10 minutes ago

PORT ARTHUR, Texas (AP) — Janis Joplin’s laugh still rings in the memory of a childhood friend.

At a gathering to dedicate a historic marker in front of one of the singer’s childhood homes, Monteel Copple recalled her friend’s laugh as they tried to keep their skirts in place while hanging upside down on the school’s monkey bars.

“I can remember her giggle,” Copple told those gathered Saturday for the dedication of the Texas State Historical Marker.

Saturday would have been Joplin’s 65th birthday. She died of a drug overdose on Oct. 4, 1970.

Joplin was 4 when her family moved into the house that now has the marker. The family moved out in 1975. Her first childhood home was torn down in 1980.

Alicia and David Sanchez and their 8-year-old son now live in the house. As they helped pull a Texas flag off the marker, some people in the crowd shouted “We love you, Janis.”

Fans still come by the house, said Alicia Sanchez, 48. When she moved into the house about 10 years ago, she didn’t know anything about its former occupants.

“One day I just saw a TV crew out here shooting and I thought ‘What’s going on,’” she said. “I asked what they were doing and they told me that she (Joplin) used to live here. And then I started having people knock on my door asking to see my house.”

She doesn’t let strangers inside, but said she doesn’t mind people taking pictures in the front yard.

By Hillary Crosley 14 minutes ago

NEW YORK (Billboard) - When Flo Rida first took the bus from Florida to Los Angeles in hopes of launching a music career, he was so broke that he was forced to live on the streets.

Even worse, he once left his bag on a bench while milling around the Beverly Center mall, only to discover that the LAPD had confiscated it, fearing it contained a bomb.

Nowadays, the rapper's outlook is considerably brighter. His debut single, "Low" featuring T-Pain, is enjoying its fourth week atop the Billboard Hot 100. It has sold more than 1.78 million downloads through January 6, according to Nielsen SoundScan. In the post-Christmas week, it set a record when it moved 470,000 digital downloads.

As a bridge to his Poe Boy/Atlantic debut, "Mail on Sunday" (March 18), "Low" is prominently featured as the lead track from the Disney film "Step Up 2 the Streets," which opens February 14 in U.S. theaters. Atlantic will release the soundtrack February 5.

The label has been building the Flo Rida story since late last summer, when he began playing club dates in Florida and the Southeast in conjunction with the release of "Low" to clubs in the area.

"This may seem like an overnight sensation to most of the country," Atlantic vice president of marketing James Lopez said. "The song spread so much faster than we could travel."

The "Low" video debuted in early November on BET and MTV, inspiring nearly 100 YouTube videos of dancing fans. According to Atlantic director of digital marketing Brian Dackowski, the label quickly initiated partnerships with social networking sites like Imeem, where fans can upload their own photos and remixes of the "Low" clip.

Flo Rida also has his own YouTube channel, through which "Low" has garnered nearly 5 million plays, and he interacts personally with fans on his MySpace site.

"This phenomenon was organic," Dackowski said. "We haven't had an artist take off like this before with a song picking up and kids across the country going for it on their own. It was like riding a wave."

Flo Rida was born Tramar Billard on December 16, 1979, in Carol City, Fla.'s 187th Street projects. The youngest (and only boy) of seven siblings, he was a natural athlete who played every sport imaginable, but music was what really moved him.

He honed his skills making tapes in his grandmother's and aunt's garages, and by ninth grade had joined four-member rap group the Groundhoggz.

"We grinded locally doing shows and mixtapes," Flo Rida said. "We kept rapping together even after I graduated high school in 2001 and left for (the University of Nevada-Las Vegas). But after a while, we started shopping our demos separately because no one signed us as a group."

Now, the rapper is putting the final touches on "Mail on Sunday," which features appearances by Ross, Sean Kingston, Lil Wayne, Trey Songz and Brisco.

"They say if you grind hard enough, you'll shine," Flo Rida said. "I didn't know 'Low' would get this big. It's the greatest feeling in the world."

