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KEXP Playlist
New music from Australian duo Close Counters!
closecounters.bandcamp.com
www.closecounters.com
bad tuner "makes electronic music in his apartment in Brooklyn New York"
badtuner.bandcamp.com
IG: @bad_tuner
New album "Inner Light" comes out in late May.
djwheelup.bandcamp.com
TOKiMONSTA teamed up with long-time collaborator Anderson .Paak and rising neo-soul singer and rapper Rae Khalil on this track.
At Neumos in Seattle on June 6th and 7th and The Independent in San Francisco on June 13th and June 14th.
tokimonsta.bandcamp.com
Kendrick Lamar and SZA will be at Lumen Field in Seattle on May 17th and at Oracle Park in San Fransisco on May 29th.
This song samples SWV's "Use Your Heart."
IG: @kendricklamar
Missy Elliott was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2023, the first woman rapper to earn the honor. Queen Latifah gave the introductory speech, underlining Elliott’s status as a trailblazer.
tinyurl.com
Happy 78th birthday to Ann Peebles, born this day in 1947 in Kinloch, Missouri!
This song originated from an offhand comment made by Peebles as she and her songwriting partners were preparing to head out to a Blues show one evening and it began tipping down with rain. "It was pouring outside and I just said, I can't stand this rain," recalled Peebles. "And I think it was Don who perked up: 'That's a good title.' We sat down and began to write. We started writing and forgot all about the rain."
www.theguardian.com
Happy birthday to Adrian Utley, producer and member of Portishead. He turns 68 today!
From Portishead's debut album, "It Could Be Sweet" was written by front woman Beth Gibbons before the formation of Portishead. After the band formed, they were so amazed by Beth’s singing on her demo version that they had to remake it and include it on the album.
www.portishead.co.uk
Brand new from SAULT, surprise released last week!
saultglobal.bandcamp.com
Butcher Brown will be at the San Jose Summer Fest on August 8th.
butcherbrownmusic.bandcamp.com
butcherbrown.com
Stephen Marley contributed this track to "Heart of Gold: The Songs of Neil Young". The full album releases on April 25th, and features covers by Eddie Vedder, The Lumineers, Sharon Van Etten, Mumford and Sons, Brandi Carlile, The Doobie Brothers with Allison Russell and more. Proceeds from the album will benefit The Bridge School in Hillsborough, California.
www.store.killphonicrights.com
Leonard Keala Kwan played ki ho'alu, Hawaiian slack key guitar, for over fifty years and along with late slack key greats Gabby Pahinui and Sonny Chillingworth, he is one of the three most influential slack key players in history.
www.dancingcat.com
That's Johnny Winter playing guitar and James Cotton playing harp on this answer to Bo Diddley's "I'm a Man." Winter is screaming in the background of the song.
www.britannica.com
Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young (CSNY) was a folk rock supergroup comprising the American singer-songwriters David Crosby and Stephen Stills and the English-American singer-songwriter Graham Nash, and the Canadian singer-songwriter Neil Young.
www.csny.com
Dolly’s first full-length solo album was released on Feb. 13, 1967, on Monument Records. Though she had already been featured on the 1963 Kitty Wells/Patsy Cline tribute album, "Hello, I’m Dolly" was the first studio-recorded solo album that Dolly could call her own.
The album, which caught the attention of Porter Wagoner, is credited with bringing Dolly more mainstream popularity when Porter invited her to join his popular weekly television show "The Porter Wagoner Show" in late 1967. She was later signed to Porter Wagoner’s organization and became his labelmate at RCA Victor.
dollyparton.com
Leonard Keala Kwan played ki ho'alu, Hawaiian slack key guitar, for over fifty years and along with late slack key greats Gabby Pahinui and Sonny Chillingworth, he is one of the three most influential slack key players in history.
www.dancingcat.com
A pioneering force hailed as the unsung hero of the genre, Linda Martell (82), was the first commercially successful Black female artist in country music. Martell had the highest peaking single on the Billboard Hot Country Singles (now Songs) chart at #22, “Color Him Father,” by a Black female country artist in the history of the genre in 1969, until Beyonce’s “Texas Hold ’Em” debuted at #1 on February 21st, 2024.
Martell was notably the first Black woman to play the Grand Ole Opry stage.
www.lindamartell.com
Born to a musical family in Houston, Texas, Mandrell began playing the accordion and reading sheet music before she could read words. By age eleven, she was a prodigy on the steel guitar, which prompted her father to take her to a music trade show in Chicago. Her performance caught the attention of legendary country guitarists, Chet Atkins and "Uncle" Joe Maphis.
barbaramandrell.com
Speedy West was inducted into the Pedal Steel Guitar Hall of Fame as one of the instrument’s most innovative performers. He was able to apply his unique style to country, jazz, and popular music. As a driving force on classic recordings with Jimmy Bryant, Speedy was also a long time product endorser for Fender Guitars. As a well respected gentleman, Speedy never lost his farm boy feeling and would sit and chat about music as much as his love of ranching.
www.namm.org
Canned Heat rose to fame because their knowledge and love of blues music was both wide and deep. Emerging in 1966, Canned Heat was founded by blues historians and record collectors Alan “Blind Owl” Wilson and Bob “The Bear” Hite. Hite took the name “Canned Heat” from a 1928 recording by Tommy Johnson. They were joined by Henry “The Sunflower” Vestine, another ardent record collector who was a former member of Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention. Rounding out the band in 1967 were Larry “The Mole” Taylor on bass, an experienced session musician who had played with Jerry Lee Lewis and The Monkees and Adolfo “Fito” de la Parra on drums who had played in two of the biggest Latin American bands, Los Sinners and Los Hooligans.
A cover of Charley Patton!
cannedheatmusic.com
A brother duo from Brooklyn, Santo began playing the steel guitar and later taught his younger brother Johnny to play the standard electric guitar.
www.discogs.com
Chuck Berry is an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist who was one of the most popular and influential performers in rhythm-and-blues and rock-and-roll music in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s.
www.britannica.com
Casey Bill Weldon was one of the most talented, yet enigmatic, blues slide guitarists of the early twentieth century.
Known as the “Hawaiian Guitar Wizard,” Weldon exhibited a range of material encompassing rag, hokum, and blues, though the majority of his more than 100 recorded songs are considered blues. Though he had a solid body of recordings and played with some well-known performers and bands of his day, much of his life is still shrouded in mystery.
encyclopediaofarkansas.net