"People have been talking this week about the 100th birthday of Ronald Reagan," said Ward Emling, director of the Mississippi Development Authority's Office of Film and Culture, from the stage of the Clive Davis Theater in the Grammy Museum on Thursday night. "This also would have been the 100th birthday of Robert Johnson."

Directing the audience's thoughts toward the legacy of the great Delta bluesman, Emling defined the mission of the second annual Mississippi Night, part of the museum's festivities for Grammy week. As one of several officials in the room repping for the state that calls itself the birthplace of American music, Emling had an agenda: convince the VIPs in attendance that a trip to the Deep South can still unlock the deepest meanings of America's greatest art form.

Mississippi Night, which Grammy Museum Executive Director Robert Santelli confirmed will be an ongoing annual event, brings bright young talent from the Magnolia State to Los Angeles to promote tourism and music-industry investment in the region. This year, much talk was of the Misssissippi Blues Trail, a statewide path of interactive markers tracing the development of one of contemporary music's fundamental styles. A film offered testimony from Mississippi native B.B. King as well as stars such as Robert Plant and Bonnie Raitt about the continued relevance of the Delta region.

The loudest case was made, however, by the trio of musical acts who provided the night's entertainment. Touching on deep blues, atmospheric folk-pop, and gritty, wide-reaching rock, these artists were anything but mired in the past.

The Homemade Jamz Blues Band is a remarkably young sibling trio that has been taking the international blues festival circuit by storm. Fronted by 18-year-old Ryan Perry, a gritty shouter with flashy guitar skills, the group demonstrated a hopped-up approach to classic blues. Perry's younger brother Kyle was a fleet-fingered secret weapon on bass, while sister Taya, only 12, thumped the drums like a little Meg White. Dad Renaud Perry provided support on harmonica as Ryan strutted through the crowd, his trademark muffler guitar lighting up as he leaned in toward the ladies and showed his prowess.

Shannon McNally was as laid-back and pensive as the Homemade Jamz Band was hot. The singer-songwriter, a New York native, relocated to northern Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina drove her from her chosen home of New Orleans, and she spoke with amusement about the process of assimilation, noting that the skinny street cats she'd adopted from the 9th Ward soon grew fat from eating the big bugs and other critters in the fields near her home in Holly Springs. McNally sang material from the albums she recorded with the late hill country great Jim Dickinson, as well as "Thunderhead," a vivid song about childbirth from her new album, Western Ballad. Her heartfelt rendition of "Miss the Mississippi and You," first made popular by the state's favorite country son Jimmie Rodgers, showed her soul-deep affinity for her new environment.

For Jimbo Mathus, that connection is a given -- raised in Clarksdale and still hugging the border between the north end of his home state and Tennessee, the Squirrel Nut Zippers founder turned solo raconteur has spent his whole life becoming, as he put it, "fluent in this strange tone."

Mathus, who is a ripping guitar player, regaled the crowd with tall tales and his fractured country blues, first solo and then with help from a local band that included Zippers drummer Chris Phillips. The rollicking, too-short set offered strong support for Mathus' pitch to this music-biz crowd -- which succinctly said what the Mississippi officials had taken much longer to communicate. "Put us to work in Mississippi and in Memphis, Tenn.," he said. "We're the best, and we work cheap!"

-- Ann Powers

In the midst of my conversation a few days ago with Clive Davis, the veteran label chief, talent scout and record producer offered up a particularly welcome bit of news about Aretha Franklin, who went through some serious surgery last fall reportedly related to a diagnosis of  cancer. She has subsequently discredited widely circulated reports that she has pancreatic cancer.

Davis said that if all goes according to plan, he'll be working this year with the Queen of Soul, who he brought over to Arista Records in 1980, overseeing the dawn of a new era of chart success for her over the next decade.

"I just got off the phone with her, and she's sounding very good," Davis said. "We had a wonderful conversation, and we’re looking forward to working together. She's planning to come here when the weather gets a little warmer in New York."

He said he's also just wrapped up work with one of Franklin's myriad R&B disciples, Jennifer Hudson.

"I'm very excited about the new Jennifer Hudson album we've just completed," he said. "I love the idea of showcasing big voices of someone unique like her, who can not only break through with hits but also have a big career."

Davis will host his annual pre-Grammy Awards bash on Saturday night, and he'll also be on hand Wednesday night at the Grammy Museum to be the first honoree in the facility's new "Icons of the Music Industry" question-answer series.

-- Randy Lewis

Photo: Jennifer Hudson and Clive Davis at the 2010 Grammy Awards "Salute to Icons honoring Doug Morris" in Beverly Hills. Credit: Jason Merritt / Getty Images

Guitarist John Jorgenson gave Grammy Museum officials a special challenge during his question-answer-performance session Monday night: how to shoehorn the myriad aspects of an extraordinarily multifaceted career into the usual two-hour time slot and leave any time at all for him to actually play some music.

