Night Lights Classic Jazz
Mary Ann McCall, whom Johnny Mandel once called “the greatest of all the big band singers,” is a secret heroine of American jazz vocal music. Little-known today, and not widely recorded during even the most active periods of her career, she has sometimes…
"The Late Miss D" features the last recordings of Dinah Washington, who died at the age of 38 in 1963.
Pianist and torch-jazz singer Jeri Southern recorded half a dozen albums for Decca in the 1950s, scoring hits with songs such as “When I Fall in Love,” “Joey,” and “You Better Go Now.” Her intimate, near-speaking approach to vocals…
An iconic singer, a songwriter (or two) named Irene, lost love and inspiration, and a history-mystery of identity.
This week on Night Lights it’s “Alexandria the Great,” a program devoted to the late 1950s and early 1960s recordings of the little-known singer Lorez Alexandria, who left a Chicago gospel background behind for the world of jazz, recording with Ramsey Lewis, Wynton Kelly, and others. Often compared to Sarah Vaughan and Carmen McRae, Alexandria also liked to…
Mary Lou Williams, the pianist, arranger, and composer whose career in jazz traced a line all the way from the Kansas City scene of the late 1920s through the swing era, bop, the 1950s jazz expatriate community, and an academic job at Duke in the late 1970s, also helped to pioneer sacred jazz in…
Una Mae Carlisle and Lil Green both were popular jazz-and-blues singer-songwriters in the 1940s; both spawned hits for Peggy Lee; and both are largely forgotten today. Carlisle, a teenage piano-playing protege of Fats Waller, wrote and recorded the hits…
“Even White Girls Get the Blues” is a look at three late-1950s blues-concept LPs by white female vocalists. Selections are included from Lee Wiley’s 1957 RCA album A Touch of the Blues (backed by Billy Butterfield and His Orchestra), Julie London’s 1957 “blues noir” LP About the Blues, and Jo Stafford’s 1959 concept record…
Nina Simone was a singer and pianist whose convergence of styles–jazz, blues, folk, pop, rock–makes her a genre unto herself. Her civil-rights anthem, “Mississippi Goddam,” remains one of her most famous moments on record; in this program we’ll hear another similar-minded song, “Old Jim Crow,” as well as “See Line Woman,” a song which was [...]
David Brent Johnson hosts the weekly WFIU historical jazz program Night Lights and Afterglow as well. Learn more »
Johnny Hartman, Blossom Dearie, Dean Martin and others help us pay tribute to the Indiana songwriter.
Afterglow is WFIU's weekly program of jazz and American popular song hosted by David Brent Johnson.
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