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Recent Shows

Stars Of Jazz: Jazz's First Emmy-Winning TV Show

Book about the Stars of Jazz TV show

Stars Of Jazz was an Emmy-winning weekly late-1950s jazz TV show that featured many of the era’s top jazz artists and used innovative techniques to help bring the music to a wider audience.

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Jazz Scene San Francisco

Book about the Stars of Jazz TV show

Long before it was a center of the psychedelic counterculture and its attendant rock groups, San Francisco was a West Coast haven for the development of jazz.

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DIY By Ellington: Duke Ellington's Mercer Records Label

Mercer Records 78

In 1950 bandleader Duke Ellington started his own record label that recorded numerous small-group dates often led by Ellington cohort Billy Strayhorn, featuring outstanding Ellington-orbit musicians such as saxophonist Johnny Hodges, singer Al Hibbler, and bassist Oscar Pettiford.

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Ella '57: Ella Fitzgerald Flies High

Ella Fitzgerald 1957

In 1957 singer Ella Fitzgerald recorded close to one hundred tracks as her career continued to soar in the wake of signing with Norman Granz’s Verve label.

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Sassy First Soars: Sarah Vaughan in the 1940s

Sarah Vaughan 1946

In the 1940s a young jazz singer with a four-octave range and bebop chops burst onto the big-band scene with Earl Hines and Billy Eckstine before going on to establish herself as a solo star.

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The Revolution Will Be Recorded: The Flying Dutchman Story

Flying Dutchman anthology

Bob Thiele had already spent three decades in the music business recording legendary jazz and pop artists when he started a new record label in 1969 that brought on board notable musicians such as Gil Scott-Heron, Leon Thomas, Duke Ellington, Oliver Nelson, and Louis Armstrong with music that reflected the cultural upheaval of the times.

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It's Time! Max Roach In The 1960s

Max Roach It's Time

Exploring the convergence of jazz and the civil-rights movement in Max Roach's career during a turbulent decade.

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Jukebox Jazz

Jazz Jukebox

Jazz is usually thought of as an album format, but once upon a time you could drop a coin into a slot and fill up a bar or restaurant with the sounds of artists such as Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, and Horace Silver spinning off a three-minute-long machine-operated platter.

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Night Lights Blog

Remembering Janis Stockhouse Part 2

Jazz educator Janis Stockhouse

We continue our remembrance of the Bloomington jazz educator with former Stockhouse student Sara Caswell and Stockhouse's colleague Thomas Wilson.

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Remembering Janis Stockhouse

Janis Stockhouse

Jazz artists and educators Natalie Boeyink, Rachel Caswell, and Lissa May discuss the life and legacy of the longtime Bloomington High School North band director.

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Just You And Joe: Joe Bourne Returns For A WFIU Jazz Celebration

Joe Bourne and David Brent Johnson

Joe Bourne, the founding host of WFIU's long-running weekday afternoon jazz program Just You And Me, came back to help the show turn 40 with a live-audience broadcast.

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Quincy Jones Brought Us Together

Quincy Jones Mosaic booklet

A Quincy Jones tribute and remembrance.

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Wakefield's Way: Dan Wakefield, 1932-2024

Dan Wakefield in 2017 2

David Brent Johnson remembers Indiana writer Dan Wakefield.

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A Family Tribute To Janiece Jaffe

Janiece Jaffe

Two of the late singer's children stopped by WFIU to discuss their mother's life and music.

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A Tribute To Janiece Jaffe 1958-2022

Janiece Jaffe

A musical and conversational remembrance of Bloomington singer Janiece Jaffe, who passed away on November 23, 2022 at 64. Jaffe friends and collaborators Dave Bruker, Peter Lerner, and David Miller discuss her life and legacy, and we hear some of Jaffe's concert and studio recordings as well.

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