Taj Mahal’s self-titled debut solo album (1967) was a rough-sawn blues-rock affair. Afterward, he moved back in time for Delta blues and antique folk songs, sideways into calypso and reggae and forward toward easy-going soul and

 Considered the poet laureate of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes drew on jazz and blues for rhyme, rhythm and words. His poetry is easily adapted for music and jazz guitarist Ken Hatfield heard the grooves

 "Your brother called. Your father is dying," the school secretary told her. It was shocking news, especially since her father, whose illness has appeared suddenly enough, had just been pronounced as "out of the woods." So recalls

 Coupling the rough-hewn spirit of an Irish session with the rough and tumble energy of punk rock seems almost obvious now. When The Pogues first tried it in the early ’80s, it was a revelation. The Irish-British band’s signature

 Award-winning investigative reporter Seth Rosenfeld examines the little known secret understanding between J. Edgar Hoover and California Gov. Ronald Reagan. Rosenfeld explains the collusion’s connection to the heavy

 American schools always taught that the U.S. Navy carried the day in early wars against Barbary pirates and the British, but in truth, Jonathan Dull tells us, the record is mixed. Despite redundant and occasionally unclear writing, Dull offers a thumbnail sketch

 Kathryn Bigelow upset the odds in 2009 when her indie-scale, grunt-level look at the Iraq War, The Hurt Locker, knocked aside her ex-husband James Cameron’s 3D extravaganza, Avatar, at Oscar time. Although her latest

 Used to be that antique jazz and blues recordings drew the obsessive attention of music buffs determined to track down recording session dates and determine who played which instrument. Rob Jovanovic brings a similar attention