Musicians

Texas singer-songwriter Joe Ely has been in love with trains his whole life. In 1977, he recorded one of the great train songs -- "Boxcars," which his longtime pal Butch Hancock wrote -- laying out exactly what had hooked him over the course of countless rides in open freight cars journeying to and from his hometown of Lubbock. If you ever heard the whistle on a fast freight train Beatin' out a beautiful tune If you ever seen the cold blue railroad tracks Shinin' by the light of the moon If you ever felt a locomotive shake the ground I know you don't have to be told Why I'm going down to the railroad tracks And watch them lonesome boxcars roll "My grandfather worked the Rock Island line, and my father worked on the Santa Fe line," Ely, 62, said Sunday night following his performance at Burt's Tiki Lounge, about two blocks from the Albuquerque train station.

No invention since the phonograph more dramatically affected how popular music is made than Fender guitars, arriving as they did with the birth of rock 'n' roll. Buddy Holly was an early Fender convert; Jimi Hendrix used the Stratocaster to revolutionize the world of rock guitar playing.

There may be no greater ambassador for jazz these days than L.A.'s adopted son Charlie Haden. Haden's nearly 40-year career has encompassed such genres as free jazz, Portuguese fado and vintage country -- the last of which is featured on his latest album, "Rambling Boy" -- not to mention a consistently revolving roster of sidemen and bandleaders that reads like a list from some imaginary jazz hall of fame.

Llyn Foulkes marches to the beat of his own drum -- and bass, xylophone, car horn and cowbell. The idiosyncratic painter, whose works are featured in "Nine Lives," is also an accomplished musician. And his instrument of choice is, well, all of them. Foulkes plays a homemade contraption called the Machine, a dense, wraparound nest of scavenged and invented instruments whose crowning glory is a clump of old-fashioned car and bicycle horns.

It was 50 years ago that Nat King Cole went to Brazil and was greeted with staggering street-side ovations. "There was so much affection, it's hard to describe what it was like," said Carole Cole, one of the late singer's daughters. "It was almost like the entire population of Rio de Janeiro turned out en masse to welcome him and throw roses at his feet. He and my mother were invited to stay at the presidential palace. He was treated like royalty."

In her landmark book "Gender Trouble," feminist philosopher Judith Butler argued that gender is a performance, a put-on constructed out of lipstick and fainting couches or neckties and pigskin. Butler called for opening up ideas of gender to more radical expressions, not just the scripted roles found in "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus," which has informed us, in short, that women like to talk and men don't.

Not just any photographer can coax rap mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs to sit in a gilded throne, cloaked in king's garb, in the middle of Times Square, to personify the social class musings from Thorstein Veblen's 1899 book "The Theory of the Leisure Class." Or to get Johnny Cash to pose with his back facing the camera. Or to shoot Mick Fleetwood in a wedding dress alongside John McVie, the members of Nirvana in Brooks Brothers suits, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers au naturel.

The jokes came quickly at Royce Hall on Thursday night as UCLA Live director David Sefton introduced the trio of virtuoso musicians about to take the stage. With Béla Fleck on banjo, Edgar Meyer on double-bass and tabla master Zakir Hussain, where exactly does one categorize such a seemingly bizarre mix of bluegrass, classical and Indian music? Despite each musician's diverse background, this wasn't an evening defined by jarring, chocolate-in-my-peanut-butter genre mash-ups. In fact, what left the biggest impression was how seamlessly the three principals' seemingly disparate sounds meshed.

The Champagne Bar at the Hotel Bel-Air is dark as a lair. Ice clinks as men and women on caramel-colored leather chairs and forest-green couches imbibe, converse and laugh. A roaring fire blasts light and warmth, which is welcome, despite the heat of a late-summer evening, because the air-conditioned room feels like an ice bucket. Against a wall, under giant paintings of swans, Antonio Castillo de la Gala -- dapper in a dark suit, striped tie and crisp shirt -- surveys his domain from his perch at a Yamaha baby grand piano.

In summer 1957, I was a teenager who had just moved to Texas from the East Coast. One Sunday afternoon, I happened to walk into a large social hall in South Dallas where a jam session was underway. On the bandstand were three saxophonists: Leroy "Hog" Cooper on baritone, David "Fathead" Newman on tenor and Hank Crawford on alto. Their playing shook me to my very core. Through their horns, they shouted out a blues with the ferocity of a Blind Lemon Jefferson or a Bessie Smith.