Archive

Although Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin both achieved higher artistic renown, no one has united the worlds of spiritual and secular music as seamlessly as Mavis Staples. Where Aretha and Sam Cooke were seen as switching from the former to the latter (without totally abandoning gospel), it has never been

Back in Mott The Hoople's day, you never would've picked frontman Ian Hunter as a candidate to age gracefully. Improbably, he has done just that, perhaps because he was always a bit older than his peers. Hunter's actual year of birth has long been

Graham Parker has been unfairly tagged as an angry young man who never grew past his venom-spewing days, but over the years, he's written and recorded some of the most tender declarations of love, some of the most earnest cries for connection, and some of the downright sweetest

Mary Chapin Carpenter looks inward and outward on The Calling, a baker's dozen of original songs that is her first new album in three years. At 49, she's still on a quest for a place in the world, to borrow an earlier album title, be it

Po' Girl has the same womanly (not girlish, mind you) croon of the 1920s and '30s blues mamas -- yet their music isn't of another era, despite the banjo backing, woodsy clarinet licks and Wurlitzer. On their third album, Po' Girl -- which includes Trish