Profonde Musique

March 31, 2026

Seventy years ago, this spring (March 23, 1956), RCA Victor released the self-titled debut album from a twenty-one-year-old rockabilly crooner from Memphis Tennessee named Elvis Presley. Within the month it would reach the top of the U.S. charts, the first such feat for what certain deejays around the country were calling rock and roll. Elvis Presley Rock n’ Roll, as it was titled in the UK, subsequently topped the charts there. No one knows the first rock and roll record for sure. Some say “Rocket 88” by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats, which was Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm in disguise due to contractual obligations, the year before. Still other music historians point to earlier recordings that more than hint at a similar driving backbeat style in Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s “Strange Things Happening Every Day” (1944), Roy Brown’s “Good Rockin’ Tonight” (1947), a song Presley recorded as one of his first sides in 1954, and Goree Carter’s “Rock Awhile” (1949). But we do know for sure that Elvis Presley heralded this new music into the apex of popularity.

If anyone challenges the well-worn moniker King of Rock and Roll for Elvis, something I have done on more than one occasion, this is one factoid you can point to in his defense. 

By the spring of 1956, Elvis was on a precipitous rise similar to Frank Sinatra’s a generation earlier – a stronghold on the fascination of the youth market, specifically women. Beyond his voice, however, Presley’s spastic movements on stage, a raw sexually charged combination of Beale Street shimmying and Baptist Church gyrations he picked up as a kid from the Black communities around Tupelo, Mississippi, set the course for his success on stages across the South. From the seismic release of his first single, “That’s All Right,” a sparkling boogie cover of bluesman, Authur Crudup’s 1946 hit, Presley came on as a naive hybrid sensation – a mish-mosh of country-blues-gospel-swing in an unfiltered package. Produced at Sun Records in Memphis by Sam Phillips, who spent years promoting Black acts like Howlin’ Wolf, Rufus Thomas, and B.B. King among others (Phillips cut “Rocket 88”), the song’s infectious rhythm, created by just Elvis on acoustic guitar, Bill Black on bass and Scottie Moore on guitar, shook the music industry to its core.

It was Phillips’s invention of the famed slap-back reverb sound that when combined with Elvis’s youthful yip-yelp phrasing, easing in and out of falsetto into a smooth timbre, backed ably with the groove of those instruments, which charted wholly new musical realms. Phillips would go onto record 24 revolutionary tracks at Sun with Elvis’s trio (and eventually foursome with D.J. Fontana on drums) between 1954 and 1955, ten of which he released on five two-sided singles. Then Elvis signed with the notorious Colonel Tom Parker, and when the big New York City labels came calling, the former carny huckster convinced RCA to pony up 40-grand (around 490-grand today) for Elvis’s Sun contract and back catalog by the end of ‘55.

Ten days into the new year, Elvis, along with Scotty, Bill and D.J., aka the Blue Moon Boys, convened at the Methodist Television, Radio and TV Studios in Nashville, Tennessee to begin recording their first RCA tracks. On day one, they completed arguably the most important and groundbreaking records of the 20th century, “Heartbreak Hotel.” With assistance from legendary Nashville session cats, guitarist Chet Atkins and pianist, Floyd Cramer, the single was awash in echo, a desperate attempt to recreate what Sam Phillips had wrought on all of Elvis’s best Sun recordings. This inadvertently gave “Heartbreak Hotel” an eerie moaning, almost mystical quality – Elvis sings as if facing his mortality in infinite loneliness. Seventeen days later it was on the radio, in stores, and being played across the Pond to thousands of teenagers like John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, who snapped into Beatles and Rolling Stones in its wake as if hit by a bolt of beatific lighting.

“Heartbreak Hotel,” penned by Nashville songwriters, Mae Boren Axton and Tommy Durden (Elvis was given credit – thanks, Colonel) from a suicide note published in the Miami Herald, obliterated culture, creating a firestorm across the universe and making Elvis Presley one of the most photographed, filmed, and written-about humans on the planet from that week forward. 

By that point, Elvis Presley was pretty much in the can, as the Blue Moon Boys and a tireless Elvis cruised through seven tracks in the remaining weeks of January after cutting “Heartbreak Hotel.” Five more songs previously tracked by Phillips filled out the long player (sans the single), which was rushed out a mere two months later to a frantic public, who’d been quite recently introduced to Elvis’s swiveling hips, shaky knees, and flopping, long duck-tail greasy hair swaying atop his bopping head on this new-fangled invention called television. An entire generation waylaid by Chittlin’ Circuit furies pulsing through the vigorous limbs of this whirling dervish snarling and mumbling strange vibrations broadcast on variety shows like the Stage Show, Milton Berle Show, Steve Allen Show, and the Ed Sullivan Show.

My mom, Phyllis, then a plucky teen, watched the Ed Sullivan appearance and was hooked, explaining to me recently she’d had a dissimilar experience than the one written in history – Elvis as this alien creature set upon the conservative, sleepy black-and-white 1950s. In the Bronx that night, Elvis was the kind of beacon John Lennon once mused, “Before Elvis there was nothing.” She told me, “He was one of us. He made us feel like he was a part of our group, nothing old but entirely new.” Never one to speak in glowing terms at any age about anyone (sans Grace Kelly – the woman loved Princes Grace), Phyllis mused to me, “I played that record so much, my mother begged me to stop. And then my friends came over, and we played it a few times more. Drove my mom crazy.” 

Photos of the copy of that very record, my mom’s beat-up 1956 original, is shared throughout this piece. She bequeathed it to me sometime in the 1970s and it remains in my collection, although I can’t play it. Man, did she ever play the shit out of that thing. No stylus of mine is going anywhere near it. But it is history – American, cultural, familial history. So, it remains tucked in there just the same. “I remember when I got it,” my mom told me. “I ran and grabbed it off the shelf. I was ready to fight anyone for it. You had to go to stores at specific times, or they would be sold out. It was rare to even see a copy.”   

To fathom the light-speed in which Elvis Presley went from regional oddity to world-wide phenomenon can give you the bends. Elvis Presley was a sonic boom in every sense of the word. It helped create a chasm in generations separated by song and style and set the course for endless discussions on sex, race, gender, delinquency, culture – and invasion of the American psyche with a new lexicon for figuring cool.

Its iconic cover, cropped from a photo of Presley performing in Tampa, Florida the previous summer, shows a man possessed, mouth agape in blissful song, his body a fluid kinetic wire untethered by mere gravity. There is a danger there in that he looks as if he does not care about anything other than the promise of that song. 

The record inside lives up to its place in pop culture history. Enamored with three precursors to his rise, first Sun Records label-mate Carl Perkins, and the Black, gay, outrageously spirited Little Richards, Elvis kicked off each side with spectacular (“Blue Suede Shoes”) and serviceable, (Tutti Frutti”) renditions of their most famous work. He also made sure to include rhythm and blues giant, Ray Charles’s first hit, “I Got a Woman,” a reworked gospel cum raucous boogie-woogie, which Elvis had played at every single one of his shows up to then.

Other highlights of the album include a rockabilly Sun track, “Just Because,” wherein Elvis’s voice playfully bounces around the chugging rhythm effortlessly, “Tryin’ to Get to You,” a pulsing bluesy number he growls with blood-red passion, and a tender ballad, “I Love You Because” that shows off the unbridled range of emotions he would later perfect but with less honest solemnity.

Elvis Presley changed the look, sound and philosophy of this new thing called rock and roll. The album spent ten weeks at number one on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart that year and became the genre’s first million-selling album. There would be more from rock and roll, of course, and you may have heard of those, but you could make a fair argument that none of them happen without this one. But that is a story for another column, so I’ll let Phyllis Campion have the final word: “When you played Elvis’s music, you had to play it loud.”

Profonde Musique

March 24, 2026

Celebrating Women’s Month (apt for this writer as both his mom and daughter celebrate birthdays in March), with a list (in no order of quality or sales or even adoration) of some of the most impactful and stirring opening musical statements by talented women of various genres. Although I’ll hang in the pop/rock/folk/funk/country/hip-hop territories, and this is not a complete list (remind me of what I missed and I’ll likely agree), I will not be a stickler for an actual debut album. This is the case for at least four of these artists, as their most rousing debuts can be found in a rebirth of their work that would come to define them. Most importantly, what are below are true expressions of what these incredible artists, and in some cases entire bands (and if a woman leads a not all-female group, that still counts here), will accomplish in their stellar careers.

