By: Franklin Bruno

The last man standing of Sun Records’ early roster has been known to set himself among even loftier company. “Al Jolson, Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, and JERRY LEE LEWIS [born 1935]…. That’s your only four […]

By: Sarah Weinman

One of my favorite children’s books, the madcap Lafcadio: The Lion Who Shot Back (1963), by SHEL SILVERSTEIN (1930-99), is about loneliness, friendship, and the perils of too much success — all of which turn […]

By: Patrick Cates

Until 1964, JOHN COLTRANE (1926-67) was a virtuoso, blasting out bebop as wing-man to the likes of Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk, and later leading his own hard bop lineups, where he is probably most […]

By: Annie Nocenti

When LEONARD COHEN (born 1934) sings, it is at once a whisper, a prayer, a confession, a chant, a lullaby, a benediction in the ear. He has misplaced a secret. He yearns to tell us, […]

By: Katie Hennessey

Contrary to rumor, MAMA CASS ELLIOT (1941-74) did not choke to death on a sandwich. Officially, she died from “heart failure due to fatty myocardial degeneration due to obesity.” Mama Cass wasn’t merely obese, though: […]

By: Katie Hennessey

“I’m sittin’ on the dock of the bay/Watching the tide roll away/Oooh, I’m just sittin’ on the dock of the bay/Wastin’ time….” Time was one thing that OTIS REDDING (1941–67) didn’t have to waste. Posthumously […]

By: Lynn Peril

The early death of BUDDY HOLLY (1936-59) transformed him into an icon of the Boomers’ Happy Days-esque vision of American life in the 1950s, all poodle skirts and sock hops at the malt shop, or […]

By: Sarah Weinman

If FREDDIE MERCURY (Farrokh Bulsara, born 1946) had been born a century earlier, audiences would have flocked to see him hit high Cs at La Scala or Opera de Paris instead of belting out the […]

By: Douglas Wolk

JOHN ZORN (born 1953) has been the nexus of the musical avant-garde in New York for a couple of decades — an unbelievably prolific composer and performer and curator and label-dude whose early look-how-eclectic-I-am tendencies […]

By: Erik Davis

Child of St. Petersburg, bug-maker for the KGB, and husband of the African-American dancer Lavinia Williams, LÉON THEREMIN (1896-1993) achieved immortality through the eponymous electronic instrument he invented in 1920. Originally called the “aetherphone,” the […]

By: Douglas Wolk

Pity Mohandas Dewese, d/b/a KOOL MOE DEE (born 1962): briefly one of the most popular rappers alive, he’s now mostly remembered for a feud with LL Cool J that the market effectively decided in LL’s […]

By: Tor Aarestad

With the ouster of original vocalist Paul Di’Anno and the hiring of BRUCE DICKINSON (born 1958) just before the release of their immortal third album, The Number of the Beast, Iron Maiden had finally completed […]

By: Greg Rowland

Miles Davis once said that the history of jazz could be summed up by two names: Charlie Parker and LOUIS ARMSTRONG (1901-71). I’d go further, and claim that the ABC of 20th century pop culture […]

By: Patrick Cates

Even when JAMES HETFIELD (born 1963) smiles — which he did copiously during this year’s induction of Metallica into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, for example — his face can’t fully escape its […]

By: Tom Nealon

During the Reagan Era, CHUCK D (Carlton Douglas Ridenhour, born 1960), the hard rhymer, gave us “My Uzi Weighs a Ton,” “Prophets of Rage,” and “Fight the Power,” not to mention Flavor Flav and the […]