Don Robey had the muscle and the money, but Evelyn Johnson was the brains and the backbone behind the Duke/ Peacock music business empire of the ‘50s and ‘60s. Ten years before Berry Gordy started Motown, Houston had the hottest black music label in the country, and Johnson ran day-to-day operations. She was also in […]
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. 1993 – It is somewhat fitting that former Hard Rock Cafe owner Isaac Tigrett is driven to the entrance of his new House of Blues eatery/nightclub in the Bluesmobile from the movie The Blues Brothers. In white letters on the side of this gaudy, yet functional, slab of Tigrett memorabilia are the words, […]
A stage is higher than the floor because you’re supposed to do something special when you’re performing on that stage, and no one has been so consumed by that challenge as Michael Jackson. At the same time, no other superstar has fallen so hard on the realities of life at the ground level.
In that time of segregation, Teagarden couldn’t publicly perform with his musical kindreds, but he broke the studio color line in 1929 when he recorded “Knockin’ a Jug” with Louis Armstrong.
Toni Price is the undisputed queen of the calendar tattoo, making the term “residency” purt near permanent with her Tuesday night “Hippie Hour” shows at the Continental Club. In 13 years of Tuesdays, Toni’s missed her spiritual party about as often as the University of Texas offensive line has skipped supper. Then you’ve got the […]
SANTA MONICA, Jan. 1993. — It promised to be the party of the year. To put a joyous and sloppy ex-clamation point at the end of the Cowboys’ 52-17 win in the Super Bowl, owner Jerry Jones rented the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, hired an expensive caterer, had the place decorated in silver and blue […]
‘All your life You were only waiting for this moment to arise’ CHICAGO – The Magnificent Mile of Michigan Avenue that leads to Grant Park has never quite earned its nickname as it did on Election Day, when history and hysteria hugged it out. Hundreds of thousands of people were down there and just about […]
by Michael Corcoran AAS 1999 John Lennon described the blues as a chair. “It’s not a design for a chair or a better chair,” he said. “It’s the first chair. It’s a chair for sitting on, not for looking at. You sit on that music.” Too often, however, the music that calls itself the blues […]
9/11/2002 It had been touted as the first great work of art based on the Sept. 11 tragedy, but the Bruce Springsteen fans who filled the Mercury nightclub in July to get an early listen to The Rising would’ve been there if their Boss had just made a concept album about the London subway system […]
The World United Music Fest held, kinda, in Nov. 2008, was a little shy of its goal of 100,000 fans during the three days. Yeah, just 99,800 short. WUMF could’ve been sponsored by Sharpie because, with high ticket prices and a local-heavy lineup, it had disaster written all over it. On the bright side – […]