Many of these albums were created in times when women were not expected to branch out as songwriters, lead singers, musicians, never mind producers and captains of their own professional destinies, while others had to overcome the industry’s stringent parameters on beauty, strength and authenticity in women’s music that men rarely contend with.

And it would be foolish to just place the albums below in the context of their times and social and political terms alone, as these are foundational creative efforts that add to the evolution of music for their genres and stand alone as excellent works that not only exploded at the times of their releases, but continue to influence and inspire artists and fans today.

Madonna – Madonna (1983)

Slamming club bangers from a pop icon, who’s underground debut changed how women, especially denizens of the sexually empowered post-feminism 80s, would be perceived, marketed and eventually sound throughout the rest of the decade with club and radio hits like “Border Line,” Holiday,” and “Lucky Star.”

Whitney Houston – Whitney Houston (1985)

The highest selling album by any female artist ever introduced the world to the extraordinary pipes of a young, fun-loving American sweetheart, producing a staggering three #1 singles, “Saving All My Love for You,” “How Will I Know,” and “Greatest Love of All.” It is difficult to translate how huge this record was and how much of a pop game-changer Whitney was because of it.

Lady Gaga – The Fame (2008)

The sheer audacity of declaring notoriety on a debut was both brash and prophetic as mega-hits, “Just Dance” and “Poker Face” scaled new electropop heights worldwide, setting the new glam icon for a generation up as someone who’s music was already primed for stardom.

Patti Smith – Horses (1975)

The godmother of the CBGB’s downtown NYC punk, next-generation movement, and the first of that wave to get a record deal, be played on the radio, appear on television, and create (with its iconic cover) the pansexual dynamo that enhances the music that will obliterate antiquated ideas of a woman as poet, rocker, and shape-shifter.

Pussy Riot – “Kill the Sexists” Single (2011)

Hunted, arrested, and made example by the Vladimir Putin fascist regime in Russia turned out to be a fine publicity stunt – which the band had a supreme understanding to the seditious nature of – like their infamous “guerrilla performances” expressing feminism, LGBTQ rights, civil rights, and causing general mayhem for art’s sake. This single recorded by original members, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Yekaterina Samutsevich kicked it off.

Aretha Franklin – I Never Loved a Man the Way I loved You – (1967)

After enduring seven excruciating years recording for Columbia Records, which tried to turn her into a sappy torch-song singer awash in strings, Franklin, sidled up to a piano to play with natural panache and escaped to the soul-based Atlantic Records that encouraged her to infuse her unique brand of gospel, R&B and a little rock and roll to launch an unparalleled Lady of Soul period with “Respect.”

Taylor Swift – Taylor Swift (2006)

This is country Taylor taking Nashville by storm by turning it back into the Music City for the pop world with chart-topping narrative-driven hits like “Our Song,” “Should’ve Said No” and sneaking “Teardrops on My Guitar” into the Billboard Top 10. The 16-year-old singer-songwriter with plenty of stories to tell was, as they say, on her way.

The Bangles – All Over the Place (1984)

Susanna Hoffs, sisters Vicki Peterson and Debbi Peterson, and Michael Steele comprise the finest all-female rock group ever. Fight me on this: musicianship, harmonies, songwriting, live performance, and one of the best debut albums of any gender. This one heralds the next decade of their hit-making prowess fueled by the raw energy of a punk band with exquisite pipes.

Fiona Apple – Tidal (1996)

The sexy contralto vocals spreads over trenchant piano, riding devil backbeats to ferry tempestuous lyrics that become a feminine tonic to the grunge movement with as much moxie as one can jam into a long player. A Top 20 hit “Criminal” and the MTV staple, “Sleep to Dream” kicked it into Grammy levels.

Lauryn Hill – The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998)

Fresh from the Fugees and motherhood, Ms. Hill brings all the pain, joy, confusion and pure street grit to this sprawling debut of hip-hop/soul/funk. The older it gets, the more poignant this album lands, as it was her only one thus far. Personal and professional setbacks, along with an uneven touring reputation scarred what should have been a long and fruitful career, but taken as a one-off, it towers over the competition.

Patty Griffin – Living with Ghosts (1996)

The record company didn’t know what to do with Patty Griffin’s original demos that intimately heralded her sultry, countrified voice accompanied by only an acoustic guitar, as no one seemed to be able to top them, so they released them as-is, making this debut the finest DIY album by a woman ever, which launched a career of country/folk majesty.

The Runaways – The Runaways (1976)  

Before the Runways, there were no all-female rock groups, especially none with a this raw, sexually explicit, razor’s edge. Lead singer, the 15-year-old, Cherie Currie backed by later solo stars like Lita Ford and Joan Jett on guitars, bassist, Jackie Fox, and drummer, Sandy West trailblazed the way for many of the bands mentioned here. But youth and the wayward lunacy of their manager, Kim Fowley, cut them down too soon.

Tracy Chapman – Tracy Chapman (1988)

At the height of slick pop dominated in synth/drum machine/digital sounds, butting up against hair-band metal mania, comes a Black woman with a deep voice playing folk songs on an acoustic guitar. No one seemed to need or ask for this, but when they got it, Tracy Chapman exploded. “Fast Car,” one of the finest compositions of the decade, famously resurrected in 2023 by country star, Luke Combs, sounded in 1988 as a seditious remedy and a return to the lost voice of the singer-songwriter.

Cheryl Crow –Tuesday Night Music Club (1993)

Former background singer and industry insider makes a fun album reminiscent of an actual Tuesday Night Music Club she attended in L.A. in which much of this material – fueled in a party/jam, milieu – was created. Sparked by laid-back groove the hit, “All I Wanna Do” the record would go on to win three Grammy Awards and set the course for Crow to become one of the most respected singer-songwriters of her generation and help anchor the groundbreaking all-women, Lilith Fair Festivals.

Alanis Morrisette – Jagged Little Pill (1995)

Like Aretha, no one in Canada knew what to do with Alanis, as she blossomed from teen-scene star into Grrrll icon for the 1990s. Camped out with songwriter/producer/mentor, Glen Ballard, who understood the 21-year-old’s desire to express her emotions without a safety net, the result was one of the biggest sellers of the 1990s with smash Top 10 hits galore, “You Oughta Know,” “Hand in My Pocket,” and the #1, “Ironic.”

The Go-Gos – Beauty and the Beat (1981)

Proving the core axioms in rock and roll in one monster debut, Belinda Carlisle, Charlotte Caffey, Gina Schock, Kathy Valentine, and Jane Wiedlin write, sing, and perform some of the catchiest pop music of the early 1980s, while proving that not only young men can act like wild animals and tear through tours in notorious splendor. “I’ll Lips Are Sealed” is a glorious pop/rock number for any time.

Britney Spears – …Baby One More Time (1999)

Bubblegum pop returns with a vengeance, as Britney reinvents the teen-girl-sings-and-dances craze for a new generation and explodes into the zeitgeist as a fully formed pop star. Hatched from Disney’s Mickey Mouse Club factory that would also bore Justin Timberlake, Spears wastes little time setting herself up for mega-stardom from the jump. Everyone knows or has parodied or hates or adores but cannot forget the title track on its inevitable rise to #1.

Tammy Wynett – Stand By Your Man (1969)

Although, like Aretha and Alanis, Tammy had a career, and in her case, four albums, before this, the woman who emerged from this record would solidify her place in the country music and pop culture realm as the prideful antidote to the feminist backlash against the life of a simple woman who loves her man. The fact that the title track, a chart-topping global smash, would arrive at the apex of the first feminist wave is something to behold.

The Sugar Cubes – Life’s Too Good (1988)
Hello unsuspecting world, here’s… Björk! Whatever this diminutive, quirky Icelandic woman was offering is difficult – even now nearly four decades hence – to comprehend, much less describe in mere words. Her singing, phrasing, weird melodic turns in this post-new-wave pop/rock masterwork has stood the test of time and influenced countless female vocalists, although, who the hell is approaching this? No one.  

