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RUSH Though not widely recognized among rock critics with breaking any new ground, the Canadian power trio of bassist Geddy Lee, guitarist Alex Lifeson, and drummer Neil Peart has experienced tremendous success since its formation, notching twenty-three consecutive gold and platinum records, the third-longest string behind the Beatles and the Stones (and tied with KISS) in popular-music history. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Christopher Cross Cristopher Cross was far and away the biggest new star of 1980, virtually defining adult contemporary radio with a series of smoothly sophisticated ballads including the chart-topping “Sailing”; seemingly as quickly as he shot to fame, however, his star descended, although he continued recording and touring for years to come. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Joan Baez The most accomplished interpretive folksinger of the 1960s, Joan Baez has influenced nearly every aspect of popular music in a career still going strong. Baez is possessed of a once-in-a-lifetime soprano, which, since the late ‘50s, she has put in the service of folk and pop music as well as a variety of political causes. Starting out in Boston, Baez first gained recognition at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival, then cut her debut album, Joan Baez (October 1960), for Vanguard Records. It was m ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Hall & Oates From their first hit in 1974 through their heyday in the ‘80s, Daryl Hall and John Oates’ smooth, catchy take on Philly soul brought them enormous commercial success - including six number one singles and six platinum albums - yet little critical success. Hall & Oates’ music was remarkably well-constructed and produced; at their best, their songs were filled with strong hooks and melodies that adhered to soul traditions without being a slave to them by incorporating elements of new wave and ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Neil Diamond A career that began in 1960s, Neil Diamond became a major recording artist, an internationally successful touring act, and a songwriter whose compositions produced hits for himself and others. His earliest recognition, in fact, came as a songwriter associated with the Brill Building era of Tin Pan Alley in the early ‘60s. But he soon branched out into recording and performing, and by the early ‘70s was topping the charts. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Def Leppard Def Leppard, in many ways, was the definitive hard rock band of the ‘80s. There were many bands that rocked harder, and were more dangerous, than the Sheffield quintet, but few others captured the spirit of the times quite as well. Emerging in the late ‘70s as part of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, the group actually owed more to the glam rock and metal of the early ‘70s. As the ‘90s began, mainstream hard rock shifted away from Leppard’s signature pop-metal and toward edgier, louder ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website K.D. Lang When K.D. Lang released her first major-label album in 1987, she caused considerable controversy with the traditional world of country music. With her vaguely campy approach, androgynous appearance, and edgy, rock-influenced music, very few observers knew what to make of her or her music, although no one questioned her considerable vocal talents. That confusion never quite dissipated over the course of her career, even when she abandoned country music for torchy adult contemporary pop. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Rock and Roll Trivia III If information is trivial, it is of little importance or is ordinary or commonplace at best. Sounds like the stuff games are made of! And since I know more useless stuff about music than most sane people would care to know, it might as well be a FreeSpin show. It’s fun, it’s easy (either you know or you don’t know) and it’s a great way to unload the duplicate CD’s from Roy’s collection. During the live broadcast of Roy’s Trivia Shows, the 1st caller with the correct answer to the trivia que ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Austin City Limits Having showcased artists ranging from Willie Nelson to Sheryl Crow since its premiere in 1976, Austin City Limits champions performers who display exceptional musical and songwriting talents, rather than hemming itself in with music labels. The results are unpretentious and engaging performances by musicians who appreciate the intimate concert setting and straightforward style of production. Austin City Limits presents the best of America’s music from country, blues and folk to rock and rol ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Southern Culture on the Skids If you’re a real fan, you refer to them as SCOTS - the initials of Southern Culture on the Skids. This band is not your usual run-of-the-mill rock and roll band. This band is strictly fun and strictly weird. The flavor of the band is a real stew of boogie-blues, swamp-rock, country-chitlin crashing into southern-fried surf and rockabilly with horns. When you finally, figure out their angle is white-trash trailer-park culture, you start to get a feel for what SCOTS is all about. They are the ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Blues Traveler The phrase “jam bands” is officially part of the music world’s vocabulary - and although “punk” and “new wave” have made it all the way to Miriam-Webster’s, “jam bands” hasn’t. Which means, semantically speaking, jam bands remain cutting edge as a genre.When “jam bands” officially make it into the dictionary, it’ll be largely due to one of a handful of artists: Blues Traveler. Blues Traveler, who made their name through relentless road work as well as a string of hit records, are first and ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Hank Williams On a warm summer night in June, 1949, with his first number one record spilling out of radios across the country, a frail young man walked onto the stage of Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium for his Grand Ole Opry debut. Behind him lay nearly a decade of struggle and rejection in pursuit of this goal; ahead, a little more than five years in the limelight. By 1953, literally worn out at twenty-nine, Hank Williams was gone. But he had given country music much of itsstandard repertoire, a new defin ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Louis Armstrong Louis Armstrong was the first important soloist to emerge in jazz, and he became the most influential musician in the music’s history. As a trumpet virtuoso, his playing, beginning with the 1920s studio recordings made with his Hot Five and Hot Seven ensembles, charted a future for jazz in highly imaginative, emotionally charged improvisation. For this, he is revered by jazz fans. But Armstrong also became an enduring figure in popular music, due to his distintively phrased bass singing and ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Nat King Cole For a mild-mannered man whose music was always easy on the ear, Nat King Cole managed to be a figure of considerable controversy during his 30 years as a profession musician. From the late ‘40s to the mid-’60s, he was a massively successful pop singer who ranked with such contemporaries as Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, and Dean Martin. He shared with those peers a career that encompassed hit records, international touring, radio and television shows, and appearances in films. But unlike them, ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Rock Stars Do The Dumbest Things! Oh come on, does this really need a description? If it’s possible, if it’s dumb, you can almost guarantee a rock star has tried it. So here’s the top picks from Roy’s list of Rock Stars Do the Dumbest Things! Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Edie Brickell Born in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas, Edie Brickell attended South Methodist University for a year and a half before drinking up enough courage in a bar one night in 1985 to get up on stage with a local band, the New Bohemians. She joined the band and wrote songs over the next year as the band changed and evolved. They finally settled on the personnel of Brad Houser (bass), Kenny Withrow (guitar), and Matt Chamberlain (drums) before taking off for Rockfield Studios in Wales to record the ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Pat Benatar Pat Benatar’s polished mainstream pop/rock made her one of the more popular female vocalists of the early ‘80s. Although she came on like an arena rocker with her power chords, tough sexuality, and powerful vocals, her music was straight pop/rock underneath all the bluster. Benatar began singing regularly in the New York City area by the ‘70s, where she was discovered at the Catch a Rising Star club and signed by Chrysalis Records. Backed by a stellar band led by guitarist Neil Geraldo that ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Chuck Berry Of all the early breakthrough rock&roll artists, none is more important to the development of the music than Chuck Berry. He is its greatest songwriter, the main shaper of its instrumental voice, one of its greatest guitarists, and one of it greatest performers. Quite simply, without him, there would be no Beatles, Rolling Stones, Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, nor a myriad of others. There would be no standard “Chuck Berry guitar intro,” the instrument’s clarion call to get the joint rockin’ in an ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website David Crosby The singular odyssey of David Crosby remains one of the more remarkable tales in the annals of music history. As a founding member of the pioneering American groups the Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash, he helped create and popularize the highly influential folk-sound, forging the richly harmonic, radiantly acoustic approach which defined the West Coast music scene for years to follow; he also sold millions of records and enjoyed a cultural impact equaled by few of his contemporaries. Yet de ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Michael Nesmith The comparatively level-headed member of the ‘60s teen sensation the Monkees, Michael Nesmith was the most proficient instrumentalist in the group and wrote their best in-house songs. In fact, he had written many songs before even joining the group, and one of his compositions, “Different Drum,” was a hit for the Linda Ronstadt and the Stone Poneys in 1968. After he left the Monkees one year later, it wasn’t a surprise that he became the only one of his bandmates to sustain a solo career; i ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website James Brown “Soul Brother Number One,” “the Godfather of Soul,” “The Hardest Working Man in Show Business,” “Mr. Dynamite” - those are mighty titles, but no one can question that James Brown has earned them more than any other performer. Other singers were more popular, others were equally skilled, but few other African-American musicians have been so influential on the course of popular music. And no other musician, pop or otherwise, put on a more exciting, exhilarating stage show; Brown’s performance ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website JJ Cale You can’t rush the good things in life. And that includes J.J. Cale. “Yeah, they told me it’s eight years since the last studio album. But it doesn’t seem that long,” he says, scratching his head and wondering where the time has gone. Whatever its origins, the Cale sound has profoundly influenced artists such as Eric Clapton and Dire Straits, and his songs have been covered by everyone from Lynyrd Skynyrd, Deep Purple, and the Allman Brothers to Johnny Cash, The Band, Santana, Captain Beefh ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Live at Red Rocks! Tucked into the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, about 15 miles west of Denver, Colorado, is Red Rocks Park. The mile and a half long trail takes hikers past dinosaur tracks and fossils ranging from weird marine life to flying reptiles. Red Rocks is a geologically formed, open-air amphitheater that is not duplicated anywhere in the world. With mother nature as the architect, the design of the Amphitheater consists of two, three hundred-foot monoliths (Ship Rock and Creation Rock) that prov ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Luther Allison An American-born guitarist, singer, and songwriter who lived in France since 1980, Luther Allison was the man to book at blues festivals in the mid-’90s. Allison’s comeback into the mainstream was ushered in by a recording contract with an American record company, Chicago-based Alligator Records. After he signed with Alligator in 1994, Allison’s popularity grew exponentially and he worked steadily until his death in 1997. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Chicago According to Billboard chart statistics, Chicago is second only to the Beach Boys as the most successful American rock band of all time, in terms of both albums and singles. Judged by album sales, as certified by the RIAA, the band does not rank quite so high, bit it is among the Top Ten best-selling US groups ever. If such statements of fact surprise, that’s because Chicago has been singularly underrated since the beginning of its long career, both because of its musical ambitions and beca ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Blue Oyster Cult Blue Oyster Cult was the thinking man’s heavy metal group. Put together on a college campus by a couple of rock critics, it maintained a close relationship with a series of literary figures (often in the fields of science fiction and horror), including Eric Von Lustbader, Patti Smith, Michael Moorcock, and Stephen King, while turning out some of the more listenable metal music of the early and mid-70’s. The band that became Blue Oyster Cult was organized in 1967 at Stony Brook College on Lo ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels The unsung heart and soul of the Motor City rock and roll scene, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels’ blue-eyed rhythm and blues attack boasted a gritty passion and incendiary energy matched by few artists on either side of the color line. As a teen Ryder sang with a local black quartet dubbed the Peps but suffered so much racial harassment that he soon left the group to form his own combo, Billy Lee and the Rivieras. When signed in 1965 by producer Bob Crewe, according to legend, he rechris ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Paul Butterfield Paul Butterfield was the first white harmonica player to develop a style original and powerful enough to place him in the pantheon of the true blues greats. It’s impossible to overestimate the importance of the doors Butterfield opened: before he came to prominence, white American musicians treated the blues with cautious respect, afraid of coming off as inauthentic. Not only did Butterfield clear Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bill Cosby Although African-American comedians had long been a staple of the stand-up circuit prior to the emergence of Bill Cosby, none had come even remotely close to reaching the same heights of commercial success or universal acceptance. Before Cosby, black comics were largely relegated to the so-called “chitlin circuit” of black nightclubs and theaters, their albums banned from white-owned record stores; after Cosby, comedians of all racial and cultural backgrounds found a home in the mainstream, ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Concrete Blonde Concrete Blonde grew out of the Los Angeles post-punk club circuit that produced bands like X, Wall of Voodoo, and the Go-Gos, but it wasn’t until 1987 that the band even recorded its first album. The group was founded by singer/songwriter/bassist Johnette Napolitano and guitarist Jim Mankey, who initially called themselves Dream 6 and released an EP.Their insistence on complete artistic control was offputting to the major labels who took notice, however, and it wasn’t until 1987 that the g ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Rita Coolidge A versatile singer blessed with a clear, pure voice, Rita Coolidge was a capable stylist in rock, pop, R&B, country, and folk, and was a hugely in-demand session vocalist outside of her own solo recording career. Born near Nashville, TN, in the town of Lafayette in 1945, Coolidge was part Cherokee and first sang in the church where her father was a minister. She studied art at Florida State University, but also sang and wrote songs on the side, and decided to give music a shot before settli ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Greg Allman Band When the Allman Brothers went on a brief hiatus in 1973, Gregg recorded the solo album Laid Back. He put together a backing band for an extensive tour, the highlights of which are documented on the double live set The Gregg Allman Tour. