He's 77 years old now and the song that made him famous turns 55 next month, but Little Richard's influence still runs strong, reports Marc Myers in the Wall Street Journal (8/10/10). "I was like the rappers today, creating dirty words to blues songs on the spot," says Richard. "One of them was called Tutti Fruitti." (video) Indeed it was, and even though the original lyrics were cleaned up, teens at the time knew exactly what he meant when he sang "about a girl named Sue who knows just what to do." Woooooo.

Released in January, 1956, Tutti Frutti peaked at No. 17. It was followed by Long Tall Sally (No. 6), and Slippin' and Slidin', Rip It Up and Ready Teddy -- Little Richard recorded "15 Billboard Top 100 hits by 1958. He also made three film appearances, including The Girl Can't Help It, starring Jayne Mansfield (video). "I had started standing at the keyboard so I could do my stage routine without having to get up," says Richard. "I also began putting my leg up on the piano, like Otis Turner." (video)

Richard was already dressing flamboyantly and wearing his hair in a pompadour, a style he picked up from Esquerita, the R&B singer who also taught him how to play boogie-woogie piano. "I wore makeup and wild outfits to keep white people from focusing on me as some kind of a ... threat," says Richard. "I knew that if I looked crazy, not cool, I wouldn't be seen that way. And it worked. People focused on the music." The affected include Elvis, the Beatles, Stones, Jimi Hendrix and Michael Jackson. "I should be better recognized today for sure," says Richard. "I am the beginning. I am the originator."

"Elvis was complicated, so you need a lot of time to make sense of him," says Jim Hamilton in a Wall Street Journal piece by Marc Myers (8/18/10). Jim is one of some 40,000 fans who descended on Memphis to celebrate Elvis Week, commemorating the 33rd anniversary of the singer's death. Jim drove his 1959 Pink Cadillac all the way from Baltimore to be near Graceland on August 16th, which he's done every year for the past 15.

June Balish has attended Elvis Week for the past 14 years, although she admits she's not sure exactly why. "Elvis is infinitely mysterious," she says. Barbara McLean, also attending Elvis week for the 15th time, agrees: "No matter how big you think Elvis is, he always turns out to be even bigger," she says. "Every year, I think I've finally figured it all out, but I haven't. He just keeps growing on you." It's true that Elvis, in his 23-year career, "delivered an almost kaleidoscopic range of stage personalities."

He was a rocker, a film star, a balladeer ... a pawn and a king. His persona ranged "from aw-shucks innocent to pill-dependent recluse." But whatever he was, he's still making money. Warner just re-issued "Elvis on Tour," a 1972 documentary, and RCA/Legacy is about to release a 30-CD box set priced at $749. "He's the only star who touches your mind, heart and secksuality all at once -- and you never really fully figure out why," says June Balish. Mitchell Johnson, an Elvis impersonator, thinks he knows: "Down here, Southern hospitality has become a tourist attraction," he says, adding, "Elvis is just the soundtrack."

If an indie band hits number-one on the charts, is it still an indie band? That's the question some fans have now that Arcade Fire, a bastion of indie-bandedness, has sold more records in a week than Eminem, writes Ben Sisario in the New York Times (8/15/10). Nevermind that being number-one on the charts today means having sold just 156,000 copies, "a quantity that might not have been enough for the top 10 a decade ago," much less in 1992, when alt-rockers Nirvana topped corp-popstar Michael Jackson.

But number one is still number one, even if it isn't what it used to be, and Arcade Fire is celebrating with two sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden. They got there, some say, through shameless self-promotion on Facebook, paid promotion on Twitter and a $3.99 download special on their new record, "The Suburbs," on Amazon. As one fan tweeted: "Corporate indie, anyone?" It seems that the music itself hardly matters anymore.

Nor does it seem to register that every other band of any size or stripe has to promote itself to realize anything like success. As Ben writes, "What separates Arcade Fire from most others isn't the band's tactics; it's that those tactics have worked." And it's worth noting that, unlike most other number-one acts who "turn over their rights to a record label," Arcade Fire retains the rights to its songs, which arguably meets the definition of "independent." And yet the only saving grace may be that, this week, Eminem is expected to re-claim his spot on Billboard's Hot 200.