Tori Amos – Little Earthquakes (1992)

A remarkable achievement in musicality, virtuosic piano playing, intensely unique songwriting, and painfully beatific honesty in its lyrics, this debut set a standard for a long and fruitful career of pushing boundaries and framing the core of womanhood’s sexual and political hopes, dreams, and fears. Every song on this record is an absolute gem.  

Lana Del Rey – Born to Die (2012)

There are better Lana Del Ray albums, but you get none of them without this (I guess you can say that about all debuts). However, sleeping on this is a mistake, for it not only introduced the concept of the psych-rock genre she invented, but it set in stone Lana’s one-of-a-kind understated phrasing and acute sexual parsing, becoming the longest-charting album by a woman on the Billboard 200. 

Adele – 19 (2008)

To my knowledge, the only debut to reveal the age of the artist on it, and I would gather the only MySpace demo gal to gain a record deal, Adele’s magnificent voice and emotional phrasing pushed two singles, “Chasing Pavements” and Bob Dylan’s finest ballad, “Make You Feel My Love” into the UK Top 10. A British balladeer with a soulful cadence, crashed pop music’s woman-as-sex-object-and-rebel-queen party to usher nostalgic elegance back onto the charts.  

The Pretenders – Pretenders (1980)

Lead singer, main songwriter, Chrissie Hynde was a mid-American ex-pat roaming through punk-addled London, bouncing off the Sex Pistols and the Clash, when she formed a band to kick everyone’s ass. In my high school, there wasn’t a girl worth her salt that didn’t sing, “Brass in Pocket’ as if a feminine national youth anthem. In fact, after I blithely broke it off with one of those girls, she quite correctly, if not surprisingly to my non-plussed parents, blasted the song outside my house (ala John Cusack in Say Anything). So, yeah, 17-year-old me, take that! 

Carole King – Tapestry (1971)

Until Whitney Houston came along, no woman sold more albums than Carole King’s pristine masterpiece in songwriting length and breadth. Former Brill Building teen prodigy gone Laurel Canyon hippie, pens songs from the heart and soul, invades the charts and wows critics. A perennial album of the golden age of the singer-songwriter with “You’ve Got a Friend,” “So Far Away,” “It’s Too Late,” and the landmark, “(You Make Me Feel Like) a Natural Woman.”

Mariah Carey – Mariah Carey (1990)

This is how big this record was out of the gate: a dear friend and songwriting partner of mine at the time, uttered without irony, “We all have to love Mariah Carey now?” Ummm… yes. And how we loved those pipes, that inhuman range, the ability to smile as she sang (you can actually hear this woman smile on these tracks), on her way to breaking pop chart records set by man or woman on the wings of four (count ‘em) four #1 hits, “Vision of Love,” “Love Takes Time,” “Someday,” and “I Don’t Wanna Cry.”

 Hole – Live Through This (1994)

Okay, so Hole’s first official album is Pretty on the Inside, but anyone who knows knows that this is the introduction of songwriter, lead singer and guitarist, Courtney Love from quasi-punk hanger-on to Kurt Cobain’s wife to undisputed grunge queen. Joined by two women, Patty Schemel on drums and bassist Kristen Pfaff, along with lead guitarist, Eric Erlandson, Love emerged from the daunting shadow of her husband’s suicide with an honest and powerful collection of songs.

Olivia Rodrigo – Sour (2021) 

A modern take on the pop sensibilities that have carried the youth surge of post-World War II to the edge of the new century from a 17-year-old singer-songwriter helped spark a rising generation of women to dominate this latest surge of troubadours. Her tender forays on the teen spectrum of heartache and confusion (hence the album’s title) wrapped in a genuine communicative voice subsequently became the first debut album to produce two #1 debuts on the Billboard Hot 100: “Drivers License,” “Good 4 U,” followed by “Déjà vu” and “Traitor” invading the top 10.

Amy Winehouse – Frank (2003)
The throwback’s throwback that sounds like a young woman being blasted out of a jazz-adorned canon into the British pop charts bloated with boy bands and nubile flash-in-the-pans. It is not Amy’s best work, as she attested at the time, but it was refreshing to hear the come-hither, smoky rich contralto voice from another time and place, as the title of the album suggests (Hello, Sinatra!). Unfortunately, her soap opera tragedies and untimely death overshadows her music, but it nonetheless remains her true legacy.

Billie Eilish – When We Fall Asleep Where Do We Go? (2019)

Its creepy, alluring, funny, and catchy as all get-out. Nothing before or since has sounded like this – a stirring debut by two teen siblings (Billie and her bro, Fineas) holed up in a bedroom making sounds and songs that will soon conquer the pop world. Although her trajectory shot into the stratosphere, much of the naivete and blessed strangeness has since been removed from later works, and for those who were given this spectacular promise, it’s a tough hang.

Barbra Streisand – The Barbra Streisand Album (1963)

When I was a kid, in my house, Barbra ruled. My dad loved her voice. And when I couldn’t think of anything to get him for a birthday or Father’s Day, bam! Barbra album! This one, I think, I got him, and then years later scored an original Columbia release. But if you want to hear a 21-year-old with a soaring operatic range with lightning quick phrasing and a biting sense of humor crush every song on an album, here ya go. 

Pat Benatar – In the Heat of the Night (1979)

Where Billie had her bro, Pat had her boyfriend and later husband, Neil Geraldo by her side to assist in realizing her voice. – a powerful roar worthy of the best male leads. Eschewing new wave or disco, which was the genres on a roll in 1979, Benatar instead returned to good, old-fashioned sexy, punchy rock and delivered a bombastic debut featuring radio and MTV staple, “Heartbreaker.”

Regina Spektor – 11:11 (2001) 

Independently released collection of exquisitely composed and arranged songs on piano introduced this New York City by way of Russia original to the world as a jazz/blues enthusiast aching to take those genres and package them later into a whirlwind creative spirit. Spektor would go onto to produce some of the most uniquely sounding albums of the early century and it begins here by her lonesome, unaffected.  

Ani DiFranco – Ani DiFranco (1990)

Speaking of unaffected and completely autonomous music-making, here is the launching of the Righteous Babe empire cut on her own, published on her own, and pitched around early-90s New York City… on her own. The striking vocal cadence, the slicing lyrics, the feral, rhythmic acoustic guitar that sound like a band, changed underground sounds for men and women forevermore. 

Profonde Musique

March 10

I rarely have the time to catch one music documentary when it’s released, much less three. But this past week-plus, I’ve had the pleasure to take in a trio of gems, all of them presenting the stories of worthy subjects – the life and music of Billy Preston, Paul McCartney’s journey from the Beatles through his years in Wings, and Elvis Presley’s late 60s Las Vegas residency. Each of these films tell their tales in far different ways, but all three are compelling, educational, and entertaining storytelling.

The music doc has evolved over the past decade into several incarnations, from a bevy of distended voices filling out the visuals (2024’s compelling One to One: John & Yoko, Todd Hayne’s stellar, The Velvet Underground from 2021) or using talking heads (Questlove’s dynamic,Summer of Soul, Netflix’s comprehensive, The Greatest Night in Pop from 2024 covering the “We Are The World” recording). There is the fly-on-the-wall cinema verité of Peter Jackson’s rightfully heralded The Beatles: Get Back from 2021, which restored countless hours of footage of the Fab Four’s creative process through painstaking experimentation of AI technology, and 2018’s  Amazing Grace, which took good old-fashioned human elbow-grease to rescue the original film from technical difficulties that shelved the telling of Aretha Franklin’s 1972 live recording of gospel standards in a Los Angles church. There are tell-alls, Amy (2015) covering in painful detail the rise of tragic fall of Amy Winehouse to comprehensive four-hour band epics, Long Strange Trip (2017), an exhaustive chronicle of the Grateful Dead or Wu-Tang Clan: Of Mics and Men (2019) that tracks the story behind one of the most influential hip-hop groups of all time.

For the record: I do not necessarily consider a straight concert film a documentary, unless it includes interviews, backstory and perspective. Interestingly, I think Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz as both a doc and concert film manages to balance indisputably the greatest concert movie of all time with commentary but falls short as an inclusive a documentary as one would hope on the band or their times. Yet, the medium in the hands of a unparalleled fictional storyteller like Scorsese, who unfolds a sweeping aural guidebook to an entire era through the performances, and one of the directors of these three new documentaries I cover here, can artfully infuse a thematic edge to the process. I’ll elaborate later. 