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Byrds Although they only attained the huge success of the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and the Beach Boys for a short time in the mid-’60s, time has judged the Bryds to be nearly as influential as those groups in the long run. They were not solely responsible for devising folk-rock, but they were certainly more responsible than any other single act (Dylan included) for melding the innovations and energy of the British invasion with the best lyrical and musical elements of contemporary folk music. The ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Canned Heat A hard-luck blues band of the ‘60s, Canned Heat was founded by blues historians and record collectors Alan Wilson and Bob Hite. They seemed to be on the right track and played all the right festivals (including Monterey and Woodstock, making it very prominently into the documentaries about both) but somehow never found a lasting audience. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Amazing Rhythm Aces A mainstream country-rock band similar in execution (if not commercial success) to the Eagles, the Amazing Rhythm Aces were formed in Memphis in 1974 by bassist Jeff Davis and drummer Butch McDade, who had recorded and toured with the great singer/songwriter Jesse Winchester. After striking out on their own, Davis and McDade enlisted vocalist/guitarist Russell Smith, keyboardist Billy Earheart, Dobro player Barry Burton, and pianist James Hooker to develop a sound composed of equal parts po ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Barenaked Ladies Toronto, Canada’s quirky popsters Barenaked Ladies were never ones to follow a trend. They were more interested in making someone laugh than being astute and serious. Most of all, a friendship consumed this band and that bond cemented their place in alternative rock. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website James Cotton At his high-energy 1970s peak as a bandleader, James Cotton was a bouncy, sweaty, whirling dervish of a bluesman, roaring his vocals and all but sucking the reeds right out of his defenseless little harmonicas with his prodigious lungpower. Due to throat problems, Cotton’s vocals are no longer what they used to be, but he remains a masterful instrumentalist. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Blood, Sweat&Tears No late-’60s American group ever started with as much musical promise as Blood, Sweat&Tears, or realized their potential more fully - and then blew it all in a series of internal conflicts and grotesque career moves. It could almost sound funny, talking about a group that sold close to six million records in three years and then squandered all that momentum. Then again, considering that none of the founding members ever intended to work together, perhaps the group was “lucky” after a fashio ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Blasters The all-American roots music band, the Blasters were principally brothers Dave and Phil Alvin whose first-hand experience with blues masters shaped their sound and turned them both into contemporarysinger/songwriters whose interest in roots rock has never waned. The brothers, along with Bill Bateman on drums and John Bazz on bass, grew up in Downey California, in the shadow of Disneyland. Their musical education involved hanging out with musicians like Lee Allen, Marcus Johnson, and T-Bone ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Rock and Rock Trivia II If information is trivial, it is of little importance or is ordinary or commonplace at best. Sounds like the stuff games are made of! And since I know more useless stuff about music than most sane people would care to know, it might as well be a FreeSpin show. It’s fun, it’s easy (either you know or you don’t know) and it’s a great way to unload the duplicate CD’s from Roy’s collection. During the live broadcast of Roy’s Trivia Shows, the 1st caller with the correct answer to the trivia que ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Guns N’ Roses At a time when pop was dominated by dance music and pop-metal, Guns N’ Roses brought raw, ugly rock and roll crashing back into the charts. They were not nice boys; nice boys don’t play rock and roll. They were ugly, misogynist, and violent; they were also funny vulnerable, and occasionally sensitive, as their breakthrough hit, “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” showed. Guns N’ Roses’ music was basic and gritty, with a solid hard, bluesy base; they were dark, sleazy, dirty and honest - everything that ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Counting Crows With their angst-filled hybrid of Van Morrison, the Band, and R.E.M., Counting Crows became an overnight sensation in 1994. Only a year earlier, the band was a group of unknown musicians, filling in for the absent Van Morrison at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony; they were introduced by an enthusiastic Robbie Robertson. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 100 Greatest Guitarists This episode contains some of the very best selections by artists from Rolling Stone’s “100 Greatest Guitarists of all Time” list. Roy couldn’t possibly fit all 100 into one show, so you better listen in and see if your favorites made the cut to be on show. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Jeff Beck While he was as innovative as Jimmy Page, as tasteful as Eric Clapton, and nearly as visionary as Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck never achieved the same commercial success as any of his contemporaries, primarily because of the haphazard way he approached his career. After Rod Stewart left the Jeff Beck Group in 1971, Beck never worked with a charismatic lead singer who could have helped sell his music to a wide audience. Furthermore, he was simply to idiosyncratic, moving from heavy metal to jazz ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Johnny Cash As an emeritus member of both the Country Music and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, winner of the 1991 Grammy Legend Award, and with more than a hundred and fifty charted hits to his credit, Johnny Cash is the Grand Old Man of Nashville. The son of an Arkansas sharecropper, Cash grew up dirt-poor. He went on stints in the Army and as an appliance salesman before making it big. In 1955, he signed with Sam Phillips’ Sun Records, joining Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins (the foursome ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Alligator Records Our very first online episode. Originally aired January 21st, 2004, this episode features the artists of Alligator Records. For over 30 years, Alligator Records has been home to some of the world’s premier blues and roots rock talent and is regarded by fans and the media alike as the top contemporary blues record label in the world. Their catalog has grown from the original recording of Hound Dog Taylor and The HouseRockers to include over 200 titles. Alligator Records is now the largest in ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Chet Atkins Without Chet Atkins, country music may never have crossed over into the pop charts in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Although he recorded hundreds of solo records. Atkins’ largest influence came as a session musician and a record producer. During the ‘50s and ‘60s, he helped create the Nashville sound, a style of country music that owed nearly as much to pop as it did to honky tonks. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Motown Records Founder and owner of the Tamla-Motown family record labels, Berry Gordy, Jr., established Motown Records as one of the most independent labels in the early ‘60s. Assembling an industrious staff of songwriters, producers and musicians, Motown Records built on of the most impressive rosters of artists in the history of pop music and became the largest and most successful independent record company in the United States by 1964. