Marty Racine

In the summer of 1981, the new music critic at the Houston Chronicle walked down five flights of stairs at 801 Texas Avenue, went through the lobby and stepped into the thick, tormented Gulf Coast afternoon. At the curb sat a black, low-slung beat-mobile with a couple of blues guys...

The boogie slinks out of the grave like the midnight creeper on this 14-cut disc of previously unreleased performances by this, the rawest of Chicago slide-slingers. The honor roll of Delta-style Chicago bottleneck bossmen scrolls through blues annals: Muddy Waters, Elmore James, J.B. Hutto, Left-Hand Frank…And Hound Dog Taylor, six...

Bob Schneider is lonely no more. That's because he's dead. I'm Good Now, the title of the album Schneider released this week, refers not to getting healthy or becoming virtuous or resolving emotional conflict. It's about being dead, shaking free from this worrisome plane, crossing the clouds to the golden...

Her voice careens out of the hills ravaged by time. Then the harmony chorus to Keep on the Sunny Side, as if bestowed by the angels, comes to lift her home. It is a poignant opening to the posthumous Wildwood Flower by June Carter Cash, wife of Johnny, stepmother of...

Down in the Houston Warehouse District, where scrawny cats and rock bands ply their trade, some long-lost characters are gathered around tacos and Red Stripe, preparing for rehearsal. They haven't been this group-dedicated in years. "We got together again in January," the guitarist says, informatively. "It was?" the singer buzzes...