No matter their agenda or process, these three films tell a larger story about each artist in original and captivating ways. In two, the voices of the dead testify to their experience from random, edited interviews to wrest a tired narrative from the clutches of history, and in the third, a man in his eighties tries to make sense of a life lived in the spotlight he simultaneously strived to remain in and sought shelter from.

Let’s do them in order of my seeing them.

BILLY PRESTON – THAT’S THE WAY GOD PLANNED IT

Thanks to my dear friend, the inimitable singer-songwriter deluxe, Eric Hutchinson, who got the tix and invited me along, we checked this out at the legendary Film Forum three weeks back. Directed by industry veteran of film and television, Paris Barclay, That’s The Way God Planned It, titled after Billy Preston’s first big hit as a solo artist, chronicles the truly extraordinary, six-decade career of the Grammy-winning keyboardist from his incredible rise as a child prodigy on organ appearing on the Nat King Cole variety show through his touring work backing such legends as Ray Charles and Little Richard, which had him crossing paths with the Beatles and the Rolling Stone, both of whom he would record with and in the case of the Stones tour with, to his inevitable chart-topping stardom.  

Barclay depicts Preston, as he was known in his lifetime, as a cheerful, ebullient personality that enlivened every session or show he participated in with as humble a reserve as could have possibly been displayed by someone so musically gifted. This was, sadly, a front for a person in great pain, which the film explains covering his conflicted childhood in Baptist churches joyfully singing and playing, set against alleged sexual and violent abuses from family members. This left Preston closeted from not only his homosexuality and proclivity for young boys later in life but displayed how folding into himself kept those close to him or his musical collaborators from seeing his trauma. This, Barclay surmises through dozens of interviews, led to Preston’s future drug and alcohol abuse as a kind of self-loathing penance.

The true highlight of the film is the archived footage of the dynamism of Preston’s amazing performances soundtracked by commentary from those who knew and loved him from family to friends and famous musicians whose music was enhanced by Preston’s work, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Mick Jagger, and more. It’s quite moving to hear how deeply the usually reserved and off-putting Eric Clapton speaks so emotionally about trying to save Preston from his addictions, relating to his demons as a former heroin addict, paining to keep his friend from falling into ruin.

And this is where the complicated legacy of Bill Preston is written in That’s The Way God Planned It, ultimately, with crimes including drug possession, insurance fraud (in which he was eventually convicted and served time) and being caught time and again with teenage boys. The film doesn’t redeem or excuse any of this, of course, but in its coda and summation, Preston turns his life around, cleansed of substance abuse, to return from prison a man understanding his talent had always been his true refuge from the pain and sorrow he kept hidden, filling out his days not as a cautionary tale of someone who’d reached the heights and lost everything to someone who still cherished his music (the man had a ton of hits, many of which I bought at the time) and the roots of his culture to finally admit out loud his sexual truth a day before he died at 59-years-old.   

MAN ON THE RUN

When I reviewed Tom Doyle’s wonderfully written Man on the Run – Paul McCartney in the 1970s in 2013, I was convinced it would make a great movie. I wasn’t thinking documentary, but considering the state of music biopics these days, I’m glad it went in this direction. Oscar-winning filmmaker, Morgan Neville’s Man on the Run, like his 20 Feet from Stardom (2013), which for the first time covered the unsung life and times of backups singers, neatly combines the music of Paul McCartney with a portrait of his life and times. Despite being hounded throughout his career as both a Beatle and a solo artist for not using his music as biography, as his songwriting partner, John Lennon was lauded for achieving, Neville finds that there was, indeed, a narrative forming behind McCartney’s most beloved pop hits. 

Beyond using the songs as guideposts to McCartney’s resurrection from the ashes of his band’s demise – one that he tried like hell to keep together but was forced to abandon and then blamed for breaking up – we hear the 83-year-old composer speak candidly about what he was going through at the time deflecting the misconceptions of his lawsuits against the Beatles and his fight to reinvent himself as a solo performer.

The ghost of the Beatles, particularly Lennon, haunts McCartney during the initials days of the breakup in which the film does a terrific job of depicting with archived and recent footage of he and Linda’s run-down Scottish cabin he retreated to in order to heal his emotional wounds. And from this blessed isolation, Paul begins to make music again and most importantly reignites his passion for live performing, which the Beatles, much to his consternation, refused to do after 1966.

And that is the other interesting slant to Man on the Run: McCartney’s struggles to recreate in some way a band construct for him to once again find comfort to produce and eventually perform his magnificent songs. Choosing his wife, Linda to build this new group, a boldly controversial move at the time, and what turns out to be another spiritual connection like he had with John as a teenager, Paul pieces together as best he can a democratic unit. From its perceived humble beginnings, that band, Wings was a rag-tag experiment that never seemed to come up with a solution of whether they were there to serve the main man’s wishes or add viable input. 

Neville masterfully takes us on Wings’ ascent from this underappreciated and poorly marketed unit to one of the most celebrated and successful (if not critically harangued) acts of the 1970s. And just like the Beatles neatly tied up its 1960s story, the journey of Wings spans the decade, wrapping up with the same anticlimax as his previous band by 1980. Throughout there are many twists, turns, and personnel changes – Paul and Linda, along with their kids, quite literally on the run constantly stitching together sustainable combos to present their music, beyond lifer, Denny Laine (late of the Moody Blues). 

And as Paul McCartney remains the greatest living songwriter and one that with his long list of hits and albums has, when combined with his Beatles output, continued to enthrall us, having a portion of his ouevre – and this is some heady portion – dissected is welcomed by fans and the curious (is there still people unaware of this?) alike.

EPIC

Baz Luhrmann, yet another Englishman obsessed with the complicated balance of the ancient American deep south, its voices, its music, its traditions, its sins, its magic and the grotesque exploitation of showbiz, has put a new coat of glittery paint on Elvis Aaron Presley. Like the British Invasion before him, his reverence for the image and texture of Elvis as a heroic if not damaged figure of American myth is both inspiring and irreverent. The director already made an uneven if not entertaining biopic of the King of Rock and Roll, with 2022’s Elvis, and with the same fervor for meshing myth with reality and modernity with the stale echoes of American schlock, his EPIC (Elvis Presley In Concert) is a rousing tribute to a rarely examined portion of Presley’s career – his post icon-shapeshifter early mid-1950s period into the army and then out to Hollywood live performance era. What Luhrmann’s frenetically paced film (and I use that term adoringly, as I love his style), does best is circles Elvis as the ultimate musical archetype and exceptional stage performer, but despite what the trailers promised of letting the King tell his own story, he, in fact, tells Luhrmann’s story of how he views Elvis – with the same nods to painting Colonel Parker as the devil as his ’22 biopic did (the film’s graphics are the same, denoting this is a companion piece). 

Luhrmann, in many ways, is in his films, something critics debate over incessantly – should we notice the filmmaker in the story he is telling? It is impossible for me to separate those aspects of filmmaking. Part of the draw to see EPIC was Luhrmann for me. But he cannot escape himself – the hyper-editing, tricky audio devices like repeating sung or spoken lines for maximum thematic effect or morphing old into new footage, as he as he did with music in his previous films like Moulin Rouge, The Great Gatsby, and the first Elvis flick, including mashups of traditional songs with modern sounds. 

It is through this aural and visual prism that Presley becomes a man stuck in a time capsule, forever bedazzled in polyester jumpsuits with his awkward karate moves and sweaty scarves tossed to frantic middle-aged women. As he was in his many kitschy 1960s films, which Luhrmann drives home was Elvis’s ultimate prison, he traps him again in the garish ballroom of the International Hotel, singing his hits with a smirk and a wink. Hey, look at me when I was young and dumb. And that is always been my fuck-you! to the smarmy 1960s Elvis. That is until EPIC’s new footage found from the 1972, Elvis on Tour film set against his 1950s TV appearances revealed that Elvis always thought what he was doing was goofy, but not in a self-mocking way, but as a not-taking-this-too-serious way that ironically EPIC with its grotesquely over-hyped title suggests. Just as the bounding “Also sprach Zarathustra” heralded his highness to the stage bloated with three-dozen musicians and singers. But in masterful surround sound and through mesmerizing cutting, Luhrmann supremely resurrects what made Elvis special: he was a natural. 

