Ed Ward, on Neil Diamond’s earliest days:

Probably the strongest negative reaction I’ve ever gotten to anything I’ve written was when I panned a Neil Diamond show during my stint at Austin’s daily newspaper. His fan club’s newsletter picked it up, and for two and a half years we got letters denouncing me — the last of which came from Vanuatu, in the South Pacific. But my disappointment in the show was based on remembering where Diamond had come from. Watching him literally wrap himself in an American flag, I remembered his contribution to pop music and felt sad.

Although Roy Orbison started out as a rockabilly performer on Sun Records, he didn’t really find his identity until he signed with a small Nashville label, Monument, in 1959. Rock historian Ed Ward looks at the 17 singles that put him, and the Monument label, on the map.

The Vagrants, one of New York City’s most popular bands in the 1960s, recorded only 30 minutes’ worth of music. Rock historian Ed Ward explains what happened to the band and why its music is worth hearing today