One of the great things about working at WFIU is having David Baker stop by occasionally for appearances on Joe Bourne’s weekday afternoon program “Just You and Me”. As busy as he is, he’s always been incredibly generous with his time, and I’m always grateful for any chance to speak with him. He’s full of stories, insights, and good will; a few minutes in his presence and you’ll understand why he’s been such a successful jazz educator.David came in today to chat about the inauguration concert for Indiana University president Michael McRobbie that he’ll be conducting Sunday night…
Word has come via Mosaic Records that pianist Jack Wilson has passed away. Wilson’s best-known albums were two 1960s Blue Note dates, Easterly Winds (featuring the hardbop dynamic duo of Jackie McLean and Lee Morgan and Something Personal. He’s also present and accounted for on several…
The new batch of Live at Monterey jazz titles, featuring Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Sarah Vaughan, and others, is due out this Tuesday.
"Full Nelson" looks at the 1960s studio big-band recordings of saxophonist, arranger, and composer Oliver Nelson.
Bobby Hutcherson made his first appearance on a Blue Note date in 1963, playing on saxophonist Jackie McLean’s LP One Step Beyond.
Tony Williams was renowned as one of the great drummers of jazz. His late-1980s acoustic quintet highlights his compositional skills as well.
"The Late Miss D" features the last recordings of Dinah Washington, who died at the age of 38 in 1963.
In the early 1970s, as recording opportunities for more adventurous hard-bop musicians dried up, trumpeter Charles Tolliver and pianist Stanley Cowell started their own label, Strata East, partly in order to document the activities of their quartet Music Inc. The aesthetic results were in some ways an extension of…
Pianist and composer Andrew Hill burst onto the jazz scene in the early 1960s with classic albums such as Black Fire and Point of Departure on the Blue Note label. Hill continued recording for the label throughout the 1960s, but many of the sessions went unreleased. After listening to the tapes last year with Mosaic producer Michael Cuscuna, Hill…
On this edition of Night Lights it’s “Meet the Jazztet,” a program of recordings taken from the recent Mosaic collection of Benny Golson and Art Farmer’s work for the Argo and Mercury labels between 1960 and 1962. Some of the players who passed through the Jazztet included McCoy Tyner, Harold Mabern, Cedar Walton…