The song wasn't originally written as a march, but it seemed to work out pretty well this time.
So I was listening to some music today -- specifically an old R&B instrumental called "Night Train," by King Curtis -- and as I enjoyed his honkin' sax I kept thinking to myself, why does that song sound so familiar? I don't mean just familiar in the sense that I'd heard it before, because practically everybody would know...
His instrument always seemed to be in a very good mood.
Teenage boys in the 1950s were not that much different from now in at least one respect -- risqué double-entendres usually made us snicker and dig an elbow into our friends' sides. That might have helped explain why a relatively unknown keyboardist named Dave Cortez rocketed to the top of the charts in 1959 with a song called "The...
She promises to be a force to be reckoned with for a long time.
It wasn't too long ago that you could count the number of women rock-guitar players on the fingers of one hand. After Bonnie Raitt, the Wilson sisters from Heart, and Melissa Ethbridge you had to really struggle in order to think of anyone else. Well, as the man said, the times they are a changing, and now its becoming more and more common to...
She promises to be a force to be reckoned with for a long time.
It wasn't too long ago that you could count the number of women rock-guitar players on the fingers of one hand. After Bonnie Raitt, the Wilson sisters from Heart, and Melissa Ethbridge you had to really struggle in order to think of anyone else. Well, as the man said, the times they are a changing, and now its becoming more and more common to...
God's Thunderbolt: The Vigilantes of Montana won the 2009 Spur Award for Best First Novel from the Western Writers of America. Hold onto your Stetsons, though, because this is a self-published novel. Unlike many (most?) books in that category, God's Thunderbolt has already passed the author's break-even point and is well into the territory of financial success.
"I've waited three decades for someone to write a great novel about Montana's Vigilante era (1863-1864), and here it is," said noted Westerns author, Richard S. Wheeler, winner of the Owen Wister Award for lifetime achievement in the literature of the West.
With that sort of accolade, it is no surprise that Montana fans (not the Hannah Montana variety), lovers of Western lore, and readers who like the gold rush and Civil War era will enjoy this historic novel. Buchanan meticulously
There have been a lot of musical siblings through the years and some of them immediately come to mind, but it's difficult to imagine a group of brothers and sisters quite like the Dinnings. Over a period of several decades, they covered just about every aspect of music; including songwriting, bandleading, recording, and performing on stage and screen. And those doing the performing included a popular all-girl singing group, and a young crooner who thrilled teens with a chart-topping hit that was banned in Great Britain. (And if that wasn't enough, the family's next generation included a member of a popular modern rock group -- but more later about that.) Of course, there were nine Dinning siblings so that gave them a leg up but it's still a fascinating story, one that began with a musical childhood in Oklahoma encouraged by their father, the musical director of a