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Robin Trower Throughout his long and winding solo career, guitarist Robin Trower has had to endure countless comparisons to Jimi Hendrix, due to his uncanny ability to channel Hendrix’s bluesy/psychedelic, Fender Strat-fueled playing style. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Charlie Musselwhite Paul Butterfield and Charlie Musselwhite will probably forever be linked as the two most interesting, and arguably the most important, products of the “white blues movement” of the mid to late ‘60s - not only because they were near the forefront chronologically, but because they each stand out as being especially faithful to the style. Each certainly earned the respect of his legendary mentors. No less than the late Big Joe Williams said, “Charlie Musselwhite is one of the greatest living h ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Kansas Fusing the complexity of British prog rock with an American heartland sound representative of their name, Kansas were among the most popular bands of the late ‘70s; though typically dismissed by critics, many of the group’s hits remain staples of AOR radio play lists to this day. The group spent the early part of the decade touring relentlessly and struggling for recognition; initially, their mix of boogie and prog rock baffled club patrons, but in due time they established a strong enough ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Elvis Costello Declan McManus’ father was a jazz bandleader, and he was often given copies of the popular records of the day, which he passed on to his son. It was these recordings by the Beatles, the Kinks, the Who, and the stars of Motown that instilled in McManus a love of rock and roll and laid the foundation for his own musical style. It was his manager, Jake Riviera, who gave McManus the idea to change his Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Cars Blondie may have had a string of number one hits and Talking Heads may have won the hearts of the critics, but the Cars were the most successful American new wave band to emerge in the late ‘70s. With their sleek, mechanical pop/rock, the band racked up a string of platinum albums and Top 40 singles that made them one of the most popular American rock & roll bands of the late ‘70s and early ‘8 Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website John Prine An acclaimed singer/songwriter whose literate work flirted with everything from acoustic folk to rockabilly to straight-ahead country, John Prine was born October 10, 1946 in Maywood, Illinois. Raised by parents firmly rooted in their rural Kentucky background, at age 14 Prine began learning to play the guitar from his older brother while taking inspiration from his grandfather, who had played with Merle Travis. After a two-year tenure in the U.S. Army, Prine became a fixture on the Chicago ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Sun Records In 1950, Sam Phillips started his Memphis Recording Service at 706 Union Avenue. In the following dozen or so years Phillips unearthed and recorded an unprecedented array of talent. Pioneering bluesmen were the first to arrive - Howlin’ Wolf, B.B. King, Little Junior Parker, Ike Turner. Then a quietly spoken electrical company employee, one Elvis Presley, walked in and helped Sam change the face of the twentieth century by inventing rock n’ roll. The King was followed through the door by Jo ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website No Nukes The No Nukes protest concert in 1979 was one of the defining ‘70s events for aging ‘60s hippies, a way to prove that they held political and social power. The concert was top-loaded with folk rockers and laid-back California pop stars: Crosby, Stills&Nash, James Taylor, Poco, Nicolette Larson, and Jesse Colin Young, who had all reached their peak; the Doobie Brothers and Jackson Browne, who were still at the crest of their popularity; and Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen, who were still youn ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cheech and Chong At their peak in the 1970s, Cheech and Chong represented the mainstream embodiment of the attitudes and lifestyles of the underground drug culture. Much as W.C. Fields shot to fame by making alcohol the focus of his act, the duo of Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong emerged from a cloud of pot smoke, simultaneously championing and lampooning the stoner community which became the team’s most ardent supporters; although derided by critics and dismissed by the general populace, the team’s stature as ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Kim Carnes Kim Carnes’ distinctively raspy, throaty voice graced one of the biggest hits of the ‘80s, the Grammy-winning smash “Bette Davis Eyes,” which spent nine weeks on the top of the Billboard charts in 1981. During the ‘60s Carnes began writing songs for other artists while performing in local clubs and as a session vocalist. In 1966, she joined the popular folk group the New Christy Minstrels for a ti Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Rick Nelson Rick Nelson was one of the very biggest of the ‘50s teen idols, so it took awhile for him to attain the same level of critical respectability as other early rock greats. Yet now the consensus is that he made some of the finest pop/rock recordings of his era. Sure he had more promotional push than any other rock musician of the ‘50s; no, he wasn’t the greatest singer; and yes, Elvis, Gene Vincent, Carl Perkins, and others rocked harder. But Nelson was extraordinarily consistent during the fi ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Willie Nelson As a songwriter and a performer, Willie Nelson played a vital role in post-rock&roll country music. Although he didn’t become a star until the mid-70s, Willie spent the 60s writing songs that became hits for star like Ray Price, Patsy Cline, Faron Young, and Billy Walker as well as releasing a series of records on Liberty and RCA that earned him a small, but devoted, cult following. Even when he was a star, Willie never played it safe musically. Instead, he borrowed from a wide variety of s ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Robben Ford Robben Ford has had a diverse career. He taught himself guitar when he was 13 and considered his first influence to be Mike Bloomfield. At 18, he moved to San Francisco to form the Charles Ford Band (named after his father, who was also a guitarist) and was soon hired to play with Charles Musselwhite for nine months. In 1971, the Charles Ford Band was reformed and recorded for Arhoolie in early 1972. Ford played with Jimmy Witherspoon, Tom Scott, George Harrison and Joni Mitchell. In 1977, ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Blues Brothers Whether celebrated as a sincere tribute or derided as a tongue-in-cheek put-on, the Blues Brothers - Joliet Jake and his silent brother Elwood - was among the most popular groups of the late ‘70s; what started as a skit on the hit NBC television sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live quickly snowballed to become a true phenomenon, complete with hit records, a sold-out concert tour, and even a feature film. Clad in vintage black suits, narrow ties, fedoras, and omnipresent wrap-around sung ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Roy Buchanan Roy Buchanan has long been considered one of the finest, yet criminally overlooked guitarists of the blues rock genre whose lyrical leads and use of harmonics would later influence such guitar greats as Jeff Beck, his one-time student Robbie Robertson, and ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons. His father was both a farmer and a Pentecostal preacher, which would bring the youngster his first exposure to gospel m Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Styx Although they began as an artsy prog-rock band, Styx would eventually transform into the virtual arena rock prototype by the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, due to a fondness for bombastic rockers and soaring power ballads. Originally formed as the Tradewinds in the late ‘60s, the group changed their name to TW4 in the early ‘70s. After securing a recording