Night Lights Classic Jazz
Women instrumentalists thrived in the upside-down jazz world of wartime America.
Jazz fans are known for their religious-like zeal, but in the 1960s jazz sometimes became a PART of religion, providing the soundtrack for church ceremonies.
If you’re searching jazz history for important women instrumentalists, then stop and take note any time you come across the name of guitarist Mary Osborne.
As cultural changes gained momentum in the 1960s, a generation of women artists made their way through a jazz world that had long been resistant to their aims.
Mary Lou Williams' extended work will be performed in its entirety by a large ensemble for the first time since 1945.
Williams' career ranged from swing and bebop to expatriate and sacred jazz, a stint as a jazz educator, and a 1977 encounter with avant-garde icon Cecil Taylor.
In the late 1940s the "King of Swing" briefly embraced the new sounds of bebop.
Some previous Night Lights shows from the archives, offered as listening suggestions for the coming weekend:Music for Peace: Mary Lou Williams’ Sacred Jazz. An early Night Lights show…
In the 1940s and 50s the colorful, laidback radio personalities who helped introduce bebop and other new music to audiences inspired tributes from musicians.
In 1945 pianist, composer and arranger Mary Lou Williams debuted her first extended work, The Zodiac Suite, with musical movements for each sign of the zodiac. Williams was 35 years old, already a veteran of the swing era; she was playing regularly at New York City’s Café Society, hosting a weekly radio program, and had begun…
David Brent Johnson hosts the weekly WFIU historical jazz program Night Lights and Afterglow as well. Learn more »
Major Glenn Miller went missing over the English Channel in December 1944. For decades afterwards, much of his wartime orchestra's music went missing as well.
Afterglow is WFIU's weekly program of jazz and American popular song hosted by David Brent Johnson.
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