Louisiana Hayride was a "barn dance"-style radio program on KWKH out of Shreveport, La., that was loosely modeled on its more famous cousin, Nashville's The Grand Ole Opry, along with Chicago's lesser-known WLS Barn Dance. The program, originally called Cradle of the Stars, launched on April 3, 1948, and went on to feature some of the most revered names in country music.In fact, from the onset, Louisiana Hayride proved to be an invaluable tool for breaking new artists and new singles, as Hank Williams — who first appeared on the show in August 1948 — would attest. (Williams, who eventually had his own sponsored radio program on WSM/Nashville, would often record Hayride shows ahead of time so he could tour.) Performing a new song on a show like Louisiana Hayride was very often just the leg up an artist needed to propel a regional hit. With a firm commitment to exposing new and regional talent to a wider audience, the show became a beloved stop on artists' Southern tours.
Within a year of its debut, the program was so popular that a regional 25-station network was pieced together to broadcast portions of it. The music was certainly a large part of that popularity, but the rotating emcees who kept the show moving with interviews and artist cues provided another kind of magic. Here, the artists were given a chance to connect with the listeners and let their personalities shine.
By 1954, a special 30-minute version of Louisiana Hayride was broadcast overseas on Armed Forces Radio. Another watershed moment came in August 1954, when a teenaged Elvis Presley made his debut, singing "That's Alright Mama." (Incidentally, it was Hayride emcee Horace Logan who coined the iconic phrase, "Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis has left the building.") By the late '50s, however, the growing popularity of rock 'n' roll, in addition to the rise of televisions, cut into the show's popularity. On August 27, 1960, Louisiana Hayride ended its regular run.
In the years since, there have been many attempts to revive the name and what it stood for. Probably the best testament to the program is the volume of quality live music recorded during its tenure. Rhapsody has many of these releases available, so let's take a listen to some of them.
Click here to listen to a playlist:
Highlights from the Hayride
The past year has seen a crop of excellent releases from the most talked-about rising stars in classical music, a varied set of neo-traditionalists who breathe life into the genre though fiery performances, scandalous outfits and bold programming choices. Astonishingly, none of them are older than 30.
We don't know about you, but this time of year makes us want to strap on a pair of sparkly gold stilettos, squeeze into something that's possibly too tight given how much we ate over Thanksgiving, and get our ho-ho-holiday on — on the dancefloor, of course. Thankfully, many of our favorite pop stars seem to feel the same way, obliging us with festive dance pop originals and clubby remakes of the classics, all decked out with killer beats and groovable hooks. To get you in the holiday spirit, we've assembled this little guide to the brightest lights on the holiday pop tree, from the Biebster's naughty, brand-spanking-new Under the Mistletoe to Destiny's Child's ode to Rudolph. It's Christmas — with a beat you can dance to. 'Tis the season to get your booty wiggling!
The thing about Christmas music is you either love it or hate it. There isn't usually much middle ground. For those of us who love it, the warble of Alvin & The Chipmunks' "Christmas (Don't Be Late)" and Bobby Helms' rockabilly-ing "Jingle Bell Rock" are welcome at least the first 10,000 times we'll hear them—in the car, in the supermarket, in our sleep—between now and December 25th. For those poor souls who have to spend the next month or so trying (unsuccessfully) to get that seizure-inducing "Carol of the Bells" song out of their heads, we're sorry. You have absolutely no use for the list below. But, if you're like me and you listen to Darlene Love's "White Christmas" and, especially, her "Marshmallow World" in June, well, have fun, and don't miss Ella Fitzgerald's bangin' "Jingle Bells," the made-for-Jimmy-Buffett wonder "Mele Kalikimaka" by Bing Crosby, the backup singers in Elvis' "Blue Christmas" or any of Vince Guaraldi's A Charlie Brown Christmas.
One of America's most successful indie labels doesn't run out of Brooklyn or Portland or L.A., but rather the modest metropolis of Durham, N.C., home of the Blue Devils of Duke University and the Bull Durham Tobacco Factory. It may not be the likeliest of habitats for a record label to blossom, but Merge Records has slowly risen to indie-powerhouse status. 
