Historian David Fowler of Cambridge University said this week that Sixties pop icons like John Lennon and Mick Jagger were essentially phonies, claiming that "Swinging London" was merely "a celebration of wealth by its social elite" and that "groups like The Beatles were basically capitalists interested in enriching themselves through the music industry. They did about as much to represent the interests of the nation's young people as The Spice Girls did in the 1990s." Do you agree? Let me know what you think!

They were already the first family of Gospel, folk protesters in their own right, friends of MLK, and products of an authentic Delta blues master... but it was when the Staple Singers joined Stax and left their native Chicago for Muscle Shoals that they truly entered the area of legend. Read all about the Staple Singers here in my new profile.

One of the most incendiary live albums in music history, 1967's Otis In Europe documented the master's rise to fame on a London stage in March 1967. But just a few days later, he gave a concert that was arguably just as wild - and now the revived Stax label has combined both the released and unreleased cuts on one smokin' platter. Read my review of Otis Redding's Live In London And Paris here.

It's influenced swing, jazz, blues, and rock, and poked its head into the cultural mainstream several times over the course of three decades. Rock and roll would have been impossible to conceive without it... and yet this style, born in humble lumber camps, is barely recognized as a style at all anymore. Read and hear more about the "boogie-woogie" style in my new entry, the latest in a series.