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Dan Penn is one of the great songwriters. His work and his life are what legends are made of, and so is this recording. Penn wrote or co-wrote such '60s classics as "Dark End Of The Street", "Do Right Woman" and "I'm

It's now 20 years since Ernest Tubb began work on his last sizable body of recorded material -- the First Generation label sides, 47 of them, cut between 1977 and 1981 under Pete Drake's production. Major labels, including his own (Decca, by then turned MCA), had

Originally released on vinyl by Sierra Records in 1982 and again in 1988 on CD, this third turn on reissue giant Rhino Records of a Gram Parsons radio show in Hempstead, Long Island, offers something special for both the hardcore Parsons fan and the newcomer. The songs are also presented

This San Francisco band signed Geffen last year within a month of playing its first live gig, and lead singer/songwriter David Fisher had never written a song until three years ago. Big Blue Hearts appear deserving of such attention based on this promising debut. Big Blue Hearts is jammed

If nothing else, this debut from Columbus, Ohio, band Big Back Forty functions as a test case as to why it's probably not a good idea to solicit opinions before listening to a record. A friend of mine who lives in Columbus compared this quartet to the fantastic

Bill Frisell is a guitar genius. Any of his multitude of collaborators -- from John Zorn and Arto Lindsay to Elvis Costello and Marianne Faithfull -- can attest to that. What's becoming increasingly clear, though, is that he is also a brilliant composer. A bona fide American original,