One key highlight from found 1972 cutting room floor footage is how utterly joyful and lost in the music Elvis always was and would be until his dying day. His most honest and relaxed interplay is during rehearsals with his incredible band, which in every incarnation during this period is fire. An incredible ensemble with the Sweet Inspirations singing their hearts out is mind-boggling stuff. This is what cuts through all the playful Luhrmann pomp, and it is where Elvis lived. So, in essence, he didn’t need to “tell his story.” His voice, his passion for the stage and to envelope song is what tells that story best.

Profonde Musique

February 24

Wrapping up my four-week exploration/celebration of the major Black forces in all genres of American music to commemorate Black History Month with more notable and laudable voices, musicians, innovators and influencers. These are the trailblazers and the legacies filled with instinct and guile, but most of all courage, as every one of them strived to overcome hardship due to systemic racism to bring forth the most original and dynamic music of the age.

King of Ragtime

The irrepressible and prolific genius that was Scott Joplin composed more than 40 ragtime pieces, many wildly popular for his times (the turn of the century), including “Maple Leaf Rag,” a recording so immensely ingrained in the spirit and movement of the genre it is still considered quintessential. 

Joplin was not only prolific, he considered ragtime as important as classical music and made sure his works were performed in theaters as opposed to the more ubiquitous saloons. To this end, he also penned a ragtime ballet, and two operas based on the style. I was introduced to Joplin through the film The Sting when I was a kid (thanx for taking me, Dad), as his music, adapted by Marvin Hamlisch, comprises its brilliant soundtrack. I was then moved to buy the single for Scott’s “The Entertainer,” which was a significant hit in 1973, reaching #3 on the Billboard Hot 100, some 70 years after Joplin released it.

When I was working on my 2024 book, Revolution – Prince, the Band, the Era, Joplin’s influence and wide-ranging musical brilliance hung heavy on the likes of someone with similar drive and purpose for multi-level virtuosity as Prince Rogers Nelson, whose father had taught him to revere.

Emily

The beautifully elegant and impossibly hip, Esperanza Emily Spalding, or as those close to her call her, Emily, is one of the great musical trendsetters of our time, balancing her art in a mixture of modern jazz, pop, and Hispanic soul, enveloping their best attributes to create something iridescent. Known for her virtuosity on double bass accompanied by smooth vocal stylings that act more as an orchestral instrument than simple communication, she started out as a child prodigy in Portland, Oregon, performing professionally as a violinist in the Chamber Music Society of Oregon at age five. Expanding her oeuvre, she was self-taught on guitar and bass, eventually earning academic scholarships to Portland State University and Berklee College of Music.

For much of the early 2000s, Esperanza released intricately delectable albums of variant styles, both original and covers, illustrating her delicate scatting techniques and showcasing her fluid bass melodies. On her eponymously titled second offering, she broke through (this is when I first heard her in 2008), providing an eclectic introduction to the music that would invade the charts by her third album, Chamber Music Society (2010), reaching #34 on the Billboard 200, and earning the first of her five Grammys Awards. 

Success has provided Esperanza a larger audience in which to share her social and political stances against human trafficking and racism, much of which ends up in Radio Music Society, her 2012 album that features one of her most striking compositions, “City of Roses.” She’s also co-written two jazz operas and still records today at 41-years-old continuing to compose, record, and tour the world.

Mr. Everything

The one and only, multi-talented, groundbreaking composer, arranger, producer and dynamic singer, musician and performer, Stevie Wonder grew up in the music that would shape, lead and eventually dominate his lifetime, from rhythm and blues, rock and roll, soul, funk and modern pop. From the mid-1960s to today (with an unmatched run of albums in the early to later 1970s), Stevie expanded the sonic elements of every genre, bending several to his will and sifting them through the multi-colored prism of his genius.

Starting as Little Stevie Wonder at 13 years-old, playing harmonica and singing with a confidence of a 30 year-old, he was eventually promoted for the unique element of his blindness by a burgeoning Motown Records but soon shed that limiting marketing ploy to begin invading the soul and pop charts while flummoxing musicologists by surpassing many of his predecessors in intricate arrangements and elaborately produced tracks, Wonder played most if not all the instruments on his recordings to create a sound all his own.

I can discuss the hits – and they are many and varied – but his run of albums from 1972 through 1976 remains a pristine expression of the musical, social and personal in one. All of them masterworks: Music of My Mind, Talking Book – the latter featuring the groundbreaking, “Superstition,” which is one of the most distinctive and famous examples of the sound of his trusty Hohner Clavinet keyboard. Then Innervisions, Fulfilingness’ First Finale, and finally the sprawling double-album, Songs in the Key of Life, all of which won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, making him the only artist to have won the award with three consecutive album releases.

There is not enough time or space to cover the immense contributions to the American musical landscape by the inimitable Stevland Hardaway Morris, aka Stevie Wonder.

Jimi

The undisputed master of the electric guitar, Jimi Hendrix erected a sonic bridge from the explorations of his antecedents to an entirely new form of rock music. Wiping the slate clean and forging new territory for the instrument that forever changed popular music. There remains the demarcation – Before Jimi and After Jimi. And, in many ways, even “After” no one could produce, seduce or caress the sounds he approached from the mid 1960s until his tragic death at just 27 in 1970.

Having developed his early style of bombastic performance and feedback-induced mayhem while playing music in the Air Force, Jimi quickly became a sought-after player along the famed “Chittlin’ Circuit” that allowed Black musicians to connect with their audiences in the Jim Crow South. During this time, rich in woodshedding and expansion, Hendrix backed such lauded acts as Wilson Pickett, Slim Harpo, Sam Cooke, Ike & Tina Turner, and Jackie Wilson. Later he toured extensively with Little Richard and was a member of the Isley Brothers band.

Breaking free of the traditional blues/soul and early rock and roll of a previous era, Hendrix, performing under the name Jimmy James and the Blue Flames, began a residency in Greenwich Village’s Cafe Wa? but did not find an audience until he decamped to London, England and found a benefactor in the bassist for the British blues/pop band, the Animals, Chas Chandler. It was there, during the height of Swinging London that Jimi floored every major pop and rock artist, gaining a reverence unmatched by anyone, even the Beatles and the Rolling Stones during that time.

King

Synonymous with the holiday season, due to his classic rendering of “The Christmas Song” from 1960, Nathaniel Adams Coles aka Nat “King” Cole recorded an astonishing 100 hit songs during his near 40-year career. Making his name as a jazz pianist and the leader of the pre-war King Cole Trio, the first Black act on Capitol Records throughout the 1940s, he inspired dozens of jazz trios to follow. Nat would then kick off the following decade as a solo singer and part-time actor, eventually becoming the first Black artist to host a nationally televised variety series for NBC in the mid-fifties. 

His sultry vocal deliveries crossed over to mainstream audiences in a time when Nat faced terrible racial discrimination on the touring circuit. Much of his notable output included one of the finest recorded songs of the era, “Unforgettable,” the playful, “Nature Boy,” “When I Fall in Love,” (my parents wedding song, although that one is by Johnny Mathis, but not as good – sorry, Mom), the tender ear-worm, “Mona Lisa,” John Lennon’s favorite song, “Stardust,” and the standard, “Embraceable You.”

But, of course, it’s Nat’s The Magic of Christmas – thanks to “The Christmas Song” that became the best-selling Christmas album released in the 1960s and sealed his legend. But if being forever connected to the most celebrated international holiday every year for as long as we’re all still around to do it, that’s a damn fine legacy.

Big Mamma 

The booming voice and ample countenance of the great Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton established her as the most influential and captivating woman blues shouter of the mid-20th century. Big Mamma was a force to reckoned with on and off stage. A brawler from Alabama in the hallowed Delta soil that birthed some of the most prominent blues artists of the era, she was the minority trifecta – Black, gay, and a woman in the Jim Crow South, and learned early the art of survival and battle to make her mark, and what a mark that turned out to be.

