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A new Night Lights show up for online listening: Jazz Women of the 1990s

Another recent Night Lights show up for online listening, devoted to Ellington's musical celebrations of black culture and identity in the 1930s and 40s: Swing It Loud: Duke Ellington's Early Black-Pride Music

Jazz pianist Billy Taylor was also a broadcaster and educator who helped found the Jazzmobile organization in 1960s Harlem and wrote the civil-rights anthem “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free.” Celebrate his centennial today with a new Night Lights show that includes clips from his appearances on the 1958 TV show The Subject Is Jazz and his work as a jazz journalist for CBS News Sunday Morning With Charles Kuralt: The Teacher: Billy Taylor

Last week's Night Lights show, Diggin' Diz: A Musical Portrait of Dizzy Gillespie in the 1940s, put together in honor of the Gillespie centennial, is now archived for online listening. The program includes the rare 1944 broadcast of Gillespie and bassist Oscar Pettiford's quintet performing "A Night In Tunisia."

Count Basie and Paul Robeson team up to salute Joe Louis, Gil Scott-Heron pays tribute to Billie Holiday and John Coltrane, Freddie Hubbard delivers a jazz skyhook for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Duke Ellington paints a musical picture of Mahalia Jackson, and more on this recent edition of Night Lights: Portraits In Black: Jazz Tributes To African-American Heroes Coming up this week: "Ready For Freddie Redd."

Last week's Night Lights show up, with a special thanks to Jsngry, who allowed me to use a quote from an old Organissimo post of his concerning the topic at hand: Final Miles: Miles Davis On Warner Brothers The web post also includes links to the full-length studio outtake of "Can I Play With U?" (the Prince song and recording originally intended for Tutu), Miles' appearance at Prince's 1987 New Year's Eve concert at Paisley Park, and much more.

This past week's Night Lights show, devoted to drummer Chico Hamilton's early and mid-1960s recordings, is now up for online listening: A Different Journey: Chico Hamilton In The 1960s ...and a happy birthday to Mr. Hamilton, who turns 90 today.

A recent Night Lights show surveying the jazz and events of the year 1963: http://indianapublicmedia.org/nightlights/1963-mans-dream-nations-nightmare/ Music from Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, the New York Contemporary Five, Andrew Hill, and more.

A recent Night Lights profile of Buddy Rich that includes excerpts from a 1969 interview with WFIU jazz host Dick Bishop is now up for online listening: Put On Earth To Play Drums: The Buddy Rich Story The web-post includes a link to the 1969 interview in its entirety, in which Rich discusses everything from his musical origins and time with the Artie Shaw and Tommy Dorsey big bands to the state of jazz circa 1969.

Here's a Night Lights program that originally aired last December for the Sinatra centennial and re-aired this past week, now archived for online listening: Jazz His Way: Frank Sinatra It gathers some rarely-heard encounters with Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald along with broadcasts and recordings made with Nat King Cole, Benny Goodman, Coleman Hawkins, Count Basie, Red Norvo, and others.

A happy 87th birthday today to pianist Barry Harris, and three days late to Toshiko Akiyoshi. Here's this week's Night Lights program, celebrating them both: Bud's Buds: Barry Harris And Toshiko Akiyoshi

Last week's Night Lights show, focusing on Waldron's late 1950s and early 60s music, up for online listening: Soul Eyes: The Early Mal Waldron Songbook

Last week's Night Lights program, featuring Jaco's recordings from 1976 to 1981, as well as an interview with bassist and Indiana University jazz faculty member Jeremy Allen, is now up for online listening: The Greatest Bass Player In The World: Jaco Pastorius

This past week’s Night Lights show focused on Duke Ellington’s weekly broadcasts to help sell war bonds for the U.S. government while World War II remained underway in the Pacific. It includes some little-known Ellington compositions and unusual arrangements, as well as several of Ellington’s promotional spots for war-bond sales and some news bulletins that occasionally broke into the broadcasts: “The Duke Is On The Air”: Duke Ellington’s Summer 1945 Treasury Shows

Posting this a bit early, since the holiday's coming up this weekend: Night Lights in the key of screeeech, with stalking monsters, road-weary Draculas, and the true tale of the jazz-loving New Orleans Mysterious Axman all part of this week's Halloween celebration. (As well as an early Gil Evans arrangement) Strange Enchantment: Jazz For Halloween

