It was dubbed the most unlikely pairing in music: Robert Plant, the mighty King of Rock, and Alison Krauss, the demure Queen of Bluegrass.
How could the sledgehammer-in-chief of 70s stadium excess possibly gel with this delicate flower of tender, sweet country?
The answer, of course, is that it’s impossible to say. Sometime it’s better not to dwell on the mystery; don’t try to read the runes. It’s far better to sit back and bathe in the magic, which is exactly what several thousand adoring fans did last night at the NIA in
, where this precious recording partnership was born.
Plant and Krauss first got together at a tribute concert to bluesman Leadbelly. T Bone Burnett, who Krauss knew from working on the Grammy award-winning soundtrack for O Brother, Where Art Thou?, brought her and Plant together, handpicked the music and the musicians. No pressure there, then.
Inspired by the critical acclaim heaped on the resulting album, Raising Sand, the pair decided to hit the road and last night’s show was a bewildering kaleidoscopic journey through musical genres. It was wonderfully impossible to pigeon hole – blues, alt-country, spiritual, soul and traditional standards all blurring, underpinned by masterful musicianship and glorious vocals.
Time can play cruel tricks on legends. Plant, though, who will celebrate his 60
birthday this year, remains a peerless performer, leaping from the trance-like to the maniacal to the cheeky schoolboy. Grooving on stage with Krauss, whose voice, fiddle playing and demeanour constitute a rare thing of beauty, the Led Zeppelin frontman grinned like the cat who’d got the cream. It is possible for a rock god to learn new tricks.
“The first time I played that in
was 1963,” said Plant after a blistering version of Brit-rock standard Fortune Teller, which was laced with breathy Krauss harmonies and a gut-churning guitar solo by Burnett, a colossus both in musical ability and physical stature. “Only two people knew it … How sad is that?” said Plant, mocking his recall of trivia. “Free prescriptions and a long memory … Don’t print that!” he added, laughing.

birminghampost.net

When Eugene, OR, comes up in conversation, several fixations quickly pop to the average mind: rain, forest, hippies, marijuana and Ducks. Easy to miss would be a chubby, middle-aged man with a shaved head who often adorns dark sunglasses. But that, perhaps, may be just how Frank Black likes it.
Leisurely enjoying the morning at his home in the rainy college town, the former leader of the Pixies is on daddy duty. “We all have kind of like this flu thing and my wife is eight months pregnant and she’s just wiped out. I’ve got the babies with me downstairs so we may be periodically interrupted,” tells Black through sounds of toddler babble. Already a father of four, his two youngest, Lucy and Jack, can be heard adjoining his every move. “Oh, I see Jack, okay, all right. Let daddy talk on the phone for a few minutes.”
Born Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV, the self-titled Frank Black has enjoyed a fairytale career of indie success. The Pixies, both in their efflorescence and after, have been embraced the world over, and Black has since sustained an acclaimed solo career over the course of 16 albums. Returning to the proven stage name of Black Francis for 2007’s fall release Bluefinger, Black has continued channeling the powers of old for his newest output; a seven song EP tagged Sv n F ng rs. The process of writing, recording and producing said record took place over just six days, which Black is quick to downplay. “I don’t know if it’s that big of a deal. As long as I’ve got a day or two in the studio [I can] come up with something. It may not be ‘Hey Jude,’ [laughs] but I’ll come up with something.”
The creative burst came from label Cooking Vinyl simply asking for a b-side. Black, typical of his prolific nature, proceeded to hash out six additional cuts in a flurry. Violet Clark (who also happens to be Black’s wife) and Jason Carter, both of whom joined on Bluefinger, make returns to the studio filling out bass and drums respectively. Carter also wears the producer hat, but more to the tune of engineering assistance and relaxed constructive feedback.

synthesis.net

Wacky Jack’s Singing Telegrams
New business offers variety of characters, packages to satisfy all
By Fred Pace
One of Keith Berneburg’s first jobs was with Eastern Onion Signing Telegrams in Pittsburgh. He dressed in various costumes and delivered the humorous telegrams in a musical form.
“I had a blast,” he said. “It was a fun job.”
When Berneburg and his wife, Rhonda, relocated to Beckley they began thinking about starting their own singing telegram business.
“There was nothing like this in Beckley,” Keith Berneburg said. “We did some research and surveying and due to the tremendous amount of requests for this type of entertainment, we decide to start Wacky Jack’s Singing Telegrams.”
Rhonda Berneburg says her husband has always been an entertainer.
“I thought it was a wonderful idea,” she said. “Telegrams have been around for a while, but you don’t see them around as much these days.”
Singing telegrams are historically linked to normal telegrams, but tend to be humorous. Sometimes the artist is in costume or formal clothing. Singing telegrams are often given as a gift.
Western Union, the American telegraph company, began offering singing telegram services in 1933. On July 28, 1933, a fan sent Hollywood singing star Rudy Vallee a birthday greeting by telegram.
According to Wikipedia.com, the Western Union public relations director at the time decided this would be a good opportunity to make telegrams, which had been associated with deaths and other tragic news, into something more popular. He asked a Western Union operator, Lucille Lipps, to sing the message over the telephone, and this became the first singing telegram.
Western Union suspended its singing telegram service in 1974, but independent singing telegram companies, like Wacky Jack’s, specializing in often costumed personal delivery of gift messages, have kept up the tradition.
“The memory of an event like this will never die,” Keith said. “And it’s just as fun to send one as it is to get one.”

register-herald.com