Reuters/Billboard

11 minutes ago

SAN DIEGO - John Stewart, who wrote the Monkees’ hit “Daydream Believer” and became a well-known figure in the 1960s folk music revival as a member of The Kingston Trio, has died, according to the band’s Web site. He was 68.

Stewart suffered a massive stroke or brain aneurysm and died early Saturday at a San Diego hospital, the band announced on its official Web site.

“The world has lost one of its best men, but a man who lived well and made many people happy with his love, his wit and his music,” the announcement said.

Stewart joined The Kingston Trio in 1961, three years after the band released its version of an old folk song, “Tom Dooley,” that went on to become a hit. Stewart replaced the band’s founder Dave Guard, who had left to pursue a new musical direction.

Stewart spent six years leading the group, during which time the band recorded 13 albums, according to its Web site.

After the trio disbanded in 1967, Stewart went on to an acclaimed solo career that included recording more than 40 albums.

Stewart’s wife Buffy and children were at his side when he died, the Web site said. Plans had not been announced for memorial services.

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On the Net:

Kingston Trio, http://www.kingstontrio.com

By Ken Tucker 24 minutes ago

NASHVILLE (Billboard) - The idea of bringing together strange bedfellows to entertain the masses is as old as "Gilligan's Island" and "The Gong Show."

More recently, the concept has been effectively demonstrated by ABC's "Dancing With the Stars," among a never-ending string of reality shows.

The latest mashup is CMT's "Gone Country," which brings together '80s R&B star Bobby Brown, former "American Idol" contestant Diana DeGarmo, Latin artist Julio Iglesias Jr., "Brady Bunch" principal Maureen McCormick, R&B artist Sisqo, Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider and singer/TV personality Carnie Wilson in a contest that nets the winner a country single release.

The ringmaster/pot stirrer/maestro/taskmaster for the show, which debuts January 25 on the network, is Big & Rich's John Rich.

Filmed in late October, "Gone Country" finds the contestants living together in the Plowboy Mansion, the 27,000-square-foot home north of Nashville co-owned by the Muzik Mafia, a genre-bending creative trust whose members include Rich, musical partner Big Kenny Alphin, Gretchen Wilson and Cowboy Troy.

While such shows as Fox's "American Idol" rely on their audience to pick a winner (albeit with entertaining judges to ostensibly guide them), "Gone Country" is more akin to NBC's "The Apprentice" in that the only person contestants need to impress is Rich. In the first episode, he arrives on the front lawn of the mansion in a helicopter, bedecked in a full-length fur coat.

During a subsequent down-home Southern dinner, Rich explains to the housemates their challenge: Each will have to compose an original country song with the help of Music Row's finest songwriters and perform it in front of a live Nashville audience.

The show provides plenty of tears (mostly from McCormick), testosterone-fueled tiffs (Snider, Rich), down-home humor (there's a toilet-seat-tossing contest) and, most important, music.

"There is some funny stuff in the show," Rich said before driving home the Nashville adage that it all begins with a song. "You have to sit down and create something from nothing, and everything springs out of that. That's what makes country music different than all the other genres."

With that in mind, Rich handicapped the seven contestants vying for the prize:

BOBBY BROWN

"His biggest strength is that he is Bobby Brown, and his biggest weakness is that he is Bobby Brown. He is his own worst enemy, but when he is just being a regular guy, what a great dude. He really understands a lot about music. He's a really, really good songwriter. He really knows how to work a crowd. He is still a superstar. He has that gear."

DIANA DEGARMO

"As a kid she was really into country, but then she kind of got disillusioned with it and went pop. That's when she did 'American Idol.' She put out a couple of pop singles and they did OK, but it just really wasn't something she could sell because that's really not her deal. For her, the biggest challenge was connecting back to country music. She wrote a really, really good song, but she sang it like Christina Aguilera. Those vocal calisthenics don't necessarily work in country music, so she has got to retool her approach a little bit. It's hard to find any flaws in what she does other than that."

