#jimmy reed

New on RBP

THIS WEEK’S Rock’s Backpages home page focuses on two extraordinary women. One is Aaliyah, the R&B “princess” who tragically died 20 years ago; the other is one-woman song factory Diane Warren…

 There’s a 1995 interview with the 15-year-old Aaliyah plus tributes to her by Miles Marshall Lewis & Michael A. Gonzales. RBP subscribers can meanwhile hear Steven Daly’s 1990 audio interview with Warren, who’s just released her first solo album The Cave Sessions, Vol. 1…

Free for a week are three pieces by featured writer Guy Stevens, most famous for producing the Clash’s London Calling. With Ronnie Wood’s tribute to Jimmy Reed out next month, we’ve included Guy’s 1964 interview with the Chicago blues legend. Wood’s name inevitably reminds us that we’ve lost Charlie Watts, the man who once bopped Mick Jagger on the nose for referring to him as “my drummer”. And of course the news came in yesterday that the great “upsetter” of Jamaican roots music Lee “Scratch” Perry had passed away aged 85. We’ve pulled out archive pieces on both men…

Subscribers get to peruse the usual 50+ additions to the RBP library, including notable pieces about:

• The Grand Ole Opry (1961) • Kim Fowley (1969) • AC/DC (1977) • Donna Summer (1983) • Ray Davies (1987) • Prince (1991) • Jah Wobble (2009)… and (from 2015) Lizzy Mercier Descloux.

Don’t miss the latest RBP podcast episode, with special guest Richard Williams professing his abiding love for Laura Nyroandthe Beach Boys’ Surf’s Up.“If you down with the clique,Let me hear you say, I’m down with it…”

Free for a week in the RBP spotlight

STEVENS CALLING — Clash producer Guy Stevens, who died 40 years ago this week, speaks to Jimmy Reed(Record Mirror, 1964), sees Smokey Robinson & Solomon Burke live at Chicago’s Regal (RM, 1964) and explains how country met rock'n'roll at Sam Phillips’ Sun Records(International Times, 1969).