Bob Dylan Rolling Thunder

Despite critical acclaim as a performer, the rootsy singer/songwriter T Bone Burnett earned his greatest renown as a producer, helming recording sessions for acts ranging from Roy Orbison and Elvis Costello to Counting Crows and Sam Phillips.

It’s hard to believe that more than 50 years have passed since Joan Baez first stepped onto the public stage and became the voice of America’s conscience. From her early support of Martin Luther King’s civil rights campaign to the platform she provided to the suffering citizens of Sarajevo, there hasn’t been a major social-justice movement in the past half-century that Baez hasn’t championed. She primarily has been identified with the 1960s, and consequently, some of her recent charitable projects haven’t been at the forefront of the mainstream radar. In her new documentary How Sweet the Sound, Mary Wharton took the steps that are necessary to reverse this trend.

Who else could have written a country song about the Holocaust ("Ride 'Em Jewboy"), or about a human being kept in a cage as part of a circus ("Wild Man from Borneo")? Outrageous and irreverent but nearly always thought-provoking, Kinky Friedman wrote and performed satirical country songs during the 1970s and has been hailed the Frank Zappa of country music. The son of a University of Texas professor who raised his children on the family ranch, Rio Duckworth, he was born Richard F. Friedman. He studied psychology at Texas and founded his first band while there. However, King Arthur & the Carrots – a group that poked fun at surf music – recorded only one single in 1966. After graduation, Friedman served three years in the Peace Corps; he was stationed in Borneo, where he was an agricultural extension worker.