Gregg Allman “My Only True Friend” (2017)
Chilling is the only word to describe the experience of listening to this beautiful and poignant song under its heart-wrenching circumstances. Just try to imagine: After all of the miles he had covered, Gregg Allman confronted the fact that – unlike one of his and the Allman Brothers most famous lines – the road does not, in...... Read More
Tedeschi Trucks Band “I’m Gonna Be There” (2019)
What the Tedeschi Trucks Band can create is something truly rare: pure joy.... Read More
Bruce Springsteen “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)” (1973)
The task was simple and the theme was equally self-evident: create a party playlist of precisely four hours, made up of songs culled from the vastly music-rich era of the seventies. I questioned nearly every choice along the way. Well, every choice except for one: the pick for final song..... Read More
Chris Stapleton “Midnight Train To Memphis” (2017)
I got back to the garden. Not MSG, not that garden, but the one about which Joni Mitchell wrote and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young most famously sang: at the erstwhile home of Yasgur’s Farm, the mythical “garden” of Woodstock. This summer (this week, in fact) is exactly 50 years since “The Summer Of Love”...... Read More
Buckwheat Zydeco “Zydeco Boogaloo” (1984)
This site is called So Much Great Music because that’s really how I feel; there’s just too much great stuff out there, both past and present, to be pigeon-holed into only one or two music genres, or to just a few artists within a given genre. Now, I’m not saying I like everything: regular readers...... Read More
Stevie Ray Vaughan “Love Struck Baby” (1983)
The greatest guitarist I've ever heard, or will ever hear. This song changed my life.... Read More
Professor Longhair “Big Chief” (1980)
I’d never heard of Professor Longhair before going away to college. I mean really, who the hell growing up pretty much anyplace outside of New Orleans would have? But down there he was a living legend. Only not for long. The living part, that is. He died of a heart attack in 1980, less than...... Read More
Steely Dan “Bodhisattva” (1973)
It’s doubtful you would ever think of Steely Dan as a “guitar solo” band, and that’s true in part because their jazz/R&B/rock amalgam never made them a typical rock and roll group, but also due to the fact that their ostensible main guitarist, co-founder, Walter Becker, played only a fraction of them... Read More
Jeff Healey “See The Light” (1988)
..I did once, however, get a chance to witness another blind guitarist play live, this one an utterly mesmerizing dynamo named Jeff Healey, and it was one of the most unforgettable performances I’ve witnessed in my life. Healey is one of the ten greatest guitarists I’ve ever heard. Hard stop. No qualifier.... Read More
Gladys Knight & The Pips “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” (1967)
Maybe there’s a better example, but I can’t think of any, where there were three different hugely popular versions of the same song. That song, ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’ was a smash hit for three artists – Gladys Knight & The Pips, Marvin Gaye, and Creedence Clearwater Revival – all within less than...... Read More