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Henry Carrigan

'I Am the Blues and My Life is a Spiritual': Music's Unifying Power

'I Am the Blues and My Life is a Spiritual': Music's Unifying Power

Music touches people’s hearts in deep and enduring ways that words often fail to do. When people hear a certain song, they recall powerfully the feelings they connect with certain events they associate with first hearing that song. Music helps people live through desperate situations, provides soothing comfort in

Questlove Delves into the Creative Process

Questlove Delves into the Creative Process

We’ve all read a novel or a poem, studied a work of art, or listened to a song and asked ourselves what the creative process of the author or artist or musician must be like. How does a songwriter start a song? How was she inspired to write the

'Music Lessons' and Stories from Norbert Putnam

'Music Lessons' and Stories from Norbert Putnam

Norbert Putnam has so many good stories, and he’s a cracking good storyteller. His sense of humor, his detailed sketches of events and people, his love of people, his passion for the music he plays, produces, and writes turn every story he tells into a humorous and fascinating tale

Rick Hall: The Soul of Muscle Shoals

Rick Hall: The Soul of Muscle Shoals

If you heard just about any soul, pop, or even country hit between 1960 and 1974, and well beyond, you were hearing a special sound produced by a musical genius named Rick Hall. In a little northern Alabama town called Muscle Shoals, Hall worked tirelessly — he would later write in

The Real Roy Orbison Story

The Real Roy Orbison Story

Roy Orbison once said, “people often ask me how would I like to be remembered and I answer that I would simply like to remembered.” If Orbison could look back these almost-30 years now after his death (on Dec. 6, 1988), he’d discover that he’s been more

Billy Bragg Explores the Roots and Reach of Skiffle

Billy Bragg Explores the Roots and Reach of Skiffle

Whenever skiffle comes up in a conversation, folks mention Lonnie Donegan — and maybe Van Morrison — as if just the sound of the name should be the end of the conversation. Thankfully, Billy Bragg decided that a proper history of skiffle — including its influence on him and his own music — needed

Prime Prine

Prime Prine

On Sept. 23, 1978, John Prine rolled into Chicago’s Park West for an evening of rollicking rock and roll. Although the night’s performance was captured on tape, the recordings languished, lost in Prine’s basement, for the next 40 years. On Record Store Day in April 2015, Oh