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      H.E.R.’s Soulful Suspicions, and 11 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Yves Tumor, Brittney Spencer, Tyler, the Creator and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.H.E.R., ‘Cheat Code’H.E.R. (Gabriella Sarmiento Wilson) has a rich grasp of soul and R&B history backed by her old-school musicianship as a singer, guitarist and keyboardist. There are 21 songs on her new album “Back of My Mind,” but most of them cling to a narrow palette: ballad tempos, two-chord vamps, constricted melody lines. “Cheat Code” is still a ballad, but a little more expansive. Its narrator is coming to grips with a partner’s infidelity — “What you’ve been doing’s probably something I ain’t cool with” — and warning, “You need to get your story straight.” The arrangement blossoms from acoustic guitar to quiet-storm studio band, with wind chimes and horns, only to thin out again, leaving her with just backup voices and a few piano notes, alone again with all her misgivings. JON PARELESBrittney Spencer, ‘Sober & Skinny’An insightful take on the way some relationships become sites of push and pull, one promise traded for another, one letdown making room for the next. “Sober & Skinny” is lonesome and doleful (some light melodic borrowing from Rihanna’s “Umbrella,” notwithstanding), the story of two people bound by their habits, and to each other, and how that can be the same thing: “I empty the fridge, you empty the bottle/we’re stacking up a mountain of hard pills we’ll have to swallow.” JON CARAMANICAAldous Harding, ‘Old Peel’The music is methodical and transparent: steady-ticking percussion, grumbling piano chords, spindly high guitar interjections, a melody line that barely budges. But Aldous Harding’s intent and attitude stay cheerfully, stubbornly, intriguingly opaque. “Old peel, no deal/I won’t speak if you call me baby,” she sings, utterly deadpan, enjoying the standoff. PARELESYves Tumor, ‘Jackie’Yves Tumor, the ineffable and audacious experimentalist, once again brandishes a reverence for Prince on “Jackie,” another venture into magisterial rock that clings to devastating grandeur. Tumor, who uses gender-neutral pronouns, assumes the role of a tortured ringleader, shepherding listeners into their surreal world of sexual and musical provocation. It’s almost easy to miss the song’s reality: a lament for the end of the relationship, in which Tumor’s anguish makes it difficult to eat and sleep. “These days have been tragic,” they wail, yearning for the possibility of a return of their body’s biological rhythms, and a promise that they will one day be whole again. ISABELIA HERRERATyler, the Creator, ‘Lumberjack’A return to croaky bragging for Tyler, the Creator, over a beat that heavily samples “2 Cups of Blood,” from the Gothically gloomy debut album by the Gravediggaz. Tyler’s boasts take the gleaming aesthete excess Pharrell once celebrated and gives it a tart edge: “Rolls-Royce pull up, Black boy hop out”; “Salad-colored emerald on finger, the size of croutons”; a credit card that “really can’t max out.” It’s a posture he’s earned:That’s my nuance, used to be the weirdoUsed to laugh at me, listen to me with their ears closedUsed to treat me like that boy Malcolm in the MiddleNow I’m zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zeroCARAMANICAStiff Pap featuring BCUC, ‘Riders on the Storm’Stiff Pap is an electronic duo from Johannesburg: the producer Jakinda and the rapper and singer Ayema Probllem. For “Riders on the Storm,” they’re joined by the Soweto band BCUC (Bantu Continua Uhuru Consciousness), adding gritty voices and salvos of percussion to both deepen and destabilize a track that’s already skewed and wily. Amid buzzing, hopscotching keyboard lines and fitful drumming, the song addresses, among other things, perpetual striving and social-media anxiety, doubled down by music that keeps shifting underfoot. PARELESChucky73, ‘Diri’A false start, a tiptoeing piano hook, a video featuring a golf course invasion: with “Diri,” the Bronx rapper Chucky73 has assembled an easy home run. The chubby-cheeked, beaming Lothario dazzles here, his slap-happy persona only amplified by his self-assured, nimble baritone and punch lines about the spoils of his success: “En do’ año’ me hice rico/El dinero me tiene bonito.” “In two years, I got rich,” he says. “The money’s got me looking cute.” HERRERAYoung Devyn, ‘Like This’Elsewhere on her debut EP, “Baby Goat,” Young Devyn leans into her Trinidadian roots and her past as a soca singer, and also toys with Brooklyn drill music. But on “Like This,” she’s just rapping — pointedly, nimbly, eye-rollingly: “I don’t even speak to my pops /How the hell would you think I would speak to my exes?” CARAMANICACochemea, ‘Mimbreños’Cochemea Gastelum, the saxophonist for the Dap-Kings soul and funk band, claims his heritage for “Baca Sewa Vol II,” his coming solo album. “Mimbreños” is named after his ancestors from the Mimbres Valley in New Mexico. It’s a call-and-response, his saxophone tune answered by vocal la-las, carried by calm, six-beat percussion. Then a marimba, hitting offbeats, supplies a vamp for Cochemea’s saxophone improvisations, abetted by biting electronic timbres. It’s untraditional, yet it feels deeply rooted. PARELESLeon Bridges, ‘Why Don’t You Touch Me’Leon Bridges, the Texas-based singer whose voice harks back to Sam Cooke, probes his unhappiness as a lover’s desire wanes in “Why Don’t You Touch Me.” A patient beat and lean electric-guitar chords accompany him as he questions, apologizes, complains and begs. “Don’t leave me out here unfulfilled/’Cause we’re slowly getting disconnected,” he reproaches, desperately longing to get physical. PARELESHarold Land, ‘Happily Dancing/Deep Harmonies Falling’“Westward Bound!”, a collection of never-before-released concert recordings from the early-to-mid-1960s at Seattle’s Penthouse club, offers a chance to revisit the overlooked career of Harold Land. A coolly expressive tenor saxophonist, Land left his mark in bands led by Max Roach and Clifford Brown and by the vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, but his own career as a bandleader never rose fully above the fray. In ways, “Happily Dancing/Deep Harmonies Falling,” a Land original, is quintessential hard-bop: the waltz-time swing feel, caught between elegance and heft; the cooperation between Land and the trumpeter Carmell Jones; the commingling of hard blues playing and balladic lyricism. But what sets this recording apart is Land, and his way of articulating each note with just enough restraint and sly timing to pull you in close. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOBen Goldberg, ‘Everything Happens to Be.’The clarinetist Ben Goldberg arranged “Everything Happens to Be.,” the title track from his rewarding new album (its name riffs on a jazz standard), in such a way that everyone in his quintet has a load-bearing role to play. The guitarist Mary Halvorson, the bassist Michael Formanek and the saxophonist Ellery Eskelin all carry different melodic parts, as the drummer Tomas Fujiwara employs a light touch to push things ahead, mirroring Formanek’s cadence without bearing down on him. RUSSONELLO More

