Search results for

On his new album, Modern Times, Bob Dylan seems to have borrowed some lyrics from a little known Civil War-era poet named Henry Timrod. Albuquerque, N.M.-based disc jockey Scott Warmuth has found a number of Timrod lyrics in Dylan's recent catalogue. Robert Siegel talks with Warmuth about the findings.

Nell Freudenberger lived every young writer's dream when her first short story was published in The New Yorker. She was 26 at the time and an editorial assistant at the magazine, writing fiction in the morning before work. Her award-winning short story collection, Lucky Girls, was published in 2003 and made our best books list that year. Freudenberger has just published her first novel, The Dissident.

For an act named The Weepies, Deb Talan and Steve Tannen seem to be pretty cheerful, actually. The pair met in Boston at a club, and have been writing music together ever since. Their latest album is called Say I Am You.

Music critic Sarah Bardeen reviews Bedtime Beats: The Secret to Sleep, a new album of classical music meant to whisk listeners away to dreamland.

Muddy Waters' 1968 blues-rock hybrid Electric Mud works as an intermittently spirited experiment, a loosely structured attempt at moving an icon beyond the traditional. The legend sounds like a lost soul from the Delta who's wandered into the exaggerated druggy debauchery of a hippie movie.

John Pizzarelli has been playing jazz guitar with his legendary father, Bucky, since he was 6 years old. John's latest album is Dear Mr. Sinatra, on which he plays songs written for Ol' Blue Eyes. Pizzarelli appears at the Birdland jazz club in Manhattan this week.

Today is the 85th birthday of jazz drummer and legendary bandleader Chico Hamilton. He has spent seventy years behind the drum kit, performing in a wide variety of styles and jazz flavors: from big band and R&B, to funky and experimental.

Bob Dylan's new album "Modern Times" comes out this week. Commentator Adam Langer says he can measure the milestones of his life in Dylan albums — and this one is no exception.

Trumpeter, composer, and arranger Gerald Wilson turned 88 years old Monday. He grew up in Mississippi, and got his start playing with Jimmy Lunceford's band in New York City. He later worked with Benny Carter's band and formed his own. As a composer-arranger, he worked for the Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie bands. And he accompanied Billie Holiday on her tour of the South in 1949. He's arranged music for Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, Sarah Vaughan, Bobby Darin, and Carmen McRae. His most recent CD was released last year, In My Time.

The Texas band Midlake has changed its sound dramatically on The Trials of Van Occupanther, transforming its poppy, keyboard-driven music into a deeper, '70s-influenced folk-pop experience. But there's also a refreshingly modern touch to "Roscoe."