Folklorist Alan Lomax spent his life making priceless recordings of some of the most important early figures in American music — from his famed recordings of Huddie “Leadbelly” Ledbetter to Jelly Roll Morton, from Muddy Waters to Woody Guthrie.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops are working with producer Buddy Miller (Emmylou Harris, Robert Plant, Patty Griffin, Solomon Burke) on a follow up to 2010’s Grammy Award–winning label-debut Genuine Negro Jig.

Levon Helm, the Grammy-winning co-founding member of the Band, is set to undergo an undisclosed medical procedure that will keep him from performing for at least a month.

This album is a musical security blanket of sorts. Actually, that’s how I feel about Greg Brown’s music in general, even the really ugly stuff. Oh yes, there is ugly stuff.

Time to let you have your say. We made a series of lists, checked them twice, then published our best-ofs. But what better way to end things than with the annual SER Readers’ Top 10? Here are your albums of the year

Here’s the way it usually works. The end of the year draws closer, and all of the music publications and websites release their “best of” lists. This is almost always followed by various rants about how the lists are “too safe,” “predictable,” or “pretentious.”

The Eagles and Tom Petty play the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival for the first time, as 2012′s lineup is announced for the sprawling outdoor music event featuring rock, jazz, Americana, gospel, rhythm and blues, Cajun and zydeco.

There was a time when I was pretty consumed with, and you could make an argument that it could be considered “obsessed with,” Robert Fripp’s Guitar Craft legion

Jai “Jaimoe” Johanson, a founding member of the Allman Brothers Band, has constructed an interesting side project when his main group is on hiatus: A jazz-rock collective called Jaimoe’s Jasssz Band.

Here on the new album from Sarah Maisel, we’re serenaded with interpretations from a broad scope of genres. The method in which Sarah performs these tunes is strictly that of the easy-listening mold. But what causes the songs to be different from the usual undertakings of such a style is the constant presence of a ukulele.