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Various Artists - Kentucky Mountain Music: Classic Recordings Of The 1920s & 1930s

Kentucky has long held a special allure for folk song scholars, collectors of hillbilly 78s, revivalists and other aficionados of old-time music. It's a near-mythical place in the minds of these folks, a place where fact and legend often overlap. It's a plain fact, however, that

Otis Taylor - Truth Is Not Fiction

Winner of the distinguished W.C. Handy Best New Artist blues award in 2002, Otis Taylor certainly deserved the recognition, though he was hardly new. A seasoned bluesman whose career dates back to the 1960s, Taylor became discouraged with the business and gave it up for antiquing in the late

Chris Whitley - Hotel Vast Horizon

Hotel Vast Horizon begins with a breath, the briefest of exhalations, a sigh almost. A snare drum stirs. And Chris Whitley takes his post as a tour guide into the "New Lost World". Whitley can rock, sure, but at his best he's a master of mood

John Mellencamp - Trouble No More

John Mellencamp fought authority, authority usually won. Still, Mellencamp was one of the few truly popular musical artists to protest George W. Bush's appointment to the presidency and the (then) gathering clouds of war with Iraq. "To Washington", a song Mellencamp made available for free download

Rank and File - The Slash Years

Autobiography typically has no place in a record review, but let's make an exception here. There's no point in trying to sequester my evaluation of Rank And File's music from memories that are now (gulp!) twenty years old. The time was 1983. The place

Earl Scruggs / Doc Watson / Ricky Skaggs - The Three Pickers

Count this recording of a December 2002 North Carolina concert as one of the dividends of O Brother, Where Art Thou? Without that soundtrack's reach into the PBS audience -- the show is being broadcast on the network's "Great Performances" series, and there'

Johnny Paycheck: 1938 to 2003

Obituary writers remembered Johnny Paycheck, who died February 18 at age 64, as an outlaw. For proof, most cited his 1977 hit version of David Allan Coe's "Take This Job And Shove It", for better or worse his signature tune. His peers praised his artistry. Yet