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      DMX’s Posthumous All-Star Track, and 9 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Griff, Kidd G, Masayoshi Fujita and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.DMX featuring Jay-Z and Nas, ‘Bath Salts’This song from “Exodus,” the first posthumous DMX album, features a 1990s rap supergroup that could have been. DMX sounds limber and loose, and Jay-Z and Nas are having far more fun here than they did on the grown-and-grumpy “Sorry Not Sorry,” from the latest DJ Khaled album. The union of the three titans is consequential, but they treat it like a friendly cipher, the mark of stars confident in their legacy. JON CARAMANICASofi Tukker and Amadou & Mariam, ‘Mon Cheri’The nonprofit Red Hot Organization supports its efforts to fight AIDS with albums full of unexpected collaborators. The preview of its dance-oriented “Red Hot + Free” collection, due July 2, is “Mon Cheri,” which brings together the Florida dance-pop duo Sofi Tukker with the Malian singers Amadou & Mariam. Sophie Hawley-Weld of Sofi Tukker coos the verses in Portuguese, philosophizing about time and rhythm over a twangy guitar line that hints at Malian modes; when Amadou & Mariam arrive for the choruses, calling for togetherness in love, a 4/4 thump kicks in, steering the song directly to the dance floor. Before it’s over, a synthesizer starts cheerfully sputtering like a high-tech kazoo. JON PARELESMelvin Gibbs featuring Kokayi, ‘Message From the Streets’Tuesday marked the one-year anniversary of George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer, and the culmination of a heady year of Black Lives Matter organizing. It was also the bassist Melvin Gibbs’s birthday. Over the past 12 months, Gibbs paid a number of visits to the site of Floyd’s death, and he was moved by the complicated but nearly serene energy about the place, which has become a kind of pilgrimage site and memorial. On Tuesday, Gibbs released an EP, “4 + 1 Equals 5 for May 25,” that balances coiled frustration with catalytic release. The idea, he wrote in the notes accompanying the EP, was “to manifest peace while facing up to cataclysm.” Working with the Washington, D.C.-based rapper Kokayi, Gibbs assembled a collection of pieces (condensed here into a final composite track, “Message From the Streets”) that writhe and heave but fix a steady gaze on the world. The act of bearing witness becomes a means of unmaking, and maybe building anew. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOUpper Wilds, ‘Love Song #5’Dan Friel has been making noisy rock — frenetic guitar abetted by over-the-top electronics — since he founded the band Parts & Labor in the early 2000s. He’s still at it in his current band, Upper Wilds, and “Love Song #5,” from an album due in July titled “Venus,” comes on as a whirlwind. As he sings about how love changes nothing and everything at once, a stereo blitz of distorted strumming, whizzing arpeggios and screaming sustained tones insists how much it matters. PARELESGriff, ‘One Foot in Front of the Other’Griff, an English pop singer, songwriter and producer who won this year’s Brit award as rising new star, sounds optimistic despite herself with “One Foot in Front of the Other,” which will be the title song of her mixtape due June 18. Sure, her first steps are tentative as she recovers from a breakup — “Things just take longer to heal these days” — but her perky keyboard tones and a chord progression that descends but soon bounces back all insist that she’ll thrive, and soon. PARELESKidd G, ‘Break Up Song’Recently, the emo-rap-influenced country singer Kidd G announced a partnership with the Valory Music Co., a division of the country powerhouse Big Machine Label Group. It was a seeming acknowledgment that his most viable path forward would run through Nashville — or at least near it. And indeed, he is slowly homing in on a version of his hip-hop that’s structured more like contemporary country music. On “Break Up Song,” the guitars are fuller, and his rapping has less residue of Juice WRLD than his earlier songs. The laments are pure country, too: “I wiped your footprints off the window of my truck.” CARAMANICAFoy Vance, ‘Sapling’A songwriter from Northern Ireland who’s fond of vintage American soul music, Foy Vance has collaborated with Ed Sheeran, Alicia Keys and Kacey Musgraves. On his own, he harks back to Van Morrison’s better days, grainy and impassioned. Many of his previous songs have been folky and rootsy, but “Sapling” deploys electronic illusions as well. He strives to draw benevolence out of his own imperfections and regrets — “Am I strong enough?” he wonders — as patient piano chords open into vast reverberations. PARELESOhGeesy featuring DaBaby, ‘Get Fly’A union of one of hip-hop’s most stoic rappers and one of its most excitable. In this partnership, OhGeesy (formerly of Shoreline Mafia) pulls DaBaby into his patient tempo, a surprise victory. CARAMANICAMasayoshi Fujita, ‘Morocco’“Morocco” is from the new album, “Bird Ambience,” by Masayoshi Fujita, a Japanese vibraphonist and composer who constructs meditative pieces with a Minimalistic pulse — layers of vibraphone lines with fleeting apparitions of percussion and sustained brass tones. Every layer is melodic; follow any one closely, and it turns out to be far less repetitive than it seems at first. PARELESDave Holland, ‘Gentle Warrior’On his new album, “Another Land,” the eminent bassist Dave Holland teams up with the guitarist (and former “Tonight Show” musical director) Kevin Eubanks, a longtime Holland confidante, and the drummer Obed Calvaire, a newer collaborator. Holland is a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master and former Miles Davis accompanist whose career has skipped around from jazz-rock fusion to the avant-garde, often lingering in the spaces in between. On “Gentle Warrior,” the one track on “Another Land” penned by Calvaire, the drummer works across the full range of his kit, getting his cymbals to speak to one another; Holland takes a bass solo that’s endowed with lyrical flair, and pries at the piece’s complex five-beat rhythm. RUSSONELLO More

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      Roger Hawkins, Drummer Heard on Numerous Hits, Is Dead at 75

