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.
“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.
“The Fireside Afterglow” provides a laidback seasonal theme for the last days of December, featuring music that evokes love, reflection, peace, and the warm moods of winter.
Johnny Mercer captured the sound and soul of America in the words he wrote for songs such as “Moon River,” “Too Marvelous For Words,” and “I Thought About You.” Afterglow founding host Dick Bishop joins us for a career-spanning look at the life and music of the songwriter from Savannah, as we honor the his centennial this week and next.
“Popular Song On the Picket Lines” features “social significance” music from the 1930s and 40s that alluded in humorous, poignant, or politically overt ways to issues and problems of the times. Featured artists include Bing Crosby, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Cab Calloway, and Ethel Waters.
Afterglow’s stroll down the lane of reverie continues this week with “Street of Dreams Revisited,” featuring music from Patricia Barber, Louis Armstrong, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, Madeleine Peyroux, Peggy Lee, Jackie Paris, Mary Ann McCall, and others.
Stormy weather ahead this week on Afterglow, with a slew of songs that invoke the rain, especially as inspiration or lamentation for romance, from Billie Holiday, the Four Freshmen, Frank Sinatra, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Patricia Barber, Peggy Lee, and more.
Afterglow welcomes fairer weather this week with a long-running program tradition–”Songs of the Season,” this time celebrating the arrival of spring. Cassandra Wilson kicks things off with her recent recording of “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most” (written by the wonderful, underrated songwriting team of Fran Landesman and Tommy Wolf).
It’s the most written-about topic in the history of popular song (OK, I don’t have statistics at hand to back that statement up, but I’ll go ahead and climb out on what I think is a very solid limb to proclaim it): L-O-V-E, as Nat King Cole once sang.
The dream’s the theme on this edition of Afterglow, as “Street of Dreams” takes a look at popular songs that evoke an ethereal drift of mind, with music from Bing Crosby, Chet Baker, Lee Wiley, Nat King Cole, Dianne Reeves, Frank Sinatra, and many more, including a full set of dream-related songs written by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn.
Copyright © 2009, The Trustees of Indiana University | Copyright Complaints
FCC-EEO Employment Report (PDF, 104K)
1229 East Seventh Street, Bloomington, Indiana 47405
WFIU HD1 
Subscribe to the