Afterglow is a weekly one-hour radio program of jazz and American popular song hosted by David Brent Johnson and produced by WFIU Public Radio. Afterglow airs Friday at 10 p.m. on WFIU HD1.
Performances from a Hollywood nightclub by two great 20th-century interpreters of American popular song.
Singer Thelma Carpenter’s career stretched from the swing era to “The Wiz” and “The Cosby Show,” and she counted songwriter Alec Wilder among her champions, but she never really gained wider fame, leading her to joke in later years that she was “the best-known unknown in show business.”
Pianist George Shearing signed with Capitol Records in 1955, partly because he wanted to branch out beyond the quintet format and make albums with singers. In the next few years he’d record with Nancy Wilson, Peggy Lee, Dakota Staton, and Nat King Cole.
This week on Afterglow I’ll feature new music from two performers from different ends of the generational spectrum—26-year-old singer Kat Edmonson and 91-year-old bandleader Gerald Wilson–as well as an interview with pianist Ben Neuman and music from his debut CD “Introductions.”
Love songs progressing from discovery and longing to settled intimacy, for the Valentine’s Day weekend.
“She Wrote the Song” highlights standards written or co-written by women composers who, in the early decades of American popular song, had to struggle for the limelight, as women had to in so many areas of American life.
Pianist and singer Nat King Cole is one of the most beloved icons of 20th-century American popular song, but his relationship with Hollywood never quite reached the exalted heights that some of his cohorts such as Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby achieved, but his recordings appeared in many films of the 1950s and early 1960s.
New music this week on Afterglow from singers Carol Sloane and Nellie McKay, plus posthumous releases from pianist John Hicks and Frank Sinatra (an anthology of New York City concert performances).
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