McCoy Tyner

"Guitars"

McCoy Tyner Music/Half Note

He’s perhaps best known as John Coltrane’s pianist during the saxophonist’s most fertile years. Until now, McCoy Tyner had never made a recording with electric guitars, nor had he recorded with banjo players. Supported by the equally estimable Ron Carter (bass) and Jack DeJohnette (drums), Tyner pounds out his thick, harmonically encompassing chords alongside five of jazz’s finest fret-men, with varying degrees of success. The 14-track album includes a DVD documenting five of these performances.

Outgoing and experimental Marc Ribot, who improvises freely with Tyner, and inward-looking and experimental Bill Frisell, who contributes a pair of West Africa-inspired compositions, bring the most to these casual sessions. John Scofield, on the other hand, is solid if uninspiring. And Allman Brothers Band guitarist Derek Trucks, the nephew of drummer Butch, sounds overwhelmed by the company. Banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck, alas, squanders his opportunity to do anything unexpected with the Coltrane Quartet staple, "My Favorite Things."

Jackson Browne

"Time the Conqueror"

Inside Recordings 

On his recent album, "Harps & Angels," Randy Newman satirically calls out Jackson Browne as our national singer-songwriter-savior. Browne proves Newman’s characterization more or less apt on "Time the Conqueror" in such rabble-rousing, left-leaning tracks as "The Drums of War," "Going Down to Cuba," and "Far From the Arms of Hunger," all of which are far more musically compelling than their titles might suggest. Browne contemplates time’s double-edged nature (it both heals and harms) in the title track and elsewhere sings about l-o-v-e with refreshing maturity and a really hot band.

 "If music be the food of love, play on,

Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,

The appetite may sicken, and so die."

     -- William Shakespeare, "Twelfth Night"

Talk about too much of a good thing. If music "be the food of love," as Shakespeare suggests, the music of food is something completely different. Food and music have long been associated, of course: First we dine and then we dance. But the 10 best songs about food stand on their own – and love has nothing to do with it. Use the comments section to let us know what songs get you salivating.

10. A ****’s hoof joins a bottle of beer and a "gang of gin" on the Saturday-night menu of "sin" that a Harlemite endorses in Wesley Wilson’s "Gimme a Pigfoot." Blues legend Bessie Smith added a then-legal "reefer," perhaps as appetite enhancer, in her raucous 1933 rendition.

9. Impish reggae producer-singer Lee Perry’s "Roast Fish and Cornbread" is a ghostly sounding yet deeply grooving celebration of a Jamaican dance party where food provides fuel for all the revelers "skanking in the backyard."

8. The first million-selling record by a male African-American, Josh White’s 1944 version of "One Meatball" told the melancholy tale of man who learns, thanks to an obnoxious waiter, that 15 cents will not buy him a side of bread with his ground round. The song actually dates back to the 1860s, when it was known as "The Lone Fish Ball."

7. Louis Armstrong reveled in everyday life. His wife Lillian Hardin-Armstrong’s "Struttin’ With Some Barbecue," which he recorded with his Hot Seven in 1927, may be an instrumental, but you can practically smell the roasting pig.

6. In 1967, Paul McCartney provided celery-chewing percussion for an early version of the Beach Boys’ "Vegetables." Brian Wilson’s sweet paean to clean living would not be released in its entirety until 2004, when a whole new generation could ponder lyrics such as, "I tried to kick the ball but my tenny flew right off/ I’m red as a beet ’cause I’m so embarrassed." (Not to be confused with the Mothers of Invention’s "Call Any Vegetable.")

5. Lyrics about cooking grease and cigarette smoke help make Tom Waits’s "Eggs & Sausage" the Smell-O-Vision equivalent of the Edward Hopper painting ("Nighthawks at the Diner") the growling singer mentions in the opening line of one of his best-known songs.

4. Written by George Harrison in tribute to pal Eric Clapton’s chocolate cravings, the Beatles’ "Savoy Truffle" is good enough to eat. Harrison’s coconut fudge and ginger slings were cribbed from a box of Mackintosh Good News candies.

