Native Musicians’ Influence Dates To Early Jazz

Native Musicians’ Influence Dates To Early Jazz August 7, 2006 Encyclopedia Of Native Music contains 1,800 entries on Native American musicians   GRAMMY.com Nick Krewen She discovered Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby, mentored jazz legend Billie Holiday, influenced Tony Bennett and was one of the first female singers to professionally perform with an orchestra. But one of the truly obscure facts about jazz singer Mildred Bailey — known as “Mrs….


Music That Puts You To Sleep

Music That Puts You To Sleep July 20, 2006 For “therapeutic” music, boring’s a good thing GRAMMY.com Nick Krewen If David Bradstreet isn’t lulling you to sleep with his music, he isn’t doing his job. According to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, more than 70 million Americans suffer from sleep disorders ranging from sleep apnea to hypertension. Bradstreet, a Toronto-based, Juno award-winning folk singer, instrumentalist and composer, is…


Road King ASME Award winner: Powered By Nature – Biodiesel (2006)

By Nick Krewen Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines: The beans-and-grease movement is stepping on the gas. In just four years, biodiesel production has grown from 15 million gallons of production in 2002 to 2005 U.S. Department Of Energy estimates of 46 million gallons.  Even if you accept the more rosy 2005 National Biodiesel Board figure of 75 million gallons, the song remains the same: The renewable fuel derived from…


Unlocking the Vaults

January 13, 2006 Major labels have put catalog mining into the hands of specialized divisions GRAMMY.com Nick Krewen If you’re a Ray Charles fan, Christmas has come early. To celebrate what would have been his 75th birthday, Rhino Entertainment recently issued a pair of Ray Charles albums — a posthumous duets project called Genius & Friends and the more elaborate Pure Genius: The Complete Atlantic Recordings (1952-1959), an eight-disc set…


Remembering Shel

  Nick Krewen GRAMMY.com Nov/Dec 2005 Legacy Recordings’ reputation for mining its vaults and producing superb compilations received another boost this past summer with the release of such acclaimed packages as Johnny Cash‘s 4-CD box set The Legend, Miles Davis‘ quintuple-disc The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions and Bob Dylan‘s Martin Scorsese-driven No Direction Home. One watershed anthology, however, got lost in the shuffle: the best of Shel Silverstein – his…