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  • Edwards is one of the last men who knew the iconic bluesman Robert Johnson.
  • She had a voice of striking, unusual beauty — and looks to match — yet she spent much of her life misunderstood and under-recorded. Now, 15 years after her death, the elusive folk singer's music has never been more popular.
  • Country music legend Willie Nelson and jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis discover common ground and a mutual love of jazz standards and the blues on their album Two Men With The Blues. Here, the artists discuss their first-ever collaboration.
  • The monks of Heiligenkreuz Abbey in Austria sing ancient Gregorian chants in their 12th-century church — and then post them to YouTube. Their technological savvy landed them a record deal, and now their album is storming the European charts and arriving in America. Father Karl Wallner talks to host Andrea Seabrook about balancing pop stardom with the religious life.
  • Twenty-five years after its first album, the New Jersey band is still selling out Madison Square Garden and putting out chart-topping singles. But these days, its sound is a little more country, and it's recording in Nashville. That may be because pop and rock songs have left behind the working-class, everyday guy, while country music sings straight to him.
  • The new album from the Philadelphia hip-hop band The Roots contains verses from the perspective of a child soldier in Sierra Leone, a campus shooter in America, and those in the grip of addictions. Rising Down may be the group's best album.
  • The launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik 50 years ago this week marked the dawn of the space age — and sparked songwriters' imaginations.
  • In the 1950s, no bluesman was more popular than Jimmy Reed. He wrote hits like "Bright Lights Big City" and "Big Boss Man" and pioneered the ubiquitous "thump" guitar riff. Two accomplished Texas bluesmen, Omar Kent Dykes and Jimmie Vaughan, pay tribute to Reed on their new CD.
  • One of the most popular poets among Western readers today is actually a long dead poet of the East. Rumi, the 13th century poet of the Persian empire, still inspires with his works evoking ecstasy and the divine.
  • He was a teenager when his band, The Stray Cats, had its first big hit. These days, Lee Rocker spends most of his time with his own group, which just released a new CD. And, true to his rockabilly roots, he still wields a mighty upright bass.
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