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      An innately soulful musician, he recorded with Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett and many others and was an architect of what became known as the Muscle Shoals sound.Roger Hawkins in performance in 1973. He was member of the band Traffic at the time, but he was best known as a studio musician.Brian Cooke/RedfernsRoger Hawkins, who played drums on numerous pop and soul hits of the 1960s and ’70s and was among the architects of the funky sound that became identified with Muscle Shoals, Ala., died on Thursday at his home in Sheffield, Ala. He was 75.His death was confirmed by his friend and frequent musical collaborator David Hood, who said Mr. Hawkins had been suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and other conditions.An innately soulful musician, Mr. Hawkins initially distinguished himself in the mid-’60s as a member of the house band at the producer Rick Hall’s FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Ala. (The initials stand for Florence Alabama Music Enterprises.) His colleagues were the keyboardist Barry Beckett, the guitarist Jimmy Johnson and Mr. Hood, who played bass. Mr. Hood is the last surviving member of that rhythm section.Mr. Hawkins’s less-is-more approach to drumming at FAME — often little more than a cymbal and a snare — can be heard on Percy Sledge’s gospel-steeped “When a Man Loves a Woman,” a No. 1 pop single in 1966. He was also a driving force behind Aretha Franklin’s imperious “Respect,” a No. 1 pop hit the next year, as well as her Top 10 singles “Chain of Fools” (1967) and “Think” (1968).Mr. Hawkins was a driving force behind some of Aretha Franklin’s biggest hits. Seen here with Ms. Franklin in a New York studio in 1968 are, from left, the producer Arif Mardin, the guitarist Tommy Cogbill, Mr. Hawkins, the bassist Jerry Jemmott, the keyboardist Spooner Oldham, the guitarist Jimmy Johnson and the producer and arranger Tom Dowd.The Estate of David Gahr/Getty ImagesRemarkably, none of the four members of the FAME rhythm section could read music. They extemporized their parts in response to what was happening in the studio.“Nobody really suggested anything to play; we would interpret it,” Mr. Hawkins said in a 2017 interview with Modern Drummer magazine. “Now that I look back at what we did, in addition to being musicians, we were really arrangers as well. It was up to us to come up with the part.”In his 2015 memoir, “The Man From Muscle Shoals: My Journey From Shame to FAME,” Mr. Hall attributed the transformation of the middle section of Wilson Pickett’s “Land of 1000 Dances,” a Top 10 hit recorded at FAME in 1966, to the genius of Mr. Hawkins.“All the musicians stopped playing except Roger Hawkins, who continued to play with every ounce of strength he had in his body,” Mr. Hall recalled. “I poured the echo into the drums and Pickett started screaming, ‘Nah, nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah, nah nah nah, nah nah nah nah.’”From left, Mr. Johnson, Wilson Pickett, Mr. Oldham, Mr. Hawkins and Junior Lowe at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Ala., in 1966.FAME StudiosMr. Hawkins said that a principal influence on his playing was Al Jackson Jr., the drummer with Booker T. & the MGs, the rhythm section at Stax Records. “Through listening to Al Jackson is how I learned to build a drum part in a soul ballad,” he said in a 2019 interview with Alabama magazine.In 1969 Mr. Hawkins and the other members of the FAME rhythm section parted ways with Mr. Hall over a financial dispute. They soon opened their own studio, Muscle Shoals Sound, in a former coffin warehouse in nearby Sheffield.Renaming themselves the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, the four men appeared on many other hits over the next decade, including the Staple Singers’ chart-topping pop-gospel single “I’ll Take You There,” a 1972 recording galvanized by Mr. Hawkins’s skittering Caribbean-style drum figure. They also appeared, along with the gospel quartet the Dixie Hummingbirds, on Paul Simon’s “Loves Me Like a Rock,” a Top 10 single in 1973.Mr. Hawkins and Mr. Hood worked briefly with the British rock band Traffic as well; they are on the band’s 1973 album, “Shoot Out at the Fantasy Factory.”Mr. Hawkins and his colleagues became known as the Swampers after the producer Denny Cordell heard the pianist Leon Russell commend them for their “funky, soulful Southern swamp sound.” The Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd mentioned them, by that name, in their 1974 pop hit “Sweet Home Alabama.”Mr. Hawkins also worked as a producer, often in tandem with Mr. Beckett, on records like “Starting All Over Again,” a Top 20 pop hit for the R&B duo Mel and Tim in 1972. The entire rhythm section produced (with Mr. Seger) and played on Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band’s “Old Time Rock & Roll,” a Top 40 hit perennially cited as among the most played jukebox records of all time.Roger Gail Hawkins was born on Oct. 16, 1945, in Mishawaka, Ind., but was raised in Greenhill, Ala. He was the only child of John Hawkins, who managed a shoe store there, and Merta Rose Haddock Hawkins, who worked in a nearby knitting mill.Roger became enamored of rhythm while attending services at a local Pentecostal church as a youth. His father bought him his first drum kit when he was 13.As an adolescent, he began spending time at FAME, then located above a drugstore in Muscle Shoals, before he joined the Del Rays, a local band, led by Mr. Johnson, that played fraternity parties and other dances. By 1966 he was doing session work at FAME.Early in his career Mr. Hawkins (top right with Mr. Oldham) played in the band Dan Penn and the Pallbearers, along with, from left, Mr. Lowe, Mr. Penn and Donnie Fritts.FAME StudiosHe and the other owners of Muscle Shoals Sound sold the studio in the 1990s. Mr. Hawkins stayed on as the studio’s manager under its new owners.Mr. Hawkins was inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 1995, along with the other members of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section. Thirteen years later they were enshrined in the Musicians Hall of Fame in Nashville.He is survived by his wife of 19 years, Brenda Gay Hawkins; a son, Dale; and two grandchildren.Mr. Hawkins’s approach to session work often focused on those moments in a recording when he remained silent, waiting for just the right time and place to strike the next note.“Every musician strives to be the best they can,” he told Modern Drummer. “Not every musician gets the chances I had. Some new studio players have an attitude of ‘Man, I’ve got to play something great here — got to play the fast stuff to be hired again.’“That’s not the way to go,” he continued. “I’ve always said this: I was always a better listener than I was a drummer. I would advise any drummer to become a listener.” More

