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In the 1950s, no bluesman was more popular than Jimmy Reed. He wrote hits like "Bright Lights Big City" and "Big Boss Man" and pioneered the ubiquitous "thump" guitar riff. Two accomplished Texas bluesmen, Omar Kent Dykes and Jimmie Vaughan, pay tribute to Reed on their new CD.

When Bridgewater came up empty after tracing her family tree back more than 100 years, she turned to West African music. After a trip to Mali in 2004, she discovered its complex musical heritage. Hear an interview about the inspiration behind her new album, Red Earth.

The opera star is known for her musical obsessions, her latest being the music and repertoire of 19th-century diva Maria Malibran. Bartoli has built a traveling shrine to Malibran, and they're currently on tour together.

In the new movie I'm Not There, director Todd Haynes deploys six actors to portray the many lives of one man: Bob Dylan. Haynes talks about the unorthodox nature of the film and how he hopes it evokes Dylan's universe of the 1960s.

Measha Brueggergosman is a young soprano on the rise. Her major label debut, Surprise, features offbeat cabaret songs by Satie and Schoenberg. She describes the CD as "classical music letting its hair down."

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) made a musical splash Memorial Day weekend in a performance with the Memphis Symphony Orchestra; it was later posted in a video clip on YouTube. Alexander performed a few tunes at the piano in NPR's Studio 4A.

The White House meeting took place four days afterelectors met to make Joe Biden the president-elect. A faction that pushed the former president to fight that outcome clashed with Trump's advisers.

For weeks at a time in the early '90s, musicians from around the world converged on the rocker's Real World Studios to meet, mingle and make music. Sixteen years later, the fruits of their experiments are now on record.

There are many gifted jazz singers, and there's no shortage of accomplished acoustic bass players. But 23-year-old Esperanza Spalding's new album features both her soaring, flexible vocals and the low-end thump of her double bass.

In his visits to Israel and Saudi Arabia this week, President Biden will aim to keep the oil flowing and lock in progress on the Middle East's simmering conflicts.