Stevie Wonder in the early 1970s was like Paul Bunyan -- chopping down everything in his path. Signed to Motown a decade earlier, at age 11, Stevland Morris was that rarest of pop performers: a child star who grew into astounding maturity.Released in early August 1973, his LP 'Innervisions' was the centerpiece of a five-album run that began with the massive hit 'Superstition' and would round out with the 1976 opus 'Songs in the Key of Life.' 'Innervisions' would be the first of three straight Wonder full-lengths to earn Album of the Year Grammys. Despite such heady times, however, upon its release Wonder told a reporter that he was having strange thoughts, fearing for his life.


In a recent interview with the Associated Press, country music legend George Jones swore he was fueled by nothing stronger than Coca-Cola in his early years onstage. But his first No. 1 country hit, way back in 1959, was an ode to moonshine liquor – 'White Lightning.' He's had 13 more chart-toppers since then, including three duets with his onetime wife, Tammy Wynette; the stone classic 'He Stopped Loving Her Today'; and a duet with Barbara Mandrell released at the height of the 'Urban Cowboy' craze, '(I Was Country) When Country Wasn't Cool.' He's often been called the best pure country singer alive. Yet he's probably best known not for his prodigious output but his intake.
This past weekend,
Most rock stars have a special attachment to their equipment. More than 40 years ago, aspiring groupie Cynthia Albritton took it upon herself to immortalize it. Using clay or wax, she and her partner (mysteriously known as Pest) set about taking molds of willing rock stars', ahem, instruments. They put together an official-looking "Plaster Caster" kit and got themselves invited backstage. Cynthia, the one who saw the task as a real calling, soon adopted a nom d'art: Cynthia Plaster Caster.
She once posed nude while running for president. She has stripped teenage boys to their underwear onstage, and she has worn a bandolier of condoms across her otherwise bare bosom.
The name of the band alone –
"She was there one minute/And then she was gone the next," sang Linda Thompson on the gloomy album classic 'Shoot Out the Lights,' which she recorded with her soon-to-be ex-husband, Richard Thompson. "Lying in a pool of herself with a twisted neck." The song, fans have suspected for years, is about Sandy Denny, the couple's old friend from Fairport Convention, the fated band that almost single-handedly invented the British version of electric folk-rock.
He was the heir apparent to
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame began inducting extraordinary sidemen in 2000. Session drummers Hal Blaine and Earl Palmer, Motown bassist James Jamerson and
If true punk is the defiant determination to make music without any actual musical training, the backwoods eccentric Hasil Adkins might have been a certified original punk. Writing thousands of songs with recurring themes that included chickens and decapitation, Adkins carried on a half-century, largely self-released career that inspired the Cramps, the Flat Duo Jets and the entire psychobilly genre.
To the fierce activist and reggae superstar Peter Tosh, the English language was a deadly weapon in the struggle against corruption and oppression. Politics were "politricks"; managers were "damagers" and producers "reducers."
The Plant Recording Studios in Sausalito, Calif., were legendary for their rock 'n' roll excess in the 1970s. Sly Stone liked recording amid the facility's shag rugs and redwood paneling so much that he took up residence in one of the studios. The members of
"You gotta suck the head off dem dere crawfish." That was one of the milder visuals in the New Orleans rapper Mystikal's exceedingly graphic breakthrough song, 'Shake Ya Ass.' A bit of Louisiana folk wisdom, the saying had another, very different pop culture presence as one of the prerecorded messages on a novelty key chain called Cajun in Your Pocket. When 'Shake Ya Ass' blew up, the key chain maker sued the rapper for copyright infringement. Mystikal's lawyer was indignant. "To suggest that Mystikal's song went multiplatinum because of these gizmos defies explanation," he said.
He might have been the black
For British rock, one dashing young American singer made an unmatched impact in the late 1950s. 




