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.
The songwriting collaborations of Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer–the hits and the lost and little-known songs as well, with recordings from Nat King Cole, Helen Forrest, Louis Armstrong, Mel Torme, and Hoagy and Johnny themselves.
Afterglow honors the centennial of one of America’s greatest songwriters, with recordings of Johnny Mercer’s songs by Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Billie Holiday, and others. Afterglow founding host and Mercer expert Dick Bishop joins the program to share his insights about the man from Savannah.
Johnny Green may not have been the most prolific of composers, but some of the songs he wrote music for turned into significant standards, including “Body and Soul,” “Out of Nowhere,” and “I Wanna Be Loved.” Although Green is best remembered for these compositions, he actually spent the bulk of his career working in the movie industry.
Composer Johnny Green wrote the music for several songs that went on to become staples of the jazz-and-popular-song canon, including “Body and Soul,” “Out of Nowhere,” and “I Cover the Waterfront.” Born in New York City on October 10, 1908, he went to Harvard at the age of 15, did some early arranging work for Guy Lombardo, and notched his first hit with “Coquette.” After an unhappy turn as a stockbroker, Green abandoned Wall Street…
In part 2 of American Popular Song and World War II we’ll hear music from Louis Jordan (“You Can’t Get That No More”), Kitty Kallen with Jimmy Dorsey (“They’re Either Too Young or Too Old”), Sam Donahue’s Navy band (“Convoy”), a rare recording of Bing Crosby with Glenn Miller’s…
In honor of the holiday weekend, we’re posting both parts of last year’s “American Popular Song and World War II” Afterglow program, featuring special guest Michael McGerr, author, cultural historian, and Indiana University professor. We’ll hear some of the martial-spirited songs from the early months of America’s entry into the war (“Remember Pearl Harbor” and “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition”), as well as pre-war songs about the draft, songs about…
More from last Friday evening’s Afterglow program devoted to jazz and jazz-vocal recordings of the songs from Show Boat. Hour 2 features several very different versions of “Ol’ Man River,” including a contemporaneous …
Last Friday evening’s Afterglow program, featuring jazz and jazz-vocal interpretations of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein’s songs for the musical Show Boat, is now available for online listening…
On December 27, 1927, the Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein musical Show Boat made its Broadway debut at the Ziegfield Theater. Show Boat, based on Edna Ferber’s novel, was one of the first musicals that wasn’t just a loose revue of unrelated songs; the songs in Show Boat actually helped establish characters and storylines. It also gave us songs like “Can’t Help Lovin Dat Man,” “Why Do I Love You,” “Bill,” and “Ol’ Man River.” The musical depicts life on the Mississippi, with a large cast of both white and African-American characters, and the song “Ol’ Man River,” which seeks to capture both the suffering of black laborers and the eternal spirit of the Mississippi…
Dick and Kiz Harp were a husband-and-wife, piano-and-vocals duo who ran their own nightclub (converted from a warehouse and called “The 90th Floor,” after a lesser-known Cole Porter song they performed) in Dallas, Texas at the end of the 1950s. They’ve developed a cult following among jazz-vocal aficionados …
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