Born Ellas Otha McDaniel December 30, 1928, Bo Diddley is best known for the Bo Diddley Beat. a rumba-like beat similar to the “hambone”, a style used by street performers who play out the beat by slapping and patting their arms, legs, chest, and cheeks while chanting rhymes. Diddley came across the beat while trying […]

One of Frank Sinatra’s undisputed classics had lyrics written by Paul Anka lyrics written by Paul Anka with a melody adaptated from the French song “Comme d’habitude” written by by Claude François and Jacques Revaux. It’s been covered by Elvis Presley (see video above) and Sid Vicious, but Frankie’s version is the best. My Way […]

Rolling Stone magazine ranked it as the greatest song of all time, declaring, “No other pop song has so thoroughly challenged and transformed the commercial laws and artistic conventions of its time”. It was the moment when Bob Dylan became a fully fledged rock and pop star and icon, leaving behind the folk singer […]

After years of intermittent success in their native Jamaica, in late 1971 Chris Blackwell of Island Records met with Bob Marley, who was in London shopping songwriting demos. Blackwell signs the Wailers and decides to market the band internationally on the strength of their albums. Catch a Fire is one of the first […]

On April 19, 2000 Metallica sued the peer-to-peer file sharing service Napster. Forbes.com reported: “Metallica has also targeted the University of Southern California, Yale University and Indiana University in the federal suit filed in Los Angeles, claiming that Napster and the schools encouraged users to copy its songs without permission. “It is sickening to know […]

The PMRC began after Tipper Gore, along with her daughter Karenna, heard Prince’s song “Darling Nikki,” which contains references to sex and masturbation. Gore watched other rock music videos and concluded: “The images frightened my children, they frightened me! The graphic sex and the violence were too much for us to handle.” Along […]

Among the high points within James Brown’s career that lasted more than 50 years, perhaps none was as significant as the release of the first Live at the Apollo. While Brown’s early singles were major hits across the southern United States and then regular R&B Top Ten hits, he and the Famous Flames were […]

Leonard and Phil Chess, two Polish born immigrants, founded Chess Records, the pre-eminent Blues label of the 50s and 60s. The list of major blues artists who recorded for Chess includes Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Elmore James, Bo Diddley, Jimmy Reed, Chuck Berry and countless more. The label began when the brothers, who owned […]

They said the tragic death of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper was the ‘day the music died,’ but to another generation of rockers, October 20, 1977 was the same. A crushing blow to the Southern Rock genre, Lynyrd Skynyrd burst on the scene in 1973 with hard driving anthems about hard […]

Not since the short-lived mid-60s heyday of the Monkees has television intersected with musical stardom with as much commercial success as with the pop phenomenon of American Idol. The #1 show on network television today, American Idol is based on the British Pop Idol model, with the show the final step of a nationwide […]