Robert Baird

The results are quite remarkable, as can be heard in this comparison between the original LP master and the 192/24 digital version archived in April of 2015.

The mini–dustup over Etta James saying she “can’t stand” Beyonce and was gonna “whip” or “whoop” her ass is a hoot. First of all, Etta’s legacy is in no danger. No one will ever top her rendition of “At Last.” That performance, her greatest single track, is in no danger of being superseded.

Publishing has a way of keeping you humble. Many years ago, after a scheduled show by her had been abruptly canceled, a club owner told me that Etta James had died.

Many if not most of the world’s most admired albums attained their fame slowly. In the case of Exile on Main Street which was released forty years ago on May 12, 1972, it took years for its ragged, bluesy charms to percolate into the collective psyche and eventually emerge as if not the best, then one of the contenders in the Stones catalog.

A distant relative to what folks in the rest of the United States sometimes call "pizza."

It drives me nuts when people, some of them intelligent and not prone to idiotic statements, say things to me like a colleague did the other day: "Do you ever hear a good record anymore?"

Another Rock 'n' Roll Legend Dies.