Short Stax Digital EPs each featuring two best-known tracks and one lost gem by classic Stax artists ...Also, five digital only full album reissues slated. All due May 22 BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. Stax Records, the classic soul label that has been reactivated this year by Concord Music Group on the occasion of its 50th anniversary, has announced plans to offer gems from its catalog for digital download exclusively through iTunes in North America for 90 days. The music will be offered on other dig

LOS ANGELES, Calif. The only songwriter whose songs were covered by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and Elvis Presley was Arthur Alexander. One of the greatest soul singers of all time, if not the best known, he penned "Anna," "Sally Sue Brown" and "You Better Move On" among many others. The Beatles modeled their early sound after him. Yet by 1980 a young man, just 40 Alexander had left the music industry and was driving a bus and working at a center for disadvantaged kids in Clevelan

LOS ANGELES "Ask me about my religion," writes Michelle Shocked in her "womanifesto" for her forthcoming album. "Of course, no one ever does." But it’s all part of her long musical journey: "I was moved by the power of rock ‘n’ roll. And if you follow the trail from rock ‘n’ roll, it always leads you back to the blues, sweet soul music and finally to the churches and gospel music." In Shocked’s case, it led to the West Angeles COGIC mass choir in the heart of South Central Los Angeles, where she

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Over his four-decade career, David Olney has built a reputation not as a kind-hearted troubadour but rather as a performing songwriter possessed of a sharp literary mind that cuts to the bone of the human condition. Whether the subject matter is heartbreak or armed robbery, Olney’s cinematic style and fearless approach to lyric writing have won him renown as kind of a musical outlaw. Listening to his latest CD, One Tough Town, due out on June 5 on Red Parlor, is like watching

Set to Rock are Roky Erickson, Dan Penn, Dave Bartholomew, Little Jimmy Scott, Dale Hawkins, Barbara Lynn, Bobby Rush, Roy Head, Augie Meyers, Wardell Quezergue, Lazy Lester, Willie Tee and Henry Gray NEW ORLEANS, La. Ponderosa Stomp, the renowned New Orleans roots festival has announced its artist schedule (see below.) The sixth annual Stomp is set to roll on Wednesday, May 2, at New Orleans’ House of Blues, encompassing three separate stages with non-stop music from 5:30 p.m. til 2 a.m. Tic