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      Pervis Staples, Who Harmonized With the Staple Singers, Dies at 85

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      He sang alongside his father and sisters as his family’s gospel group achieved renown in the late 1950s and ’60s.Pervis Staples, who sang harmony and also provided quieter forms of support during the rise to gospel stardom of his family’s group, the Staple Singers, died on May 6 at his home in Dolton, Ill. He was 85.The death was confirmed by Adam Ayers, a spokesman for Mr. Staples’s sister, Mavis Staples. Mr. Ayers did not specify the cause.Pervis Staples joined two of his sisters, Cleotha and Mavis, and their father, Roebuck Staples, known as Pops, on travels through the gospel circuit in the late 1950s and ’60s. Their sound was heavily influenced by the Delta blues that Roebuck had learned during his youth in rural Mississippi. Roebuck and Mavis were the lead vocalists; Cleotha and Pervis sang harmony.At a time when performers like Bobby Womack and Curtis Mayfield were starting their careers singing hymns and spirituals, the Staples were gospel stars. They performed in their Sunday best, with Pervis and Roebuck wearing matching dark suits and shiny alligator shoes while Cleotha and Mavis wore bridesmaids’ dresses.In an interview with Greg Kot for his 2014 biography of Mavis Staples, “I’ll Take You There,” Pervis compared their effect on ecstatic church audiences to “a miracle or the hand of God.”The group contributed to the soundtrack of the civil rights movement, touring with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and recording some of Bob Dylan’s more political songs, including “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” and “Masters of War.”Pervis also helped write vocal arrangements, protected his sisters and ventured into segregated towns to buy groceries.As popular tastes changed in the 1960s, Pervis encouraged his father, the leader of the group, to expand its range beyond gospel music, asking, “Do you think religion was designed to make pleasures less?”Even as their lyrics retained a social message, the Staple Singers went on to adopt more of a soul-music style. They placed several records in the Top 40 in the 1970s and in 1972 had a No. 1 hit, “I’ll Take You There.”But by that time, Pervis had left to pursue his own ventures.He tried his hand as an agent, representing the R&B group the Emotions, and opened Perv’s Place, a nightclub in Chicago that was popular in the mid-1970s, before the rise of disco.He rejoined the family group when they were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1999.Pervis Staples was born on Nov. 18, 1935, in Drew, in western Mississippi, and raised in Chicago. His father shoveled fertilizer in stockyards and laid bricks before putting the family vocal group together. Pervis’s mother, Oceola (Ware) Staples, worked as a maid and laundress at a hotel.He attended grammar school with the future singing stars Sam Cooke and Lou Rawls. After class, Pervis and his friends would practice singing under street lamps and in Cooke’s basement. The boys had voices so sweet, “they could make the mice come down the pole and watch,” he told Mr. Kot.When Roebuck Staples formed the Staple Singers in 1948, Pervis sang second lead and hit the high notes. He was replaced as second lead by Mavis when his voice dropped an octave during puberty.Pervis Staples graduated from Dunbar Vocational High School in 1954. He was drafted into the Army in 1958 and honorably discharged in 1960.Another sister, Yvonne, replaced Pervis when he left the Staple Singers. After Perv’s Place closed, he remained active in the music business.Mr. Staples’s two marriages ended in divorce. He is survived by his sister Mavis, who is now the last surviving member of the Staple Singers, as well as five daughters, Gwen Staples, Reverly Staples, Perleta Sanders, Paris Staples and Eala Sams; a son, Pervis; seven grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.The Associated Press contributed reporting. More

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      Tina Turner and Jay-Z Lead Rock Hall of Fame’s 2021 Inductees

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      Foo Fighters, the Go-Go’s, Carole King and Todd Rundgren were also voted in, meaning nearly half of the 15 individuals in this year’s class are women.For years, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has been pummeled by criticism that its inductees — the marble busts in the pantheon of rock — were too homogeneous, and that the secretive insiders who create the ballots showed a troubling pattern of excluding women.This year the voters seem to have listened: The class of 2021 features Jay-Z, Foo Fighters, the Go-Go’s, Carole King, Tina Turner and Todd Rundgren — a collection of 15 individuals that includes seven women.That ratio alone should lend a new energy to the 36th annual induction ceremony, planned for Oct. 30 at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland.In past years, when women have been inducted, they have been far outnumbered by men. In 2019, for example, Stevie Nicks and Janet Jackson may have stood triumphant, but their earnest speeches — Jackson: “Please induct more women” — did not seem to last as long as it took to name every male bass player of the rock bands that joined alongside them.Dave Grohl, center, and the members of Foo Fighters. Grohl is already in the hall as a member of Nirvana.Magdalena Wosinska for The New York TimesThe latest inductees show a balance of genre and generation that has come to be a feature of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s expanding tent. Foo Fighters, led by Dave Grohl, represent the cream of 1990s-vintage alternative rock. Jay-Z is rap incarnate. And the Go-Go’s stand for joyful, upbeat 1980s power-pop.Each of those acts was a first-time nominee, although the Go-Go’s — the first and only all-woman rock band to score a No. 1 album on Billboard’s chart — have been eligible since 2006. (Artists can be nominated 25 years after the release of their first recording.)The Go-Go’s in the early 1980s: from left, Kathy Valentine, Jane Wiedlin, Gina Schock, Charlotte Caffey and Belinda Carlisle.Paul Natkin/WireImageRundgren, the prolific producer and multi-instrumentalist, occupies the role of the auteur from classic rock’s flowering in the late 1960s and early ’70s; Turner is a force of nature whose career has stretched from old-school R&B to MTV-era pop; and King is the singer-songwriter and conscience who brings gravitas to the proceedings.Three of this year’s inductees were already in the hall: Grohl as a member of Nirvana, Turner with Ike and Tina Turner, and King as a nonperformer, with