Few popular artists have remained as relevant or inventive as Ian Anderson over the course of nearly fifty years. Best known as the flamboyant front man of Jethro Tull, Anderson is a gifted songwriter, showman and performer. He is also someone who has repeatedly redefined himself throughout his professional career. Transitioning from electric blues to minstrel-tinged rock, Anderson established an identifiable sound that became uniquely associated with Tull: drawing on medieval motifs, hard rock, folk and other elements, Anderson and the band invested the troubadour’s ballad... Read More

  One Year of TheVinylPress.com Self-congratulatory pieces are usually distasteful to me. But, I wanted to mark the first anniversary of TheVinylPress.com for several reasons. This all started rather innocuously- and for entirely selfish reasons. I got serious about hunting for the best sounding vinyl LPs-    “ordinary” records, not necessarily “audiophile” releases — of hard rock, folk, psychedelia and offbeat stuff that didn’t always make “best of” lists, wasn’t necessarily reissued or remastered and in many cases, might prove... Read More

The Art of Recording: A Conversation with Brooks Arthur   Janis and Brooks at the board-Between the Lines sessions, courtesy Peter Cunningham   Brooks Arthur still dreams of the little studio he owned in Blauvelt, New York in the early ‘70s; a converted gas station on a suburban highway next to an all-night diner in “upstate” New York. 914 Studios (pronounced: “nine-one–four,” the telephone area code there at the time) may have been one of the best sounding rooms Arthur recorded in. He ought to know: a songwriter and performer with ties to the Brill Building era, Arthur... Read More

  Given the current cultural antipathy toward symbols of the “old South,” I admit to a moment’s pause before diving into a piece about Lynyrd Skynyrd. In popular culture, the band is often associated with the glory of the South and, perhaps unfairly, some of the pejoratives. Is it possible to enjoy the band without endorsing any negative symbolism? I don’t know about others, but I can. I’m not making any sort of cultural statement here. I just really dig their music– they were originals – superb players and well worth exploring beyond the stereotypes. Back in the... Read More

Introduction I’m fascinated by that “turning point” in popular music in the mid- ‘60s, when mainstream music was transformed from sonic pablum to electric rock, folk and blues. Of course, the Beatles (and others from the first British invasion) had a huge, irreversible influence, but other things were stirring Stateside, including a reconnection with rural blues. No band had more involvement in this transformation than Canned Heat. Members of Canned Heat were deep blues enthusiasts involved directly or indirectly in the rediscovery, with others, of such legendary, forgotten... Read More

  The history of the blues revival is just as fascinating and almost as confusing as the history of some of the early blues players. There were a number of key figures involved in the effort to locate the surviving players and their pursuits were often beset by misdirection, sometimes inadvertent, sometimes deliberate and occasionally hilarious.   Dick Waterman, Phil Spiro and Nick Perls finally located Son House in Rochester, New York after searching fruitlessly in the South. House, who influenced Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson, apparently had no idea that his early work was so... Read More

I knew as much about Canned Heat as the average listener back in the day; I was familiar with their “hits” and had some sense of their serious devotion to historical blues. I always enjoyed their filmed performances, including their appearance at Woodstock. But, digging deeper into their catalog of records released during their heyday proved to be a revelation. These guys were an odd mix of highly talented blues aficionados fluent in all the varieties of blues, from delta and rural stuff, to the more eclectic jazz-based “traditional” blues to the harder, grittier urban sounds; but... Read More

    “Sunnyland,” by Elmore James, is a blues track that has been part of my DNA since I first heard it in around 1970. What I didn’t know, until quite recently, is that this song –that I’ve known and loved for 45 years –wasn’t the original “Sunnyland” recorded by Elmore James, but a later cut, recorded in New Orleans in 1961. This version, which is far more distorted and raw sounding than the original, remained unreleased until the end of that decade. It first appeared on a compilation released in 1969 in the UK by Blue Horizon entitled To Know a Man.... Read More

    I had the privilege of writing an essay on Hoodoo Man Blues for the National Recording Registry of the U.S. Library of Congress. (You can find the text of the essay here, along with a link to the National Registry where it is officially published). Bob Koester, the founder of Delmark Records (which released Hoodoo Man Blues) and producer of the album, was gracious enough to provide a first-hand account in that essay. (His views lent a far more authentic and interesting voice than any third-hand account I could write fifty years after the fact). Koester is a virtual encyclopedia of... Read More