Ry Cooder

3.5 stars (out of 4) Producer-musician Jim Dickinson was a gentlemanly maverick who served as the unofficial historian and advocate for the most deeply imbedded strands of Southern music. His death in 2009 was a huge blow, not least of......

Fernando Ruelas, who with his brothers founded Duke's So. Cal, considered the world's oldest continuing lowrider car club, and expanded its reach beyond Southern California during his years as president, has died. He was 60. Ruelas died of cancer...

Don Van Vliet, a maverick musician who emerged from the Southern California desert with the name Captain Beefheart and a singular and influential form of avant-garde rock in the 1960s, died Friday. He was 69. Van Vliet, who retreated to a reclusive...

Rhino's latest Nuggets set offers a comprehensive look at the mid-'60s music scene. Yes, the marquee names are here -- many performing rarities -- but so too are the long-forgotten acts. The mid-'60s was a remarkably dynamic time in pop......

May 9, 1980: Times’ Pulitzer winner Howard Rosenberg, in top form, interviews Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca. Caesar talks about Mel Brooks … and “Saturday Night Live.� Sneak preview of “The Long Riders� … I didn’t realize Ry Cooder did the...

Pop quiz: How many No. 1 hits did Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member Otis Redding score before his death in 1967 in a plane crash? Answer: None. The R&B and soul great’s only chart-topping hit was “(Sittin’ On)......

Ry Cooder has added his voice -- and guitar -- to the raging debate over Arizona’s recent SB 1070 law targeting illegal immigration with "Quicksand," a fiery song he posted on iTunes this week. The veteran guitarist, singer, songwriter and......

The Roskilde Festival in Denmark, billed as Northern Europe’s biggest music and culture festival, usually coincides with Independence Day in the U.S., and this year, veteran composer-arranger-orchestrator-raconteur Van Dyke Parks decided to weave...

Jim Dickinson, a piano player and producer who helped shape the Memphis sound in a career that spanned more than four decades, died Saturday. He was 67. His wife, Mary Lindsay Dickinson, said he died in a Memphis, Tenn., hospital after three months of...

Most Southland music fans know McCabe's Guitar Shop for the innumerable folk, country, blues, jazz and world-music concerts presented over the decades in the tiny back stockroom that can hold about 150 folding chairs when all the instrument cases are...

Sometimes, when winter lingers in your bones, you probably wish you could get out of Dodge. You long to fly to distant places for great, soul-stirring adventures and palate-pleasing meals bursting with foreign flavors. But how can you travel without plane...

TÊTE-À-TÊTE: JIMMY SMITS If it seems Jimmy Smits has been in our living rooms for the best part of 20 years, it’s because he has. With iconic roles on L.A. Law, NYPD Blue, The West Wing, Cane and a recent stint on Showtime’s Dexter, this actor has...