her songwriting partner and former husband Gerry Goffin.The story of the inductions is also told by who didn’t make the cut. The voters — a group of more than 1,000 artists, journalists and industry veterans — decided against the bands Iron Maiden, Devo, New York Dolls and Rage Against the Machine, as well as Kate Bush, Mary J. Blige, Chaka Khan and Dionne Warwick.The Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti would have been the first Black musician from Africa to join the hall, but was not voted in this year. Leni Sinclair/Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty ImagesFela Kuti, the Nigerian-born pioneer of Afrobeat, had been the surprise nominee this year, and was one of the artists chosen in the Hall of Fame’s fan vote — an online public poll that creates a single official ballot — thanks in part to support from African stars like Burna Boy. Kuti would have been the first Black artist from Africa to join the hall, but he failed in his first time on the ballot. (Trevor Rabin of Yes is from South Africa, and Freddie Mercury of Queen was born in Zanzibar, now part of Tanzania; both bands are in the Hall of Fame.)And LL Cool J, a titan of hip-hop who also received high-profile support this year, lost after a sixth nomination. But he has been given a musical excellence award, for people “whose originality and influence creating music have had a dramatic impact on music.” This category was once known as the sidemen award, but it is also something of a consolation prize: The producer and guitarist Nile Rodgers won it in 2017 after Chic, his band, was passed over 11 times.The other musical excellence recipients this year include Billy Preston, the keyboardist who was a frequent collaborator of the Beatles, and Randy Rhoads, a guitarist with Ozzy Osbourne.Also this year, the Ahmet Ertegun Award, for nonperformers, will go to the record executive Clarence Avant, and “early influence” trophies will go to Gil Scott-Heron, Charley Patton and Kraftwerk, the German electronic pioneers who had been nominated for induction six times.The induction ceremony is to be broadcast later on HBO and streamed on HBO Max. More

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      Lloyd Price, ‘Personality’ Hitmaker, Is Dead at 88

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      His “Lawdy Miss Clawdy” was a rhythm-and-blues smash that hooked white listeners in 1952, anticipating the rise of rock ’n’ roll. Even bigger records would follow.Lloyd Price, who provided some of the seeds for what became rock ’n’ roll with his New Orleans rhythm-and-blues hit “Lawdy Miss Clawdy” in 1952 and later had major pop hits with “Personality” and “Stagger Lee,” died on Monday at an extended-care center in New Rochelle, N.Y. He was 88. The cause was complications of diabetes, said Jeffrey Madoff, the writer and producer of “Personality: The Lloyd Price Musical,” a stage show scheduled to open next year in Pennsylvania.Nicknamed Mr. Personality after his most recognizable hit, which reached No. 2 on the Billboard singles chart in 1959, Mr. Price found success with Black and white audiences alike. He was a prolific songwriter as well as a gifted singer — a combination that was relatively uncommon at the time — and his songs were covered by many others. Among the artists who recorded versions of “Lawdy Miss Clawdy” were Elvis Presley and Paul McCartney.He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1998.Mr. Price found success early: He was still in his teens when he recorded “Lawdy Miss Clawdy,” its title an exclamation borrowed from a local disc jockey, for Specialty Records, an independent label founded by Art Rupe. On that session, recorded in New Orleans, he was accompanied by a band, led by the local musician and songwriter Dave Bartholomew, that included the pianist Fats Domino.“Lawdy Miss Clawdy” topped the Billboard R&B chart for seven weeks and introduced Mr. Price’s emotionally direct vocal style and infectious New Orleans beat to white listeners years before the term “rock ’n’ roll” was in wide use. Mr. Rupe later recalled, “That was the first Black record that wasn’t intended to be a white record — it became a white record, versus the previous Black records which were designed for the white market.”Mr. Price’s career was interrupted by Army service, and by the mid-1950s other Black artists, among them Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Mr. Domino, were achieving comparable crossover success. Mr. Price made up for lost time with huge pop hits of his own.Mr. Price in concert at the Apollo Theater in Manhattan, probably in the mid-1960s.Don Paulsen/Michael Ochs Archives-Getty ImagesAlong with his successful music career, Mr. Price had an entrepreneurial streak: He founded record labels, managed other performers, owned nightclubs, promoted boxing matches, ventured into real estate and even promised to champion the sweet potato with his company Lloyd Price Icon Food Brands.But the songs came first. “Music brings my soul more joy than anything else does, or can,” he once said. “It makes my heart beat faster with excitement; and my love for music has never changed! If you love music, you know what I’m talking about.”Lloyd Price, a self-described “country boy,” was born on March 9, 1933, in Kenner, La., one of 11 children — eight boys and three girls — of Beatrice and Louis Price, who owned the Fish ’n’ Fry Restaurant. As a child, Lloyd sang in the gospel choir at his family’s church, picking up trumpet and piano along the way while also working at the family business.A high school dropout, Mr. Price started his first band, the Blue Boys, at age 18. To the dismay of his parents, he also got a job at a New Orleans nightclub, but he quit at their insistence to work construction.His breakout success with Specialty Records came to an end when he was drafted in 1953, leaving the label to focus instead on Little Richard and Larry Williams, Mr. Price’s onetime chauffeur.After returning to civilian life in 1954, Mr. Price founded his own record company, KRC, with two partners. The label did not make much of an impact, but one single he released on KRC, the ballad “Just Because,” was leased to ABC-Paramount Records and reached the Top 40 pop chart in 1957. Mr. Price was then signed directly to ABC-Paramount and soon had his greatest success with the song “Stagger Lee.” His upbeat take on a folk song that had been recorded numerous times since the 1920s, it reached No. 1 on both the pop and R&B charts in 1959.Mr. Price’s crossover success did not come without some compromise. Dick Clark, the producer and host of the immensely popular television show “American Bandstand,” decided that the lyrics of “Stagger Lee,” which involved gambling and ended with a fatal barroom shooting, were too