Linda Gail Lewis and Robbie Fulks have teamed up on a shrewd, witty album that's a throwback to the earliest era of rock n' roll — but it's not pickled in nostalgia.
The singer and songwriter from Mali died Sunday at age 59. She was revered across west Africa and beyond for her raw, rootsy sound and her embrace of the many cultures in her beloved city, Timbuktu.
For Annie Clark, the guitar is not an appendage, not an extension of the body. It is its own body with its own voice. She doesn't use it to embellish her songs; she uses it to build worlds.
Franklin's gospel recordings presented black life itself as a sacred practice. On albums like Amazing Grace, she is less individual genius than willing instrument of the world that created her.
Aretha Franklin's album Amazing Grace was recorded in 1972 at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in south-central Los Angeles after riots devastated the area.
Amidst an instantly historic performance in 1971 that led to one of her best-known albums, Aretha Franklin's rendition of a single song carries inside it the weight of pop, soul and gospel history.