"Jazz Goes Folk" this week on Night Lights

[ghost of miles]

In the late 1950s and early 1960s the folk-music movement in America hit a commercial zenith with artists such as the Kingston Trio, Joan Baez, and Peter, Paul and Mary enjoying great success–particularly on college campuses, competing with jazz as the countercultural music of choice. Several jazz artists responded to the movement with albums based around folk-music themes (although one such artist, composer and arranger John Benson Brooks, had been interested in exploring such a path since the late 1940s, and even performed a folk-jazz concert with popular folk act the Weavers at New York City’s Town Hall in 1950).

Jazz Goes Folk features music by unsung hardbop heroes saxophonist Harold Land and trumpeter Carmell Jones (from their LP Jazz Impressions of Folk Music, John Benson Brooks’ Folk Jazz U.S.A.. and Alabama Concerto, singer Frances Faye’s Sings Folk Songs (with a swingin’ version of “Skip to My Lou”), clarinetist Bill Smith’s Folk Jazz, and saxophonist Clifford Jordan’s Leadbelly tribute These Are My Roots, as well as recordings by jazz mavericks Fred Katz and David Amram.

Jazz Goes Folk airs Saturday, June 28 at 11:05 p.m. EST on WFIU-Bloomington and at 9 p.m. Central Time on WNIN-Evansville, IN, as well as 10 p.m. EST Sunday evening on Michigan's Blue Lake Public Radio. (You can see other broadcast times around the country on the program's links page.) It will be posted for online listening Monday morning in the Night Lights archives.

Edited August 29, 2009 by ghost of miles

[ghost of miles]

Jazz Goes Folk is now archived. Edited August 29, 2009 by ghost of miles

[Teasing the Korean]

Did you play anything from "The Hi Los Happen to Folk Music" on Reprise? Great cover art.

[ghost of miles]

Did you play anything from "The Hi Los Happen to Folk Music" on Reprise? Great cover art.

I came across that LP two days after finishing "Jazz Goes Folk" and putting it up on the server for stations to download. You're right, great cover art.... Billy May's orchestra backs them up. Eventually I want to do a Hi-Lo's show, either for Night Lights or Afterglow, so I'll probably try to work in one of HAPPEN's cuts then.

[ghost of miles]

We're re-airing Jazz Goes Folk this week; it's already archived for online listening.