Having parted ways with a major record label, John "Cougar" Mellencamp says he's not trying to sell anything anymore, reports Edna Gundersen in USA Today (8/17/10). "If people can discover my songs without having them shoved down their throats, it makes me feel good," says John, who has sold 40 million albums and scored 22 top 40 hits over his 35-year career. His latest record, called No Better Than This, features "13 rustic Americana originals" recorded on vintage, reel-to-reel machines, usually in one take.

"We played music as opposed to piecemealing a record in a studio," says John, who recorded the album at various historic locations, such as Sun Studio and the Sheraton Gunter Hotel, where Robert Johnson recorded. John is going on tour to promote the new record, but he's avoiding "the TV promotional circuit" and is unconcerned about getting radio airplay. "With every album," he says, "the question was, 'How many hits do you have on this record?' It's not a very fun road to travel." Sounds like fun to me, but John insists rock 'n' roll has had its day.

"The music is now fifth or sixth generation, and the farther you get away from the original, the worse it gets," he says. "Let's face it, the best records were made a long time ago. Those first five Rolling Stones records ... Dylan's Highway 61 is the best record ever ... Who's going to make a better pop record than the Beatles? I hear the radio today and it sounds like Saturday morning cartoons to me." And he thinks that within a couple of generations, nobody will remember anything about rock 'n' roll except "the Beatles, the Stones, Dylan, maybe Jimi Hendrix." That realization, says John, "was really freeing."

"We're rewriting the top of the charts for the new music business," says Eric Garland of BigChampagne in a New York Times piece by Ben Sisario (7/22/10). Eric has launched the Ultimate Chart, a new pop-music chart that challenges the Billboard Hot 100 by factoring in not only sales and airplay, "but also online streams and an array of social-networking services," such as "YouTube, MySpace, Last.fm, Twitter and Facebook." Billboard does include streaming reports from AOL and Yahoo, but the Ultimate Chart's sample is broader.

The resulting charts are quite different. While both put Katy Perry and Eminem in the number one and two spots for the week ending July 13 -- albeit in flipped order -- Ultimate's number-three song -- by Shakira -- is number 39 on Billboard. Ultimate's biggest winner is Justin Bieber's "Baby," which it ranks at number 5, exactly where it peaked on Billboard -- last February! Apparently the song is still popular on social networks even if it isn't selling or getting as much airplay. The extra attention suggests a different, and valuable, kind of equity.

"We need to be informed and have insight into all forms of data that isn't being tracked by any one entity," says Tom Corson of the RCA Music Group. "It's reflective of the disruption and fragmentation in this business." It remains to be seen whether the Ultimate Chart can top Billboard, which has been around since the 1950s. But it "taps into a common frustration in the music industry about how success can be measured at a time when streaming, ring tones and licensing for television commercials may have a bigger effect on the bottom line than record sales do."

"No one would let us headline their festival, so we made our own," says Jon Gutwillig of the Disco Biscuits, reports Seth Schiesel in the New York Times (7/22/10). That was more than ten years ago, when Jon and his bandmates grew tired of getting only the afternoon slots at music festivals when they wanted to close the show. Nine hundred fans showed up for Camp Bisco, their first "jamtronica" festival in 1999. This year, they drew "as many as 15,000" fans as well as corporate sponsors including Coca-Cola and Sony Electronics.

Peter Shapiro of Relix magazine says Camp Bisco is an idea whose time has come: "The big record deal doesn't really exist anymore," he explains. "All bands make their living by touring now, and what's the epitome of touring? Your own festival. Instead of you going to your fans, they come to you. You can invite your base and also invite other bands that are aligned with your audience and build that way." Fans paid $150 each to attend the weekend-long Camp Bisco, which reportedly took in "at least a few million dollars."

Coke was also there with a Coke Zero trailer offering "an elevated view of the stage, and a Sony PlayStation compound included dozens of game kiosks." Sony's Ginger Kraus comments: "Festivals like Camp Bisco provide us with the unique opportunity to interact with a diverse range of consumers who are passionate about music and entertainment, as well as our brand." Aron Magner of the Disco Biscuits explains: "We're not giving away shampoo to everyone or allowing in-your-face corporate marketing like that, but if sponsors are willing to deliver something that enhances the overall experience for the fans, that's something we can appreciate."