JULIO IGLESIAS JR.

"His only weakness is the language barrier, and I am not sure that is so much of a weakness, really. He doesn't know a lot about country as far as modern country, (but) he knows a lot about old country because of his dad. We have been looking for a (way) to bridge that gap between the Hispanic community and country music for forever. We could really use a couple of artists that speak their language and speak our language and bridge the two together. If he wanted to stick with it and take a serious run at it, he could do something."

MAUREEN MCCORMICK

"She's just not a great singer, but as a person she has an incredible story. We all grew up watching her — she is part of our DNA. She's really an emotional kind of person. She is either laughing at the top of her lungs or balling her eyes out, which makes her a bit of a train wreck on some things, but when it came to writing songs, I felt like her vulnerability (was a plus). She wrote the best song of anybody on the entire show, 'That's the Price I Gotta Pay for Being Me.' It just killed me."

SISQO

"He's a really good singer, knows how to write a hit song and is a really good record producer. It's going to be really hard for him to overcome the whole hip-hop thing. He is so urban in his delivery. He always does dance moves (and) things that are so alien to country music. I am not sure the audience is going to let that go. Can he keep his identity and lose some of the juke-and-jive a little bit?"

DEE SNIDER

"His opinion of country music was so antiquated. He didn't realize that there is music out there now that rocks harder than what he was doing. But he went to a Muzik Mafia show and saw the level of intensity, saw me perform a couple of times and started digging into the music further. His respect level came full circle by the time we hit the end of the show. His biggest strength was that he is extremely charismatic and has the 'I don't give a damn' attitude."

CARNIE WILSON

"Carnie just grew up around such great music. She understands harmony, she understands how music works. Some of the Wilson Phillips stuff I thought was some of the greatest pop music we had at that period of time. It was real melodies, real lyrics. Her weakness is she has never been a frontperson. She's always singing harmony. To win this show, you have to be able to step up and control an audience and take over the stage. That was one of the things she really struggled with."

Reuters/Billboard

By Antony Bruno 11 minutes ago

DENVER (Billboard) - In the two months since MTV Networks and Harmonix released the music-based videogame "Rock Band," players have purchased and downloaded more than 2.5 million additional songs made available after the game's initial distribution. Activision, meanwhile, said it has sold more than 5 million new songs via download for "Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock" since it began adding downloadable content in early November.

By comparison, it took wireless operator Sprint four months to sell 1 million songs on its over-the-air full-song download service. While new digital music services competing with iTunes and free peer-to-peer services have struggled to convince music fans to pay $1 for a single, downloadable tracks for games like "Rock Band" and "Guitar Hero" are flying off the digital shelves.

"With such a low installation base, we didn't think that there'd be 2 million songs sold in eight weeks," MTVN Music Group/Logo/Films division president Van Toffler said. "We live in a rough time around music where our audience struggles to pay $20 for a CD but don't hesitate to pay $50 for a game. The notion to pay 99 cents or $1.99 to have a song and repeatedly play with it apparently isn't a big hurdle."

The original "Rock Band" and "Guitar Hero" games shipped with more than 50 licensed songs each, a mix of master recordings and covers. Since then, "Rock Band" has made new music available every week as either singles or in three-pack bundles that can be added as new playable levels for between 99 cents and $5.50. "Guitar Hero III" did the same, focusing on three-song bundles of new music and music featured in previous versions of the game.

Although MTV is not providing specific numbers, it did say that the majority of the downloaded songs were purchased by Xbox 360 as opposed to PlayStation 3 users. According to the NPD Group, "Rock Band" sold 775,000 copies for the Xbox 360 through the end of 2007, compared with 250,000 on the PS3.

METALLICA SHINES

The game's impact on song sales for participating artists, however, remains unclear. While not providing exact sales figures, MTV did say that the Metallica three-pack of "Ride the Lightning," "Blackened" and "And Justice for All" is the best-selling "Rock Band" download.

