul hits, including “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man,” “Dark End of the Street,” “I’m Your Puppet,” and “Cry Like a Baby” has released only a handful of studio recordings since 1973, beginning with his solo debut Nobody’s Fool.
Penn’s latest, Living on Mercy, comes 26 years after his previous effort, 1994’s Do Right Man. The 78-year-old songwriter doesn’t have a specific explanation for why that is.
“I don’t really know why,...
Penn’s latest, Living on Mercy, comes 26 years after his previous effort, 1994’s Do Right Man. The 78-year-old songwriter doesn’t have a specific explanation for why that is.
“I don’t really know why,...
- 8/26/2020
- by Jon Freeman
- Rollingstone.com
An under-appreciated period of Johnny Cash’s lengthy recording career will be reexamined with the April 24th release of a seven-disc box set, The Complete Mercury Recordings 1986-1991, and a 24-cut “best of” collection representing highlights from this period. The CD set also includes several rare or previously unreleased tracks and an additional 20-track collection titled Classic Cash: Hall Of Fame Series (Early Mixes), featuring material mastered from tapes newly discovered in the Mercury vaults. While the vinyl version does not include this LP, it will be available as a...
- 3/6/2020
- by Stephen L. Betts
- Rollingstone.com
Alabama musician, songwriter, and actor Donnie Fritts, an architect of Southern soul music whose songs were covered by dozens of artists from Waylon Jennings to Dusty Springfield, died Tuesday night. His publicist confirmed Fritts’ death at the age of 76.
Fritts’ friend and fellow songwriter Gary Nicholson posted a tribute to Fritts on Facebook early Wednesday morning, writing in part, “There aren’t words to describe what his loving friendship has meant to me through the years, so many songs and stories, it’s gonna take awhile to process this one.
Fritts’ friend and fellow songwriter Gary Nicholson posted a tribute to Fritts on Facebook early Wednesday morning, writing in part, “There aren’t words to describe what his loving friendship has meant to me through the years, so many songs and stories, it’s gonna take awhile to process this one.
- 8/28/2019
- by Stephen L. Betts
- Rollingstone.com
Aaron Sagers Jun 12, 2019
Blake Ritson gets even deeper into Brainiac's head for Krypton season 2.
Blake Ritson has a lot on his brain, as might be expected when one is playing a godlike hyper-intelligent alien android under five hours’ worth of makeup, and prosthetics. But while the actor is immersed in thought about his portrayal of classic Superman villain Brainiac, he is in exceedingly good spirits about the character’s arc during Krypton season 2. But perhaps the other characters on the show facing off against Brainiac be a little less at ease.
“If you do the intellectual tango with Brainiac, you can expect to get your feet trampled on,” Ritson says.
To be fair, Brainiac trampled some feet in the first season as well when he showed up in Krypton’s past to bottle the city Kandor. Time travel shenanigans occurred, and misfit hero – with a dubious grasp of history --...
Blake Ritson gets even deeper into Brainiac's head for Krypton season 2.
Blake Ritson has a lot on his brain, as might be expected when one is playing a godlike hyper-intelligent alien android under five hours’ worth of makeup, and prosthetics. But while the actor is immersed in thought about his portrayal of classic Superman villain Brainiac, he is in exceedingly good spirits about the character’s arc during Krypton season 2. But perhaps the other characters on the show facing off against Brainiac be a little less at ease.
“If you do the intellectual tango with Brainiac, you can expect to get your feet trampled on,” Ritson says.
To be fair, Brainiac trampled some feet in the first season as well when he showed up in Krypton’s past to bottle the city Kandor. Time travel shenanigans occurred, and misfit hero – with a dubious grasp of history --...
- 6/13/2019
- Den of Geek
Can a music festival have a mid-life crisis? In its 33rd year, over two weeks in Austin, Texas, SXSW made its biggest headlines in the opening interactive phase, hosting a widely reported forum of prospective Democratic candidates for president. The SXSW film festival featured major premieres and director Q&As, like a spring-break Sundance with a Texas drawl. And a new SXSW sideline – gaming – drew huge lines at the Austin Convention Center. The original founding energy of SXSW, the music festival, was spread out over an entire week, but big...
- 3/18/2019
- by David Fricke
- Rollingstone.com
Yola was at home in Bristol in December of 2015 when she realized her kitchen was beginning to fill up with flames. “I was walking around burning like a human torch, and my first instinct was, ‘Ahhh!’” says the British singer-songwriter, who had accidentally set a new kitchen appliance on fire. “But instinct two was laughter, because I was thinking, ‘What’s worse than this?’ And the thing that was worse was the life I had just managed to get myself out of.”
That idea–of escaping one’s past life...
That idea–of escaping one’s past life...
- 1/19/2019
- by Jonathan Bernstein
- Rollingstone.com
Jim James adds a ragged, ghostly edge to Burt Bacharach/Hal David’s “What the World Needs Now Is Love” with his cover of the pop ballad for the Spotify Singles series. The My Morning Jacket frontman croons over gentle acoustic guitar and the oceanic harmonies of Resistance Revival Chorus. During the a cappella climax, he ascends to a high, shaky falsetto – adding a mournful vibe to the 1965 hit.
