Folk
This section gathers album stories, birthdays, and anniversaries from folk artists and songwriters, along with vinyl reissue news as titles return to print. Folk has a long history of careful preservation on record: archival labels such as Smithsonian Folkways have spent decades documenting traditional and singer-songwriter recordings specifically for release on LP, treating the format as a way to keep field recordings and acoustic albums in circulation rather than letting them disappear. Expect stories about the people behind specific songs and albums, and why a reissue of an older folk record still matters to listeners.
124 STORIES
How Johnny Cash Answered Illness on American III: Solitary Man
Johnny Cash released American III: Solitary Man on October 17, 2000, after pneumonia and illness forced him to scale back touring.
· 3 min read
How John Mayer Bet Everything on His Own Pop Sound
John Mayer left Atlanta duo LoFi Masters after a split over pop music, then built a solo career that led to Columbia Records and a first Grammy in 2003.
· 4 min read
Why Toše Proeski’s Death Stopped the Balkans
Toše Proeski, the Macedonian pop singer known across the former Yugoslavia, died in a car crash near Nova Gradiška, Croatia, on 16 October 2007. He was 26 years old.
· 4 min read
How Did Bob Weir Survive Being Kicked Out of Grateful Dead?
Bob Weir was sidelined by Grateful Dead in 1968 when Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh played shows without him. He returned and stayed for nearly six decades.
· 3 min read
How Grateful Dead Rebuilt After Loss
The Grateful Dead recorded Wake of the Flood in Sausalito in August 1973 without founding keyboardist Ron "Pigpen" McKernan. It arrived that October on the band's own label.
· 4 min read
Led Zeppelin Remasters: The 1990 CD Cash-In
Atlantic Records rushed Led Zeppelin's catalogue onto compact disc with Remasters. The three-vinyl set arrived on 15 October 1990, drawn from eight of the band's nine studio albums.
· 3 min read
Natalie Maines and the Comment That Changed Country Music
In a London theatre, Natalie Maines told a crowd the Dixie Chicks were ashamed President George W. Bush came from Texas, triggering a backlash that reshaped the band's career.
· 3 min read
Taylor Swift's 19-Minute Christmas Gamble
In 2007 Taylor Swift released a six-track Christmas EP, The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection, sold only at Target and running barely nineteen minutes.
· 4 min read
The Beatles Take Over the London Palladium
Fifteen million people sat down to watch a variety show on a Sunday evening on October 13, 1963. The programme was Sunday Night at the London Palladium, broadca…
· 4 min read
Why Olivia Newton-John Almost Said No to Physical
Olivia Newton-John nearly turned down the song that became her biggest hit. The demo was written for a rock singer but landed with the Australian pop star instead.
· 4 min read
John Denver Died at the Controls of His Own Plane
John Denver died on 12 October 1997 when his Rutan Long-EZ ran out of fuel near Monterey Bay. The singer behind Take Me Home, Country Roads was alone at the controls of a plane he had built himself.
· 4 min read
Dolly Parton's Bluegrass Gamble on Those Were the Days
Dolly Parton's Those Were the Days arrived on 11 October 2005. The bluegrass rebuild of 1960s and 1970s folk and pop songs replaced her planned album Blue Smoke.
· 4 min read
How Johnny Cash Turned Rejection Into His First Album
In 1955 Sam Phillips rejected Johnny Cash's gospel pitch at Sun Records, sending him back to find the sound that became his debut album two years later.
· 4 min read
How Jagjit Singh Lost His Voice and Found a New One
Jagjit Singh arrived in Bombay in 1965 and built a career that made ghazals a household sound in India, first with Chitra Singh and then alone after 1990.
· 3 min read
John Prine: The Mailman Who Changed Folk Music
John Prine was still delivering mail for the US Postal Service when a night at Chicago's Fifth Peg turned him into a songwriter's songwriter.
· 3 min read
How Solomon Burke Became the King of Rock 'n' Soul
Solomon Burke signed with Atlantic Records in 1960 after a ten-minute meeting with Jerry Wexler. He became one of the first singers called a soul artist and was crowned King of Rock 'n' Soul in 1963.
· 4 min read
Why Did PJ Harvey Walk Away from a Working Band?
PJ Harvey left Automatic Dlamini in January 1991 to form her own trio, and within two years had released Dry and Rid of Me. The band dissolved in 1993 after opening for U2.
· 4 min read
Why Did Leonard Cohen Hand His Comeback to Sharon Robinson?
Leonard Cohen returned in 2001 with Ten New Songs, a comeback he built at home with Sharon Robinson, who produced, arranged and sang on the album.
· 4 min read
How Komitas Saved Armenian Song, Then Lost Himself
Komitas, the monk born Soghomon Soghomonyan, transcribed more than 3000 Armenian folk songs. The genocide destroyed most of his manuscripts and broke his mind.
· 4 min read
How Judee Sill Vanished After Being Asylum's First Signing
Judee Sill became the first artist signed to David Geffen's Asylum Records. She released two acclaimed albums in the 1970s and died in 1979 without a single obituary.
· 4 min read
Comes a Time: The Album Neil Young Bought Back
Neil Young bought back the first two hundred thousand copies of Comes a Time after a mastering fault stripped the high frequencies. He then remixed the 1978 Reprise album himself from a safety copy.
· 3 min read
How Loretta Lynn Turned a $17 Guitar Into Country History
Loretta Lynn, a teenage wife from a Kentucky coal camp, taught herself to play a 17-dollar guitar. She became the first woman to win the CMA Entertainer of the Year award.
· 3 min read
Janis Joplin: The Outsider Who Outsang Everyone
Janis Joplin grew up bullied in Port Arthur, Texas, and became one of America's best-selling female vocalists before her death at 27 in October 1970.
· 4 min read
Why Did Mercedes Sosa Sing When the Guns Were Out?
In the city of La Plata, a concert was underway. On stage stood Mercedes Sosa, the Argentine folk singer known to millions as la Negra, a nickname that came fro…
· 3 min read