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Curated playlist

American acoustic guitarists

  • Bob DylanAt a 1966 Manchester concert, Bob Dylan told his band to play loud after a heckler called him Judas.
  • Taylor SwiftEvery record label in Nashville turned Taylor Swift away when she was 11. She kept going and began writing songs.
  • Paul SimonPaul Simon, the American singer-songwriter and guitarist, nearly gave one of his best-known songs the wrong name. While writing music for the film The Graduate, he toyed with calling a new song "Mrs. Roosevelt." Art Garfunkel passed the…
  • Johnny CashJohnny Cash never served a prison sentence. He was jailed seven times, one night each.
  • Hank WilliamsHank Williams was already dead in a car's back seat when the driver noticed. He was 29.
  • Neil DiamondNeil Diamond, born on the 24th of January 1941, once stretched his food budget to just 35 cents a day. Decades later, the American singer-songwriter had sold more than 56.5 million records in the United States alone. That total places him…
  • Joan BaezJoan Baez was singing at a music festival called Bratislavská lýra in Communist Czechoslovakia in May 1989 when someone cut off her microphone. From the stage, she had just greeted members of Charter 77, a dissident human-rights group.…
  • James TaylorJames Taylor, the American singer-songwriter and guitarist, was the last act on the bill at the Newport Folk Festival on the 20th of July 1969. Thousands of fans had stayed through the rain just to hear him. He got through only 15 minutes.…
  • Townes Van ZandtTownes Van Zandt earned one of the boldest compliments in American songwriting from his friend Steve Earle. Earle said Van Zandt was "the best songwriter in the whole world and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and…
  • Hayley WilliamsHayley Williams was 16 years old when her band Paramore released its debut album, All We Know Is Falling, in 2005. Readers of Alternative Press later voted her second in a poll of the five greatest pop-punk vocalists of all time. Yet…
  • Linda RonstadtLinda Ronstadt sings harmony on Under African Skies, a track on Paul Simon's album Graceland, and its second verse contains a line written for her. The line reads, "Take this child, Lord, from Tucson, Arizona...." Simon's tribute suits a…

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