Country music legend Willie Nelson has teamed with celebrated producer T-Bone Burnett for "Country Music," an album which marks the first release of his recently inked deal with Rounder Records. "Country Music" is due on April 13.

Nelson, who spends more than 200 days a year on the road, will include songs from the album in his sets throughout 2010. "Country Music" features musicians like banjo player Riley Baugus, double bassist Dennis Crouch and Burnett himself, all veterans of the sessions for the Grammy winning "Rising Sand" album by Alison Krauss and Robert Plant.

The Nelson album is just one of the special releases Rounder has planned for 2010 as the label marks its 40th anniversary. On Mar. 2, he celebrated indie from Boston will release "Rounder Records' 40th Anniversary Concert," an event that was recorded in october 2009 at Nashville's Grand Ole Opry. Performs on the set include Rounder favorites like Alison Krauss & Union Station, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Bela Fleck and Irma Thomas, among others. The concert will also be broadcast as a PBS television specials nationally throughout March.

Other planned Rounder releases for 2010 include new albums from Alison Krauss & Union Station, Mary Chapin Carpenter and Kaki King.

Willie Nelson's "Country Music" track listing is:
 
"Man With The Blues"
"Seaman's Blues"
"Dark As A Dungeon"
"Gotta Walk Alone"
"Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down"
"My Baby's Gone"
"Freight Train Boogie"
"Satisfied Mind"
"You Done Me Wrong"
"Pistol Packin' Mama"
"Ocean Of Diamonds"
"Drinking Champagne"
"I Am A Pilgrim"
"House of Gold"
"Nobody's Fault But Mine"

Source Billboard

Dr. Dre has said that he probably won't release his long-awaited new album 'Detox' until 2011 now.

The long-overdue record, which will be his his first full-length LP since '2001' (released in 1999), has been delayed numerous times already. Now Dre has told Slam Online that he's too busy working on other people's music to release it yet.

"I'm working on it ['Detox'], but also I've been working on other people's projects," he said. "You'll probably hear something in a year or so."

Last year the rapper previewed material set for the album in a Dr Pepper advert – listen to it by clicking below.

Source NME

The final studio album by Johnny Cash is to be released in February.

'American VI: Ain't No Grave' is out on February 22, four days before what would have been Cash's 78th birthday.

Produced by Rick Rubin in 2002 (a year before Cash's death), the album features covers of Sheryl Crow and Kris Kristofferson songs.

The tracklisting for 'American VI: Ain't No Grave' is:

'Aint No Grave'
'Redemption Day'
'For The Good Times'
'First Corinthians'
'Where I'm Bound'
'Satisfied Mind'
'It Don't Hurt Anymore'
'Cool Clear Water'
'Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream'
'Aloha'

Source UNCUT

Roky Erickson, founder of psychedelic legends The 13th Floor Elevators, will release his first album of new material for 14 years on April 20.

Recorded with fellow Texan rockers Okkervil River, True Love Cast Out All Evil comprises unreleased songs taken from Erickson's entire 45-year career. Okkervil's Will Sheff has produced the album and has inserted recordings made during Erickson's spell in the Rusk State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

"I feel truly lucky that I got to produce this record," says Sheff. "When we started out, I was given sixty unreleased songs to choose from. There were songs written during business setbacks including the Elevators' painful breakup, songs written by Roky while he was incarcerated at Rusk, and a great deal of songs that reminded me of the sense of optimism and romanticism that I think sustained Roky through his worst years and ultimately reunited him, a few years ago, with his son Jegar and his first wife Dana. his is not a cynical comeback record, a lukewarm update on an established legacy - these are the best songs Roky has ever written, unreleased due to decades plagued by the kind of personal tragedies that would destroy someone less resilient.

True Love Cast Out All Evil will appear on the Anti label on April 20.

Source MOJO

TEDDY PENDERGRASS, who has died of colon cancer aged 59, was one of the last of the great bravura soul singers, a line which began in the '50s with Ray Charles, Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson.

When Pendergrass stepped from behind the drum kit to take a featured vocalist role in Harold Melvin & The Blues Notes in 1972, Philadelphia International writer/producers Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff realised they'd chanced upon a baritone voice as force of nature. TP's vocal armoury encompassed a raw and blistering power. From the drive of Bad Luck and expansiveness of message song Wake Up Everybody to the intense passion of I Miss You and If You Don't Know Me By Now.

He quickly outgrew the group and in 1977 was launched as a solo artist, the eponymous first album polishing those facets, from powerhouse Philly soul performances on You Can't Hide From Yourself and I Don't Love You Anymore to superb ballad readings such as The Whole Town's Laughing At Me and And If I Had.

I saw Pendergrass during his pomp, about 1979/80, in an upstate New York theatre, women's frillies raining down on the stage as he radiated a steamy sensuality from the stage. The men looked very grumpy. But in 1982 a serious car accident left Pendergrass with a spinal cord injury and he was paralyzed from the waist down, confined to a wheelchair until his death yesterday.

Pendergrass continued to record, though on 1984's Love Language and thereafter his voice betrayed the loss of power caused by his weakened diaphragm. He did not play another solo concert until 2001.

His style - contemplative opening, gently building to a pulverising emotional crescendo without the need, it must be said, to be in any way explicit - has rarely been matched since. A further Disc Of The Day tribute will follow.

Source MOJO

Farewell to the stiletto guitarist who lit a fire under British rock'n'roll.

MICK GREEN, FORMERLY the guitar player with Johnny Kidd & The Pirates (Green is far right) and latterly sideman to the stars, has died, aged 66.

The early years of British rock'n'roll were not overburdened with authentic tear-arse guitarists. Joe Brown was one; Green was the other, and although he joined Kidd in 1962, after the latter's defining hit, Shakin' All Over, he ensured that beneath the Pirates' pantomine privateer schtick there was always proper musical ballast. The glowering lead line and serrated slashes that stalk Kidd's vocal in 1964's Number 4 hit I'll Never Get Over You, were typical, and the group's cover of Piano Red's Doctor Feelgood minted a snarling sound that would inspire the Canvey band of that name.

In the '70s, as the main attraction in the now Kidd-less Pirates, he held a torch for blistering R&B, and with gutbucket mores back in fashion later in the decade, he held his own with the pub'n'punk crowd , trading blows with The Stranglers, Wilko Johnson, The Saints and others at 1977's Front Row Festival, a three-week run of shows at Islington's infamous punk pub, The Hope & Anchor.

More recently, Green lent licks to Paul McCartney on the Beatle's r'n'r revivalist Run Devil Run album (1999), played on Bryan Ferry's Frantic (2002) and underwent a saintly stint under the Van Morrison cosh, enlivening Van's 2008 album, Keep It Simple. Meanwhile, the most recent generation of garage rock converts continued to seek his patronage.

His son Brad Green, writing on his father's web site, released the following statement...

"It is with the greatest of sorrow that I have to inform you all that my father, Mick Green, has this morning (11th Jan 2010) passed away. My dad will be deeply missed by his family, friends and fans all around the world. He inspired and dazzled with his amazing talent and his sharp personality and wit. His spirit and his music will continue to live on through his music. Thank you all for your support and thoughts."

Source MOJO