violent for his show. Mr. Price, ever the savvy businessman, recorded a new version in which the song’s rivals are fighting over a woman and make up at the end: “Stagger Lee and Billy never fuss or fight no more.” (The cleaned-up version was not released commercially at the time, but it was included many years later on a compilation album.)That same year, “Personality” became almost as big a hit, certifying Mr. Price as a bona fide rock ’n’ roll star. In 1962, he set out on his own again, starting Double L Records with Harold Logan (who had also been a partner in his earlier label), with a roster that included a young Wilson Pickett. Mr. Price and Mr. Logan opened a nightclub, the Turntable, on the former site of the celebrated jazz club Birdland in Midtown Manhattan in 1968. Mr. Logan was murdered in 1969.Mr. Price reached the Top 40 for the last time with a version of the standard “Misty” in 1963, but by that time his star in the music world was fading. He wisely dipped into other arenas, including a partnership with Don King to help promote Muhammad Ali’s “Rumble in the Jungle” against George Foreman in Kinshasa, Zaire, in 1974 and “Thrilla in Manila” against Joe Frazier in the Philippines the next year. Concurrently with the Zaire fight, he helped promote a music festival with a lineup that included James Brown and B.B. King. He lived in Nigeria from 1979 to 1983.Mr. Price is survived by his wife, Jackie Battle; three daughters, Lori Price, D’Juana Price and December Thompson; two sons, Lloyd Price Jr. and Paris Thompson; a sister, Rose Moore; and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.In the 1980s, Mr. Price invested in real estate — he backed the construction of homes in the Bronx — and ran a limousine company. By 2007, at the age of 74, he was talking up his Miss Clawdy line of sweet-potato products to The Wall Street Journal. “It’s going to do things,” he said. “It’s going to bring attention back to the sweet potato.” His company also sold organic cereals and energy bars.There was always music in the background. Mr. Price helped organize oldies tours, on which he shared the bill with other early rhythm-and-blues acts like Little Richard and Ben E. King, throughout the ’90s and into the 21st century.Mr. Price released his last album, “This Is Rock and Roll,” in 2017. He published an autobiography, “Lawdy Miss Clawdy: The True King of the 50’s,” written with William E. Waller, in 2009, and a collection of essays, provocatively titled “sumdumhonky,” in 2015.Peter Keepnews contributed reporting. More

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      Bob Porter, Jazz Producer and Broadcaster, Dies at 80

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      Hundreds of albums bore his name, notably reissues of classic material. And he helped make WBGO the biggest jazz radio station in the New York area.Bob Porter, who as a record producer guided the reissue of vast swaths of the classic jazz canon, and who as a broadcaster helped build WBGO into the largest jazz radio station in the New York City area, died on April 10 at his home in Northvale, N.J. He was 80.The cause was complications of esophageal cancer, his wife, Linda Calandra Porter, said.Rock ’n’ roll had mostly eclipsed jazz in the public ear by the time Mr. Porter produced his first album for Prestige Records, the organist Charles Kynard’s “Professor Soul” (1968), for which he also wrote the liner notes. Mr. Porter began regularly producing sessions for the label, mostly in the soul-jazz style of the day, including outings by the saxophonists Gene Ammons and Sonny Stitt, the organists Jimmy McGriff and Charles Earland and the guitarist Pat Martino, among many others.He went on to take part in the creation of hundreds of albums as a producer and author of liner notes for a variety of labels. Much of that work was on boxed sets and reissues of archival material.He won a Grammy in 1978 for his liner notes to the five-disc “Charlie Parker: The Complete Savoy Studio Sessions,” which he also produced. He later won the best historical album Grammy in 1986, for producing the compilation “Atlantic Rhythm and Blues 1947-1974, Vols. 1-7.”Interviewed that year by Rolling Stone, Mr. Porter recalled putting together the Atlantic box alongside Ahmet Ertegun, the label’s famed co-founder. Some of Atlantic’s original master tapes had burned in a fire, so Mr. Porter drew upon his network of fellow vinyl collectors to track down original pressings. His main goal, he said, was accuracy and completeness.“We tried to list in copious detail everything we could about the original recording date — the singers, the bands, every piece of information we could unravel,” he said. “The most important thing in doing any work of this nature is that you get it right.”But he also wanted to make a historical point about how social history shapes genre. “We decided to stop in 1974 because that, in a sense, marked the end of an era,” he said. “When you get into disco and rap music, you’re really talking about something that’s very different. The conditions in the country were a lot different when this music was being made. I think that the demise of soul and R&B may ultimately be viewed as a casualty of integration.”In the 1980s, jazz’s commercial fortunes perked up, in thanks partly to the advent of compact discs, which led listeners to buy reissues of old albums. Working most often with Atlantic, Mr. Porter led the remastering process for CD reissues by the likes of Duke Ellington, Ray Charles and Lester Young.As soon as WBGO hit the airwaves at 88.3 FM in 1979, broadcasting out of Newark but reaching across New York City, Mr. Porter started volunteering as a host. Two years later he began a daily show, “Portraits in Blue,” which went on to be syndicated by NPR stations around the country and would continue for the next 40 years. He later hosted two additional shows: “Saturday Morning Function,” which focused on R&B and jump blues, and “Swing Party,” heard on Sunday mornings.On his own podcast earlier this month, Nate Chinen, the director of editorial content at WBGO, called Mr. Porter “a Mount Rushmore figure when it comes to Newark public radio — someone who was on the air, really, from Day 1.”Robert Sherwin Porter was born in Wellesley, Mass., on June 20, 1940, to David Porter, who ran the financial advisory firm David L. Babson & Company, and Constance (Kavanaugh) Porter, a homemaker. The eldest of four siblings, Bob attended Whittier College in California, where he studied English before serving in the Army, stationed in Fairbanks, Alaska.In addition to his wife, he is survived by his brothers, John and William Porter; a sister, Linda (Porter) Owens; a son from a previous marriage, David Porter; two stepsons, Michael and Rick Tombari; and a