| My role is as rabbi, priest, guru, banker, for sure, adviser, counselor friend, psychotherapist, marriage counselor, sex counselor, you name it. Punching bag. | | | | |  | Nanci Griffith circa 1991.
(Mick Hutson/Redferns/Getty Images) | | | | | "My role is as rabbi, priest, guru, banker, for sure, adviser, counselor friend, psychotherapist, marriage counselor, sex counselor, you name it. Punching bag." | | | | Soon As I Get Home
New York City's vaccine mandate for indoor venues goes into effect today and DISTROKID is rocking a $1.3 billion (!) valuation—about 1/30th the current valuation of UNIVERSAL MUSIC—and R. KELLY is about to go on trial and BRITNEY SPEARS and her dad may or may not be headed for a legal breakup and "RADIOACTIVE" has given way to "BLINDING LIGHTS," but today, my first day back after a week and a half of reading, beaching, unwinding and masking as much as I can in the blinding lights of a Northeastern heatwave, I pause to remember those we've lost in the last week and a half—and to catch up, in the mix below, on some highlights from around the musicverse.
We'll Catch Some Blackbird's Wing
The description "singer/songwriter" was made for NANCI GRIFFITH, a not-quite-folk, not-quite-country daughter of Texas and longtime resident of Nashville who sang other people's songs damn close to definitively, had other singers take hers up the charts, and had to make up her own name, folkabilly, for what came out when she did both with her girlish drawl and poet's pen. She sang "From a Distance" and wrote "Love at the Five and Dime" and there were hundreds of others and the list of friends and descendents who owe their careers to her is long and still being added to. Though she had all but stopped recording and performing in the last decade of her life, she was still way too young, and her passing at age 68 leaves a Texas-sized hole in Tennessee and a Tennessee-sized hole in Texas... Songwriter/producer CHUCKY THOMPSON, one of Bad Boy Records' "Hitmen," was a crucial collaborator with Mary J. Blige, the Notorious B.I.G., Faith Evans and others. "His fingerprints are all over some of the greatest hip-hop/R&B records of the '90s and 2000s"... WALTER YETNIKOFF, another kind of hitman, was the controversial, colorful head of CBS Records in the 1970s and '80s who played a not-unimportant role in the careers of Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen and several other pop and rock superstars. "A wild man," Springsteen told the Los Angeles Times, but "he respected and shepherded my art through an often hostile and unfriendly music business." He cajoled hard, played hard and, in the end, fell hard.
Also lost in the past 10 days: Kool & the Gang saxophonist and master of ceremonies DENNIS "DEE TEE" THOMAS... South African amapiano stars KILLER KAU and MPURA, killed in a car accident on the way to a show... Backup singer NICOLE HURST, who performed with Justin Timberlake, Kelly Clarkson, Janet Jackson, Bruno Mars and others... STEVE "ZUMBI" GAINES, rapper in veteran Bay Area hip-hop group Zion I... Canadian composer/environmentalist R. MURRAY SCHAFER... EMI Music Publishing executive PAT LUCAS... DICK ODETTE, who as longtime music purchasing head of the Musicland Group was a music retail powerhouse... PIL TRAFA, lead singer of Argentine punk band Los Violadores... Tower of Power guitarist BRUCE CONTE... Country songwriter RAZZY BAILEY... Sacramento, Calif., jazz pianist (and famous dad) BOB RINGWALD... California rock guitarist KYLE HOOVER, whose bands included Ganglians and Tiaras... JIM O'ROURKE, a staple of the Orlando, Fla., rock scene... Nashville rapper and concert promoter ROSS "KIDDEAD" NORTON... Kiwi rapper LOUIE KNUXX... And the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th (at least) hip-hop artists murdered in the US in 2021: Hip-hop DJ and producer SQUEAKPIVOT of Chicago's Pivot Gang, cousins ODION "12 O'CLOCK" TURNER and DAVID "MURDOCK" TURNER of the Wu-Tang Clan-affiliated rap group Brooklyn Zu (killed in Portland, Ore.), and 17-year-old aspiring Hartford rapper YNT JUAN. Guns are by no means the entirety of the problem but they're absolutely part of the problem, and maybe the music industry is in a position to use its voice to say something about this.
| | | | Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| | |  | | Variety |
| | Nanci Griffith, In Memoriam: An Appreciation of Folk and Americana Music's Sweet but Gritty Beacon | | by Holly Gleason | | She had a little girl's voice, slightly chirping and ether-light, and the widest eyes when talked that punctuated her heart-shaped face. But listening to her songs, she wrote with an underlying wisdom and sense of detail about small things that made her more kin to Eudora Welty, Willa Cather or even Carson McCullers, all of whom she adored. | |  | | Los Angeles Times |
| | He was a celebrated singer-songwriter with famous fans. Then he started posting about the vaccine | | by Randall Roberts | | Joseph Arthur has spent the past year opposing the COVID-19 vaccine on social media. His manager and band quit, and his remaining fans beseech him to stop. | |  | | The Guardian |
| | 'We aren't all dumb hillbillies': how Covid caused a rift in country music | | by Kyle Mullin | | Country stars such as Jason Isbell have received backlash for insisting on safety at their concerts, exposing an age-old political divide. | |  | | The Undefeated |
| | After 21 years in prison, former No Limit rapper Mac Phipps is figuring out what it means to be free | | by David Dennis Jr. | | Louisiana governor granted him clemency years after investigations raised questions about his conviction for manslaughter. | |  | | Billboard |
| | Can Riot Grrrl TikTok Re-Imagine a Flawed Scene? | | by Mia Hughes | | Open TikTok's #riotgrrrl hashtag and you'll find a thriving ecosystem. Teens are having their own conversations, asking and answering questions, building a community. | |  | | protocol |
| | Tidal and Square: The first 100 days | | by Janko Roettgers | | Tidal COO Lior Tibon on life after the Square acquisition. Tidal's chief operating officer is OK with the company being much smaller than Spotify, but he won't tell us how much smaller it actually is. | |  | | The Believer |
| | Maxwell's: An Oral History | | by Frances Badalamenti | | I moved into a derelict apartment in Hoboken, New Jersey in the early 90s, an escape hatch from the mundane suburbs. It was $275 a month for a dank basement room, but it didn't matter—I could be in downtown Manhattan in a half hour. Back then, Hoboken was still accessible enough to allow artists and musicians and writers to inhabit the mini metropolis. | |  | | Real Life |
| | Moving in Stereo | | by Robin James | | Spotify and Peloton offer two different ways of training the self for work. | |  | | The Tennessean |
| | Country Music Hall of Fame 2021 inductees include Ray Charles, The Judds | | by Dave Paulson and Matthew Leimkuehler | | A genius of soul raised on the Grand Ole Opry, a singular mother-daughter duo and a pair of Nashville's most decorated studio musicians will receive country music's highest honor. | | | | Los Angeles Times |
| | Today, hip-hop and R&B are seamlessly intwined. You can thank Chucky Thompson for that | | by Julian Kimble | | Chucky Thompson, who died Aug. 9 from COVID-19 complications, produced classic records by the Notorious B.I.G. and Mary J. Blige for Bad Boy Records. | | |  | | NPR |
| | Opinion: 13 Years After The Last R. Kelly Trial, The Culture Has Changed | | by Anastasia Tsioulcas | | The first federal trial against disgraced R&B superstar R. Kelly is underway. Tenacious reporting has explicitly centered the mostly Black girls and women who have accused him. | |  | | Chicago Tribune |
| | A sex-abuse enterprise? Breaking down the unusual racketeering case against R. Kelly. | | by Jason Meisner and Megan Crepeau | | R. Kelly, 54, could face decades in prison if convicted in the unusual federal racketeering case against him. | |  | | VICE |
| | Little Simz Rises | | by Nana Baah | | One of the UK's boldest creative forces tells us all about her incoming album 'Sometimes I Might Be Introvert'. | |  | | Culture Notes of an Honest Broker |
| | How Jazz Was Declared Dead--Then Came Roaring Back to Life | | by Ted Gioia | | An extract from the new updated edition of my book "The History of Jazz." | | | | The Guardian |
| | 'I had no confidence, no money': the pop stars kept in limbo by major labels | | by Rhian Jones | | Raye is one of the world's most listened-to artists, but her label wouldn't let her make an album. She's the latest example of stars who say their music is being sidelined. | | | | Billboard |
| | Walter Yetnikoff Was a Wolf Among 'Hit Men,' But That Was His Undoing | | by Fredric Dannen | | Some people thought "Hit Men" - Fred Dannen's expose of the music business - helped end the career of the CBS Records chief. The truth is, he didn't need any help. | |  | | Music Industry Blog |
| | The record labels are weaning themselves off their Spotify dependency | | by Mark Mulligan | | The major labels had a spectacular streaming quarter, registering 33% growth on Q2 2020 to reach $3.1 billion. Spotify had a less impressive quarter, growing revenues by just 23%. After being the industry's byword for streaming for so long, Spotify's dominant role is beginning to lessen. | |  | | The New York Times |
| | Bobby Shmurda's New Lust for Life | | by Joe Coscarelli | | The Brooklyn rapper, fresh off nearly seven years in prison on gang conspiracy charges, is plotting his dance-heavy comeback - slowly. | | | | VICE |
| | Cardi B Is the Queen of Features That Break The Internet | | by Kristin Corry | | For a woman whose reality TV slogan was "If a girl beef with me, she gon' have beef forever," the Bronx rapper plays exceptionally well with others. | |  | | The Washington Post |
| | Yasmin Williams, a new kind of guitar hero, is listening to the world around her | | by Chris Richards | | The Virginia guitarist says she doesn't feel part of any tradition. Her playing proves it. | |  | | Harper's Bazaar |
| | Beyoncé's Evolution | | by Kaitlyn Greenidge | | After more than two decades in the spotlight, Beyoncé has become much more than a pop icon. She's a cultural force who has routinely defied expectations and transformed the way we understand the power of art to change how we see ourselves and each other. But at 40, she feels like she's just scratched the surface. | |  | | Texas Monthly |
| | Nanci Griffith Was More Loved Than She Knew | | by Jason Cohen | | Fans of the Seguin-born singer-songwriter, who died on Friday, are as uncategorizable as the artist they adored. | |  | | Deadline |
| | Quentin Tarantino's Tribute To Late EMI Music Exec Pat Lucas | | by Mike Fleming Jr | | The former EMI Music executive, who passed away last Monday, took a chance on him and OK'd the use of the 'Reservoir Dogs' tune that launched his career.. | | | |  | | | Music of the day | | "You Bring Me Joy" | | Mary J. Blige | | RIP co-writer and -producer Chucky Thompson. |  | | YouTube |
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RIP co-writer and -producer Chucky Thompson. | Seventeen years of clips from "Late Night" and "Late Show." | | | Music | Media | Sports | Fashion | Tech | | "REDEF is dedicated to my mother, who nurtured and encouraged my interest in
everything and slightly regrets the day she taught me to always ask 'why?'" | | |  | | | Jason Hirschhorn | | CEO & Chief Curator | | |  |
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