Interviewer Scott Goldman, head of the Recording Academy’s MusiCares Foundation, did a yeoman’s job of steering the conversation through Jorgenson’s upbringing in Redlands, his years honing his skills as an instrumentalist playing in three Disneyland house bands by day while moonlighting in a new wave band that was slogging it out in Hollywood clubs by night and on weekends, his role as  a founding member of the country-rock Desert Rose Band in the '80s, his six years touring with Elton John in the '90s and his passionate advocacy over the years for the Gypsy jazz guitar music of Django Reinhardt.

Jorgenson, 54, touched on the highs -- in 2005, he became the first American musician to headline the annual Reinhardt tribute concert in France in the town where Reinhardt lived out the final years of his life -- and the lows: appearing once with the Desert Rose Band at a show in Mississippi, second-billed to a wrestling bear.

Grammy-nominated producers discuss their lives, careers and pop music in general at a roundtable event. 

In 2010, the songs were ubiquitous, even if the music producers who helped create them were less well-known: Lady Gaga's “Bad Romance,” Eminem's “Love the Way You Lie,” Cee Lo Green's “[Forget] You” and B.o.B.'s “Nothin' on You” and “Airplanes” blanketed airwaves and filled earbuds with indelible hooks and melodies. 

But those hooks and melodies took work. Though they may drift out of the car stereo effortlessly, much sweat equity was spent crafting them. No one understands that process better than the music producers, whose job it is to turn an idea into a song. If the timing's right, the song hits. 

In advance of the Grammy Awards, which will be held Feb. 13 in downtown Los Angeles, three of today's hottest hitmakers, RedOne (Lady Gaga, Enrique Iglesias), Alex Da Kid (Eminem, B.o.B.) and Ari Levine of the Smeezingtons (Cee Lo, Bruno Mars) sat down with Times pop music critic Ann Powers for the first Los Angeles Times Music Producers Roundtable, an intimate conversation with artists who helped shape 2010's pop-music landscape.

On Saturday evening in front of a sold-out crowd, Powers led a freewheeling conversation that sought to put into words the magic that turns a bunch of notes on paper (or, these days, a hard drive) into a hit song.

“I think the most important thing is having a vision. Being able to see things before other people can see it,” Alexander Grant — better known as Alex Da Kid — told the audience inside the Grammy Museum's Clive Davis Theater. “Most of the songs you're working on, they won't even come out for three or four months at least, maybe longer, so you have to be able to think what's going to be a hit record in six months.”

Nadir Khayat, the Moroccan-born producer known as RedOne, knows something about foresight. His best known collaborator, and muse, is Lady Gaga.

“I just saw the vision,” he said of Gaga. “I just saw this girl that could be this [huge] thing. We went to the studio and talked about Queen, Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen and I'm thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, she knows music,'” Khayat said. “She was inspired. I've always thought of music as one, it's a universal language. That's what we did with the sound of Lady Gaga.”

If one were to list the breakout hits of the last two years, a few songs would rise to the top: the massive chart killers of Lady Gaga ("Alejandro," "Bad Romance," "Poker Face"), Eminem's "Love the Way You Lie," Cee Lo Green's "Forget You" and B.o.B.'s "Nothin' on You" and "Airplanes," among others.

Those songs have one thing in common -- well, at least one we're interested in right now: Three of the hitmakers responsible for them will take part in the first Los Angeles Times Music Producers Roundtable on Saturday at the Grammy Museum at L.A. Live. Just in time for the Grammys, producers Alex Da Kid (Eminem, B.o.B.), Ari Levine of the Smeezingtons (Cee Lo Green, Bruno Mars) and RedOne (Lady Gaga)  -- all of whose songs have been nominated this year -- will sit down with Los Angeles Times pop music critic Ann Powers for an hour-long conversation about their work, today's trends in music and the business of hitmaking.

Although producers are by definition the silent partners in the creative process, their role in guiding the landscape of popular music is crucial, and while the artists get their kudos onstage during performances, the producers remain in their windowless recording studios creating the magic. The Los Angeles Times Music Producers Roundtable will offer a rare opportunity for these artists to chime in on the art of the hit song in 2011.

The event is free to the public, but reservations are required. To learn more about getting a ticket, check out the announcement at the Awards Tracker blog.

-- Randall Roberts

Photo: Alex Da Kid. Credit: Natty Photo.

 
Rosanne Cash is back in Southern California this week, having swept through in August on a promotional tour for her New York Times bestseller “Composed: A Memoir,” in which she sorts through her life through the prism of the songs she’s written, sung or heard over her 55 years.

