Indiana Public Media | WFIU - NPR | WTIU - PBS

Afterglow Jazz and American Song with host David Brent Johnson

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.

Recent posts by David Brent Johnson

Ella Fitzgerald and Mel Torme: Live at the Crescendo

Performances from a Hollywood nightclub by two great 20th-century interpreters of American popular song.

Continue Reading »

The Best-Known Unknown in Show Business: Thelma Carpenter

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.”

Continue Reading »

George Shearing and the Singers

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.

Continue Reading »

What’s New: February 2010

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.”

Continue Reading »

Some Enchanted Evening

Love songs progressing from discovery and longing to settled intimacy, for the Valentine’s Day weekend.

Continue Reading »

Afterglow Goes to Town

Popular song is out on the town this week on Afterglow.

Continue Reading »

She Wrote the Song: Women Composers of Popular American Music

“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. 

Continue Reading »

Nat King Cole At the Movies

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.

Continue Reading »

What’s New: January 2009

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).

Continue Reading »

Best of 2009

Our annual, highly-subjective survey of the past year’s CDs.

Continue Reading »