Night Lights Classic Jazz
Compilations are usually anathema to jazz aficionados, but Allen Lowe's Devilin' Tune project offers a highly compelling tour of music history.
Jazz greats such as Dexter Gordon, Bud Powell, Kenny Clarke, and Don Byas spent long periods of time on the European continent and made many recordings there.
In the 1940s and 50s the colorful, laidback radio personalities who helped introduce bebop and other new music to audiences inspired tributes from musicians.
As the swing era gave way to new and challenging sounds, a generation of bandleaders was forced to take notice.
Jam sessions, bebop, r and b, big bands, visits from Hollywood celebrities--as the center of African-American culture in L.A., Central Avenue had it all.
Jazz impresario Norman Granz, who started the popular Jazz at the Philharmonic concert tour series in the 1940s as well as the record label that came to be known as Verve, also produced a lavish package of jazz recordings…
Frank Hewitt, a New York City underground bop-piano legend, played with Cecil Payne, Billie Holiday, John Coltrane, and many other jazz greats in the 1950s and 60s and had a role in the storied play The Connection. In the 1990s he was a mainstay at Smalls, a hip Greenwich Village nightclub…
Several years ago an amazing audio find came to light–a June 1945 Town Hall concert in New York City featuring Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Max Roach–the rising stars of the then-revolutionary new music bebop–accompanied by Al Haig on piano and Curley Russell on bass. The performance, captured in sound that’s stellar by the era’s standards…
We'll hear collaborations with former Basie big-band singers Billie Holiday and Helen Humes, as well as a live version of some bop anthems.
This week on Night Lights it’s jazz from the late-1940s/early-1950s Boston scene, featuring alto saxophonist Charlie Mariano, pianist and arranger Nat Pierce, and baritone saxophonist Serge Chaloff. The Boston scene was a thriving one, enhanced in part by the presence of the Boston Conservatory of Music, which stood out for its acceptance of…
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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