Billy Joel’s 52nd Street was huge—a certified- platinum monster that’s logged over ten million sales since its 1978 release. While The Stranger, which debuted a year earlier, cemented Joel’s status as a global star, 52nd ...

Fans of British folk and folk-rock performers like Pentangle, Ralph McTell, Bert Jansch, and John Renbourn owe it to themselves to check out Wizz Jones, who all of the above would consider not only a ...

American roots-music has moved to the cities. Only a few old-timers and hardy ex-urbanite pioneers are still playing the fiddle tunes, dance ditties, country blues, rags, chain-gang hollers, minstrel songs, and mournful mountain-music ballads of ...

As in its original 1959 release and expanded 2002 reissue, so in this new 180-gram vinyl edition by Impex Records: The Fabulous Johnny Cash consolidates the strengths that had catapulted the singer to regional stardom ...

London-born, Georgia-dwelling Holly Golightly (not a pseudonym—her mother was a Breakfast at Tiffany’s fan) has made some 30 albums in various incarnations. No Help Coming is the fourth with her strychnine-voiced, multi-instrumentalist Texas-bred partner known ...

In the 1970s, when musicians mining America’s rich musical history were a much rarer breed, Ry Cooder was a pivotal figure. If initially I was wary of artists plunging into roots music from bygone days, ...

Super groups are a stock-in-trade in the rock world but seldom live up to their billing. That’s the case with Superheavy. Producer and ex-Eurhythmic Dave Stewart built this East meets West band in 2009 around ...

John Hiatt’s songs are a rich tapestry of stories and moods, alternately tough and tender. The opening track, “Damn This Town,” is a gritty tale of a lost soul trapped by the circumstances of birth ...

Steve Cropper, Grammy-nominated Rock Hall of Fame guitarist, recorded Dedicated as a heartfelt tribute to fellow guitarist Lowman “Pete” Pauling and his pioneering 50s R&B group, The 5 Royales. Cropper was the house guitarist of ...

Its heyday had about the lifespan of a mayfly but rockabilly has had a habit of cropping up in slightly altered form throughout every rock ’n’ roll era. Ireland’s fetching cool kitty Imelda May Higham ...

Born to bluegrass (he played mandolin on stage with Bill Monroe at the age of six and was in Ralph Stanley’s band in his mid-teens), Ricky Skaggs went mainstream country in the 80s and became ...

Hailing from Kansas City, 23-year-old Samantha Fish is the latest in an emerging generation of young female blues singers- songwriters-guitarists who learned their blues from Muddy Waters and Stevie Ray Vaughan and their songwriting angles ...

There’s almost nothing in the music of Pentangle, Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention, or any of the members of those groups that wasn’t directly inspired by one larger-than-life guitarist named Davy Graham. As the young man ...

Jennifer Warnes is one of the most underrated pop singers of her generation. Her albums, though few and far between, brim with melody and craft—and lyrics both intelligent and emotionally weighted. The Well was originally ...

Eight years in the making and definitely worth the wait, this latest roots music collaboration from singer/songwriter Gillian Welch and guitarist David Rawlings uses spare vocal harmonies and simple folk instrumentation (guitar, banjo, and harmonica) ...