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Last modified on Mon 31 May 2021 12.59 EDT In 1969, BJ Thomas, who has died of complications from lung cancer aged 78, spent four weeks at the top of the US chart with Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head, from the soundtrack of the popular film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It is the song he will always be synonymous with, but he nearly didn’t get to sing it. As Thomas recalled, its composer Burt Bacharach originally wanted Bob Dylan to record it, but Dylan could not or would not oblige. Then Ray Stevens was offered it, but he too declined. When Thomas was at last given the job, he wa...

It was a couple of years ago when Maria Muldaur was shopping for clothes at a favorite store when she heard “the most beautiful vintage jazz” of the ‘20s and ‘30s playing over the speakers. And though she couldn’t peg the artist, the interest of the woman who’s been called “The First Lady of Roots Music” was piqued immediately. Imagine her surprise when the shop owner told her that the band was Tuba Skinny, an act made up of young players from New Orleans who had put out a few CDs, but mostly performed on the streets of the Big Easy. Still not convinced about their age, Muldau...

February 26, 2021 When Wallace Willis created his mournful song, “Steal Away to Jesus,” he voiced his suffering in slavery with a lament that has evoked a powerful response through the ages and across the world. “Steal Away” has touched poets, presidents, queens, composers, and blind street musicians. The song speaks to brokenness and sorrow across ages. It has spoken to a blind street singer in Macon, Georgia in the 1950s trying to make a living singing “slave songs” with a collection cup tacked to his guitar, and to an English composer who heard in it the suffering of the Nazi p...