Willie Mae was the first (and still the best) to record the Leiber and Stoller classic, “Hound Dog” – a song specifically written for her. To listen to her belt out those first lines Yooouuuu ain’t nothin’ but a hound dawg… is to understand the woman’s hurt, defiance and humor all at once. Her hoots and hollers on that track and many of her ensuing recorded material were the precursor to all the great ad libs of the soon-to-come rock and roll, soul, funk and hip hop. 

Big Mamma also put the blues classic, “Ball and Chain” on the map, bowling over a young Janis Joplin, who insisted on belting the song every time she stepped on stage as a homage to Thornton’s image of immovable strength – something Willie Mae displayed for another two decades before her death in 1984.

A true original in an arena dominated by men, Big Mamma was a revelation and revolution all in one.

Prince

And now to the one-man revolution, Prince Rogers Nelson. And when asked why I gave my aforementioned book that title, one only needs to take a glance at the musical and racial barriers toppled by his thematic and colossal output. Composing, arranging, performing, and producing nearly every note of his singles and albums, many of them massive hits, he also wrote and produced for many other successful acts. But that is only part of Prince’s story, the rest is found in his dedication to stripping away labels, and allowing all artists, no matter the color of their skin, to reach beyond the music industry silos and reductive music critic frameworks to create something wholly new.

Signed to Warner Bros. records at just 19 as “the new Stevie Wonder,” he was granted complete control over his music, image and performing. He put together killer touring bands that worked their way up through the clubs, combining funk with punk and swagger with overt sexuality to bring his playfully salacious material to the masses. In this way, Prince was the first blatantly sexual artist to not hint or play with the subject, but face it head on without shame.

Although his halcyon period is the 1980s, with his triumphantly critical and financial successes in gems like Dirty Mind, 1999, Purple Rain, and Sign ‘O’ the Times Prince continued to forge uncharted paths to soundtrack films not of his own (there are four of those), like 1989’s Batman, triple-album epics, 1996’s Emancipation, and later create direct online releases. In fact, Prince became the first established artist to set a course for his independence by using the Internet in its earliest stages to present his music straight to his fans (whom he affectionately called fams).

Until his final breath taken far too soon at age 57, dying in his home/studio, Paisley Park, Prince made music that excited, challenged and even sometimes flummoxed popular music the way it always should be.

Profonde Musique

Feb 3, 2026

Part I

The wholly original American music– jazz, bebop, blues, rock and roll, hip hop – was invented, created, cultivated and evolved in the Black community, later appropriated (and I do not use this pejoratively, but it’s true) by poor Whites and then exploited by mostly White managers, agents, radio personalities, record executives, and publishers. The music transformed, as did America, from rural explorations into big city, big business ratings, charts, awards, etc. But at its core, the music of America, seeded and blossomed from the Black experience, continued unabated to excite, influence, and expand the art form into unimaginable realms.

Overcoming the horrors of slavery, America’s original sin, to lynching, Jim Crow, segregation, ghettos, systemic, economic and geographical racism, which were exacerbated by poverty, crime, substance abuse, and the cyclical rise and fall of deep-seated White nationalism that is as prevalent in America’s story as is its democracy, came the voices of titans, preternaturally talented and overtly revolutionary.

Over the next four weeks, I hope to concentrate on those towering figures of the African American musical landscape that sparked the rhythmic, melodic foundation in song, dance, fashion, language, and instrumentation for generations of every race to enjoy, explore and expound upon.  

Lady Day

The sultry, sad, beatific majesty of Billie Holiday, the early 20th century’s finest female torch songstress, maintained solid footing in both jazz and blues. A standout in nightclubs and theaters, she could silence an intimate venue fronting a small ensemble with her melancholy voice or overwhelm a bandstand belting from her core before the celebrated ensembles of Count Basie and Artie Shaw.

In 1936, Billie turned popular music on its head, singing the provocative anti-racist song, “Strange Fruit,” a commentary on lynching in the South by a Bronx-born Jewish songwriter by the name of Abel Meeropol at Greenwich Village’s Cafe Society club. Arguably the most important song written in the American century, the ensuing recording of the controversial composition was at the very least the period’s most seditious and revolutionary musical statement by an American songwriter beyond Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.” Billie’s performance that evening was an explosive expression of pained retribution echoed down the corridors of time.

And while she lived a difficult life battling drug addiction and suffering from poor business decisions, she managed to always embed in song a spine-chilling declaration of anguished beauty that never failed her.

Godfather of the Electric Guitar

Charlie Christian, the first national guitar hero, single-handedly popularized the electric guitar in the late 1930s, becoming a key figure in the development of bebop and cool jazz. An integral cog in the Benny Goodman Sextet and Orchestra, the first American integrated ensemble, his single-string technique combined with amplification helped bring the guitar out of the rhythm section and into the forefront as a solo instrument.

In 1939, Christian’s playing on Goodman’s “Rose Room” was an immediate sensation and today is considered a cornerstone of swing guitar, showcasing Christian’s mastery of melodic phrasing, triplet runs, and chord-tone improvisation; in other words, the template for electric guitar mastery. He was a national sensation and a massive star all before the age of 25, when he tragically succumbed to tuberculosis. Who knows what kind of effects his talent could have had on the next iteration of American music, which for the latter half of the 20th century was dominated by the electric guitar. But make no mistake, there is no Chuck Berry or Jimi Hendrix, Eddie Van Halen or really any notable electric guitar slinger without the sonic path forged by Charlie Christian.

King of Soul

Sam Cooke’s career spanned the entire scope of music. He was a ground-breaking singer, beginning in 1950 as a gospel standout with the legendary Soul Stirrers, then later in the decade when he became an instinctual pop composer that achieved unprecedented success. Throughout, he was a consummate and impassioned performer in both the posh, White, urban scene and an underground blues wailer in the sweaty, Black clubs throughout the famed Chitlin ’Circuit. In an industry rife with racist constructs, Cooke became a meticulous producer of his own and others work, a mentor and manager of new and raw talent, and a powerful and innovative record mogul until his mysterious death by murder in 1964 at age 33.

A resounding voice in the Civil Rights movement and as a young Black man having creative and business control of his art and image, Cooke stood tall as an undeniably significant precursor to the rise of Barry Gordy at Motown, as well as contemporary artists like Ray Charles and future multi-faceted Black artists/entrepreneurs like Prince, Dr. Dre and Jay Z.

Cooke’s musical output in his short time dominating the charts is Herculean and vast with seminal hits like the lush, “You Send Me,” the playful, “Cupid,” the infectious, “Chain Gang,” the stirring, “Wonderful World,” the fun-loving, “Another Saturday Night,” and the one that hit the year I was born, “Twistin’ the Night Away.” His most prominent contribution to the American musical and social landscape, “A Change is Gonna Come,” is simply one of the greatest songs ever written and performed, a thing of magnificent exquisiteness, which unfortunately was released after his death.

Sir John

And now to the criminally underrated and under-appreciated Johnnie Johnson, the musical genius behind rock and roll’s first poet laureate, Chuck Berry. His notoriety as pianist extraordinaire only scratches the surface of Johnson’s considerable mark on American music and the early foundation of latter 20th century pop music. You see, it was Johnnie Johnson who had the Sir John Trio that welcomed in an eager and ready young guitarist to give the otherwise jazzy ensemble a little St. Louis boogie, and so as Berry developed a style that would come to define rock guitar forevermore, it was Johnson by his side developing that uniquely legendary sound.

Berry’s most beloved and groundbreaking records from the chugging, “Maybellene” to the iconic “Roll Over Beethoven” (the first song to celebrate the new musical style), to the relatable, “School Days,” the seductive “Carol,” the era-defining, “Johnny Be Goode” and much more have the stamp of Johnnie Johnson’s piano driving the tunes as Berry grooves and noodles and scats his brilliant lyrics above them. All of Berry’s compositions were in piano keys, leading many to surmise that Johnson had more than a little to do with Berry’s songwriting.

Johnson would go on to record and tour with Berry for years before the two had a falling out due to Johnson’s drinking problem and undue credits to his work, which would rage on for decades. But make no mistake, there is no Chuck Berry as we know him – arguably the father of rock and roll – or even that genre without the talent and ingenuity of Johnnie Johnson and his amazing piano playing and musical foresight.

