The Queen of Soul was born on this day in 1942. Here is more on Ms. Franklin. The great clip above is from the show “The Midnight Special.” It...
Category - Soul
This Day in Music reports that The Prince of Motown would have turned 76 today. It also says that on this day in 2006, Watts Branch Park in Washington, DC, was...
Valerie June Hockett — who performs as Valerie June — was born in Tennessee, lived in Memphis and has relocated to Brooklyn. (Click here or on the...
Louis Allen Rawls was born in Chicago in 1933. He was friends with Curtis Mayfield and Sam Cooke, who would play a significant role in his life. Rawls was in...
Simone was diagnosed with bipolar disorder later in life. This led to erratic behavior, including shooting at a record executive (not the first performer to...
TDMB offers emails keeping you up to date on our posts. Just send me a note at this email and I will add you to the list. The Marvelettes certainly would like...
Here is part of the very good profile of Otis Redding from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame website, He was inducted in 1989: Redding’s relatively unspectacular...
It’s interesting to compare the staid, probably lip-synced and homogenized version of Bobby Hebb’s great song, Sonny (at this link) and the far...
The beginning of War is one of the signature musical moments of the Vietnam War era. It’s nice to learn that Edwin Starr contributed much more than that...
Love Train, above, has gotten a second life in Coors beer commercials. There are versions with far better audio quality than the original video — such as...
Reading Music
The stories of the great bands and musicians are fascinating. Musicians as a group are brilliant, but often troubled. The combination of creativity and drama makes for great reading.
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Here are some books to check out.
Duke Ellington brought class, sophistication and style to jazz which, until that point, was proudly unpolished and raucous. His story is profound. The author, Terry Teachout, also wrote "Pops," the acclaimed bio of Louis Armstrong. Click here or on the image.
What else is there to say? Here is the story behind every song written by The Beatles. Click here or on the image.
The Grateful Dead don't get enough credit for the profound nature of its lyrics. Many of the band's songs are driven by a deep and literate Americana ("I'm Uncle Sam/That's who I am/Been hidin' out/In a rock and roll band" and "Majordomo Billy Bojangles/Sit down and have a drink with me/What's this about Alabama/Keeps comin' back to me?").
David Dodd's exhaustive study tells the story, song by song. Click here or on the image.