There has been a great outpouring of grief over the death of Prince who, by all accounts, was a highly gifted and innovative musician. I have not written about his life and death because, although of course I had heard of him, I was not at all familiar with his music, a telling sign of how ignorant I am of so much of popular culture. The Prince phenomenon occurred during a time when I was not paying much attention to the world of popular music.
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The country music singer died today on his 79th birthday. I am not greatly familiar with his music but I loved his big 1969 hit Okie From Muskogee that contrasted supposedly wholesome patriotic small town values with the hippie, anti-war, drug-using behaviors of the coastal cities.
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I know nothing about jazz and don’t listen to it but I laughed out loud when I heard this item on NPR’s All Things Considered on January 19, 2016.
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Australians have a reputation for loving their beer. I had no idea of the depth of their passion until I recently acquired a few CDs that features Australian drinking songs. These are not songs like Waltzing Matilda that are easy to sing and thus popular at parties and in pubs. They are songs that directly and fulsomely praise beer and the act of drinking to the point of venerating both and the Monty Python troupe added to the narrative of the Aussie passion for beer (and their supposed preference for the name Bruce) in these sketches here and here.
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The Eagles founder member died today. The group had a huge number of hits in the decade that they lasted before they broke up. Here is a live BBC performance from 1973 of my favorite song by the group, Peaceful Easy Feeling.
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The death of the singer and actor from cancer was reported today. There have been many tributes to his impact on music. While of course his fame was such that I had heard of him, I did not know much about him or his music but this article lists the ten key songs that track the trajectory of his varied career.
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Janis Joplin’s psychedelic Porsche is being sold for $400,000. Maybe she got it from one of her friends.

The famous psychedelic Porsche convertible driven by late singing legend Janis Joplin is going up for sale.
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Here’s the late great Nat King Cole with a song that showcases his velvety voice and was a huge hit back in the day, its jaunty music balancing its somewhat ominous lyrics. I had not realized until today that the Clifton Clowers mentioned in the song was an actual person who lived on Woolverton Mountain in Arkansas, though the rest of the song is fictional. His nephew wrote the song and decided to immortalize his uncle by using his name.
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