Between an appearance on “The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson” on Monday night and a scheduled question-answer-performance session tonight at the Grammy Museum in downtown L.A., the singer-songwriter and her musical collaborator husband, John Leventhal, took time for a living-room performance Tuesday morning in the Hollywood Hills home of author, KCRW-FM deejay and music supervisor Gary Calamar.

The intimate setting, packed with several dozen guests, provided an ideal forum for Cash to read a passage from “Composed,” in which she recalled rooting through writing assignments she’d done as a schoolgirl. She recalled plucking the phrase “A lonely road is a bodyguard” from one of those old papers. The mature writer in her admired her youthful choice of a metaphor rather than a simile (which would have made it “A lonely road is like a bodyguard”), then dropped it into the song “Sleeping in Paris,” from her 1993 album, “The Wheel,” with which she started her short set.

The Grammy Museum isn't the place to go for lurid rock 'n' roll details. Like the awards for which the institution is branded, Grammy Museum events aren't necessarily ones filled with dirt. But that wouldn't stop a fan at a session with Jerry Lee Lewis on Tuesday night from at least trying, although he did apologize before presenting his question. 

It wasn't all that probing, and it wasn't one Lewis hadn't been asked before, but in an evening in which Lewis was prodded to offer his thoughts on the Beatles and the Rolling Stones (spoiler: he likes them), it was downright scandalous. What, the fan asked, did Lewis think of 1989 bio-pic "Great Balls of Fire," in which Dennis Quaid portrays the artist known as "The Killer"? Inspired by true events, the film showcases the more exaggerated aspects of Lewis' reckless mythology -- a drunk, an abuser and the controversial marriage to a teenage cousin that derailed his career. 

As a man with a reputation for the unpredictable, even if the artist has been a bit declawed these days (the Grammy Museum event happened on the eve of his 75th birthday), the audience hushed. His most recent album, after all, is named "Mean Old Man." The fact that the elder rock legend has lost a bit of his lighting-fast quickness only added to the tension.

"It was kind of a distortion," Lewis said after a pause. "It wasn't really up to par. I'm really trying to say something but I don't know what to say. I was displeased with it. Dennis Quaid did a good job ...  But there was a lot of fiction in it." 

In lieu of follow-ups, the evening moved on to more merrier moments, allowing Lewis to perform a brief set -- one new song as well as "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" and "Great Balls of Fire" -- that revealed he hasn't slowed a bit when it comes to owning a piano. The Times' Randy Lewis covered Lewis' appearance Saturday in Pomona, writing "If it’s no longer with the fire of youth that once drove him, he still projects a focused intensity."  

John Lennon's history and legacy as a composer and lyricist will be explored starting next month in conjunction with what would have the former Beatle’s 70th birthday in “John Lennon, Songwriter,” a new exhibit coming to the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles.

Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, is loaning the museum a number of items used by him, including several guitars, a pair of his signature round wire-rimmed glasses, the typewriter he wrote on early in his career, original drawings and handwritten lyrics to songs such as “Imagine” and his musical paean to their son, Sean, “Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy).”

The exhibition opens to the public on Oct. 4, but Ono will attend a members-only preview a day earlier. 3, following her first-ever concert appearances in Los Angeles on Oct. 1 and 2 at the Orpheum Theater.

It also will feature rare film footage of Lennon, mementos from his pre-Beatles Liverpool band, the Quarrymen, the uniform he wore on the cover of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and a previously unreleased interview with Ono on the subject of his songwriting.

It’s one of myriad activities recognizing the 70th anniversary of Lennon’s birth. On Oct. 5, EMI and Capitol Records will reissue remastered editions of all of his post-Beatles recordings, on individual CDs and in an 11-CD box set with considerable bonus materials, along with a “Double Fantasy -- Stripped Down,” a newly remixed version of the final album released before Lennon was killed in 1980. A new book chronicling those recording sessions, “Starting Over -- The Making of ‘Double Fantasy’,” by musician and author Ken Sharp, is set for publication next month. Fans will gather for a birthday vigil at his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Oct. 9, and in November, PBS’ “American Masters” series will air “LennoNYC,” a new documentary covering Lennon's and Ono's years in New York, although the Grammy Museum will host an advance screening on Oct. 4.

-- Randy Lewis

Photo: John Lennon in 1974. Credit: Tony Barnard / Los Angeles Times

There would seemingly be little that would catch Mavis Staples by surprise. Yet with Staples now 71 years old, Wilco's Jeff Tweedy found a way to get the soul/gospel veteran to step out of her comfort zone -- literally. 