3. When it comes to unappetizing yet brilliant food songs, I hereby declare a tie between "The Worst Pies in London" and "A Little Priest," both from the Stephen Sondheim musical "Sweeney Todd." You’ll never enjoy a meat pie in quite the same way again. And is that squire on the fire?

2. Released this year, Paul Shapiro’s "Essen" is an album of zany Yiddish swing devoted almost entirely to food. The hilarious title track documents the entire menu of a weekend stay at a Catskills resort, from soup to nuts. Es gezunderheit! as they say in the old country. Eat in health!

1. Food always tastes better when you’re subsisting on a diet of gruel. Hence the exuberance universally displayed by whichever orphans happen to be singing "Food Glorious Food" in Lionel Bart’s "Oliver!" musical. The waifs don’t care what their repast looks like as long as they get that "full-up feeling." And sometimes that’s all that magical, wonderful, marvelous, fabulous food requires.

On September 1, the online store Amazon and

debuted their new music site,

, which they hope will combine IMDb's comprehensive accumulation of facts with

collaborative, reader-written character – along with easy on-site shopping, of course. At present, the site isn't much use for anything outside rock and pop (if you've got some time on your hands, Ludwig Van Beethoven and Lefty Frizell still await profiles), but it could well evolve into a vast source of free information in years to come.

Until then, here are some music sites that do an outstanding job in their respective fields:

A terrific site for jazz news, reviews, columns, and interviews,

strives to illuminate the music for beginners as well as seasoned snobs. A robust forum addresses topics ranging from "Yet another jazz newbie looking for recommendations" to "Wild Fusion Jazz" and everything in-between. The Jazz News Center posts up-to-the-minute tidings, and both professional and amateur enthusiasts contribute CD reviews of both familiar and exceedingly obscure artists. In its kitchen-sink approach, All About Jazz embodies the ideal of what a genre-oriented site should be. Runner-up:

Glossier and more corporate than most music sites, but no less useful, The

cable channel's site focuses on country music's present while respecting its glorious past. For this we could probably thank its editor, Chet Flippo, who applies decades' of historical perspective to his weekly

column. You'll also find plenty of Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, and Reba McEntire videos – and entire TV shows, too – as befits a site attached to a TV station. Runner-up:

.

Classical music attracts intriguing individual sensibilities. My favorite read is

, which is written by a novelist who also covers classical music for British newspaper "The Independent." Duchen is foremost a fan, albeit a particularly knowledgeable one. Her latest posts include an article on conductors eschewing formal wear onstage, a rave review of a new production of "Carmen," and observations on the London Symphony Orchestra/South Ossetia connection. Runner-up:

Among countless pop and rock sites,

(disclosure: for whom

) concentrates on rock, soul, blues, jazz, country, and roots music that older audiences – in their greater wisdom – might appreciate. The current edition includes reviews of new Frank Sinatra, Southside Johnny, and Little Feat recordings; vintage features on Todd Rundgren, Elvis, and the Band; and Bucks Burnett's colorful memories of writing ad copy for Warner Bros. back in the day. Runner-up:

.

The

and

provide decent entries into the blues and rhythm & blues worlds, respectively, but tend to drop the ball when it comes to contemporary artists. For African music on a global scale, however, nothing comes close to

, which complements a lovingly produced weekly syndicated radio show devoted to African and world music. The site takes its international mandate seriously, and is just as likely to focus on the music of Cuba, Jamaica, and Black Peru in addition to Africa's inestimable musical riches. Runner-up: The Voice of America's

.

Kanaka’ole

"Kaumakaiwa"

Mountain Apple Company

Kaumakaiwa Kanaka’ole, 26, is a fifth-generation practitioner of the ancient Hawaiian art of hula. Too seldom heard outside the islands, Hawaiian music has continued to evolve while treading carefully between past and present. "Kaumakaiwa" contains stunning examples of traditional Hawaiian chant, whose epic production on this album resembles IMAX for the ears. Contemporary Hawaiian music, meanwhile, adds country and folk vocal styles. Backed by acoustic guitars and the occasional banjo, Kanak’ole’s vibrant tenor voice sweeps dramatically through his original poetic meditations on Hawaiian nature, culture, and ancestor worship. The most startling track, though, may be "Noho Ana I Hilo," when he is accompanied only by rushing wind and water.

