It’s an injustice that the roll call of great 1960s male soul singers — Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, Sam & Dave, Ben E. King, etc. — often excludes Chuck Jackson. Jackson, who died Feb. 16 at the age of 82, had everything it takes to make that list…

Polito Vega and New York Hispanic radio grew up together, and over their six intertwined decades they created quite the party. When Vega died March 9 in his North Bergen, N.J., home, age 84, he was widely and rightly hailed as one of the pioneers who elevated New York area…

A couple of months ago, the comic strip “Dilbert” gave readers a long cameo from a character named Dave. Dave was black. He had been hired by the strip’s office manager, the Pointy-Haired Boss, to satisfy a diversity quota. Only problem was, Dave announced that he identified as white. So…

One of the many fascinating things about New Orleans, arguably America’s most musical city, is how many of its musicians have sustained long and revered careers without the benefit of multiple hit records. Huey (Piano) Smith, who died Monday at the age of 89, reached the top 10 on the…

When Gina Lollobrigida died last month, I was thinking that she stirred fond memories for a lot of us who were teenage boys in the 1960s. When Raquel Welch died Wednesday, you could multiply that stirring by a factor of five or 10. Maybe more. I was in a discussion…

When we think of one-hit wonders in the pop music world, we often assume that catching the lightning once exhausts everything this artist had to say. Sometimes it does. But for others, the miscalculation is ours, because we carelessly equate commercial success with artistic merit. Most pop music fans these…

If you stepped onto the sidewalk of any decent-sized American city and randomly tossed a pebble, odds are at least 50–50 that you would hit someone who used to be a member of the Drifters. A rhythm and blues vocal group that began in 1953 and established a remarkable legacy…

Cindy Williams spent the last half of her life being known as Shirley Feeney from Laverne & Shirley. She was, she said, fine with that. “I love my life,” she said in 2013. “I wouldn’t trade it for anyone’s.” Williams died Sunday at the age of 75, after what was…

When music fans and historians talk about the great songwriters of Motown in the 1960s, they will usually reel off Holland-Dozier-Holland, Norman Whitfield and Smokey Robinson and then take a break — not because there were no others, but because that group casts such a long shadow over everyone else. …