This week on Night Lights it’s “Away From the Spaceways: John Gilmore.” Tenor saxophonist John Gilmore, who influenced John Coltrane and helped to pioneer the challenging techniques of 1960s avant-garde saxophone, spent most of his career with Sun Ra and his Arkestra, recording outside of Sun Ra’s band on only a handful of occasions. (Much discussion of Gilmore in the thread I started here while working on this program). His powerful, edgy style combined aspects of hardbop and outside playing; we’ll hear examples of it with pianists Andrew Hill and Paul Bley, as well as recordings that Gilmore made with McCoy Tyner, Elmo Hope, Pete LaRoca, and Art Blakey (a rare broadcast version of the ballad “I Can’t Get Started”), in addition to his 1957 Blue Note date with fellow tenor saxophonist Clifford Jordan. “Away From the Spaceways” airs Saturday, October 21 at 11:05 p.m. EST on WFIU and at 9 p.m. Central Time on WNIN-Evansville. It will be posted Monday afternoon in the Night Lights archives. Next week: "Down at the 90th Floor: Dick & Kiz Harp."

On a recent Night Lights show Boston jazz historian Richard Vacca revisits George Wein's 1950s nightclub with me. Broadcast performances from Charlie Parker, Lee Wiley, Erroll Garner, Ella Fitzgerald, Chet Baker, Dave Brubeck, and more, including a Storyville reading list and basic discography: Jazz From Storyville

Last week’s Night Lights show up for online listening: Jukebox Jazz: Jazz On 78s And 45s ... with an acknowledgement to this forum at the end of the program.

Last week’s Night Lights centennial Bird tribute, featuring a Parker’s dozen of career-defining tracks, is up for online listening: Ornithology: A Brief History Of Charlie Parker

Last week's Night Lights show, which delves into the music and history of New York City's Five Spot, is now up for online listening: Making A New Kind Of Scene: New York City's Five Spot It includes commentary from Five Spot regulars David Amram (also a Five Spot performer) and novelist Dan Wakefield, as well as live Five Spot recordings from Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane or Johnny Griffin, Eric Dolphy and Booker Little, and representational recordings by Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman, and poet Frank O'Hara reading "The Day Lady Died."

Last week's Night Lights program, put together in honor of the Tristano centennial this year, is now available for online listening: https://indianapublicmedia.org/nightlights/lennie-tristano-jazz-guru/

From 1929 to 1947 trumpeter and singer Louis Armstrong, who had already made a series of seminal small-group recordings that would become a cornerstone of jazz history, rose to popular culture stardom, appearing in movies, becoming the first African-American to host a weekly radio program, and waxing a wealth of material for Decca and other labels that brought him greater commercial success, as well as critical controversy. I’ll be featuring music from those years on this edition of Night Lights, and we’ll also hear from Armstrong biographer Ricky Riccardi, whose recent book Heart Full Of Rhythm chronicles this key but often overlooked stretch of Armstrong’s career: Swing That Music: Louis Armstrong In The Big Band Era

This week's Night Lights show, The Juneteenth Jazz Jamboree, is up for online listening. Music celebrating freedom and the holiday from Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Carmen McRae, James Newton, Louis Jordan, and more...plus background on the holiday from emancipation-holiday historian William Wiggins. The Juneteenth Jazz Jamboree

Last week’s Night Lights show, broadcast in honor of drummer Shelly Manne’s centenary, is up for online listening: West Coast Manne: Shelly Manne In The 1950s It includes music from Manne’s collaborations with Shorty Rogers, Jimmy Giuffre, and Russ Freeman; an excerpt from Bill Holman’s Quartet; tracks from Manne’s recordings of the music from My Fair Lady and Peter Gunn; a sideman appearance with Ornette Coleman; a cut from the first Poll Winners album; and a live recording at the Black Hawk in San Francisco.

Last week’s Night Lights show highlighting pianist Ahmad Jamal’s run of albums for ABC and Impulse from 1968 to 1971 is up for online listening: The Second Great Trio: Ahmad Jamal On Impulse