Ed Ward

Mike McGonigal runs the literary magazine Yeti. In his spare time, he's been collecting gospel 45s on vanity and tiny independent labels for years. He's now released a pair of three-CD sets featuring amazing, long-forgotten African-American gospel tracks from his collection.

One capital of soul in the 1960s? Muscle Shoals, Ala., a fly-speck on the map which spawned some of the era's greatest recordings, via productions in Rick Hall's Fame Studios. Rock historian Ed Ward has their story.

The band didn't have many big hits, but it helped define the music of its generation. With the release of The Smiths' complete works, rock historian Ed Ward looks back and tries to figure out what made the group so important.

SMiLE may be the most famous unreleased album of all time, but it's not really unreleased: bits and pieces of it wound up on other Beach Boys albums. Now that EMI has assembled a definitive collection of the session tracks, Ed Ward has listened to them -- and wonders what the shouting was about.

Al Green wrote "Take Me to the River," but it was his labelmate Syl Johnson who first made it famous. Rock historian Ed Ward traces Johnson's early career, which started in Chicago blues clubs in the 1950s.

Roy Orbison didn't really find his identity until he signed with a small Nashville label, Monument, in 1959. Ed Ward looks at the 17 singles that put him, and the Monument label, on the map.

In 1927 and '28, Ralph Peer, a talent scout for the Victor Talking Machine Company, set up recording sessions in a town straddling the Tennessee-Virginia border. The resulting sessions, rock critic Ed Ward says, laid the framework for all of country music.

Diamond has sold 128 million records and written and recorded 37 Top 40 songs. But in the early 1960s, rock historian Ed Ward says, Diamond was writing songs for other musicians while struggling to get his own career off the ground.

The Vagrants, one of New York City's most popular bands in the 1960s, recorded only 30 minutes' worth of music. Rock historian Ed Ward explains what happened to the band and why its music is worth hearing today.

It's hard to believe that Nick Lowe's second album, Labour of Lust, was out of print for over 20 years. But a new reissue by Yep Roc has remedied that situation. Rock historian Ed Ward says that it's good to have the album -- featuring the tracks "Without Love" and "Cruel to Be Kind" -- back on the shelves.