granddaughter.After his military service, he returned to Whittier to complete his degree. While still in school he began contributing to DownBeat magazine. His articles caught the attention of Bob Weinstock, the head of Prestige, who was impressed by Mr. Porter’s erudition and offered him a job with the label.Mr. Porter’s passion for the artistic and cultural history of African-American music stretched back to its earliest known recordings, and he was deeply knowledgeable about blues as well as jazz.He received awards from various music societies and foundations. In addition to his two Grammys, those included a 1986 W.C. Handy Award (now known as the Blues Music Award) from the Blues Foundation and a 2003 Community Service Award from the Bergen County chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. In 2009, he was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.Mr. Porter became a published author late in life, self-releasing “Soul Jazz: Jazz in the Black Community, 1945-1975” in 2016. That book gave a detailed history of the jazz musicians who were especially popular in Black communities just after World War II, but who at the time had rarely come under the gaze of white critics.A white writer himself, Mr. Porter felt compelled to redress the omission. “Black communities had their own heroes, and Black fans of jazz had their own way of responding to the music,” he wrote in the book’s preface. “I have helped dozens of researchers and writers through the years, and I always hoped that one of them would tackle this untold story. Nobody did, and now most of the greatest players are gone. Thus, I decided to do this myself.” More

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      Dawn Richard Will Find a Way to Be Heard

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      Dawn Richard is accustomed to being by herself. During the pandemic, she got used to being unable to seek inspiration in the typically vibrant streets of New Orleans — no catching a last-minute show at Preservation Hall, no detouring to pick up dessert at Pandora’s Snowballs. Instead, she went for long solo drives at night, where she’d listen to her favorite classical composers — Debussy, Chopin — and sit with the city’s emptiness.In the early days of the singer, songwriter and producer’s career, all of her waking (and, actually, sleeping) moments were captured by the camera crew on “Making the Band 3,” the MTV reality show that brought her to national fame as a member of the Diddy-created R&B-pop girl group Danity Kane in 2005. It was a wild time, filled with cutthroat singing and dancing competitions, screaming matches in the studio, and the inherent drama of housing multiple people under the same roof and telling them, “Try to be famous.”So it’s not a big surprise that she prefers a little peace and quiet now. She likes to record without anyone else in the studio. For much of the last decade, she has worked as an independent musician with few of the resources afforded to more connected artists. And as a result she has had one of the most unconventional, eccentric R&B careers in recent memory.This didn’t happen as a point of principle, but as a necessity. “I didn’t wake up one day like, ‘Yeah, I want to be independent. Screw the industry,’” Richard, 37, said in a recent interview. “I was in the mainstream. I liked that money. I liked that help. It just didn’t believe in me. So I picked myself up, and I got really good at picking myself up.”That’s changed — sort of. Adding another unexpected twist to a career full of them, Richard’s sixth solo album, “Second Line,” will be released April 30 on the storied North Carolina indie label Merge Records. Merge, founded in 1989 by members of the punk band Superchunk, is more typically associated with earnest and outré guitar bands like Arcade Fire, Neutral Milk Hotel and Waxahatchee.“I was kind of like, ‘I don’t see a lot of Black on the roster,’” she said.But she was convinced after meeting with the label at her manager’s suggestion, and realizing how many of its artists (Caribou, Destroyer) she loved. And the adventurousness of the broader Merge lineup syncs up nicely with “Second Line,” which channels R&B, electronic, house and bounce into a loose narrative about a synthetic android named King Creole navigating her way through art, love and the music industry.Speaking over two video interviews from Los Angeles in the middle of a full-time relocation to New Orleans, Richard was enthusiastic when talking about her music — she illustrated several songs by spontaneously beatboxing the rhythm — and candid about the many ups and downs of her career.“I have literally been rejected by everybody in this industry,” she said with a warm laugh, her bejeweled heart-shaped earrings flashing as she shook her head. “But those failures have really created this beast in me. I really don’t take no for an answer anymore.” Growing up, music hadn’t seemed like a career option — she won a college scholarship playing softball, and studied marine biology. Now she’s been a professional musician for nearly half her life, with no plans to slow down anytime soon.“I’ve always known what I wanted — who I wanted to be,” Richard said.Myles Loftin for The New York TimesThe new album is named for the New Orleans tradition in which the leading section of a funeral parade — the first line — is followed by musicians and dancers improvising off the beat. “In New Orleans, when you hear a second line, you can walk outside and join in,” she said. “You don’t even know the person you’re celebrating; you’re just dancing because it feels like their legacy is big enough. That’s what this album is.”Born in New Orleans, Richard grew up around the arts: Her mother was a dance instructor, and her father was the lead singer of the funk band Chocolate Milk. “Making the Band 3” culminated in the formation of Danity Kane, named after a drawing Richard made of an invented anime superhero. With hits like “Damaged,” its first two albums topped the Billboard charts, but the group’s creative output was heavily regimented, from the songs the members were told to sing to the outfits they were instructed to wear. It was also subject to the conventions of ’00s reality television, when explicit abuse and exploitation were rarely challenged by the broader culture.