Staples' career began in earnest in the '50s, and with the Staples Singers she spent her youth on the Southern gospel circuit. Through the family's close association with Martin Luther King Jr., the Staples Singers provided a score for the civil rights era. It's safe to say that in her 60 years of singing, the South Side of Chicago resident has seen plenty. 

Yet she had never before recorded in a Chicago stairwell in below-freezing weather.

Tweedy wanted to capture Staples a cappella and in the cold, putting the boldness and defiance of her richly deep vocals front and center for a rendition of the jubilant gospel cut "Wonderful Savior." Staples, however, was more concerned about the temperature.  

"When he said he wanted to go in the stairwell," Staples recalled, "I said, ‘Are you crazy? It’s 10 below zero! I’m not going out there.’" 

Tweedy didn't relent. Tasked with producing Staples' second studio effort for Silver Lake's Anti- Records, the Sept. 14 release "You Are Not Alone," Staples noted that Tweedy took great pains to give her soulful traditionalism a refreshing spin. In the end, Staples put her full trust in Tweedy.

"He’s very family-orientated, and me too," Staples said. "He talked about his two sons. I liked him from that." 

In other words, she was willing to brave the Chicago winter for Tweedy, who recorded Staples in Wilco's famed Windy City recording studio "The Loft." 

Chrissie Hynde will put out her first full-fledged album apart from the Pretenders next month, but don’t call it a solo project.

Hynde has partnered with Welsh singer and songwriter JP Jones on “Fidelity!,” which will be released Aug. 24. It’s credited to JP, Chrissie & the Fairground Boys, and the album is full of bracing rock that Pretenders fans will recognize, as well as some country touches that may surprise those who’ve heard Hynde’s professed aversion to country music over the years.

The album in a sense documents the budding relationship between Hynde, the 58-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member, and Jones, who is in his 20s. The 30-something year age gap between them figures into the lead-off track, “Perfect Lover,” in which Hynde sings, “I’ve found my perfect lover but he’s only half my age/He was learning how to stand when I was wearing my first wedding band.”

Word is they met randomly at a party in London and not long after took a trip together to Cuba, where they wrote most of the songs.

“It wasn’t an easy album to make emotionally,” Hynde wrote on their MySpace page, “but writing and singing together was like falling off a log -- the music was pouring out of us. We wrote to each other, about each other, with each other and for each other.”

Hynde and Jones, who played their first gig together in April at Bardot in Hollywood, will make an appearance at the Grammy Museum in downtown Los Angeles on Aug. 23 as part of the museum’s “The Drop” series highlighting noteworthy new releases.

The museum's executive director, Robert Santelli, will interview them, and they are then expected to play a few songs from the album. Tickets will go on sale next week, but an on-sale date hasn’t been finalized.

-- Randy Lewis

Photo: Chrissie Hynde and JP Jones. Credit: C. Taylor Crothers

Nearly two months into the worst oil spill in history, a Facebook group has sprung up for people who support British Petroleum and think the company has gotten a bad rap.  Don’t look for Dr. John’s name on that page's friends list.

“Let BP foot the bill,” he interjected into “Black Gold,” a song about the consequences of the “Drill, baby, drill!” mentality from his 2008 post-Hurricane Katrina album, “City That Care Forgot,” which won the  Grammy Award for best contemporary blues album

The irascible pianist-singer-songwriter-producer worked several jabs at BP into his performance and Q&A; on Monday night at the Grammy Museum while skipping through his half-century career as one of the chief ambassadors of Louisiana music and culture. He was in full sartorial splendor in a vibrant purple suit, a satiny silvery-gray paisley shirt, a smart fedora, several necklaces of beads and animal teeth and a voodoo-ish walking stick.

It's hard to imagine there could be a music question that could render Craig Finn -- front man of Hold Steady, one of the wordier bands in rock 'n' roll -- speechless. But it happened Monday night at the Grammy Museum, where the band was appearing to discuss its fifth album in six years, "Heaven is Whenever." 

How does it feel, a young female fan asked the 38-year-old practitioner of barroom poetics, to play to a crowd that's equally split between fans that are "your age, and a lot of people around my age?" The question came near the end of a 45-minute or so Q&A;, and while Finn and his bandmates laughed and shrugged it off, it was the evening's third or fourth reminder that the Hold Steady aren't getting any younger. 

But stumbling over the question was perhaps the most appropriate response. "Heaven is Whenever," released Tuesday via Los Angeles label Vagrant Records, is largely about aging awkwardly, as the band's rock 'n' roll anthems and relationship ruminations are tempered with bluesy touches and lilting harmonies. If the boys in the band are still chasing the girls who do them no good, "Heaven is Whenever" is an album of lessons learned.