To get your head around trumpeter, virtuoso and jazz godhead 
"Urban Latin" is at once an extremely specific and yet incredibly vague term, but for our purposes here we've defined it loosely as Latin music that in some way cozies up to mainstream hip-hop and R&B, whether through its beats, its aesthetics, its collaborations or its target audience. We've focused this Cheat Sheet on three prominent styles: reggaeton, Latin hip-hop, and the newest big player in this game, bachata. That Dominican pop genre hasn't always been as urban-identified as, say, reggaeton (in fact, bachata was originally the music of the rural poor), but many of its biggest stars are carving out an aesthetic kinship to R&B that feels organic and sounds hot. 
There was once a time when Americans treated the idea of British rappers as a joke. How could the English, with their funny accents and halting rhymes, approach the dexterity and rhythm of quality hip-hop music? Those days ended with the classic 1997 compilation 
Deep house never really goes out of fashion; somewhere, there'll always be someone playing jazzy chords over a disco beat. For whatever reason, though, the style is particularly hot right now, with artists from Los Angeles to the Ukraine sinking their teeth into the slower tempos and moody melodies of dance music at its most romantic.
The singer-songwriter movement is generally depicted as an outgrowth of the 1960s folk revival. Near decade's end, as the story goes, denim-clad bards and feathery songbirds such as James Taylor, Joni Mitchell and Jackson Browne shifted folk music's gaze off the world outside, including all its myriad political and social crises, and cast it upon humanity's inner realms (i.e. questions addressing emotional and psychic health, existential inquiry, love, relationships, even faith). Though these artists pushed folk into an orbit closer to pop's sonic palette, their music remained predominantly acoustic, centering around the solo performer as well.
"Heavy psych." Just the words themselves sound cool. When someone says a band plays heavy psych, you immediately at least have an idea of what you're in for. Specifically, super loud guitars, howling feedback and long floating sections that sound like you're docking your space craft on, um, Uranus. Or maybe Saturn. Anyway, fun, fun, fun. 
"Hipster metal" is not so much a style of music as a state of mind. And we're not necessarily talking about the minds of the musicians themselves, who in most cases will deny the classification entirely. The phrase has probably been around for only a few years, and like similar accusations in other genres ("hipster rap," for instance), it's at least partially a pejorative — implying, as it does, that these aren't Real Metal Bands Listened to by Genuine Honest-to-Satan Metalheads, but rather acts marketed to (and, in some cases, at least tentatively embraced by) theoretically gullible indie rock twerps. Who'll fall for anything, after all, right? And even if they don't, taking an end-run shortcut around metal's troo fan base seems rather unseemly. Or at least, that's what some metal magazines would say — though, to be honest, if those mags weren't at least a wee bit hip themselves, they might not know of such bands at all.
"Latin crossover" has meant many things over the years, from pop songs featuring Spanish lyrics to Latino artists who cracked the predominantly white mainstream charts. It's a vague, loaded and problematic term. But underneath that confusing umbrella, talented artists of Hispanic heritage have added rich musical, stylistic and sometimes linguistic strains to the tapestry of American pop music. That's what we're celebrating with this Cheat Sheet on Latin Crossover Artists, compiled in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, which is observed September 15 to October 15.
Pop punk is one big, fat oxymoron if you think about it, but if The Ramones were the first punk band, then "Blitzkrieg Bop'" and their obvious affection for teenybopper pop also made them the first pop punk band. Punk, in its earthiest of roots, may just be poppier than any self-aware devotee would ever admit. But since The Ramones, the genre branched off into several differing sectors, some more snot-nosed and anarchic than others. This Cheat Sheet highlights more of the latter: groups that nail the requisite sneer but add irresistible pop charm that even a mom could love (well, maybe), full of punks more likely to scream about orgasm addictions, getting stoned in the afternoon, suburban stagnancy and losing their nose-ringed sweetheart than any unjust isms. Starting with 1976's Ramones, we travel through time and highlight 20 of pop punk's most successful and influential albums to see how the genre has grown, changed and thrived.
More or less invented and/or exhumed (by a band called 
With the arrival of Alice Cooper's new record, Welcome 2 My Nightmare -- a concept-album sequel to his 1975 classic 
Oh, the marvels of modern technology! A handful of long-forgotten 
Since releasing its first strange transmissions in 2004 and '05, Los Angeles-based Not Not Fun Records has become one of the underground's most exciting, prolific and influential labels. Their aesthetic is commonly described as "hypnagogic pop," a tag that does a nice job of capturing the gooey and decayed fusion of synthesizer music, psychedelia, dub, lo-fi rock, exotica and '80s dance pop favored by much of the label's roster. We're talking freaky heavies with names like Sun Araw, Peaking Lights, Robedoor, Maria Minerva, LA Vampires, High Wolf, Sex Worker, Dylan Ettinger and Psychic Reality.