“Now, you can’t just tell a woman on national television that she’s fat,” she said. “But that was what was said back then. And then when you don’t have a team or someone behind you, you have to tread very carefully.”After Sean Combs decided to disband Danity Kane — a process that also largely played out on television — Richard remained signed to his Bad Boy Records label, and moved to Baltimore, where her family had relocated in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. With nothing to do, she convinced Combs to let her record at his Manhattan studio, and started commuting by train to New York. Those songwriting efforts were eventually noticed, resulting in the formation of a new group with her boss and the singer Kalenna Harper: Diddy-Dirty Money, which released a single album, “Last Train to Paris.”Richard in Danity Kane, second from right. “I was a grown person who had never been able to say ‘I want to wear what I want to wear,’” she said. After leaving the group, “I just started doing what felt good.”Peter Kramer/Getty ImagesIn 2012, after gradually losing interest, Combs broke up the group over email, and Richard successfully requested a release from her contract. (She and Combs remain in touch.) She met with multiple major labels, which all passed. Undeterred, she committed to going independent, and began working on a trilogy of concept albums with experimental electronic producers such as Andrew “Druski” Scott, Noisecastle III and Machinedrum.“I was instantly taken aback by how talented she was, and how she gravitated towards the stranger beats,” Machinedrum said in an interview. “A lot of artists these days are sucked into social media; they seem like they’re not all there. But you could tell that she’s there to work.”After nearly a decade of having her creativity dictated by others, tapping into this freedom was like uncorking a bottle. “I was a grown person who had never been able to say ‘I want to wear what I want to wear,’” she said. “So I just started doing what felt good. I had been rejected so much, I didn’t care if people got it. I just needed to get it out.”While she received critical acclaim, there was a slight backhanded element to the praise for her post-girl group career. “It made me feel like maybe Danity Kane was a joke — like everything that I had done before had been seen as some bubble gum thing, and now I’m a legitimate artist,” she said. “I was mind boggled by that because I hadn’t changed anything; I just literally got an opportunity to write more.”Over the next few years she worked incessantly on full-length records, loose singles, feature appearances, remixes and ornate music videos — most of it self-funded, which made it even more disappointing if it didn’t make the impact she had hoped for. Drained, Richard decamped to New Orleans for an extended period for the first time since she’d moved away. There, she reacquainted herself with the city’s creative rhythms, which had changed dramatically post-Katrina, and settled on translating that into her music. (Instead of dialing down her production values, she covertly audited a finance class at the University of New Orleans to better manage her funds.)“You can take people outside of New Orleans, but you can’t take New Orleans out of them; no matter where we are, the culture lives inside of us,” said the jazz musician Trombone Shorty, who’s known Richard since childhood. “She wanted to add her taste and her style to what we already have here and move it forward, while at the same time respecting the culture and where it comes from.”“In New Orleans, when you hear a second line, you can walk outside and join in,” Richard said. “You don’t even know the person you’re celebrating; you’re just dancing because it feels like their legacy is big enough. That’s what this album is.”Myles Loftin for The New York TimesThe summation of that work fed into her 2019 album “New Breed,” which she laced with samples from her father’s old band. For “Second Line,” she wanted to shift the focus to her mother, who underwent a knee surgery at the start of 2020. After Richard moved back home to help take care of her, the pandemic struck, and Richard suddenly found herself occupying a guest room in her parents’ home with an album that still needed to be finished.But she adjusted, as she tends to do, linking up with local engineer Eric Heigle to complete the record while accepting the responsibilities that come with living with your parents. (Folding clothes and towels, which she recounted with relatable exasperation.) And her extended proximity to her family flowed back into the album: Her mother appears throughout as a kind of narrator, and Richard said their relationship reached a new, adult level through their many conversations for those recordings.“Second Line” was made in close collaboration with the Los Angeles producer Ila Orbis, who performs much of the music. (“Sometimes you have to tone it down a bit” when working with other artists, he said, “but she allowed me to experiment as much as I wanted to.”) It also bears Richard’s first solo production credits, and her synth playing can be heard across the album.“It took so long to get to production as a producer, because I had other things to figure out — how to build a set, pay the workers, master the album, get the clothes and the outfits, learn the eight-count, get the choreographer to teach the eight-count,” Richard said.Her interests stretch outside music: She owns and oversees Papa Ted’s, a vegan food truck in New Orleans that she plans to expand into a brick-and-mortar restaurant; still an anime fan, she consults for Adult Swim; she acts, from time to time. Speaking about the future, Richard brought up the possibility of starting her own animation production studio, or even an awards show geared at independent artists. She also held out hope of fully reuniting Danity Kane.“I just wanted to be seen as an artist — less ambitious, and more celebrated for the fact that as a Black woman, I was pushing something that wasn’t being pushed, at that time,” she said about the early reactions to her solo career. But ambition was not something she shied away from. “Radio Free,” the first song she recorded with Ila Orbis, opens with a dramatic synthesizer barrage before Richard begins singing tenderly to an artist who’s being swallowed up by the music industry’s predations. “Where do you go when the radio’s down?” she asks. “Who are you now, when no one’s around?”Richard agreed that the song was partially directed at her younger self. She had played by the rules, and done what was asked of her, and it hadn’t worked out — twice, she emphasized. Asked what she wished she’d known at the onset, she was unequivocal: “I’m going to be frank with you: I’ve always known what I wanted — who I wanted to be. I think the only thing I would tell myself is ‘Commit to it.’ I would have found my freedom earlier and attacked it harder.”“‘Second Line,’ to me, is that freedom,” she continued. “And I want to have that conversation because maybe somebody doesn’t relate to it through the music industry — they relate to it through their queerness, or they’re stifled in their job. They feel like the world has turned them off. But just because the radio doesn’t play, it doesn’t mean you can’t be heard.” More