contract in 1972 with Wooden Nickel Records, the group opted to change their name once more, this time to Styx, named after a river from Gree ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bon Jovi Few bands embodied the era of pop-metal like Bon Jovi. By merging Def Leppard’s loud but tuneful metal with Bruce Springsteen’s working-class sensibilities, the New Jersey-based quintet developed an ingratiatingly melodic and professional variation of hard rock - one that appealed as much to teenagers as to housewives. Bon Jovi skillfully employed professional songwriters to give their songs, especially their power ballads, an appropriately commercial sheen, inaugurating a trend that domina ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Wilson Pickett Of the major ‘60s soul stars, Wilson Pickett was one of the roughest and sweatiest, working up some of the decade’s hottest dance floor grooves on hits like “In the Midnight Hour,” “Land of 1000 Dances,” “Mustang Sally,” and “Funky Broadway.” Although he tends to be held in somewhat lower esteem than more versatile talents like Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin, he is often a preferred alternative of fans who like their soul on the rawer side. He also did a good deal to establish the sound o ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website They Might Be Giants Combining a knack for infectious melodies with a quirky, bizarre sense of humor and a vaguely avant-garde aesthetic borrowed from the New York post-punk underground, They Might Be Giants became one of the most unlikely success stories of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Musically, the duo of John Flansburgh and John Linnell borrowed from everywhere, but their freewheeling eclecticism was enhanced by their arcane, geeky sense of humor. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Peter Green His career riddled by drug abuse and paranoia, Peter Green is still regarded by some fans as the greatest white blues guitarist ever, Eric Clapton notwithstanding. As he grew up in London’s working-class East End, Green’s early musical influences were Hank B. Marvin of the Shadows, Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Freddie King, and traditional Jewish music. He’s played with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and helped found Fleetwood Mac, before attempting a solo career in the mid 70’s. Green went on a ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Band For about 6 years, from 1968 through 1975, the Band was one of the most popular and influential rock groups in the world, their music embraced by critics (and, to a somewhat lesser degree, the public) as seriously as the music of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Their albums were analyzed and reviewed as intensely as any records by their one-time employer and sometime mentor Bob Dylan. And for a long time, their personalities were as recognizable individually to the casual music public a ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Melissa Etheridge Melissa Etheridge became one of the 90’s most popular recording artists due to her mixture of confessional lyrics; pop-based folk-rock; and raspy, Janis Joplin/Rod Stewart-esque vocals. But the road to stardom was not all smooth sailing as she debated behind the scenes whether or not to disclose to the public that she was gay early on in her career. Born May 29, 1961 in Leavenworth, Kansas, she first picked up a guitar at the age of eight and began penning her own songs shortly thereafter. ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductees The Rock and Roll Foundation was started in 1983. Leaders in the music industry wanted some way to recognize the people that made it all happen. One of the Foundation’s goals was a Hall of Fame induction process to single out these who have had significant impact on the development of Rock and Roll. There are several categories: performers, non-performers, early influences and in the year 2000, the side men category was added. This episode concentrates on some of the performers inducted int ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Dion Next to Elvis, Dion was one of the greatest white male singers of the early Rock and Roll era. More important than that is that he was the biggest white blues singer of the same era. On top of that, he may have been the first major white rock singer who was not from the south. The career of this legend has spanned six decades. And, needless to say, to survive from the 50’s into the 2000’s, you can play the same ole stuff or rest on yesterday’s accomplishments. Ladies&gentlemen, an evening w ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Rock and Roll Graveyard Every once in a while a theme show just screams “DO ME!” Rock stars have been dying young, often and in some of the most non-standard ways for 50 plus years. So it only makes sense that we should gather some of this from-the-grave music and tell you how it all came down. Drug over-doses, car crashes, drug related heart attacks, airplane crashes and further forms of insanity. Who, when, where and how - all the music, all the news, all the dead guys. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Thomas Alan Waits Thomas Alan Waits was born on the 8th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor - December 7th, 1949 in Pomona, California. He and his two sisters grew up moving around alot. When Tom was 10, his parents divorced. That’s when they moved to National City, California. Tom was interested in music pretty early on. He thumb tacked Bob Dylan lyrics to his bedroom walls and even framed some around the rest of the house. Tom loved lyrics! He kept a pencil and paper beside his bed in case he though ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Harry Nilsson Although he synthesized disparate elements of both rock and pop traditions, singer/songwriter Harry Nilsson was at heart a maverick whose allegiance belonged to neither. His initial series of albums in the late ‘60s made him a personal favorite of the Beatles, who found a natural affinity with his knack for catchy melodies, witty lyrics, and extraordinary vocal range. Thought of as a songwriter first and a performer second, he became a pop star himself in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s with “ ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Led Zeppelin Critics hated them, Top 40 radio ignored them, but Led Zepplin achieved unparalleled success in the seventies, both in terms of record sales and record-setting concert tours. Since their demise in 1980 with the death of drummer John Bonham, the band’s legend has only grown, thanks to a carefully planned series of album reissues and hundreds of hard-rock and heavy-metal bands who are still working from the quartet’s blueprints. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Tracy Chapman Tracy Chapman helped restore singer/songwriters to the spotlight in the ‘80s. The multi-platinum success of Chapman’s eponymous 1988 debut was unexpected, and it had lasting impact. Although Chapman was working from the same confessional singer/songwriter foundation that had been popularized in the ‘70s, her songs were fresh and powerful, driven by simple melodies and affecting lyrics. At the time Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Jimmy Buffett Jimmy Buffett says his songs are 90% autobiographical. So when you listen to his musical stories of wine, women and song, you just have to admire the guy! He is “the son of the son of a sailor” so describes his grandfather’s life in a song called “The Captain&The Kid”. Singer/songwriter/author, Jimmy has become a legend of popular culture. His life and career have been heavily influenced by the tropics and the seas. His sold-out concert tours are an annual rite of summer for his fans. TheGr ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Beach Boys The Beach Boys line up: brothers Brian, Carl and Dennis Wilson plus cousin Mike Love and friend Al Jardine. The 3 brothers formed a casual high school band in 1960 called the Pendletones. Brian’s early infatuation with the 4 Freshmen led to all those incredible Beach Boys harmonies. It was Dennis (the only surfer) who suggested Brian write a song about the new beach craze. The tune “Surfin” made local charts thru an independent