Ben Manilla

The story behind Zydeco performer Clifton Chenier.  

If there’s one holiday album everyone can agree on, it’s “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” by Vince Guaraldi. Here’s how it came to be.

The First Family broke new ground for comedy by openly mocking the Kennedys — even though it was recorded during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

If there’s one Christmas album everyone can agree on, it’s “A Charlie Brown Cristmas,” by Vince Guaraldi. Here’s how it came to be.

Linda Ronstadt’s “Heart Like a Wheel” made her a household name. Now it’s in the National Recording Registry.

The First Family broke new ground for comedy by openly mocking the Kennedys — even though it was recorded during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Buck Owens didn’t think he could fill Carnegie Hall, but the 1966 show turned out to be one of the highlights of his career.

Mississippi in the 1910s produced some of our country’s greatest blues artists. It also produced one of our greatest operatic singers, soprano Leontyne Price.

Saxophonist Ornette Coleman's 1959 record, The Shape of Jazz to Come, introduced the world to the art of jazz improvisation.

Before there was Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, even before Lennie Bruce, there was Will Rogers, America's first political comic.

The Wild Tchoupitoulas was an all-star band that celebrated the music of a New Orleans institution--the Mardis Gras Indians.

George Jones talked with Studio 360 about his song "He Stopped Loving Her Today." It was chosen for preservation in 2008 in the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry.

In 1977 Donna Summer released a single that changed the sound of dance music forever. 

The soundtrack of the holidays is lousy with annoying songs about sleigh rides and snowmen, and beautiful old carols done up as treacly as possible. One of the saving graces this time...

The year 1967 saw the release of two psychedelic pop masterpieces — one globally famous (the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper), the other nearly forgotten: Forever Changes, by Love.

Gabby Pahinui was a master of the style known as slack-key. His "Hula Medley," from 1947, helped introduce slack-key to the world, and it was chosen for the National Recording Regist...

The Sons of the Pioneers' 1934 song “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” was written by a Canadian by birth who fell in love with the American West when his family moved to Tucson.  

The New Orleans piano player Henry Roeland Byrd made a name for himself as Professor Longhair, a former street hustler turned self-taught musician who started recording in his early...

Trout Mask Replica (1969) is part free jazz, part blues, part beat poetry. Frank Zappa (who gave singer-songwriter Don van Vliet the name Captain Beefheart) produced the album. “It ...

Did you know there are audio recordings that predate Thomas Edison's phonograph by almost 20 years? The phonautogram was invented by a Frenchman named Eduoard Leon-Scott and patente...