© JONAS CUNHA/dpa/Corbis Disco Queen Donna Summer has passed away after a battle with lung cancer at age 63. Even though her name is always automatically entwined with disco, it was a sobriquet that she was never fully comfortable with. And rightfully so; unlike so many studio-manufactured singers of that era, Summer possessed a pure, sparkling mezzo-soprano voice and felt that she performed her best on ballads and show tunes. Here are a few stories behind some of her biggest hits. "Love to Love... READ ON

Yesterday Levon Helm, the multi-instrumentalist best known as the singer and drummer for The Band, died after a long battle with throat cancer. He was 71. Helm was a southern gentleman, owner of one of rock and roll’s all-time great beards, easily the genre’s best singing drummer and, as Esquire’s Charles Pierce wrote, the “real voice of America”: “I wanted to thank him for the way he sang, and for the throb of his drums, and for the way he helped point the way home for all of us who... READ ON

Whether you’re a Disney fan or not, chances are pretty good that you’ve had a Sherman Brothers song firmly stuck in your head at one point or another. The songwriting duo got their big break when Annette Funicello turned one of their songs – “Tall Paul (He’s My All)” into a hit in the late ‘50s. Disney asked them to write more songs for the popular Mouseketeer, and you could say that things kind of took off after that. The Sherman Brothers’ influence can be found in everything from... READ ON

To quote a song from Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones Ltd, it’s Hard to Believe. Davy Jones, the cuddly member of the Monkees, the master of the maracas, and the guy with the fanciest footwork, has left us at the age of 66. Davy Jones, whom every girl in my third grade class crushed on back in 1967, who nicknamed the profile-less Micky Dolenz “Skillet Face” upon first meeting him, who cheerfully reprised his role as Marcia Brady’s prom date in Real Live Brady Bunch stage shows, and whose... READ ON