According to Nielsen SoundScan data, those same songs saw digital download sales spikes of 31 percent, 39 percent and 48 percent, respectively, for the month after they were featured as a "Rock Band" download, over the previous month.

But those increased sales numbered only in the hundreds, while the "Rock Band" downloads numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Still, label executives are thrilled with the results.

MTVN already has plans to expand its outreach to artists, creating additional game expansions — as both physical products and downloadable content — around specific music genres and even artists.

"We are talking to tons of bands, from indie to the most established … to release not necessarily their entire catalog, but maybe some of their classic albums and do special packages around that," Toffler said.

What's more, there's no reason for "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band" to be the only videogames that sell music. It's only a matter of time before other games begin offering new downloadable soundtracks as well.

Titles like the "Madden" football series, the Tony Hawk skateboarding franchise and the venerable "Grand Theft Auto" games are well known for their extensive soundtracks. Offering gamers the ability to replace their soundtracks every few months after the initial release is not only technically possible with today's new-generation consoles, but also on the horizon.

"That's certainly something we're interested in," Electronic Arts worldwide head of music Steve Schnur said earlier this month at the Consumer Electronics Show.

Reuters/Billboard

57 minutes ago

NEW YORK (Billboard) - Rap star Missy Elliott has popped up here and there in the past few years (namely, in a Doritos ad campaign), but there hasn't been much in the way of new music from her since 2005's "The Cookbook."

Now the wait is over, in the form of the new songs "Ching-a-Ling" and "Shake Your Pom Pom," which will appear on Atlantic's "Step Up 2 the Streets" soundtrack (February 5) and Elliott's new album (likely due in May).

At No. 57, "Ching-a-Ling" is currently the top debut on Billboard's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart.

Elliott is hoping to reunite with producer Timbaland, who has been behind some of her biggest hits but wasn't much of a factor on "The Cookbook."

Reuters/Billboard

By Ayala Ben-Yehuda 31 minutes ago

LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - The title of the new album by Los Creadorez del Pasito Duranguense de Alfredo Ramirez — "Listos, Montados y Armados" (Ready, Mounted and Armed) — is inspired by cowboys, a common theme in regional Mexican music. But it could well refer to a group ready to defend its hard-fought position as one of duranguense's top acts.

The band was born when Alfredo Ramirez Corral, the onetime lead singer of duranguense pioneer Grupo Montez de Durango, split from that act, taking most of his bandmates with him. Amid a bitter court battle with Montez leader Jose Luis Terrazas, Ramirez Corral and several of his band members spent two months in jail in 2006 on charges of illegally benefiting from the Montez name.

Disa Records released compilations that year with a few songs by Ramirez Corral and other acts on the label. But in 2007, the newly named Los Creadorez del Pasito Duranguense de Alfredo Ramirez bounced back strongly with the album "Recio, Recio Mis Creadorez," which has sold 131,000 units in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

"The other group went romantic," said Ramirez Corral, Los Creadorez's vocalist, keyboardist and producer. "We are like cowboys … I've always fought for that. The other group was too light and didn't fit us."

In keeping with that, "Listos," due February 5, has a country-party feel and features a corrido, fast polkas, waltzes and a ranchera single, "Por Quien Me Dejas."

Now on its own, Los Creadorez has the freedom to express "our style and our taste, without leaving our roots," Ramirez Corral said.

Duranguense is a fast-clipped hybrid of traditional banda and electronic instruments — originally from Durango, Mexico, but popularized in Chicago. In recognition of the youthful audience the genre has developed, Los Creadorez's release will carry a heavier online and mobile emphasis in its marketing than on previous releases, according to Disa marketing vice president Gerardo Vazquez. Los Creadorez will be one of the acts featured in AT&T's catalog for new customers, with a text code for a ringtone download of the single.

