Changing Taglines
Broadway Is Seeing Benefits
Of Building Its Black Audience

NEW YORK--They thought it was about Elvis.
That’s what a focus group of a dozen Black women concluded about the musical, “Memphis,” last summer when they were asked to assess the show’s tagline, “The Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll.”
But after seeing artwork featuring Felicia, the Black R&B singer in the show, and after hearing about the turbulent romance between the character and a white D.J., the women in the focus group said the show was much more up their alley. [Read full story]

A Documentary
For Lee, a New Requiem Produced for New Orleans

NEW YORK--Four years ago Spike Lee took his cameras to New Orleans to document the disaster wrought by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, as told by the people still dealing with its calamitous effects. 
The film Mr. Lee returned with was “When the Levees Broke:  A Requiem in Four Acts,” a four-hour HBO documentary that won a Peabody Award and three Emmys. [Read full story

Grier!
New Book Is Collection of Lessons Learned by Actress

Pam Grier, who manages to exude toughness and sensuality in equal measure, has also managed to embody many of the cultural shifts of the last 40 years. [Read full story]

 

From Mali
String Band Expanding Boundaries of a West African Instrument

There were no Western instruments onstage when the Malian griot Bassekou Koyate and his band, Ngoni Ba, performed at SummerStage in Central Park  
[Read full story]

Khaki, Man!
A Leaner, Sexier Look, but Decidedly More Dressed Up Than Jeans

NEW YORK--The country may not be in the midst of a great color conciliation, what with Red and Blue paint balls flying as furiously as ever, but fashion is. [Read full story]

Men Who Share a Name Take Different Paths in Life

On a glorious spring afternoon, sunshine glitters off the bales of silver barbed wire at Maryland’s vast Jessup Correctional Institution prison complex. [Read full story

‘Memphis Beat’
The Blues, Southern
Charm, Crime Blended

LOS ANGELES--A new sound arrived for the summer on Tuesday, and it stars Alfre Woodard. [Read full story]

Entertainment

 

Music Review

Rucker At Home With Country
In ‘Charleston,’ Frontman Is Charting Hits

Chronicle News Services

NEW YORK--After several chart-topping hits and a Country Music Association win for new artist of the year, the Hootie & the Blowfish front man seems to have made his primary home in country music. 
And a pleasant home it is.
The first lines of “Charleston, S.C., 1966” find Darius Rucker reveling in a sleeping daughter, a laughing wife and the sound of rain on the roof.
Working with producer Frank Rogers, Mr. Rucker has made a fine-sounding country album, full of singable choruses, bittersweet fiddle and steel, and guitars with bottomless twang. 
If Mr. Rucker’s looking to rock, a front porch will do just fine (“In a Big Way”), and he’s convinced the tattoo-sporting, fast-driving woman of “The Craziest Thing” never went nuttier than when she married a musician.
In a song written with Radney Foster (whose “Del Rio, Texas, 1959” inspired this album’s title), Mr. Rucker hopes work in the kitchen pays off later (“Might Get Lucky”).  Elsewhere, he apologizes on the radio when he screws up (“Come Back Song”). 
In an album this domesticated, a playful duet with Brad Paisley is the equivalent of a night out with the boys.