Al Stewart

"Sparks of Ancient Light"

Appleseed

Al "Year of the Cat" Stewart has been the hip history teacher of singer-songwriters ever since his 1974 release, "Past, Present & Future." On his 18th album, Stewart delivers tuneful treatises about 19th-century British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury, the fall of the Shah of Iran, Elvis Presley’s roadside religious revelation, and the fifth-century Carthaginian explorer, Hanno the Navigator. Father knows best in "(A Child’s View of) The Eisenhower Years," but Dad will also find "new things to outrage him." Former Wings guitarist Laurence Juber concocts ingenious jazz, classical, and folk arrangements around Stewart’s genial melodies. The sense of a living past pervades.

Lang Lang/Zubin Mehta/Vienna Philharmonic
"Chopin: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 2"
Deutsche Grammophon

The 26-year-old Chinese piano virtuoso has been playing Chopin since he was five and these marvelous Chopin concertos have long been part of his repertoire, so it's no surprise that he knocks them out of the park. Subtleties abound. Lang Lang tempers Chopin's Romantic spirit with flawless classical technique, digging into the wilder and more impassioned passages with an improviser's doggedness. Much of the 20-minute opening Maestoso movement of Concerto No. 1 in E minor (which was actually written subsequent to the second concerto in F minor) is a series of piano fireworks that neither cloys nor ceases to amaze.


The Donkeys
"Living on the Other Side"
Dead Oceans

The laid-back country-rock of Neil Young, Poco, and the later Byrds resurfaces in the cozy harmonies and taciturn riffs of this young San Diego quartet. On their terrific second album, the Donkeys have rediscovered a nearly forgotten musical sweet spot that combines earnest craftsmanship with sly slacker wit. "My lady wears her curlers in the winter," observes whoever's singing "Dolphin Center," while "Nice Train" concerns drunken foolishness in Hipsterville. Honed in the group's local roadhouse, tracks like "Gone Gone Gone" and "Walk Through a Cloud" refine the album's overall see-ya-later theme to dusty perfection without a gram of pretension.

From infatuation to divorce, from break-ups to make-ups, country music's greatest male-female duos can distill an entire relationship down to a few teary verses and a catchy chorus. Want to play country couples counselor? Start with these nine passionate classics -- all preserved on YouTube.

Dolly Parton's pure mountain voice found its dazzling complement in older partner Porter Wagoner's Nudie suits of many colors. The intriguingly mismatched pair kept listeners guessing about their strictly musical relationship for years thanks to tunes like their poignant 1968 hit, "Holding On to Nothin'," which they performed more than once on Porter's long-running TV show.
 
George Jones knew how to keep a cheating song fresh. Country's baddest bad boy was likely married to Tammy Wynette when he and Melba Montgomery reprised their 1963 home-wrecking hit, "We Must Have Been Out of Our Minds," on TV, as a steel guitar gently weeps in the background.

Following mutual marital misfires, June Carter and Johnny Cash – probably country's healthiest couple over the long haul – remained hitched for 35 years until death did them part. Here they are in 1969, the year after their marriage, kicking up their heels and seemingly having the time of their lives as they sing Lee Hazelwood's "Jackson"

Jessi Colter also had a benign effect on fellow country outlaw Waylon Jennings, whom she reportedly helped kick a serious drug habit. The couple sound angelic – with Waylon appearing particularly tender – while singing Jenning's "Storms Never Last." Following Jennings death in 2002, Colter's career enjoyed a nice up tick with the 2006 release of her underappreciated "Out of the Ashes."