label. Their father, Murry had a failed music career, but he k ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Who Few bands in the history of rock and roll were riddled with as many contradictions as the Who. All four members had wildly different personalities, as their notoriously intense live performances demonstrated. The group was a whirlwind of activity, as the wild Keith Moon fell over his drum kit and Pete Townshend leaped into the air with his guitar, spinning his right hand in exaggerated windmills. Vocalist Roger Daltrey strutted across the stage with a thuggish menace, as bassist John Entwis ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Traveling Wilburys Reversing the usual process by which groups break up and give way to solo careers, the Traveling Wilburys are a group made up of solo stars. The group was organized by former Beatle George Harrison, former Electric Light Orchestra leader Jeff Lynne, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and Roy Orbison, thus representing three generations of rock stars. in 1988, the five (who had known each other for years) came together to record a Harrison B-side single and ended up writing and recording an album on which ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Atlanta Rhythm Section Often described as a more radio-friendly version of Lynyrd Skynyrd or the Allman Brothers, the Atlanta Rhythm Section was one of many Southern rock bands to hit the upper reaches of the charts during the late ‘70s. Hailing from the small town of Doraville, Georgia, the beginning of Atlanta Rhythm Section can be traced back to 1970. It was then that a local recording studio was opened, Studio One, and the remnants of two groups (the Candymen and the Classics Four), became the studio’s house ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Pink Floyd From a premier psychedelic act in the sixties to one of rock and roll’s biggest groups in the seventies and eighties, Pink Floyd has enjoyed a phenomenally successful career. The band created one of the music industry’s biggest-selling recording of all time in 1973’s Dark Side of the Moon (twenty-five million sold worldwide at last count, and it stayed a record 566 weeks on the Billboard Top 200 chart). Yet Dark Side was but one of several No. 1 records in the U.K. and U.S. for Pink Floyd, ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Rock and Roll Trivia I If information is trivial, it is of little importance or is ordinary or commonplace at best. Sounds like the stuff games are made of! And since I know more useless stuff about music than most sane people would care to know, it might as well be a FreeSpin show. It’s fun, it’s easy (either you know or you don’t know) and it’s a great way to unload the duplicate CD’s from Roy’s collection. During the live broadcast of Roy’s Trivia Shows, the 1st caller with the correct answer to the trivia que ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website America America was a light folk-rock act of the early ‘70s who had several top 10 hits, including the number ones “A Horse With No Name” and “Sister Golden Hair.” Vocalists/guitarists Dewey Bunnell, Dan Peek, and Gerry Beckley met while they were still in high school in the late ‘60s; all three were sons of the U.S. Air Force officers who were stationed in the U.K. After they completed school in 1970, they formed an acoustic folk-rock quartet called Daze in London, which was soon pared down to the ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Sheryl Crow Sheryl Crow’s fresh, updated spin on classic roots rock made her one of the most popular mainstream rockers of the ‘90s. Her albums were loose and eclectic on the surface, yet were generally tied together by polished, professional songcraft. Crow’s sunny, good-time rockers and world-weary ballads were radio staples for much of the ‘90s, and she was a perennial favorite at Grammy time. Although her songwriting style was firmly anchored to the rock tradition, she wasn’t a slave to it - her fr ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Jonny Lange Jonny Lange is an American blues guitarist and singer. In 1995, at the age of 14 he released his first album; Smokin’ by Kid Jonny Lang and the Big Bang. At age 15, he released his debut solo album Lie to Me. Part of this success is due to a voice that sounds like that of a 40 year blues veteran, containing a harshness tempered by a fine falsetto that has taken prominence in his newest albums. Part of it is his scorching guitar solos, which display a prodigious natural talent honed by years ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Queen Few band embodied the pure excess of the ‘70s like Queen. Embracing the exaggerated pomp of prog rock and heavy metal, as well as vaudevillian music hall, the British quartet delved deeply into camp and bombast, creating a huge, mock-operatic sound with layered guitars and overdubbed vocals. Queen’s music was a bizarre yet highly accessible fusion of the macho and the fey. Freddy Mercury was one of the most dynamic and charismatic frontmen in rock history. Through his legendary theatrical p ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Aretha Franklin A living legend, “Lady Soul” has inspired and influenced who knows how many female vocalists around the world. Aretha Franklin has won 17 Grammy Awards, was the 1991 recipient of the Grammy Legend Award and in 1994 she was honored with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. More than a dozen million-selling singles, 20 #1 R and B hits, a cover story in Time magazine, it just goes on and on. One of the privileged few entertainers recognizable by first name only, she’s Aretha, the undisputed ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bryan Adams From the mid-’80s to the mid-’90s, Canadian singer/songwriter and guitarist Bryan Adams was one of the most successful recording artists in popular music worldwide. Twenty years later, Adams may be keeping a lower profile, but he’s still going at it, concocting the anthemic rock and radio-friendly ballads he’s famous for. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert On Labor Day, 1995 close to 60,000 fans stood for 7 hours at the Cleveland Municipal Stadium while 10’s of millions watched on television all around the planet. The concert for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was a once in a lifetime event that lived up to the expectations. The concert brought together several artists who were members of the HOF (Little Richard, James Brown, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, The Allman Brothers Band) with future members (Bruce Springsteen, Parliament/Funkadelic) and a ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Stevie Nicks Famed for her mystical chanteuse image, singer/songwriter Stevie Nicks enjoyed phenomenal success not only as a solo artist but also as a key member of Fleetwood Mac. During high school Nicks joined with Lindsey Buckingham and formed the band Fritz along with other friends. Between 1968 and 1971, the group was a popular attraction on the West Coast Music scene, opening for Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Creedence Clearwater Revival. Tensions eventually led to Fritz disbanding; but after a m ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Phil Collins Phil Collins’ ascent to the status of the most successful pop and adult-contemporary singers of the ‘80s and beyond was probably as much of a surprise to him as it was to many others. Balding and diminutive, Collins was almost 30-years old when his first solo single, “In the Air Tonight,” became a number two hit in his native U.K. (the song was a Top 20 hit in the U.S.). Between 1984 and 1990, Col Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Allman Brothers Band The story of the Allman Brothers Band is one of triumph, tragedy, redemption, dissolution, and a new redemption. Over nearly 30 years, they’ve gone from being America’s single most influential band to a has-been group trading on past glories, to reach the 21st century as one of the most respected rock acts of their era. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Woodstock Well, have you pulled out your beads and bandanas yet? It’s Woodstock, baby! The Woodstock Music and Art Festival was held at Max Yasgur’s 600 acre dairy farm in Bethel, New York from August 15th thru the 18th in 1969. It is widely viewed as the most famous rock festival ever held. For many, it exemplified the counterculture of the 1960’s and the “hippie” era. Many of the best-known musicians of the times appeared during the rainy weekend, captured in a successful 1970 movie, Woodstock. Jon ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Live at the Fillmore The Fillmore, is a legendary music venue in San Francisco, California made famous by Bill Graham. Named for its location at the intersection of Fillmore Street and Geary Boulevard, it lies on the boundary of the Western Addition neighborhood and the Pacific Heights neighborhood. In the mid-1960s it became the focal point for the psychedelic music and counterculture in general, with acts such as The Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Jefferson Airplane, and Janis Joplin getting th ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Commander Cody Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen were equally adept at stripped-down basic rock & roll, R&B, and gritty country-rock. Commander Cody’s country-rock rocked harder than the Eagles or Poco - essentially, the group was a bar band. Much like English pub rock bands like Brinsley Schwarz and Ducks Deluxe, Commander Cody resisted the overblown and bombastic trends of the early-’70s rock, preferring a basic, no-frills approach. Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen never had the impact ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Beatles: 1 So much has been said and written about the Beatles - and their story is so mythic in its sweep - that it’s difficult to summarize their career without restating cliches that have already been digested by tens of millions of rock fans. To start with the obvious, they were the greatest and most influential act of the rock era, and introduced more innovations into popular music than any other rock band of the 20th century. Moreover, they were among the few artists of any discipline that were ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Beatles: Paul is Dead Hoax - Pt. 2 Since late 1969, rumors have circulated that Paul McCartney died and was replaced in 1966. The replacement was supposedly William Campbell who had won a Paul lookalike contest. Further, even though this was kept a secret, the Beatles have been planting clues in lyrics and on album covers to tell us about it. Explore this popular urban legend as Roy examines the “clues” left by the Beatles. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Beatles: Paul is Dead Hoax - Pt. 1 Since late 1969, rumors have circulated that Paul McCartney died and was replaced in 1966. The replacement was supposedly William Campbell who had won a Paul lookalike contest. Further, even though this was kept a secret, the Beatles have been planting clues in lyrics and on album covers to tell us about it. Explore this popular urban legend as Roy examines the “clues” left by the Beatles. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Doobie Brothers As one of the most popular Californian pop/rock bands of the 1970’s, the Doobie Brothers evolved from a mellow, post-hippie boogie band to a slick, soul-inflected pop band by the end of the decade. Along the way, the group racked up a string of gold and platinum albums in the U.S., along with a number of radio hits like “Listen to the Music,” “Black Water” and “China Grove.” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Rolling Stones By the time the Rolling Stones began calling themselves the World’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the late 60’s, they had already staked out an impressive claim on the title. As the self-consciously dangerous alternative to the bouncy Merseybeat of the Beatles in the British Invasion, the Stones had pioneered the gritty, hard-driving blues-based rock and roll that came to define hard rock. With his preening machismo and latent maliciousness, Mick Jagger became the prototypical rock frontma ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Boston The arena rock group behind one of the fastest-selling debut albums in history, Boston was essentially the vehicle of studio wizard Tom Scholz. A rock fan throughout his teen years, he began writing songs while earning a master’s degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After graduation, he began working for Polaroid, and eventually joined a local band led by guitarist Barry Goudreau. Though Scholz signed on as a keyboardist, he also learned guitar, and his quick mastery of the ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Randy Newman Randy Newman was an anomaly among early-70s singer/songwriters. Though he was slightly influenced by Bob Dylan, his music owed more to New Orleans R&B and traditional pop than folk. Newman developed an idiosyncratic style that alternated between sweeping, cinematic pop and rolling R&B, which were tied together with his nasty sense of humor. Where his peers concentrated on confessional songwriting, Newman drew characters, creating a world filled with misfits, outcasts, charlatans, and con me ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Dr. Hook and The Medicine Show Dr. Hook was born in 1968 in Union City, New Jersey when a local 19-year old aspiring singer-songwriter named Dennis Locorriere teamed up with 32-year old R and B musician Roy Sawer. The band rounded out with 2 from New Jersey, 2 from Mississippi and Ray from Alabama. So guess where the southern fried influence came from? The new band gigged at local bars& clubs, often using no name at all. O Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Lynyrd Skynyrd Lynyrd Skynard was the definitive Southern rock band, fusing the overdriven power of blues-rock with a rebellious, Southern image and a hard rock swagger. Skynyrd never relied on the jazzy improvisations of the Allman Brothers. Instead, they were a hard-living, hard-driving rock and roll band - they may have jammed endlessly on stage, but their music remained firmly entrenched in blues, rock, and country. For many, Lynyrd Skynrd’s redneck image tended to obscure the songwriting skills of it ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Ray Charles Ray Charles was the musician most responsible for developing soul music. Singers like Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson also did a great deal to pioneer the form, but Charles did even more to devise a new form of black pop by merging ‘50s R&B with gospel-powered vocals, adding plenty of flavor from contemporary jazz, blues and (in the ‘60s) country. Then there was his singing; his style was among the most emotional and easily identifiable of any 20th-century performer, up there with the likes of ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Susan Tedeschi Susan Tedeschi has been standing the blues world on its ear ever since her 1998 breakthrough album Just Won’t Burn, earning inevitable comparisons to Bonnie Raitt and less obvious but equally deserving comparisions to our soulful guitar slingers like Buddy Guy and Stevie Ray Vaughn. But her new album, Hope and Desire, is a brave departure for the young Massachusetts native. Setting aside her guitar and songwriting skills, Tedeschi steps out here as an extraordinary interpreter of other peo ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Chuck Berry Of all the early breakthrough rock & roll artists, none is more important to the development of music than Chuck Berry. He is its greatest songwriter, the main shaper of its instrumental voice, one of its greatest guitarists, and one of its greatest performers. Quite simply, without him, there would be no Beatles, Rolling Stones, Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, nor a myriad others. There would be no standard “Chuck Berry guitar intro,” the instrument’s clarion call to get the joint rocking’ in any s ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Joe Cocker After starting out as an unsuccessful pop singer (working under the name Vance Arnold), Joe Cocker found his niche singing rock and soul in the pubs of England with his superb backing group, the Grease Band. He hit number one in the U.K. in November 1968 with his version of the Beatles’ “A Little Help From My Friends.” His career really took off after he sang that song at the Woodstock Festival in August 1969. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Harry Chapin Harry Chapin’s career as a popular singer/songwriter was cut short by an auto accident in 1981, yet he left behind a series of recordings that his fans continue to treasure decades after his death. Chapin was never a critically acclaimed singer/songwriter. Critics accused him of over-sentimentalizing his subjects and attaching heavy-handed morals to his socially aware story-songs; the heavily orchestrated arrangements that accompanied many of his songs didn’t help his case with the critics ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Whitesnake After recording two solo albums, former Deep Purple vocalist David Coverdale formed Whitesnake around 1977. In the glut of hard rock and heavy metal bands of the late ‘70s, their first albums got somewhat lost in the shuffle, although they were fairly popular in Europe and Japan. During 1982, Coverdale took some time off, so he could take care of his sick daughter. When he re-emerged with a new version of Whitesnake in 1984, the band sounded revitalized and energetic. The group could write ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cream Although Cream was only together for a little more than two years, their influence was immense, both during their late-’60s peak and in the years following their breakup. Cream was the first top group to truly exploit the power-trio format, in the process laying the foundation for much blues-rock and hard rock of the 1960s and 1970s. It was with Cream, too, that guitarist Eric Clapton truly became Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Robert Cray Tin-eared critics have frequently damned him as a yuppie blues wanna-be whose slickly soulful offerings bear scant resemblance to the real down-home item. In reality, Robert Cray is one of a precious few active blues artists with the talent and vision to successfully usher the idiom into the future without resorting either to slavish imitation or simply playing rock while passing it off as blues. Just as importantly, his immensely popular records helped immeasurably to jump-start the contem ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young The musical partnership of David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, with and without Neil Young, was not only one of the most successful touring and recording acts of the late ‘60s, ‘70s, and early ‘80s - with the colorful, contrasting nature of the members’ characters and their connection to the political and cultural upheavals of the time - it was the only American-based band to approach the overall societal impact of the Beatles. The group was a second marriage for all the participants ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Animals One of the most important bands originating from England’s R&B scene during the early ‘60s, the Animals were second only to the Rolling Stones in influence among R&B-based bands in the first wave of the British invasion. The Animals had their origins in a Newcastle-based group called the Kansas City Five. After members moved on to join the Kontours, and then the Alan Price R&B Combo. In 1963, the combo formed together and recorded a self-produced EP under the band’s new name, The Animals. T ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Jackson Browne In many ways, Jackson Browne was the quintessential sensitive Californian singer/songwriter of the early ‘70s. Only Joni Mitchell and James Taylor ranked alongside him in terms of influence, but neither artist tapped into the post-’60s zeitgeist like Browne. While the majority of his classic ‘70s work was unflinchingly personal, it nevertheless provided a touchstone for a generation of maturing baby boomers coming to terms with adulthood. Not only did his introspective, literate lyrics stri ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Charlie Daniels Band His dad (William Carlton Daniels) was a lumberjack and a music lover. Charlie grew up with bluegrass and his dad was really his 1st introduction to singing. He tells the story of sitting on his grandmother’s porch across the street from the Pentecostal Church. The congregation was singing “Power in the Blood” and little Charlie (7 years old) was belting it out with them. His dad came out of the church and across the street and told him to “stop singing so loud.” A very talented fiddler, he ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Creedence Clearwater Revival At a time when rock was evolving further and further away from the forces that had made the music possible in the first place, Creedence Clearwater Revival brought things back to their roots with their concise synthesis of rockabilly, swamp pop, rhythm and blues and country. Though CCR was very much a group in their tight, punchy arrangements, their vision was very much singer, songwriter, guitarist, and leader John Fogerty’s. Fogerty’s classic compositions for Creedence both evoked endurin ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Jimi Hendrix Perhaps no other rock and roll trailblazer was as original or as influential in such a short span of time as Jimi Hendrix. Widely acknowledged as one of the most daring and inventive virtuosos in rock history, Hendrix pioneered the electric guitar (he played a right-handed Fender Stratocaster - his “Electric Lady” - upside down and left-handed) as an electronic sound source capable of feedback, distortion, and a host of other effects that could be crafted into an articulate and fluid emotio ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Buffalo Springfield Besides the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield was probably the best folk-rock band of the 60’s. Their music was a blend of folk, country and rock; highlighted by incredible harmonies and excellent song writing talent. Renegade ex-folkies drawn back to the rock and roll of their youth after the massive success of the Beatles, the lineup included: Steven Stills, Neil Young, Richie Furay, Bruce Palmer and Dewey Martin. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Fleetwood Mac While most bands undergo a number of changes over the course of their careers, few groups experienced such radical stylistic changes as Fleetwood Mac. Initially conceived as a hard-edged British blues combo in the late ‘60s, the band gradually evolved into a polished pop/rock act over the course of a decade. Throughout all of their incarnations, the only consistent members of Fleetwood Mac were drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie - the rhythm section that provided the band with it ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Frank Zappa Frank Zappa was the father of invention, the most caustic iconoclast of the rock-and-roll era. “My job,” he once said, “is extrapolating everything to its most absurd extreme.” And Zappa clearly loved his job. Blessed with an agile mind that embraced astoundingly diverse styles of music and rejected moral and intellectual hypocrisy, Zappa made non-conformity his credo. Experimentalism was his methodology, satire and social commentary his weapons and the American way of life his target. In t ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Doors The mood of the Doors’ music was dark and daring and - best of all - erotic. On the first chorus of the group’s self-titled 1967 debut album, Morrison announced the goal, to “break on through to the other side.” The Beatles wanted to hold your hand. The Rolling Stones wanted to spend the night together. But the Doors wanted to light your fire. Even that was tame compared to “The End,” a modern Oedipal parable - “Father, I want to kill you / Mother, I want to ...” Well you know. It was shock ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Eric Clapton By the time Eric Clapton launched his solo career with the release of his self-titled debut album in mid-1970, he was long established as one of the world’s major rock stars due to his group affiliations - the Yardbirds, John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Cream and Blind Faith - affiliations that had demonstrated his claim to being the best rock guitarist of his generation. That it took Clapton so long to go out on his own, however, was evidence of a degree of reticence unusual for one of his sta ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website