Mike Greenblatt’s Rant ‘n’ Roll Mike Greenblatt May 15, 2019 Albums, Reviews A Gal Named Anoushka Listening to Reflections (Deutsche Grammophon), by Anoushka Shankar, brought me back to when I saw her dad Ravi perform at Woodstock. True story: I went so wild over the sound of my firs...
Mike Greenblatt’s Rant ‘n’ Roll Mike Greenblatt May 8, 2019 Albums, Reviews Peter Ward is on the Train To Key Biscayne (Gandy Dancer Records) with an all-star crew of top-notch blues A-Listers. This all-original 12-track gem, the follow-up to his 2017 Blues On My Shoulders debut, featu...
Mike Greenblatt’s Rant ‘n’ Roll Mike Greenblatt May 1, 2019 Albums, Reviews The “Deluxe Edition” of Van Morrison’s mid-career 1997 masterpiece The Healing Game (Exile/Legacy Recordings) is a treasure trove of unbridled genius reaching out in all directions at once. Its three discs cont...
Mike Greenblatt’s Rant ‘n’ Roll Mike Greenblatt April 24, 2019 Albums, Reviews The Legend When Ray Charles inducted Nat King Cole into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2000, he admitted to copying Cole’s cool vocal style prior to developing his own. Starting out as a jazz pianist wi...
Rant ‘n’ Roll: Oz Noy, William Steffey, Professor Louie, and more! Mike Greenblatt April 17, 2019 Columns, Rant 'N' Roll In the nineteen-sixties, Latin audiences in New York City went wild for what was known as boogaloo, a hybrid dance sound of funk, salsa, jump blues, and mambo, that went national when Dick Clark introduced it o...
Rant ‘n’ Roll—Pete Seeger: Centennial of an American Hero Mike Greenblatt April 10, 2019 Columns, Rant 'N' Roll Pete Seeger should be celebrating his 100th birthday May 3. We lost him January 27, 2014 at the age of 94. Upon his death, President Barack Obama said, “Over the years, Pete used his voice—and his hammer—to str...
Rant ‘n’ Roll: Dina Hall — Ballad of a Singer-Songwriter Mike Greenblatt April 2, 2019 Columns, Rant 'N' Roll Dina Hall wears a lot of hats. Songwriter. Guitarist. Bandleader. Activist. Mentor. Graphic designer. Yet listen to her sing John Prine’s “Angel From Montgomery” or his “Speed of the Sound of Loneliness” and yo...
Rant ‘n’ Roll: Elvis Presley, Seth Walker, Larry Grenadier, and more! Mike Greenblatt March 27, 2019 Albums, Reviews By 1968, Elvis Presley had abdicated his throne to those British long-hairs whom he hated. The King just wasn’t relevant anymore and he knew it. Along came TV producer Steve Binder with an idea to restore Elvis...
Rant ‘n’ Roll — Charlie Faye & The Fayettes, John Fusco and the X-Road Riders, and more! Mike Greenblatt March 20, 2019 Albums, Reviews The Whole Shebang (Bigger Better More Records), by Charlie Faye & The Fayettes, feels good. An update on the girl groups of the ’60s, singer-songwriter Faye wrote or co-wrote 12 frilly retro-pop tunes, sing...
Rant ‘n’ Roll: The Delines, Dave Rudolph Quartet, Aaron Goldberg, and much more! Mike Greenblatt March 13, 2019 Albums, Reviews The story of the second album of The Delines would make a great movie. In 2014, the Portland, Oregon Americana band with the country-soul female singer made many a Top 10 list with its Colfax debut. With most o...