Earthy Loretta Lynn and puffy-haired Conway Twitty were the most successful country couple of the early 1970s, yet their chemistry always seemed strangely chaste. Check out their 1972 TV version of Freddie Hart's smooth recent hit, "Easy Loving," and see if you don't agree.

Lee Hazelwood and Nancy Sinatra share a gothic moment in this creepy yet magnificent 1967 black-and-white TV rendition of "Summer Wine." They were never romantically involved. In fact, Hazelwood was nearly 40 when he instructed the 25-year-old Sinatra to sing "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" as though she were "a 14-year-old girl who goes with truck drivers."

Little footage exists of tragic country-rock legend Gram Parsons, who died of a drug overdose, at age 27, in 1973. Fortunately, the magic of Parsons's musical partnership with Emmylou Harris transcends the low production values of the film that captured them singing "Big Mouth Blues" to a raucous Texas crowd.

According to Roseanne Cash, the 1988 video of "It's Such a Small World" she made with former husband Rodney Crowell embarrassed their children greatly. It's a pretty decent song, though, so it might have something to do with the hair. Crowell went on to write more pointedly political tunes, as on his new album, "Sex & Gasoline."

Relationships rarely end up in such a gorgeous shambles as that conjured up by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss in "Please Read the Letter." The rock god and pop-bluegrass queen let their unique brand of mystic mountain music shine during a 2007 Tennessee performance.
 

Brian Wilson

"That Lucky Old Sun"

Capitol

The Beach Boys’ troubled musical genius waxes autobiographical on the latest album in his surprising, and ongoing, artistic resurrection. With the songwriting assistance of bandmate Scott Bennett and longtime collaborator Van **** Parks, Wilson, 66, assumes the role of a solar observer overlooking Los Angeles in general and Wilson’s own unlikely career in particular.

Parks’s narrative interludes, voiced by Wilson, paint vivid pictures of Venice Beach, Olivera Street, and other familiar LA scenes. The tunes, meanwhile, concern Hollywood fantasies ("California Role"), female inspiration ("Forever My Surfer Girl"), Wilson’s "lost" years ("Midnight’s Another Day"), and his overall infatuation with the SoCal mystique ("Southern California"). Wilson and band perform them with angelic grace, surf-rock charm, and a bittersweet blend of nostalgia and possibility.

Billy Coulter

"Dose"

Confluence

This Washington, D.C., roots-rock favorite (and, it must be mentioned, daytime AARP employee) is an anomaly in a genre more typically represented by swaggering bad boys with cigarettes jammed between the strings and headstock of their guitars. And while the punning title of Coulter’s second album suggests pharmaceutical high jinks, his music combines tuneful and dynamic rock with seemingly hard-earned, emotional maturity. Coulter seems to direct his perceptive X-ray specs on the older dating scene in "Party of One," "Dragonfly," and "Striking a Pose." He offers consolation to a teenaged child of divorce in "Innocence" and calls out narcissists of all ages in "I’ll Be Happy When...". You’ll be happy when you hear it.

B. B. King has a classy new album called "One Kind Favor." It consists of a solid hour of jazzy blues, ranging from Blind Lemon Jefferson's "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean" to Lonnie Johnson's "Tomorrow Night," performed with passionate insouciance by a band featuring pianist Dr. John. On September 13, three days prior to his 83rd birthday, King will preside over the opening of the B. B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center in his hometown of Indianola, MS. Having played some 15,000 shows during the past 52 years, King still performs more evenings than not. So I wasn't surprised to find him in a Florida hotel room when we spoke by phone recently.

AARP: What's the concept behind "One Kind Favor"?

King: If I was going to pretend I had an idea, or was trying to make a point, I would say it's back to the beginning, somewhat. I'm trying to play some of the things I did when I first started. Not thinking about the times, contemporary music, or anything of that sort, but just doin' it. I'd have to say the theme would be: from the beginning.

AARP: You still perform hundreds of shows a year. How do you keep the experience fresh for yourself?

