Listen: Can’t Stand To Let You Go Many times I let my co-workers choose the music we listen to in the office since, before working for Music Maker, I had very little working knowledge of Roots music. I listened to everything – I just didn’t know much of anything. But I’ve been pretty diligent lately […]

Many times when an artist passes away, Tim is asked “is that it? Is this the end of the music?” Tim addresses that concern and the answer is no – we have much more work to do and many more artists out there playing traditional Roots music. There are many “Discovery Artists” that Music Maker […]

When a Music Maker Partner artist passes away, folks always ask me, how many artists do we still have with us and is this the end of Music Maker? This is exactly why I started the Music Maker Relief Foundation in 1994. Blues fieldworkers in the 1970s and 1980s such as Peter B. Lowery, George […]

Listen: Summertime There is something spooky about Guitar Gabriel’s “Summertime”. “Summertime” is a George and Ira Gershwin song from the musical Porgy and Bess. It is one of the most recorded songs in history according to Wikipedia. On this recording, Michael Parrish plays piano and Mark Levinson sits in on trumpet. In the intro, Mike […]

We heard, sadly, that Adolphus Bell passed away this morning. Last week Aaron, Ardie Dean and I all met up in Birmingham to see our old friend. His four-year fight with lung cancer had taken a turn for the worse and he was fighting pneumonia. Despite his tough situation, Adolphus was clear-headed, watched a beautiful […]