Chris Morris

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Hot Rails to Hell

Chris Morris
LONG BEFORE HIS BODY WAS INTERRED, NEXT TO his beloved mother's, in Graceland's Meditation Garden, Elvis Presley was entombed alive behind the mansion's walls. The shadow of that living death hangs heavily in the pages of Careless Love, the second of Peter Guralnick's two volumes devoted to Elvis' life. Knowing......
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Eastside Chronicles

Chris Morris
SOME ARTISTS CAN TRAVEL LIGHT-YEARS OUT OF their original orbit and still return home. So it is with Los Lobos. Founded in 1973 by four graduates of Garfield High in East L.A. -- David Hidalgo, Cesar Rosas, Louie Perez and Conrad Lozano -- Los Lobos del Este de Los Angeles......
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Can Blue Men Play the Whites?

Chris Morris
Jon Spencer do not play no blues. He tells you that, his own bad self, on "Talk About the Blues," the first single from his current Matador Records album, Acme. Over a rumbling groove that's split by a sampled shard of Judah Bauer's guitar, Spencer, utilizing that mush-mouthed white-blooze voice......
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Electric Judas

Chris Morris
Last year, Warner Bros. Records issued Royal Queen Albert & Beautiful Homer, a promotional CD by Robyn Hitchcock, the reigning king of Anglo-wackiness. The disc contained a track from Hitchcock's then-current album, Moss Elixir, and 11 live renditions of songs written by Bob Dylan - two acoustic, eight with a......
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Screamin' Jay Hawkins

Chris Morris
Listen to Screamin' Jay Hawkins: Real Audio Format I Put a Spell on You Orange Colored Sky Frenzy Download the RealPlayer FREE! "Screamin' Jay's the shit," proclaims Eszter Balint as she lugs a boom box blaring Screamin' Jay Hawkins' 1956 recording of "I Put a Spell on You" down a......
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Pair o’ Dice and the Blues

Chris Morris
DAVID HONEYBOY EDWARDS The World Don’t Owe Me Nothing (Earwig Music) THE WORLD DON’T OWE ME NOTHING: The Life and Times of Delta Bluesman Honeyboy Edwards By DAVID HONEYBOY EDWARDS As told to JANIS MARTINSON and MICHAEL ROBERT FRANK Chicago Review Press 224 pages $24 hardcover Time has a way......
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Making Tracks

Chris Morris
BOBBY FULLER El Paso Rock Volume 2: More Early Recordings (Norton) THE BOBBY FULLER FOUR Never To Be Forgotten (Mustang) One recent Saturday night, I idly tuned in to the Arts & Entertainment network, the "All Crime All the Time Channel." Between a Gary Gilmore flashback and an awful TV......