Beyond his wife, Rita, three women occupied center stage in Bob Marley's musical saga. Cedella Marley Booker, a dynamo in a do-rag whose alto voice booms out with a matriarch's authority, sings "Brown  …

Talk about big impressions. The former Birmingham footballer whom Gladys Knight dubbed the "The Velvet Teddy Bear" won the hearts of millions as the champ of 2003's American Idol sing-off. Follo …

They say that big things come in small packages. Take Tears for Fears, the Bath, England, duo behind some of the most majestic sounds of the '80s. Seriously, what would MTV have been without staples li …

He may be genuinely mad (supposedly guzzling tape-deck cleaning fluid ain't normal), but Lee "Scratch" Perry productions reveal a true genius. The stunted bass lines of "People Funny Boy" mistakenly in …

The Lovin' Spoonful embodied the magical, pre-Woodstock rock era in which optimism ruled. During a two-year hot streak from 1965-66, the band notched ten consecutive Top 20 singles, all characterized b …

The Doobie Brothers are a band of two halves, split between the California boogie of their early days and the slick, white funk of their second, Michael McDonald-led incarnation. After attracting a loy …

Ani Difranco's her own woman, make no mistake. Assertively bisexual, tatted, pierced, and occasionally shaved, she has plowed an audacious path in the punk-folk field, catering neither to mainstream mo …

Back when the Spinners were Detroit high schoolers making doo-wop-tinged R&B, they probably never dreamed that they'd one day be the kings of smooth soul. A brief stint at Motown yielded underrated cro …

The golden age of the Spinners spanned their '70s Atlantic output, with soul-deep, genre-defining classics like "Just as Long as We Have Love" making the most of Philippe Wynne's urbane lead vocals, pr …