Night Lights is a weekly one-hour radio program of classic jazz hosted by David Brent Johnson and produced by WFIU Public Radio. Night Lights airs on WFIU HD1 Saturday at 11:05 p.m.
At the end of 1938 a former shoe salesman named Barney Josephson opened what would become one of the most legendary nightspots in jazz history. Cafe Society was New York City’s first integrated nightclub, and it quickly became a gathering place for artists, intellectuals, leftwing political figures, jazz lovers, and–perhaps inevitably–the very Manhattan sophisticates it meant to mock with its satirical murals and ill-dressed doormen. It was also the place where Billie Holiday debuted her version of the harrowing anti-lynching anthem Strange Fruit, which Time Magazine would declare 60 years later “the Song of the Century.”
Jazz and recovery meet on two unique early-1960s albums made by guitarist Joe Pass and pianist Elmo Hope. Pass’ 1961 Pacific Jazz LP Sounds of Synanon was his debut as a leader; although he’d begun to play professionally as a teenager in the late 1940s, stays in prison and rehabilitation centers for drug addiction had hampered his career throughout the 1950s.
In the 1950s and 60s the Dave Brubeck Quartet became one of the most popular jazz acts in the world–one of the reasons why the group ended up doing a State Department tour in 1958 at the height of the Cold War that took them to countries such as India, Poland, and Iraq.
Labor Day meets the Great American Songbook, as Afterglow takes a look at satirical and political protest music of the 1930s and 40s, performed by Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Billie Holiday and others.
Jazz criticism first emerged in the 1930s and has played a role not only in how the music’s been heard, but sometimes in the way it’s been made. We’ll hear some of the music that’s inspired the most debate, and we’ll also talk with John Gennari, author of a recent history of jazz criticism, BLOWIN’ HOT AND COOL.
Juneteenth, the African-American holiday celebrating the end of slavery, has a long tradition of food, games, music and prayer. Our jazz tribute includes musical tributes to freedom from Duke Ellington, Max Roach, Carmen McRae, and John Coltrane, as well as Louis Jordan’s homage to the holiday itself, and some odes to African-American athletes.
The sounds and stories of the year that changed everything, including interviews, news clips, and the music of Bing Crosby, Woody Herman, Charlie Parker and more.
The first song I ever heard by the Who was its anthemic anticipation of punk, “My Generation.” It was already an oldie when it juiced up my twelve-year-old spirit; in fact, punk had only recently arrived, and one of the reasons I liked the Who song so much was that its energy seemed similar to two bands of the moment for me, the Ramones and the…
The Living Theater is reviving Jack Gelber’s groundbreaking 1959 play The Connection, a study of drug addicts (some of them jazz musicians) pontificating on their lives and chemical loves. The cast includes saxophonist Rene McLean, whose father Jackie performed in the original version, and will be directed once again by Judith Malina, who will also play the role of Sister Salvation.
All Things Considered did a story tonight on the Addiction Research Center that was a part of the federal prison in Lexington, Kentucky. The segment alludes to the many talented jazz musicians who passed through this program in the 1940s and 1950s, including Sonny Rollins and Tadd Dameron, who took what came to be known as “the Lexington cure.”
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At the end of 1938 a former shoe salesman named Barney Josephson opened what would become one of the most legendary nightspots in jazz history. Cafe Society was New York City’s first integrated nightclub, and it quickly became a gathering place for artists, intellectuals, leftwing political figures, jazz lovers, and–perhaps inevitably–the very Manhattan sophisticates it meant to mock with its satirical murals and ill-dressed doormen. It was also the place where Billie Holiday debuted her version of the harrowing anti-lynching anthem Strange Fruit, which Time Magazine would declare 60 years later “the Song of the Century.”
Jazz and recovery meet on two unique early-1960s albums made by guitarist Joe Pass and pianist Elmo Hope. Pass’ 1961 Pacific Jazz LP Sounds of Synanon was his debut as a leader; although he’d begun to play professionally as a teenager in the late 1940s, stays in prison and rehabilitation centers for drug addiction had hampered his career throughout the 1950s.
