Music

Don Everly, half of one of rock and roll's pioneering groups, The Everly Brothers, has died. The musician, known for singing close harmonies with his brother, was 84.

With hits like, "All I Have To Do Is Dream," "Wake Up Little Susie," "Bye Bye Love" and "Cathy's Clown," The Everly Brothers were a sensation in the late 1950s and early '60s as rock and roll became a cultural phenomenon.

Everly's country-influenced vocals, sung alongside his younger brother, Phil, stretched the possibilities of harmonies in early rock and roll.

During their lives, the trumpeter Don Cherry (1936-1995) and his wife, visual artist and designer Moki Cherry (1943-2009), were best known to music fans for their collaborations.

Ella Yelich-O'Connor, known to the world as Lorde, is embracing a sunnier and more analog sound, full of plucked acoustic guitars and brushed snares. Since releasing her breakout single, "Royals," in 2013, she's made the most of hook-heavy pop songs constructed from a palette of overcast electronic sounds.

"In the past," she says, "I'd hear an acoustic guitar and I'd say 'Oh, here we go. It's about to get painfully authentic!' "

As a kid in 1980s Washington, D.C., Carl Edward "Chucky" Thompson Jr. couldn't stop running into Chuck Brown, the godfather of the city's funky go-go music scene, chopping it up with the youth that made up his core audience at his shows. By the time the self-taught musician finessed his way into Brown's band, the Soul Searchers, as a 16-year-old conga player, he noticed something else: The bandleader made a point to individually address all of his musicians before, during and after every performance.

Reverend Freakchild will return to WCBE to perform Live From Studio A! 

Nanci Griffith, a Texas-born singer-songwriter celebrated in folk and country-music circles for her crystalline voice and storytelling skill, died Friday in Nashville at age 68.

The news was confirmed by her management company, Gold Mountain Entertainment.

No cause of death or further information was provided, reportedly at Griffith's behest: "It is Nanci's wish that no statement or press release happen for a week following her passing."

It probably comes as little surprise that Jakob Dylan thinks about songwriting a lot. He's been crafting songs for more than 30 years between his solo work and leading The Wallflowers.

WCBE is looking forward to having Columbus group The Floorwalkers back in the studio to perform Live From Studio A!

Taking a much-needed break from the week's news, NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro takes a listen to some Alt.Latino-curated discoveries with the help of producer Anamaria Sayre.

On his newest album, Never Too Late To Call, we find Southern rocker Paul Thorn reflective. Raised in Tupelo, Miss., Thorn worked as a professional boxer and factory worker before becoming a full-time musician in the late 1990s, releasing multiple studio albums since. But his latest record has been seven years in the making.

TOKYO — In equestrian dressage, horses maneuver through complicated, dance-like choreography. The animals pirouette, step high, extend their legs long, and side step to music, signaled by an expert rider.

Olympic teams are turning to special composers to put together music tailored to highlight the best qualities of the horse and the routine.

"The music side of it really brought our sport to life," said Winnie Murphy, a spokesperson for British Equestrian. That's particularly true for spectators who aren't already attuned to the highly technical aspects of equestrian.

Pop music has its expected moves, its reliable strategies to get a musical payoff by making the melody's apex the main event. Torres isn't interested in reserving her intensity for the high notes. She engineered the chorus of "Don't Go Puttin' Wishes In My Head," a muscled-up power-pop song on her ravishing fifth album, Thirstier, so that it has a dramatically shifting center of gravity.

Despite multiple apologies, rapper DaBaby continues to face criticism — and cancellations — for homophobic comments he made during the Rolling Loud festival in late July.

Country music icon Dolly Parton has revealed that she used some of the royalties she earned from Whitney Houston's cover of her song "I Will Always Love You" to invest in an office complex in a Black neighborhood in Nashville, Tenn.

During an appearance on the show Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen, Parton said she thought it was an apt way to honor the Black singer, who boosted the song's popularity with her cover.

Fifty years ago, on August 1, 1971, the music world descended on Madison Square Garden for an event like no other. It was the first major charity concert of its kind — the Concert for Bangladesh. In that corner of South Asia, civil war, cyclone and floods had created a humanitarian disaster.

"There are six million displaced Bengalis, most of them suffering from malnutrition, cholera and also other diseases that are the result of living under the most dehumanizing conditions," former All Things Considered host Mike Waters reported in July of 1971.

Tune in for a Zydeco party during the Global Village when CJ Chenier And The Red Hot Louisiana Band perform Live From Studio A!

They'll perform that night at Natalie's in Grandview for another sold out event presented by Crazy Mama's Concerts and WCBE!

Chariots of Fire, the drama depicting two British Olympian runners, was released in 1981 — 40 years ago this spring — and left us with an enduring cultural treasure: its musical .

NPR Music's Turning the Tables is a project envisioned to challenge sexist and exclusionary conversations about musical greatness. Up until now we have focused on overturning conventional, patriarchal best-of lists and histories of popular music. But this time, it's personal. For 2021, we're digging into our own relationships to the records we love, asking: How do we know as listeners when a piece of music is important to us?

In the final fading moments of "Wilshire," the centerpiece on his chart-topping album Call Me If You Get Lost, Tyler the Creator admits he's just broken one of his own rules. He's spent eight minutes peeling off the skin of a secret, sharing myriad details of an emotional affair with a friend's significant other. "Wilshire"'s narrative is digressive, dodgy, the backtracking confession of someone who feels innocent but can't help but share the evidence against himself.

They may be two of the most influential notes in funk-rock history: the soaring, plaintive start to guitarist Eddie Hazel's legendary solo in Funkadelic's "Maggot Brain."

WCBE is looking forward to hosting Sean Woosley in The Repo Pilots Live From Studio A! 

Famed musician Eric Clapton said on Wednesday that he will not perform in any venue that requires audience members to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

"Following the PM's announcement on Monday the 19th of July 2021, I feel honor bound to make an announcement of my own: I wish to say that I will not perform on any stage where there is a discriminated audience present," Clapton wrote.

Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson is coming out of the pandemic a changed man. The co-founder of The Roots and the music director for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon did something he never thought he'd do — he bought a farm in upstate New York.

"The last year has really been a big lesson for me in terms of self-love," Questlove says. "I was world famous for being a machine. ... I thought chaos was the only way that I could exist. But now I embrace quiet, and I can hear myself think."

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts today announced its 44th lifetime achievement award winners.