Night Lights Classic Jazz
Working for decades as a broadcaster for the Voice of America, Willis Conover was perhaps the most influential and widely-heard jazz DJ of the 20th century.
The story of a husband-and-wife jazz duo who ran and performed in a Texas nightclub in the late 1950s. The two LPs they recorded have won them a cult following.
Trumpeter Don Ellis is best-known today for the big bands he led during the late 1960s and early 1970s and their use of odd time signatures.
This week on Night Lights I’ll be playing jazz from a new Miles Davis concert release–MONTEREY ’63, featuring the then-new rhythm section of Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams…along with Mosaic Records reissues of classic hardbop J.J. Johnson/Kai Winding and Art Blakey albums… the never-before-released Ella Fitzgerald LOVE LETTERS, featuring the singer in small-group settings, with big bands, and with the London Symphony Orchestra…and much, much more. And I’ll be broadcasting live, because this is the beginning of…
Just in time for Christmas: Mosaic Records has discographical information and audio clips up for their forthcoming Quincy Jones and Lionel Hampton sets, out later this month. The Hampton includes the vibraphonist’s remarkable late-1930s small-group dates…
NPR has launched a new multimedia jazz and blues page as part of a larger new musical site. The site offers content produced by NPR and a number of contributing stations, including interviews, reviews, blogs, and streaming music. A first glance reveals…
We'll hear an interview with Oscar Brown Jr, a pioneer of early 1960s vocal jazz.
This week on Night Lights it’s “Jazz Goes to the Cold War,” a program about the U.S. State Department’s sponsorship of international jazz tours during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1956, as both the Cold War and the civil-rights movement heated up, the American government asked Dizzy Gillespie to assemble a new big band to promote the image of American freedom around the globe. Gillespie obliged, although he made it clear…
Reading Norman Mailer while at sea--literally and existentially.
Annals of broken-limbs-and-books dpt.: recently I broke my right arm in a bike accident. The only good thing that ensued from said accident was a chance to spend several days catching up on my reading (kids, don’t try this at home), and one of the books I got around to was Ashley Kahn’s story of Impulse Records, The House That Trane Built. Kahn, who’s previously written books on the making of Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue and John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, focuses as much on Creed Taylor and Bob Thiele, the producers who successively oversaw the rise of Impulse, as he does on the musicians such as Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Archie Shepp…
Brief notes for the holiday weekend:*Copacetic Night Lights friend Bill Kirchner is taking his monthly turn on WBGO’s Jazz From the Archives this Sunday evening with a program on pianist Dick Twardzik…
Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, and screwball noir in late-1940s Mexico.
There are several confirmed reports from yesterday evening and this morning that baritone saxophonist Cecil Payne, an unsung hero of the bebop era, has passed away:
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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