Queen Tina

Beyond her incredible voice, dynamic dance moves, commanding stage presence, and preternatural abilities to own songs, the Queen of Rock & Roll, Ms. Tina Turner is a symbol of survival and strength for women everywhere, as she overcame personal hardships and many barriers both social and racial to forge a career that included several comebacks, most of all her dominant return to the top of the charts in the 1980s, decades after breaking through with her husband, bandleader, and one of the pioneers of rock, Ike Turner.

The tumultuous and abusive Turner, inspired Tina’s early career while simultaneously causing her mental and physical traumas through several difficult years during which the two helped lay the groundwork for a genre of music they invented, providing a roadmap to the British Invasion and later the artists who combined unforgettable performance with a myriad of musical styles.

Aside from James Brown, no one worked a stage like Tina Turner, from her earliest days as a teen sensation well into her forties. Her vocal calisthenics in early performances of “A Fool in Love” circa 1960 is mind-blowing enough but her choreography with the Ikettes whilst dancing wildly on high heels and tight dresses is nothing short of super-human.

During her transition from escaping the horrors of Ike and preparing for her final splash upon pop culture, I saw Tina in 1981 open for the Rolling Stones in New Jersey. She was magnificent, and I still recall fondly her reinventing the Beatles’ “Help” as a slow, emotive blues.

Tina Turner was more than a musical giant and female icon but a force of nature, a Black woman who showed the way forward to not only survive male toxicity but thrive in a world set up to restrain her.

Funky Drummer

Hands down my favorite drummer of all time, Clyde Stubblefield was best known for his work with James Brown’s band during the Godfather of Soul’s most prolific and groundbreaking period of 1965 through 1970 in which he acted as the rock-steady backbeat to an incredible cadre of musicians that invented funk – much of it live in the studio as Brown barked out instructions and the band responded as if a left/right brain. The best example of this period resides on In the Jungle Groove, a 1986 revised compilation of Brown’s in-studio compositional process, which was built upon Clyde’s indelible rhythms.

During his time with Brown, Stubblefield was the backbone of  perennial funk workouts, “Cold Sweat,” “I Got the Feelin,’” “Give It Up or Turnit a Loose,” “Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud,” “Mother Popcorn,” “Get Up, Get into It, Get Involved,” “There Was a Time,” “Ain’t It Funky Now,” and the brain-melting album, Sex Machine.

But, let’s face it, Clyde originated the most imitated, duplicated and, most of all, sampled rhythm pattern ever on Brown’s 1970 track, “Funky Drummer.” Used for decades by hip hop groups and rappers such as Public Enemy, Run-DMC, N.W.A, Raekwon, LL Cool J, Beastie Boys, as well as pop artists like Sinéad O’Connor, and Prince, as well as a host of other genres.

Clyde had a pocket style that was all his own – a powerful bass foot and supple wrists on ghosting notes that drove the band’s coolest jams and helped to inspire James Brown to new and unmatched heights. Quick hitting fills that never drew attention to his instrument, Clyde not only served songs and drove their purpose, but held his ground to allow others to lay down grooves. He was and is the OG, as much a partner in creation for James Brown as Johnnie Johnson was with Chuck Berry on his foundational rock and roll records of the 1950s.

Lunching with my friend, author, music journalist, and podcaster, Rob Sheffield this past November, he casually mentioned that for the first time a song topped the Billboard charts that was entirely human-free. An AI-generated artist named Solomon Ray, created by Christopher Townsend, achieved this feat with a chain-gang thumper featuring allusions to faith called “Find Your Rest.” As Rob rightly pointed out, this “digital stream” hitting #1 on a Gospel chart and not the Billboard Hot 100 was less intrusive to the greater public, but nonetheless there it was: a song made by a computer atop the Gospel charts. The most spiritual of musical genres dominated by a robot. A ghost in the machine” kind of thing.

There are many aspects of this event to discuss here. I will start with the obvious – controversial backlash. Of course, those in the religious community questioned the worth of a song reflecting God derived from something purportedly not created by humans, who were purportedly created by God. And, of course, this underlines the argument that man created a Godhead to fill a void in the human spirit, and in many ways, the advent of AI is yet another human creation filling voids, whatever they may be. But irrespective of technology, faith, science or philosophy, there is something rather funny if not strange that the first AI creation (it was bound to happen eventually) rose to the top triggered by the faithful.

You make the existential pun here, I’ll let it lie. I have bigger hurdles to traverse.

Next, there is the obvious dispute on whether artificial intelligence is art, or strike that, a creative endeavor. My dear friend, Peter Blasevick, one of our honored subscribers, is vehemently against even considering this. He sees it, and I concur on several levels, as non-music-talents sitting in their basement with a computer feeding “ideas” into some form of AI (ChatGTP, etc) and coming up with “song.” These things are everywhere now, but mostly in social media or YouTube and not “official” releases. One can assume that people who bought/streamed “Find Your Rest” and the entire Solomon Ray album, Faithful Soul presumed this was a person, as all songs for more than a century of recorded music has surely been. Does this matter?  

Ray, sold as a Black Gospel singer in the mode of an Al Green with a heavy influence of blues/soul – I hear “Find Your Rest” as a track not unlike early Ray Charles, Sam Cooke or Aretha Franklin (all humans) that could slip easily into a secular construct. In fact, the name Solomon Ray, one could assume, is a clever mash-up of the godfathers of rhythm and blues, Solomon Burke (a human) and Ray Charles (also, again, human). So, there is some marketing acumen here that could be considered (beyond the whole computer-generated singer and song) a hoax, a con, or at the very least an attempt to mislead consumers.

An important side-note to keep me from being eviscerated: all the stellar artists referenced above, of course, are far superior to the robot and its robot song, but taste/critique is hardly the point here.

If there was no official announcement that Ray didn’t exist, then that is the most egregious part of this. Jesus, Milli Vanilli, a couple of model/dancers who were marketed as having sung songs two other guys sang in the late 1980s, were first vilified and then ostracized, despite all parties involved being human. And who is to say that you couldn’t have someone “front” a song sung by others? Phil Spector did this shit all the time in the early 1960s. Ask Darlene Love. There were 50 versions of the Drifters. What exactly is Steely Dan? But that’s for another column. So, you know, caveat emptor.

But just in case anyone thought Solomon Ray was a one-off phenomenon, the very week after my discussion with Sheffield, “Walk My Walk,” a white guy chain-gang blues by a faux band called Breaking Rust, reached the apex of the Billboard Country Digital Song Sales chart, hitting three-million streams on Spotify. Ironically, the music streaming platform released a statement this past autumn pledging “stronger impersonation protection for artists” that “features an improved music spam filter and intensified scrutiny” of what they deem is “deceptive content.” But these policies still allow publicly anonymous creators to post AI-generated artist profiles and music, which is, at best, a paradox.

So, is this art? Is this good? Or is this garbage creation by non-musicians and non-singer-songwriters and it is very bad?

Now, I’m old, so I will land on “I’d like my artists to be human and their songs to be created by humans,” but I am also not a head-in-the-sand afraid of technology cranky white-guy grievance dipshit either. I realize there is some “creation” here, and since I have always blathered on about “art being a two-way street,” if people are reacting to these songs one way or the other, then it is art. But I am also no longer a singer-songwriter, as my friend Peter is, as so many friends of mine are, not the least of which is my niece, the 22-year-old, Sydney Leigh, who’s been a pro for a year now and has new music coming out soon that she endeavored to keep clean of autotune and other digital “fixers’ that make the untalented sound less horrible. So, I could see how those who make song, as I make words and columns and books – another craft being invaded by the robots – might be threatened and aggrieved by these faux songs.

And this brings me to the modernization of music in the twenty-first century, where a fair if not major portion of our popular music is in many ways “enhanced” and “manipulated’ by computers. Not to the extent that it is entirely fabricated, but let’s face it, has been a gateway for this ingenuity. No way this Solomon Ray character could have comfortably infiltrated the music biz before synthesizers, drum machines, autotune, digital studios, algorithms, and other aspects of technology that have taken some of the “real” and “life” from our music, those little mistakes and foibles that make recording an organic artform.