King: It's kind of like doing this interview. You ask me a question and I try to answer it. It's the same thing onstage. I try to play something that makes sense to me, and hopefully it makes sense to others. I never try to do exactly what I did last night or the night before; I try to do it as I feel it now. "The Thrill Is Gone" played better than anything else I ever made solo, and I play it every night. But I tell my band to play it as they feel it each night. Play the chord progression, but put yourself in it as you feel tonight, not like you felt last night. I like doing that, it keeps it fresh.

AARP: What makes you happiest these days?

King: Being onstage and playing to people who seem to be enjoying it is the happiest time of my life. But I'm also a family person. I have friends and acquaintances I love, too. But the happiest thing for B.B. King is when I'm onstage trying to entertain people. If I feel they get it, that is.

AARP: Are there many nights when you think they don't get it?

King: Yes. I have a motto: Always do your best. When I was in grade school, there was a poem a teacher used to tell us. I don't remember it verbatim, but part of it went something like, "Be thou great or small, do it well or not at all." I think about doing the best I can do each and every night I go onstage. But a lot of nights my best is nowhere as good as I'd like it to be.

AARP: Do you feel very different onstage today than you did when you were, say, in your 30s?

King: I can't compare that so much. When I go onstage today, it's business. And when I say business, I mean you're out there trying to say, "Here I am. I'm the blues singer, the entertainer. This is what I do, and I'm going to try to do it the best I can." But when I was younger, it didn't matter. I was having a good time, so... There's an old saying: "I hope you get yours, 'cause I got mine." But today it's different. I want the audience to get theirs. I'm not playin' for myself. I do that in my room.

AARP: What do you play for yourself in your room?

King: When I practice, which is seldom...I've never practiced as I should. But usually when I put on new strings myself – the guitar sounds better when it's got new strings – I play whatever strikes my fancy at the time. I've never tried to play what's on the record player verbatim other than when I was trying to mimic some of my idols. And I could never ever ever play like neither one of 'em. So I guess that's why I play so weird today. Because I could never do what they did.

AARP: Who were your idols?

King: Lonnie Johnson seemed to be the link between jazz and blues, country and blues, gospel and blues. He seemed to be able to fit into any type of music we hear in the Western world. I still want to be like that. Then I had a blues player called Lemon Jefferson who was born blind, according to what I read. He was from Texas, and he had a way of playing that seemed to go through me like a sword.

I also had a friend who went into the army the same time as I did, but he had duty overseas. He heard of a group called the Hot Club of France, and the leader of the group was called Django Reinhardt, a jazz player with a fantastic style on guitar. When my friend came back on furlough, he brought me some Django records and I fell in love with him. I also heard of another guitarist, one of the first blacks to be integrated into a white band, a guy called Charlie Christian. He played with Benny Goodman, who hired him the first time he heard Christian play – and he'd never had a black person in his group before, according to what I read. And finally, I went crazy for another Texan I heard playing single-string blues on electric guitar, and his name was T-Bone Walker. So all of those men were my idols, and still are. I have them on my mp3 player now – and still cannot play like 'em.

AARP: Looking back over your career, would you have done anything differently?

King: If I could live my life again, I would have finished high school and gone to college. I would have majored in computers, minored in music, and wouldn't have gotten married until after I was 40. But I loved the way I grew up, with the exception of the segregated part of it. We grew up poor. I learned to love people. I learned to live with people. I learned that I didn't know it all. I also believe that no man's an island. I need people, and that I would never change.

Jimmy Sturr and His Orchestra

"Let the Whole World Sing!"

Rounder

Jimmy Sturr has won 17 of the 22 Grammys ever awarded for best polka album. So try to restrain your shock when "Let the Whole World Sing!" grabs number 18. Sturr’s latest is an eclectic mix of country polkas (Raul Malo sings "Heartaches By the Number" and Ray Price "I Love You Because"), snappy instrumentals, a terrific Polish-language polka (Johnny Karas’s "Wojenko"), a comedy polka (Charlie Prose’s ode to obesity, "Suck It In"), and polkas about the simple joy of polkas. This blue-chip outfit is nothing if not consistent, and "Let the Whole World Sing!" easily demonstrates why polka fans, not to mention Grammy voters, prefer their polkas Sturred rather than shaken.

