Back in 2002 the adventurous, eclectic jazz singer Cassandra Wilson returned to her home state of Mississippi to record this album in the Clarksdale train depot as well as in a boxcar not far from the now immortalized "crossroads" where, as legend has it, Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil.

The documentary "Heartworn Highways" produced and directed in the mid-1970s by James Szalapski but not released until 1981 documented the rise of a generation of singer-songwriters that included Steve Earle, the late Townes Van Zandt, David Allan Coe, Rodney Crowell, Guy Clark, Steve Young and Charlie Daniels.

Ever have one of those days from hell that starts before the sun comes up and doesn't end until you fall into bed exhausted and stressed, hours after your normal snooze time?

I had one a few weeks ago. I'll spare you the 6am phone call that started it, but by noon I'd learned that my furnace was cracked and a new one would cost me $3000. Three grand? What a waste. That almost buys a state-of-the-art phono cartridge or some good cables these days, and I have to divert it to heat?

The Ukranian pianist Valentina Lisitsa, who has more than 30 million YouTube channel views (and you thought classical music was 'dead'?) and is currently signed to Decca Records, will soon issue a collection of Liszt pieces recorded two different ways: digitally and all-analog with no edits, recorded from the same set of microphones.

Howard Stern crapped all over me today on his radio show. The opening salvo came just after he admitted that he really doesn't listen to music anymore, couldn't care less and couldn't bring himself to play David Bowie's new album.

Oh well. My segment on Gary Dell'Abbate's and Jon Hein's VH-1 Classic TV show "For What It's Worth" aired last night. I thought it was next Thursday evening.

"The killer cycles, the killer Hertz, / the passage of my life is measured out in shirts," as Brian Eno once sang. In 1997 I measure out the vitality of the analog revival by how long it takes my Dick to fill with new vinyl. It doesn't take more than a few weeks, and a Dick holds about 75 records. Dick, by the way, is a sturdy, inexpensive, attractively finished, LP-sized, wooden slatted crate sold at Ikea, the Swedish home furnishing giant. As at Linn, everything at Ikea has a weird, consonant-heavy name.

Whether or not you appreciate the mono "old 78rpm" sound of Bryan Ferry's re-imagining of songs from his catalog as "jazz age" singles (I do so far), I came upon a serious pressing problem on side two track three that I brought up to Bob Ludwig, who gets mastering credit because I honestly wasn't sure if it was part of the " retro-plan" or a genuine pressing problem. In part that's because there's absolutely nothing visible to indicate a problem.

You always remember your first one. For me it was an Oracle Delphi turntable back in 1982. I'd gone to Christopher Hansen's in LA to buy a brand-new one, but as luck would have it, a barely used one had just been traded in by film director Roger Corman's son, and I was able to get the Delphi/Magnepan unipivot tonearm combo for a few hundred dollars less than the cost of a new 'table. My first exposure to a wobbly-armed unipivot gave me the creeps, but the deal was too good to pass up.

Why am I reviewing a CD???? The answer(s) are easy. Firstly, this loving tribute to Les Paul featuring longtime trio cohort Lou Pallo and others with whom Les played at Fat Tuesdays and the Iridium is musically fabulous assuming you like the timeless "old school" style.