In my new book, Revolution – Prince the Band, the Era, many members of the Revolution discuss Prince’s ability to effortlessly combine modern musical instruments with a human touch, antithetical to the bands of the period that relied on synths and drum machines to dehumanize music, Kraftwerk, Gary Numan, Human League, etc. Prince, perhaps better than anyone in the 1980s into the 90s, balanced the human element with technology, so much so that he had entire albums dedicated to this marriage, starting in 1982 with 1999 all the way through The Gold Experience in 1995 and his use of disseminating new music entirely through the Internet, the first popular artist to do so.  

So, with the advent of two robots and their robot songs topping the Gospel and Country charts, what could be next? It won’t be stopping, that much is certain. Consumers of music have always “liked what they liked,” and invention and technology has always threatened the music business and musicians – from sheet music to radio, and then recordings, MTV, Napster, and on and on and on. The threats from the evolution of humans and machine are real, sure, but is it “pure evil” or “a necessary evil” of that evolution? The humans will decide.

One thing I noted to Rob in our discussion, as I have to many inside the industry, and especially Sydney Leigh, is that I can foresee a backlash to this from the younger generation. I already hear from Gen Z that they want real songs with real expressions, featuring those “mistakes and foibles” and they will seek those out, as youth once found be-bop during the big band era and rock and roll and rhythm & blues when “(How Much is That) Doggie in the Window” ruled the charts, and when punk revolted against the pretensions of prog rock, or hip hop was an antidote to the blandness of 80s soul, or grunge’s challenge to the pretentiousness of AOR pop, and, you get the point.

Where AI and robot songs and robot artists fit into the inevitable, “Cut this shit out!” I don’t know. Disco had its run. And then it didn’t. But it’s no longer coming, folks. It’s here.

Dec 23, 2025 – Profonde Musique

Earlier this month, we learned of Steve Cropper’s passing at 84. It is a spectacular understatement to cite his enormous imprint on the world of popular music in the 20th century. If Cropper had merely been an elite and influential guitarist, which he most certainly was, he would merit note, but as a maker of song – composer, arranger, and producer – the prolific Missourian by way of Memphis put his stamp on some of the most important American music ever created. Cropper, who also found time to discover and develop raw and unique talent, was the genius “behind” greatness, a right-hand man, a pillar of “sound” and the godfather of much of the Memphis Soul that permeated pop culture forevermore.   

 I am confident in writing that Steve Cropper might be the most pertinent White musician of the rock and roll era behind Elvis Presley. But unlike the purported King of Rock and Roll he lifted others up to be stars, while maintaining a dedication to the Black origins of the music. This begins with Stax Records, a Memphis label/studio that emerged from the wellspring of Sam Phillips’s Sun Records (Howlin’ Wolf, Elvis, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, to name a few), and a reflection of the northern blues purists at Chess Records (Muddy Waters, Willi Dixon, Etta James, Chuck Berry, etc) in Chicago. Like Chess’s Leonard and Phil Chess, Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton, made Stax the epicenter of the musical melting pot of the Jim Crow South with an integrated staff of gifted and dedicated enthusiasts. Through their efforts, Stax gave rise to a musical revolution of soul and rock and roll unlike any other in the early 1960s.

Like many labels at the time, Stax boasted a house band. This was the indominable Booker T. & the M.G.s with Cropper on guitar, by way of the integrated rhythm and blues outfit, the Mar-Keys. This group of tight knit studio and performance mavens also included bandleader, Booker T. Jones on Hammond organ, original bassist Lewie Steinberg, later replaced by the legendary Donald “Duck” Dunne, and one of the most significant drummers of the genre, the great Al Jackson Jr. This incredible lineup of musicians was the bedrock of Stax and what became a sonic revolution. Cropper was just 20 when he joined this august gathering and would soon elevate into the label’s A & R man.

After the M.G.s scored an unlikely Top Ten hit in 1962 with their cooly languid instrumental, “Green Onions,” Cropper was a ubiquitous presence at Stax and thus the Memphis scene, becoming a star producer and session cat prized by the industry, so much so that the Beatles had sought to work with him until the normal music biz red tape scuttled what we can only imagine as a dream colab. Nevertheless, former Beatle, Ringo Starr, along with Rod Stewart, John Prine, Jeff Beck, and Band drummer/vocalist Levon Helm came calling, as did the fabulous collection of rhythm & blues musicians that made up the Blues Brothers touring band in the late 1970s, featured in the classic 1980 film of the same name. But when discussing Steve Cropper, it comes down to his position behind the console, often gripping his 1956 Fender Esquire or blonde Fender Telecaster, where he composed, arranged, and recorded the legendary voices of Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, and Sam & Dave.

The story of Steve and Otis is a grand one, much of it depicted in spectacular fashion in arguably the finest book written about American music, Peter Guralnick’s masterful, Sweet Soul Music.

Otis Redding was never supposed to record at Stax. The same year “Green Onions” was tracked, he strode into the growing label’s studio as merely a roadie, setting up for Atlantic Records R&B guitarist/singer, Johnny Jenkins, who, according to those in the room, did not impress Cropper. Instinct proved to be Cropper’s finest talent, as he looked at the burly figure in the corner of the control room and suggested Redding take a stab at the vocals for “Hey, Hey, Baby,” the song at hand. It was better than what Jenkins was laying down, for sure, but when Cropper heard Redding sing his own song, “These Arms of Mine” a cappella, he immediately readied the M.G.s and they cut the track on the spot. This is the recording that became Redding’s first foray into inventing the Memphis Sound and launching a partnership for the ages.

Over the next five years, Redding and Cropper became unstoppable, beginning with the 1964 Top 10 R&B standard, “Mr. Pitiful,” which displayed the soul singer’s crossover protentional, reaching #41 on pop charts. Soon, there was the blues ballad, “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now),” covered famously by Ike & Tina Turner, then “Respect,” a song Aretha Franklin remade and tore up the charts, and finally, the Redding/Cropper masterpiece, “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay,” which rose to #1 worldwide, after Redding’s tragic death from an airplane crash in December of 1968. He was only 26.

But before his death, Redding’s influence on rock/pop/soul music was wide-ranging, becoming the first Black artist to appear at Bill Graham’s iconic Filmore West, and as a result of his incendiary shows there, performed the centerpiece set at the Monterey Pop Festival that became the first rock concert film, Monterey Pop. The Rolling Stones would forever alter their live version of “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” after the M.G.s, with Cropper right there backing Redding on a blistering version, which featured the horns that Keith Richards had initially envisioned for the song.

Cropper and the M.G.s were also the backbone of the dynamic Sam & Dave (Sam Moore and Dave Prader), a live R&B act of enormous energy, captured forevermore in hits like “Soul Man,” co-written with Cropper, in which Moore famously shouts, “Play it, Steve!” on the recording. This was later revived by Saturday Night Live comedian/actor, John Belushi in his turn as Joliet Jake Blues with his “brother, Elwood, played with monosyllabic glee by fellow SNL pal, Dan Akroyd, on the live Briefcase Full of Blues, a version that once again featured Cropper on guitar in 1978. And although Cropper did not write as diligently or as prolifically as he did with Redding, the M.G.s featuring his guitar chops are all over Sam & Dave’s many hits, “Hold On, I’m Coming,” “I Thank You,” and the soaring ballad, “When Something Is Wrong with My Baby.”

But perhaps Steve Cropper’s most lasting and influential turn as a songwriter, arranger and producer, is his collaboration with the great blues-shouter, Wilson Pickett on “In the Midnight Hour,” one of the most imitated and covered soul songs ever. The swing-addled sashaying backbeat and rolling bass/guitar groove conceived in a Memphis hotel room between the two men, was brought to life by the M.G.s, with inexorable charm by drummer Al Jackson Jr., whose insouciant style laid the groundwork for the genre’s most enduring backbeats. “In the Midnight Hour” was no mere hit, it was a seismic explosion in 1965, amidst the British Invasion and Motown dominance.

Steve Cropper loved rhythm and blues like few others, and his adoration was poured into his playing on those recordings forever. His pop sensibilities brought out the best in the acts he worked with, never taking from them the instincts and talents they displayed, and understanding what it meant to support and buttress their goals for the best sounding templates of their most cherished art. Like all the seminal sounds of popular music in the latter half of the American Century, Cropper’s canon stands the test of time, forever cementing him in the annals of the greats of any era.