Like the country's rich and varied natural landscape — and its thrilling and often tumultuous socio-political history — Colombian musical culture is exhilarating, breathtakingly diverse and at once richly historic and cutting-edge. Its musical claims to fame encompass everything from wide-ranging folk traditions to some of the world's biggest Latin pop stars, from rock heavyweights to alt-folkloric hip-hop. Colombian musicians are also equally brilliant at both artistic importing and exporting: salsa inundated the country and Colombians made it their own, while homegrown cumbia has infiltrated nearly every sector of the Latin world. What we've assembled here in this guide to Colombian music is only a very brief introduction, but it will give you a taste for just how deliciously diverse this country's musical heritage is. Dig in.
In the 1960s, most of the country charts were controlled by a handful of Nashville producers, and their fondness for lush string sections, syrupy background vocals and corny lyrics came to be known as the Nashville sound. At the same time, rock 'n' roll artists — who mostly wrote their own songs, played their own instruments, and had a hand in shaping their own sound while in the recording studio — were showing a growing number of young, blue-collar country lovers a different way of making music. 
We admit that the title of this Cheat Sheet we've compiled ("we" being Latin editor 
The rise of Sub Pop Records is a tale of Cinderella stature: Prince Charming came in the form of a rogue Aberdeen poet, and the rest, as they say, is history. But that was only the beginning of the story. From longhaired grunge to squeaky-clean indie folk to a world-music imprint and now hip-hop, the Seattle label has proven time and again to be one of the most reliable tastemakers in the biz. For over two decades, they've helped define whatever "indie music" is, or soon will be.
Latin alternative music, like anything lurking under that ambiguous "alt" umbrella, is a hodgepodge hive of sounds, ranging from gritty rock to twee pop, from experimental electronic music to quirky hip-hop. But one aspect of the sound is easy to pin down: initially a kind of boys' club (or at least a club in which admittedly very talented boys got most of the attention), the world of Latin alt has recently been invaded by captivating, critically acclaimed, incredibly talented female artists. In fact, there are so many fresh new female faces in this world that we're focusing here primarily on women working in the cantautor (aka singer-songwriter) tradition, and saving the hard-rocking outfits, punk bands and emcees for another time. But even within that concentration, a wealth of sonic diversity exists, from Juana Molina's ambient electro-pop to Rita Indiana's techno-merengue, from Pistolera's folklorico rock to indie-pop darling Ximena Sariñana, whose masterful self-titled sophomore album dropped this week.
Like all musical styles, reggae has progressed considerably from its early days. Spawned from mento and ska, the music took root in the 1970s, when 
Ever since fusion devolved into flaccid pop-jazz in the 1980s, the genre has been treated with suspicion by more than a few jazz snobs. In fact, fusion didn't get a fair shake right out of the gate. When Miles Davis went electric and started performing before rock audiences, critics couldn't stop condemning the man. "SELLOUT!" they proclaimed ad nauseam, even though the music he made was wildly challenging and ambitious.
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Electronic pop is the most vocal that it's been in years. Between acts like Planningtorock, Austra and Glasser, we're riding a wave of strong new voices wrapped artfully in idiosyncratic sonics and synth-pop productions. Artists like James Blake and Gang Gang Dance, meanwhile, are using vocals as waveforms to be manipulated, tracing the human/machine interface with wires wrapped around vocal cords.
Truth be told, heavy metal and prog rock have been intertwined since both genres were born. My friend Frank, who is a few years older than me, remembers confusing 
When rockabilly stole away much of country music’s younger audience in the mid-1950s, Nashville producers aimed for a more adult market. Producers 
Age is a funny thing. What's old to one person is relatively current to another. When it comes to tracing Christian music's roots, some fans look back only as far as 
In the early 1980s, some of the best New Wave bands were actually progressive rock groups. This is a bit of an exaggeration, of course. But not totally untrue, when you think about the super-creative ways in which Yes, Rush, Phil Collins and Queen fused the two genres. Ignoring the fact that punk had declared war on the classic rock fossils of the previous decade, these musicians boldly explored synthesizers, funk-inspired dance grooves, drum machines, sound collage, wiry arrangements and icy production techniques. Some truly great music was produced in the process. The Trevor Horn-produced 90125, the wildly experimental The Game and the titanic Moving Pictures are all bona fide classics. Then there's Collins' Miami Vice masterpiece "In the Air Tonight," one of the most striking (and moodiest) pop songs of the 20th century.
