Ed Ward
Ed Ward is the rock-and-roll historian on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross.
Ward is the author of The History of Rock and Roll, Volume 1, 1920-1963, and a co-author of Rock of Ages: The Rolling Stone History of Rock & Roll, Ward has also contributed to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and countless music magazines. The first part of his two-volume history of rock and roll, covering the years 1920-1963, will be published by Flatiron Books in the fall of 2016.
Ward lives in Austin, Texas. He blogs at City on a Hill.
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In the '60s, musicians left New Orleans, major labels lost interest, and Motown and Memphis took over the black music charts. But one producer didn't give up.
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During a hiatus, some tapes surfaced of new songs Bob Dylan been writing: the infamous Basement Tapes. These songs have been collected in a box set.
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Singer Conley had a number of hits before disappearing in the '70s, a few years after his mentor Redding died in a plane crash. So where did he go? To Europe, where he changed his name.
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The archetypal '70s band had a charismatic frontman and wonderful songs, but they also had drug problems and kept breaking up. Their Warner Bros. recordings are in a new box set called Rad Gumbo.
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With the release of the 131-track collection Soul and Swagger: The Complete "5" Royales, the group has finally gotten the recognition they deserve.
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Between 1917 and 1932, the label released thousands of records. Jack White's Third Man Records has joined with the reissue label Revenant to release the first of two packages documenting Paramount.
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Largely ignored today, the rough-and-tumble quintet from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne gets reassessed in a new box set, titled The Mickie Most Years & More. -
There was a time when people in the know in Memphis described James Govan as Otis Redding's natural successor. A new compilation collects some of his unreleased recordings. -
A new nine-hour box set, titled Sun Country Box: 1950-1959, collects Sun Records' country output. -
In 2012, the band became another rock group that was celebrating its 50th anniversary. This year, it released Made in California, an eight-hour, six-disc retrospective of their career that, perhaps inadvertently, shows how this once-great force in American popular music faded from public view.
