That there wasn’t one already seems unfathomable. Now that the Memphis Music Hall of Fame has been created, however, its inaugural class can assembled with a snap resembling the legendary hometown Stax Records logo.

*** STEELY DAN SUNDAY INDEX *** On Donald Fagen’s last album Morph The Cat, there’s a great tune on there where he’s imagining himself as a young man asking Ray Charles what makes him tick.

Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen has completed eight new originals which, coupled with a new version of Isaac Hayes’ “Out of the Ghetto,” will comprise a forthcoming solo album.

In the same way that the Beatles were the undisputed kings among 1960s classic rock Desert Island Discs, Stevie Wonder owned R&B in the subsequent decade.

Charles “Skip” Pitts, one of the architects of soul, R&B, and funk guitar and a member of the Bo-Keys, has passed away at the age of 65. Pitts is best known for creating two of the signature guitar riffs of all time: The Isley Brothers’ “It’s Your Thing” and the wah-wah on Isaac Hayes’ “Theme From Shaft.”

In 1972, Albert King joined forces with some of the leading figures in the legendary Stax soul sound to create one of his most celebrated releases

In looking back to disco and the 1970s, nobody is arguing that there weren’t excesses. “Disco Duck,” that song about CB radios, Barry Gibb’s chest hair. But don’t let one or two — OK, a teetering truckload — of bad apples spoil the whole batch.

The Bo-Keys, with a spring-loaded, testifying Memphis vibe associated with Otis Redding, Rufus Thomas and Al Green, have put out an album that bubbles like a dark, spicy gumbo.

There are plenty of Christmas rock songs out there, but I struggled at first to think of any Thanksgiving-themed tracks.

It’s one of those Isaac Hayes shut-your-mouth moments. I’m talking about the news that Hayes, at 65, had passed. He was a renaissance man in gold chains, a composer and arranger unafraid of style. He’d wear sunglasses the size of milk saucers while directing a room full of musicians on fiddles and bassoons. Hayes leaves this group of recordings marked […]