[Note: This is the first in a series of articles that constitute Village Voice Media's year-end music package. The others - pop, indie-rock, dance mixes, Latin, country, alt-country/Americana, metal, rap/hip-hop and special graphics breaking down the year in charts and 2008's worst lyrics - will be posted on Rocks Off throughout the rest of the holiday season.]
It's time to rank the best of what went around and came around again.
BILLY JOEL
The Stranger
(Columbia/Legacy)
As punk and disco e
[Rocks Off scrolled through the various Top Sellers lists on Amazon.com this afternoon to see which albums by Texas artists are moving, and where.]
Top Sellers Overall
2. Steve Martin, The Crow: New Songs for the Five-String Banjo
7. Willie Nelson & Asleep at the Wheel, Willie and the Wheel
14. Buddy Holly, Memorial Collection
Top 40
2. Beyonce, I Am... Sasha Fierce
8. Jamie Foxx, Intuition
MP3 Downloads
5. Beyonce, "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)"
30. Beyonce, "If I Were a Boy"
Photos by Frank Stewart/ Jazz at Lincoln Center
When Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis first shared the stage at New York's Allen Room for Jazz at Lincoln Center almost exactly two years ago, the concert was simply billed as "Willie Nelson Sings the Blues." There was no hint that music history was about to be made, but the pairing resulted in one of the best releases of 2008, the CD/DVD Two Men with the Blues.
For their second concert together Tuesday night, Marsalis and Nelson chose not
Willie Nelson & Asleep at the Wheel
Willie and the Wheel
www.willieandthewheel.com
The late Jerry Wexler, who passed away last August at age 91, was best known as an advocate and producer for top R&B and soul artists like Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett. But Wexler was also a huge fan of country music, dating back to the days the kid who spent his teenage nights in Harlem jazz clubs discovered Western Swing in Kansas City while in college. Credited as executive produ
www.mickeyraphael.comFor a disarmingly large number of his worldwide fans, Willie Nelson burst onto the country music scene in the mid-'70s, fully hirsute, sporting an earring and proclaiming the joys of being on the road again. Real aficionados know that his "overnight success" came only after decades of struggling as a songwriter (hitting big with "Crazy" and "Night Life") and climbing even greater obstacles as a performer.
For much of the 1960s, Nelson recorded for RCA at a time when t
In addition to his long career as one of modern jazz's finest trumpet blowers and composers, Wynton Marsalis has waged a sort of one-man PR campaign for jazz education. He extols the virtues of the music as a current and lively art with a rich history - as opposed to a genre whose best days and practitioners are behind - in all sorts of settings both musical and academic.
In the wide-ranging Moving to Higher Ground, Marsalis argues that jazz can also teach life lessons based on his own experi