Los Creadorez's album may be Disa Records' last major studio release before Univision Music Group is sold, a move expected to be announced soon.

Ramirez Corral counts on the fans who have stayed loyal to his group, whom he said have told him, "These are the people I've always seen and the ones I want to see, even under a different name."

Reuters/Billboard

By NEKESA MUMBI MOODY, AP Music Writer 51 minutes ago

NEW YORK - As the Hollywood writers’ strike threatens to disrupt the 50th annual Grammy telecast, some in the music industry are befuddled, frustrated and even resentful.

“I feel torn, because I’m a writer,” R&B singer-songwriter Jill Scott, who is nominated for three Grammys, told The Associated Press on Friday. “I feel like I’m caught in the middle. … I don’t know how to feel.”

The Writers Guild of America, which went on strike two months ago, has said it was unlikely to grant the Recording Academy a waiver to allow writers to work on the Feb. 10 show, the music industry’s most important event, set to be broadcast live on CBS from Los Angeles.

The guild, which is seeking compensation for programs, movies and other content streamed or downloaded over the Internet, refused to grant the waiver for the Golden Globes and threatened picketing, and the Screen Actors Guild encouraged its stars to stay away as well. As a result, the typically lavish three-hour televised awards extravaganza was reduced to a one-hour, celebrity-free newscast on Jan. 13.

While Recording Academy President Neil Portnow has insisted that a full-scale Grammys will continue no matter what — and Beyonce and the Foo Fighters announced they still plan to perform at the event — some musicians may sit out the broadcast in solidarity with writers, especially top-level musical superstars who also are actors, such as nominees Justin Timberlake and Alicia Keys.

Scott, also an actress, said she felt empathy for the WGA and didn’t know what she would do if asked to perform at a picketed show.

“That’s not an easy decision for me,” she said. “I would feel like I’m choosing between my parents.”

Best new artist nominee Feist, who is up for four Grammys, told the AP last week she planned to go to the event.

“It’s going to be kind of a reunion for `The Reminder,’ everyone who was involved,” she said of her critically acclaimed album. “For us, it’s just a night to see everyone dressed up.”

That may change if the WGA pickets. She admitted she doesn’t really understand the issues involved in the writers strike, and because of that, she said, she turned down an invitation to appear last week on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report.”

“I just balked,” she said. “I couldn’t see myself crossing the picket line. I don’t know enough about the cause to speak about it, for or against. You cross the picket line, you have to speak about it.”

Another best new artist nominee and SAG member, R&B singer-songwriter Ledesi, was hopeful the situation could be worked out, but indicated that she would not go if the WGA picketed and SAG directed its members not to attend.

“We have to do what we have to do,” she said. “I’m praying that I get to go — I’ve been wanting to go for years.”

Many in the industry have declined to talk publicly about the issue for fear of alienating either side. But privately, some expressed frustration and anger that a musical event would be ensnared by a writers’ strike.

“The overriding initial reaction is ‘I don’t even understand what this has to do with the music industry.’ That really is the bottom line, because the reality is that over 700 hundred union members work on this particular show, (and) two of them are writers,” Portnow said Friday.

“We are in complete agreement of the aims and the goals of the writers, and we aim for those very same goals and rights and royalties and compensation for our own creators. … We should not be penalized.”

If the show were drastically altered or canceled because of the strike, it would be a major blow to an already ailing music industry: The Grammys can provide huge sales boost for winners and nominees, and for other performers who are featured on the show. There’s a sense of urgency this year, after another year of sharp sales decline, to experience that bump.

Still, “whatever the case, we should respect the writers,” said Grammy-winning rock legend Tom Petty, who is not in the Grammy race this year.

And as far as all the consternation and hand-wringing from others in the music industry about the fate of the awards show, Petty said, “I’ve never met a musician who gave a damn about the Grammys, actually.”

___

AP Entertainment Writer David Bauder contributed to this report.

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On the Net:

Grammys: http://www.grammys.com/