Ed Ward
Ed Ward is the rock-and-roll historian on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross.
Ward is the author of The History of Rock and Roll, Volume 1, 1920-1963, and a co-author of Rock of Ages: The Rolling Stone History of Rock & Roll, Ward has also contributed to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and countless music magazines. The first part of his two-volume history of rock and roll, covering the years 1920-1963, will be published by Flatiron Books in the fall of 2016.
Ward lives in Austin, Texas. He blogs at City on a Hill.
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Ward, who died May 3, 2021, spoke in 1992 about a series of Christmas singles the Beatles made in the '60s. If you were a member of their fan club, you got one each year.
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Rock historian Ed Ward takes us back to California's Redondo Pier, where Dennis Wilson and his cousin Mike Love first decided to write a song about surfing. The Beach Boys were formed soon afterwards.
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After his 1958 hit "Endless Sleep," Reynolds continued to record interesting music — though he never connected with the public in the same way again. Rock historian tells his story.
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Rock historian Ed Ward says that musicians in Düsseldorf, Germany, including Klaus Dinger of the band Neu!, helped start a new German pop movement in the 1970s and '80s.
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In 1950, a red-haired Alabama boy who'd learned about radio and electronics in the U.S. Army opened a recording studio to document the blues and country music he loved. A new box set compiles the beginnings of Sam Phillips' Memphis Recording Service, and the record label he would soon create. -
Six feet tall, weighing in at 400 pounds and in his 40s when stardom hit him, Big Joe Turner is behind a load of rock 'n' roll hits. His hardest-hitting singles have been collected on a new compilation, titled Big Joe Turner Rocks. -
Charles was one of those rock 'n' roll figures whose work you're almost certainly familiar with, even if you've probably heard of him. He lived in isolation, recorded very little, didn't perform live and died in 2010. Rock historian Ed Ward looks at his memorable body of work. -
Sam Phillips once referred to Howlin' Wolf's voice as "where the soul of man never dies." Phillips, who worked with dozens of great Memphis musicians, never changed his mind. Rock historian Ed Ward examines the evolution of Wolf's singular talent.
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Before the Civil Rights movement, segregated American cities helped give birth to the Chitlin' Circuit, a touring revue that provided employment for hundreds of black musicians. Rock historian Ed Ward profiles two recent books which illuminate the conditions these musicians endured.
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SMiLE may be the most famous unreleased album of all time, but it's not really unreleased: Bits and pieces of it wound up on other Beach Boys albums. Now that EMI has assembled a definitive collection of the session tracks, Ed Ward has listened to them — and wonders what the shouting was about.
