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3 weeks 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.
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2 months ago | 
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.
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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.
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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.
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Nov 13, 2024 | 
msn.com | Barry Mazor
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Oct 28, 2024 | 
wsj.com | Barry Mazor
The singer and multi-instrumentalist’s new album makes an old style sound fresh, showcasing his polished voice, driving rhythms and increasing skill as a songwriter. Since relocating to New York from his native South Los Angeles in 2007, the multifaceted blues performer Jerron Paxton has been ever more in demand, rising from street busker to much-noticed and lauded attraction in live show line-ups, on multiartist recordings, and on a few independent records of his own.
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Oct 16, 2024 | 
wsj.com | Barry Mazor
There’s a problem commonly faced by performers who have dedicated themselves to reviving some retro, once-popular style and found acceptance in the practice: keeping that act fresh over time. Sooner or later, scratching that same niche becomes all-too predictable, a tiresome take on the oldies, itself getting old.
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Aug 9, 2024 | 
wsj.com | Barry Mazor
The Americana chanteuse takes a fresh and feisty turn on her new album. Singer-songwriter Shelby Lynne has been making records steadily since a first duet single with country great George Jones in 1988. Over the 36 years since, she has proved to be one of the most reliably moving and artful vocalists on the broad American roots-music spectrum—and one of the most likely to change direction abruptly when she feels the pull of another musical flavor.
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Jun 26, 2024 | 
wsj.com | Barry Mazor
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Apr 15, 2024 | 
wsj.com | Barry Mazor
Elegant guitarist Chet Atkins is one of the most regularly honored of roots-music makers, as a contributor to country and rock, as a broad musical influencer, and as a producer, label executive and occasional songwriter, too. He was inducted into both the Country and Rock Halls of Fame, and received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1993 after racking up Grammys and Country Music Association awards time after time.
