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.
A sampling of some favorite reissues from the past year, including Stan Getz, Denny Zeitlin, Freddie Hubbard, Jackie McLean, and Tony Williams.
This Memorial Day weekend Night Lights pays tribute to departed musicians with another program of jazz elegies. “Turn Out the Stars V. III” includes musical remembrances of Louis Armstrong, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Wes Montgomery and more.
The April 2009 Downbeat features a cover story on the late trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, featuring reflections from numerous friends and musical colleagues such as James Spaulding, David Weiss, Cedar Walton, and David Baker. Near the end of the article writer Dan Ouellette mentions that Blue Note Records is preparing a springtime CD release of a 1969 Hubbard concert, titled Without a Song: Live in Europe 1969.
Trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, who died on Monday at the age of 70, was one of Indiana’s true jazz giants, rubbing historical shoulders with the likes of J.J. Johnson, Wes Montgomery, and Hoagy Carmichael. On Tuesday, December 30, longtime Hubbard friend and musical colleague David Baker stopped by the studio while I was guest-hosting WFIU’s Just You and Me and offered some remembrances and reflections during our 90-minute Hubbard tribute. He also brought along a rare live recording of the teenaged Hubbard’s 1957 Indianapolis group the Jazz Contemporaries, which included saxophonist James Spaulding and bassist Larry Ridley. Listen to the Just You and Me tribute to Freddie Hubbard with special guest David Baker, including classic Hubbard sides as a leader and as a sideman with Tina Brooks, Ornette Coleman and others.
*Columbia University’s Center for Jazz Studies has put up a Jazz Studies Online site, which I’m adding to the Night Lights blogroll page. Looks like a cool site–for starters, they’ve put up the entire first issue of the legendary but short-lived late-1950s journal Jazz Review.
*Speaking of cultural studies of a sort, check out this 1964 Playboy symposium on jazz, posted by Detroit Free Press music critic (and Bloomington native) Mark Stryker over at Organissimo. Participants included Cannonball Adderley, Dave Brubeck, Ralph Gleason, Charles Mingus, Stan Kenton, Dizzy Gillespie, and Gunther Schuller.
Organist Melvin Rhyne, who first made his reputation playing with Wes Montgomery during the halcyon days of Indianapolis’ Indiana Avenue, performed in Bloomington this past Sunday at Tutto Bene as part of a benefit for local collective Jazz From Bloomington. His tenor saxophonist was a longtime favorite of mine, David Young, who played in the legendary George Russell-David Baker sextet. Indiana Avenue archivist David Williams also brought along a wealth of memorabilia, celebrating the era when Rhyne, Montgomery, Freddie Hubbard, Larry Ridley, and many other future jazz stars could be seen and heard jamming regularly along Indianapolis’ main stem…
On “Slide at 75″ we celebrate a landmark birthday of trombonist, composer, and arranger Slide Hampton. Hampton, like fellow trombonists J.J. Johnson and David Baker, emerged from the Indianapolis jazz scene of the 1940s and early 1950s, playing with his prolifically talented family’s band before going on the road with Buddy Johnson, Lionel Hampton, and Maynard Ferguson…
Bobby Hutcherson made his first appearance on a Blue Note date in 1963, playing on saxophonist Jackie McLean’s LP One Step Beyond. In the next 14 years Hutcherson would record 22 albums as a leader for the label and appear as a sideman with musicians such as Joe Henderson, Grant Green, Lee Morgan, McCoy Tyner, and Herbie Hancock, becoming a prominent figure in the avant-bop landscape of the 1960s.
Trumpeter Cal Massey was an African-American jazz composer, little-known now and in his lifetime, but whose work was recorded by musicians such as John Coltrane, Freddie Hubbard, Charlie Parker, Lee Morgan, Jackie McLean, McCoy Tyner, and Archie Shepp. In the 1960s Massey made his Brooklyn home into a kind of community center for jazz artists and produced…
This edition of Night Lights is a salute to warmer weather with “Let’s Spring One,” including music from Ike Quebec, Thelonious Monk & Milt Jackson, Anita O’Day, Nat King Cole, Charlie Parker, June Christy…
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