"This is a Southern religious song that was adapted along with others for the Civil Rights Movement," says Roger McGuinn in The Folk Den. "I used drums, banjo, bass and Rickenbacker 12-string for the track." (listen)

George Washington's "most endearing and least familiar weakness ... was for music, theater and dancing," reports Barrymore Laurence Scherer in the Wall Street Journal (7/1/10). Well, he did have a weakness for a friend's wife, Sally Fairfax, but that's not what this is about. Although not a musician himself, Washington loved taking in concerts in his travels, in some cases buying up blocks of high-priced tickets to do so. He liked hanging out with poets and musicians, like his friend Francis Hopkinson, too.

Hopkinson and others returned the love by composing music dedicated to Washington's "military and presidential accomplishments," including Hopkinson's "Seven Songs for the Harpsichord or Forte Piano." Shortly after the war was won, in 1781, Washington attended a concert celebrating the victory at the French Embassy in Philadelphia, featuring "The Temple of Minerva, America Independent," also written by Hopkinson. That must have been really cool at the time.

Washington hired a leading musician of the day to serve "as music master to his step-granddaughter, Nelly Custis," who played the harpsichord at Washington's Mount Vernon home. He offered all his step-children and grandchildren a musical education and kept a small library of music books, as well. By eyewitness accounts, "the chief" was a graceful and enthusiastic dancer, who especially dug the minuet. When he died, at 67, his passing inspired "another repertoire of dirges, elegies, odes and marches ... with musical offerings continuing to appear up and down the Eastern Seaboard throughout the winter of 1800."

"It's going to be a Whitman freak-out jam by the waterfront," says Zach Layton in a Wall Street Journal piece by Steve Dollar (6/30/10). Zach is organizing an evening celebrating Brooklyn's own Walt Whitman, in which "dozens of artists, rockers and writers" will perform the poet's work, set to music. "I was fascinated with the weird, pyschedelic passages in his work," says Zach. "He talks a lot about orbs, and millions of orbs circling those orbs, which got me thinking about psychedelia."

Zach isn't the only one so smitten by Whitman's poetry. Holly Anderson, a poet and songwriter, is all set to read Whitman's "Locomotive in Winter," backed by her husband's band, known as February, "a multi-guitar minimalist blues band adept at chugging, circular rhythms." Says Holly: "The cadence is kick-ass ... And there's a lot of ... innuendo. C'mon it's a poem about a big locomotive!"

Here's a Whitman sampler: "Fierce throated beauty! / Roll through my chant with / all thy lawless music, thy / swinging lamps at night ..." Whoa, baby! Not all the artists find Whitman so easily adaptable to song, though. "The only challenge is, it's freaking hard to set the lines because there's no meter," says Rick Moody of the Wingdale Community Singers. "Why couldn't they do a Dickinson event? Those could all be sung to The Yellow Rose of Texas.'" The Walt-a-Palooza starts at 5 pm on July 1 and is organized by the Issue Project Room.

When Mary McBride and her band tours, their venues are "hospitals, homeless shelters and rehabilitation centers," reports John Jurgensen in the Wall Street Journal (6/14/10). Mary calls this tour "The Home Tour," and sometimes expresses the idea by quoting Maya Angelou: "I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself." Mary and her band will lose money on this tour, but that's not the point. "I have a very generous band who has bought into this idea," she says, "and the notion that payoff comes in different ways."

Mary's idea is simply to show "how communities can be nurtured, whether by sharing shelter, stories or -- for an hour or two -- some live music." She got the idea while "visiting homebound elderly people in Washington on behalf a foundation called We Are Family. Originally, she thought she would map a tour "where she could tack on money-making club dates," but the number of free dates far outnumbered the paid ones. She does get some free lodging courtesy of Starwood Hotels and discount Ryder truck rentals, which is nice.

Mary actually is no stranger to unconventional tours, having previously embarked on "The Five Borough Tour," in which her tour bus was taxicabs. Nor is she a total stranger to success, having contributed a tune called "No One's Gonna Love You Like Me," to the "Brokeback Mountain" soundtrack. Her music is said to fall somewhere "between country, folk and the blues, singing with a blurred voice that situates her somewhere between Lucinda Williams and Melissa Etheridge." Mary's latest record, "The Way Home," will be released June 22nd.