Chicago house never really goes out of fashion. Invented in the mid-'80s, it was a catalyst for both British rave culture and 
There's a short paragraph in Ed Ward's "Italo-American Rock," an excellent essay that I first encountered in the original edition of The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, that encapsulates many of the key points I want to make about this thing called East Coast Horn Rock:
Heavy metal was always about technology (as in 
Initially formed in Minneapolis in 1994 as an outlet for cassette-only recordings, Rhymesayers have grown from a modest rap collective to perhaps the biggest indie rap label in the country (albeit distributed by Warner Bros.' Independent Label Group). In some ways, Rhymesayers earned that distinction just by being the last brand name standing because the indie rap scene is a shell of its former turn-of-the-century glory. But its roster of multiracial musical revolutionaries, from albino Muslim Brother Ali to crustcore emcee P.O.S., have loyal audiences, too. In 2008, flagship artist Atmosphere saw their 
What do belching brass lines and thrashing guitar licks have in common? How about jovial Balkan wedding bands and drunken, debauched N.Y.C. punks? Well, actually, quite a lot (and not all of it has to do with Eugene Hutz, Elijah Wood or Borat). 
If rock 'n' roll is about breaking all the rules, Christian music is rock's polar opposite. There are definite rules that need to be followed and lines that shouldn't be crossed. That doesn't mean there aren't artists who strain at those confines, eager to broaden horizons and get people thinking. Sometimes it's a single song in an otherwise conservative career, sometimes it's an artist's ongoing mission to shake things up. Either way, Christian music is better for these rebels who push the boundaries and continue to make us question our ideas of what's good or right or even "Christian."
We could lay out a bunch of "women are awesome" quotes right about now, but the ladies we spotlight on this Cheat Sheet would likely cringe at such clichés; they'd cringe and then probably be inspired to create some sort of inexplicable masterpiece. Really, these sirens need no introduction. We've put them into rough categories, only to make the navigation a little easier, but all of them could easily slink under any of these groupings: the Femmes Fatales, the Edgy Eccentrics, the Brooding Romantics, the Quirky Thinkers, the Wistful Dreamers. All of these women have shaken up the music world (and plenty of men as well) — and thank heavens for that. Take a listen to our 
Just as the East Coast hip-hop industry experienced its renaissance in the mid-'90s, so did the South's. The latter wasn't a musical revolution, at least in terms of beats. Southern artists still took their cues from the West Coast and producers like 
Chicago's Kranky label has had a handle on its aesthetic from the very beginning, when albums from 
A couple of years ago I was programming a new Rhapsody radio station to complement our New Wave channel. Since it was called ‘80s Alternative, I was loading it up with hundreds of songs from the 1980s (no duh!). Picking songs for this station was easy as can be — after all, this was the era I grew up in. But when I listened to the station I knew that something was wrong.
Ten years ago, Luke Lewis, chairman of Universal Nashville, made his dream of a nurturing, singer-songwriter-oriented label into reality with the launch of Lost Highway. The aim was to create a label that, as he says, "might be a haven for artists that make enduring music not driven by hits on the radio," and Lost Highway put that dream to the test with their first release, the soundtrack to the quirky movie, O Brother, Where Art Thou? Five Grammy Awards and 7 million sales later, Lost Highway was up and running in the fast lane. Since then, the label has released gems from pioneers such as Willie Nelson, Elvis Costello and Johnny Cash as well as groundbreakers including Whiskeytown and the Jayhawks. Not to put too much emphasis on the numbers, but since its inception, the label has released 80 albums, sold 18 million units, and earned 53 Grammy nominations resulting in 15 wins.
