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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.

  • Al Green wrote "Take Me to the River," but it was his labelmate Syl Johnson who first made it famous. Rock historian Ed Ward traces Johnson's early career, which started in Chicago blues clubs in the 1950s.
  • Stone is known to millions from the records he made with Sly and the Family Stone. But his early days, and the recordings he produced for his own Stone Flower label, add another dimension to the career of this enigmatic character, rock historian Ed Ward said.
  • Diamond has sold 128 million records and written and recorded 37 Top 40 songs. But in the early 1960s, rock historian Ed Ward says, Diamond was writing songs for other musicians while struggling to get his own career off the ground.
  • Roy Orbison didn't really find his identity until he signed with a small Nashville label, Monument, in 1959. Ed Ward looks at the 17 singles that put him, and the Monument label, on the map.
  • In 1927 and '28, Ralph Peer, a talent scout for the Victor Talking Machine Company, set up recording sessions in a town straddling the Tennessee-Virginia border. The resulting sessions, rock critic Ed Ward says, laid the framework for all of country music.
  • The Vagrants, one of New York City's most popular bands in the 1960s, recorded only 30 minutes' worth of music. Rock historian Ed Ward explains what happened to the band and why its music is worth hearing today.
  • It's hard to believe that Nick Lowe's second album, Labour of Lust, was out of of print for over 20 years. But a new reissue by Yep Roc has remedied that situation. Rock historian Ed Ward says that it's good to have the album — featuring the tracks "Without Love" and "Cruel to Be Kind" — back on shelves.
  • The master of country soul, Percy Sledge crooned some of the genre's greatest hits, like "When a Man Loves a Woman." Rock historian Ed Ward says a new box set featuring all of Sledge's Atlantic recordings is certainly worth a listen.
  • A recent 13-CD box set called Next Stop Is Vietnam: The War on Record 1961-2008 documents the music that dominated the airwaves during the Vietnam War. Rock historian Ed Ward says the compilation could have used some "conscientious curation."
  • Goldwax, a label which issued some of the greatest soul records ever made in Memphis, is almost completely unknown. Given the quality of what it released, it had very few hits, but its legend has lived on. Ed Ward reports on the label's impressive run from 1963 to '70.