Loudon Wainwright III

"Recovery"

Yep Roc

Singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright reemerged with a bang in 2006 thanks to "Strange Weirdos: Music From and Inspired By the Film ’Knocked Up’" (whose finest moment was Wainwright’s version of songwriter Peter Blegvad’s magnificent "Daughter"). Not that Wainwright had ever disappeared. Over the course of some 20 albums, the 61-year-old occasional actor has remained one of the smartest, wittiest, and more personally revealing musicians around. On "Recovery," Wainwright revisits songs he recorded more than 30 years ago, recasting ruminations on teenage lust ("School Days"), one-night stands ("Motel Blues"), and alcoholism ("The Drinking Song") in sophisticated new arrangements.

Bob Dylan and Neil Diamond are the fully grown Goofus and Gallant of rock singer-songwriters. Where Dylan has always done as he pleased, audience be damned, Diamond is the consummate crowd pleaser. Seeing these black-clad, 67-year-old legends within a couple of days of one another (on August 12 and 14, respectively) was a rare and remarkable study in contrasts.

A craggy-faced Bob Dylan played to 7,000 parents, children, and hipsters at the Prospect Park Bandshell in Brooklyn. He was attired in red-striped matador pants, double-breasted Western suit jacket, and a big round gray hat while stationed at an electric keyboard situated perpendicular to his audience (and thus eliminating virtually all eye contact). He opened his 17-song set with "Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35," closed it with "Blowin' in the Wind," and played nothing recorded between 1970 and 2000 in-between. Beside introducing his rather uninspiring band, Dylan limited his typically rare stage patter to the following observation: "Man, I wish the Dodgers had never left Brooklyn."

Fellow Columbia recording artist Neil Diamond, on the other hand, was holding court for the second of four basically sold-out nights at Madison Square Garden, playing to an older crowd about three times the size of Dylan's. The lights dimmed abruptly and the "Jewish Elvis," a picture of health dressed nattily in a black sequined silk shirt and black slacks, appeared flashily silhouetted at the top of a raised stage containing his longtime 10-piece band and three backing singers. Like Dylan, Diamond performed without an opening act for more than two hours. Unlike Dylan, his set consisted of hit after hit – beginning with "Holly Holy" and ending with "Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show" – from his entire career. He also sprinkled in a handful of tracks from his two most recent albums, 2005's "12 Songs" and his new "Home Before Dark."

Dylan the crooner ("Lay Lady Lay" and "Girl of the North Country" were merely croaked) long ago gave way to Dylan the vocally limited improviser. Even his fine newer material – such as the searing "Honest With Me" and mystical "Spirit on the Water" – were sung as though he were interpreting another writer's work. Diamond, on the other hand, sounds virtually the same as ever, his strong baritone voice still a force to be reckoned with. Both Dylan and Diamond, in their own ways, resemble preachers. While the former spits Old Testament fire and brimstone (befitting his own Jewish upbringing), the latter offers hope, salvation, and a touch of Vegas.

Nothing particularly amazing happened during Dylan's show, unfortunately, although I was personally enthralled by the Oscar for "Things Have Changed" the Pulitzer Prize-winner keeps perched beside him. During "Sweet Caroline," however, Diamond's audience reacted as though a love drug had been injected into its collective system, rising as one, holding hands, and singing along with more fervor than at any arena-rock show I've ever experienced. Diamond milked the experience, reprising the final chorus two more times. Brooklyn, sadly, did not take to "Like a Rolling Stone" with nearly as much gusto.

Where Dylan was merely visiting, Diamond was born and raised in the borough he celebrated with touching home movies during "Brooklyn Roads." As ultimately disappointing as Dylan under the trees and stars may have been, he was as honest in his own way as Diamond was in his: both are driven, well-seasoned road warriors with plenty of gas left in their respective tanks. And they're coming to your town.

Bob Dylan tour dates

Neil Diamond tour dates