While you're reading, listen to the entire playlist: 
Ms. Avril Lavigne's latest, 
Although the 1980 movie Urban Cowboy was panned by critics, the general public was attracted to something beyond the thin plot and John Travolta's fine two-step moves — which, let's face it, paled in comparison to his electrifying disco moves in 
Time to travel back to the mythical mid-1960s, when the folk revival stumbled into the British Invasion and 
It's impossible to summarize the contributions of black musicians to our cultural history with a few random albums. Some of the innovators we could not fit into this short list include 
Heavy metal is, in many ways, a music of tradition — it has by now accumulated more than 40 years of baggage, after all. So artists and fans alike have always been eager to pay homage to giants and dinosaurs who trod the earth in days of yore. In recent years, bands from all geographic and stylistic corners of the metal universe have taken to recording albums consisting entirely or primarily of cover versions, presumably as a way to highlight their inspirations — i.e., artists whose vinyl they wore holes through before becoming stars themselves. It's also an easy way to get new product on the streets, without having to bother writing new songs. So here's a stack of such albums — many with selections that may well surprise you. 
Heavy metal, descended as it was from the deep and dark despair of mid-'60s garage-verging-on-psych bands like 
The idea of singing — harmonizing — as a duo has gone hand in hand with country music since long before labels started recording it in the 1920s. Family acts, who would have been harmonizing with each other at home and in church for years, became a popular attraction in the '30s and '40s, and laid the foundation for duos (related or not) for decades to come.
"Alternative metal" is an awfully nebulous genre tag, one that first emerged in the early 1990s. Looking back on those heady days, it was more or less slapped on any quasi-metal outfit that didn't fit nicely into an already established genre, be it thrash, groove metal, industrial metal, grunge, death metal, hardcore, progressive metal or even alternative rock. In fact, what united groups as disparate as Helmet, Jane's Addiction, Deftones and Life of Agony was how they blurred the lines between said genres, and in the process helped lay the groundwork for the rise of nu metal. Of course, this is either a good or bad thing depending what you think of Korn and 
Last year, Otis "
Punk rock, as theoretically invented in 1976 (even though it had technically been around for years before that), came off as a fairly artistic proposition from the get-go — plenty of high-minded academic theory involved, not to mention guys and gals who'd flunked out of art school and cared as much about their look as their sound. Also, lots of it pretty much just sounded like '70s metal played faster, but with fewer chops, and brutish soccer hooligans thought it a bloody good soundtrack for beating up strangers. So inevitably, as the decade wound down, some of punk's more thoughtful practitioners decided to branch out beyond those primal three chords and attempt to re-invent rock 'n' roll from scratch — or at least from ideas about noise, dub, doom, gloom, funk, feminism, communism, anarchism, amateurism and even old-school European art-rock eccentricity that could no longer be mistaken for mere greaser nostalgia. Hence, "post-punk." England (home of 13 of the 15 bands below) was inarguably the hotbed, but there was action on American and Australian peripheries as well. Some of it worked better on paper than in practice; most of it sold out by the time MTV went on the air. But it was really exciting while it lasted. 
Post-rock may be something of a vague term; the emphasis on "rock" negates the complexity of this subgenre that is virtually boundless in its fusion of elements from jazz, metal, punk, shoegazer, Krautrock, classical and electronic music.
Love 'em or hate 'em, there's no denying the mega-impact of the greatest-hits package on classic rock. Let's face it: for the overwhelming majority of us, our first Steve Miller album wasn't 
The drone. It's a sustained note that hangs, while music happens (or doesn't happen) around it ... and when you start digging, you can find it everywhere: in 
The mythical emcee is usually an egoist, often claiming credit for constructing a song himself (even though "ghostwriters" and others contribute lyrics more often than the public realizes) and relegating the producer to the background (even though producers not only create the beat, but sometimes the arrangements and even the hooks) and engineers to the liner notes (even though engineers often play a crucial role in the sound and vibe of an album). It's no surprise that, as hip-hop has become big business, classic groups of the '80s and '90s like 
Hair metal, if memory serves, wasn't particularly called "hair metal" much during most of its heyday. Even circa 1987-88, when mascara and eyeliner dominated MTV, if you'd picked up a rock magazine you likely would've seen "pop-metal," "glam-metal," "false-metal," "shag-metal" or "Nerf-metal" at least as often. In retrospect, of course, the genre didn't seem to have much to do with "metal" at all. Even early on, the '70s acts it took as inspiration -- 
Although the marriage of Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash would end up being the marriage by which all others were measured, it was, famously, not without its trials. Each had been married before, and each had children from those marriages. You could hardly call them the Brady Bunch, but when it came to blending families, Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash were decades ahead of the curve. 
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