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
Howie Epstein: 1955 to 2003
For several years, hardly anyone in Santa Fe knew that Howie Epstein, longtime bass player for Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, lived in the area. That changed in the summer of 2001 when Epstein and his longtime girlfriend Carlene Carter were arrested in Albuquerque for heroin possession.
Carter, daughter of
Little Miss Cornshucks - A soul forgotten
Almost everyone knows the song "Try A Little Tenderness." Most remember it as the soul ballad nailed by Otis Redding in 1966 -- based, he always said, on ideas heard in performances by Sam Cooke and Aretha Franklin a few years before. Some recall its origins as a
Various Artists - It'll Come To You:The Songs Of John Hiatt
The genius of John Hiatt's music is that his best songs are at once John Hiatt songs, Willie Nelson songs, Linda Ronstadt songs... At least 90 different artists have covered some 80 Hiatt tunes over the past three decades; and then there are Hiatt's nineteen solo
Beverly Smith & Carl Jones - Moving Lightly Through This World
A quick survey of recordings by contemporary old-time artists these days might well reveal a strong preference for dance music played by fiddle-driven string bands, with a few vocal numbers thrown in for good measure. This new disc by Beverly Smith & Carl Jones offers a differing perspective -- a
Jay Farrar - Terroir Blues
A crude art historian might suggest that creative forms develop along a similar arc: They begin as rudimentary attempts to reproduce a natural account of life, but mature into complex, subjective re-creations of the artist's worldview.
So the earliest, simple storytelling paved the way for the formal daring