Night Lights Classic Jazz
Thelonious Monk must have provided easy inspiration for the title-namer of his 1956 Riverside album, The Unique Thelonious Monk.
Max Roach was a revolutionary bebop drummer, a leader of the classic Clifford Brown-Sonny Rollins hardbop quintet, a social activist, jazz educator and intellectual, a forerunner of Do-It-Yourself recording, and an explorer of the avant-garde…among other things. Max Roach contained multitudes, and his death in August of 2007 reverberated across the jazz world as if it were a long solo being played on a cosmic drumset. This program, an audio snapshot of his career on record, features his work with pianists Herbie Nichols and Bud Powell, his hardbop configurations with Clifford Brown and Sonny Rollins…
The story of Sun Ra's Chicago years, when he formed his Arkestra, forged his new identity, and wrote some of his most compelling music.
In the early 1970s, as recording opportunities for more adventurous hard-bop musicians dried up, trumpeter Charles Tolliver and pianist Stanley Cowell started their own label, Strata East, partly in order to document the activities of their quartet Music Inc. The aesthetic results were in some ways an extension of the music Tolliver had made in the 1960s with artists such as Jackie McLean, Max Roach, and Andrew Hill…
(This is a continuation of a previous post, Along the Avenue: the Legacy of Indianapolis Jazz.)
Indianapolis in those days was sharing in the euphoric glow of the post-World War II economy. Lockefield Gardens, the expansive and beautiful housing complex built during the Depression to provide…
There’s a report from a reputable jazz-world source that pianist George Cables is recuperating from a liver and kidney transplant. He’ll certainly be in my thoughts. Cables, who’s always caught my ear on sideman dates with Dexter Gordon, Art Pepper, Woody…
It just wouldn't be a Sony/Legacy Miles Davis box-set without some strange, inexplicable delay.
Following up on recent posts about the rise and fall of the Indiana Avenue jazz scene in Indianapolis, I’ve started a new category on the links page for websites devoted to significant jazz cities or regions and their histories…
Word has come via Mosaic Records that pianist Jack Wilson has passed away. Wilson’s best-known albums were two 1960s Blue Note dates, Easterly Winds (featuring the hardbop dynamic duo of Jackie McLean and Lee Morgan and Something Personal. He’s also present and accounted for on several…
A brilliant composer/arranger, Jack toiled in relative obscurity despite several marvlous dates for Blue Note that included Lee Morgan, etc.
Michigan’s Blue Lake Public Radio carries Night Lights every Sunday evening at 10 p.m. EST. This Sunday, October 13, Blue Lake jazz DJ Lazaro Vega will be offering up a three-hour special on pianist Muhal Richard Abrams from 7-10 p.m, preceding the Night Lights Portrait of Max…
Notes and tones from around the web:On the heels of his fantastic Hal McKusick series, Marc Myers follows up with a profile of David Amram…
Indiana University Jacobs School of Music professor Phil Ford, heard recently on our Night Lights program Jazz and Jack Kerouac, will be giving a talk this Friday (Oct. 19) on private acetate recordings that Kerouac, John Clellon Holmes, and Allen Ginsberg made in the late 1940s and early 1950s. I’ve had occasion to hear a brief bit of one of the acetates, which featured Keroauc, Holmes, and Seymour Wise doing scat/bop vocalese accompaniment…
One of the great things about working at WFIU is having David Baker stop by occasionally for appearances on Joe Bourne’s weekday afternoon program “Just You and Me”. As busy as he is, he’s always been incredibly generous with his time, and I’m always grateful for any chance to speak with him. He’s full of stories, insights, and good will; a few minutes in his presence and you’ll understand why he’s been such a successful jazz educator.David came in today to chat about the inauguration concert for Indiana University president Michael McRobbie that he’ll be conducting Sunday night…
Media pundits a-twitter about deadpan satirist Stephen Colbert’s leap into the 2008 primaries need only look to the jazz world for a precedent: trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie’s historic 1964 challenge to incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson and Republican nominee Barry Goldwater. And while the jury is still out on whether…
Ross Lockridge Jr.'s 1948 novel had just topped the bestseller charts when the author committed suicide.
From piano-noir master Ran Blake, just in time for Halloween–New England-area readers and listeners, take note:Ran’s fall student performance focuses on one of his favorite films, the psychological murder mystery Spiral Staircase. Fittingly, the show falls on Halloween…
That’s my way of preparation–to not be prepared. And that takes a lot of preparation!–alto saxophonist Lee Konitz, from the new book Lee Konitz: Conversations on the Improviser’s Art. You can read an online excerpt here.
Beware… Strange Enchantment: Jazz for Halloween, replete with the story of the jazz-loving New Orleans Axeman, from the Night Lights archives. Me, I’ll be spinning lots of jazz CDs this evening to ward off any axe-wielding apparitions while I put…
David Brent Johnson hosts the weekly WFIU historical jazz program Night Lights and Afterglow as well. Learn more »
Johnny Hartman, Blossom Dearie, Dean Martin and others help us pay tribute to the Indiana songwriter.
Afterglow is WFIU's weekly program of jazz and American popular song hosted by David Brent Johnson.
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