Barry Mazor

3 weeks ago | wsj.com | Barry Mazor

The Nashville guitarist who has played with Patty Loveless, Rodney Crowell and Vince Gill, and found fans among the country-music elite, releases only the third solo record in his two-decade-long career. Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8Subscribe NowAlready a subscriber? Sign In

2 months ago | wsj.com | Barry Mazor

This year, Alison Krauss, among the top female Grammy winners of all time and one of the most recognized vocalists in all of American roots music, marks four decades of a varied and adventurous recording career. Over the past 10 years alone she has released orchestrated “Nashville Sound”-style country and pop, collaborated with heavy-metal veterans Def Leppard, and with considerable attention reunited with Robert Plant to rock out on tour and on record.

Feb 22, 2025 | wsj.com | Barry Mazor

Seven years ago, when “Healing Tide,” the debut duo album by Michael and Tanya Trotter, was released, the husband-and-wife artists had already been together some eight years. He was a wounded Iraq War veteran suffering from PTSD, but with a gift for words; she had been a professional gospel and R&B singer for years, having recorded her own first album and performed in the Hollywood movie “Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit” in 1993.

Jan 8, 2025 | wsj.com | Barry Mazor

One aspect of the Beatles’ music that attracted British radio and record labels in their early days was its detectable country tinge. All four were fond of American country and rockabilly, yet it would be drummer Ringo Starr, the final band recruit, who’d be most closely associated with those genres. His performances of Carl Perkins’s “Honey Don’t,” the Johnny Russell-written Buck Owens hit “Act Naturally,” and his original, “Don’t Pass Me By,” solidified the connection.

Nov 15, 2024 | wsj.com | Barry Mazor

If the U.S. had a “Living National Treasure” designation, as Japan does, Dolly Parton would be a shoo-in. Now 78 years old, she has received nearly every musical honor the country has to give. Joining the likes of Hank Williams and Ray Charles, Mahalia Jackson and Elvis Presley, she has become a roots-music hero—the sort of sensation who ascends from a regional down-home genre to secure a place in the broad popular imagination.