“I look forward to the day when these songs are outdated and there is So Much Love that we don’t...
“I look forward to the day when these songs are outdated and there is So Much Love that we don’t...
- 12/12/2018
- by Ryan Reed
- Rollingstone.com
From South America to Ireland via Iceland, from great white soul out of the Deep South to the paisley revival, here is a dynamite variety with further evidence of the long demise of the CD: The first album is only available digitally — and on vinyl.
Diamante Eléctrico, Buitres (Altafonte)
Formed in Bogotá, Colombia, in 2012, Diamante Eléctrico make alternative rock en Español with cross-the-border zeal. Singer-bassist Juan Galeano, guitarist Daniel Álvarez and drummer Andee Zeta recorded 2016’s La Gran Oscillacion with Joshua V. Smith, Jack White’s house engineer at Third Man Records...
Diamante Eléctrico, Buitres (Altafonte)
Formed in Bogotá, Colombia, in 2012, Diamante Eléctrico make alternative rock en Español with cross-the-border zeal. Singer-bassist Juan Galeano, guitarist Daniel Álvarez and drummer Andee Zeta recorded 2016’s La Gran Oscillacion with Joshua V. Smith, Jack White’s house engineer at Third Man Records...
- 11/29/2018
- by David Fricke
- Rollingstone.com
“I think of Aretha as Our Lady of Mysterious Sorrows,” Jerry Wexler once said of Aretha Franklin. Wexler was the Atlantic Records producer who, in 1967, helped raise the singer to her sudden and incomparable soul heights. “Her eyes are incredible, luminous eyes covering inexplicable pain. Her depressions could be as deep as the dark sea. I don’t pretend to know the sources of her anguish, but anguish surrounds Aretha as surely as the glory of her musical aura.”
Those doleful eyes were sometimes mistaken for shyness. That was how...
Those doleful eyes were sometimes mistaken for shyness. That was how...
- 9/27/2018
- by Mikal Gilmore
- Rollingstone.com
New documentary puts as many survivors of the southern country-soul studio scene on screen as possible
A long line of ghosts, some famous, others unfairly forgotten, haunts Greg "Freddy" Camalier's splendid music documentary Muscle Shoals. Duane Allman, Arthur Alexander, Wilson Pickett, half of Lynyrd Skynyrd… a full accounting of the dead is too sad to contemplate, but Muscle Shoals does us the great favour of putting on camera almost all of the survivors of a defining era in American popular music and of two feuding studios – Fame and its spin-off Muscle Shoals Sound – both located in a single tiny town on the Tennessee river.
If you've read Peter Guralnick's Sweet Soul Music you'll know much of the story, but Camalier puts ageing faces to names often only seen in liner notes. The central figure is legendary producer Rick Hall, a dyed-in-the-wool Alabama good ol' boy who, in a place...
A long line of ghosts, some famous, others unfairly forgotten, haunts Greg "Freddy" Camalier's splendid music documentary Muscle Shoals. Duane Allman, Arthur Alexander, Wilson Pickett, half of Lynyrd Skynyrd… a full accounting of the dead is too sad to contemplate, but Muscle Shoals does us the great favour of putting on camera almost all of the survivors of a defining era in American popular music and of two feuding studios – Fame and its spin-off Muscle Shoals Sound – both located in a single tiny town on the Tennessee river.
If you've read Peter Guralnick's Sweet Soul Music you'll know much of the story, but Camalier puts ageing faces to names often only seen in liner notes. The central figure is legendary producer Rick Hall, a dyed-in-the-wool Alabama good ol' boy who, in a place...
- 10/21/2013
- by John Patterson
- The Guardian - Film News
When Aretha Franklin walks into a room, you know it.
“The girl was special,” music writer and producer Dan Penn says of the Queen of Soul in the clip below. We see Franklin taking to the piano back in the ’60s at Rick Hall’s iconic Fame studio, as well as looking back in a recent interview about her unique experience recording there.
The new documentary, aptly titled Muscle Shoals, chronicles the historic studio in tiny Muscle Shoals, Ala. that’s hosted nearly every big name in music — from Aretha to the Rolling Stones to Bono to Alicia Keys. Beyond Franklin,...
“The girl was special,” music writer and producer Dan Penn says of the Queen of Soul in the clip below. We see Franklin taking to the piano back in the ’60s at Rick Hall’s iconic Fame studio, as well as looking back in a recent interview about her unique experience recording there.
The new documentary, aptly titled Muscle Shoals, chronicles the historic studio in tiny Muscle Shoals, Ala. that’s hosted nearly every big name in music — from Aretha to the Rolling Stones to Bono to Alicia Keys. Beyond Franklin,...
- 9/26/2013
- by Laura Hertzfeld
- EW - Inside Movies
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