"I got started singing when I was five years old," Marie Knight said in a recent phone interview. "My mother used to stand me up on the table in the church. That's been my life, the church."

Unlike those black sanctified singers who crossed over from gospel to pop (like Sister Rosetta Tharpe) or who started in blues but ended up preaching (like the Reverend Gary Davis), Knight's story has generally stayed within the bounds the church. And this year she's being inducted into the International Gospel Music Hall of Fame in Detroit.

Any description of Recapturing the Banjo feels inaccurate.

It was released under the name of trance-blues artist Otis Taylor yet is more of an all-star collaboration, featuring Guy Davis, Corey Harris, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Keb' Mo', and Don Vappie on the titular instrument.

Yet that description would suggest an album dominated by the banjo, and overloaded with it, when the reality is that the instrument is merely an accent on some tracks, including "Hey Joe," with a ringing electric-guitar solo closer to Hendrix than anything traditional.

The Great Black Music Ensemble, with almost 40 members, has long been an avant-garde force in jazz. CDBaby.com asserted that the ensemble brings "the excitement of new sounds and rhythms, while incorporating the traditions of black music including funk, reggae, bebop, swing, and more" to its music. The group is one of two bands connected to the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), a group that has made "unparalleled contributions to modern music," according to JazzPolice.com. Before 2005, the ensemble was known as the AACM Big Band.

When Bo Diddley died on June 2, you might have heard a story about how that name came to be.

Billy Boy Arnold, the harmonica player and singer who will be performing with Jody Williams at Mississippi Valley Blues Festival (and who will be receiving the RiverRoad Lifetime Achievement Award), says he knows the real story.