“Willis Conover did more to crumble the Berlin wall and bring about collapse of the Soviet empire than all the Cold War presidents put together,” jazz writer Gene Lees once said. Working for decades as a broadcaster for the Voice of America, Conover was perhaps the most influential jazz DJ of the 20th century. He brought the music into eastern Europe and other areas of the world where jazz was either repressed or commercially unavailable, helping to bridge the cultural gap between Western and Communist-bloc countries. In addition to the many fans he garnered around the globe, he…
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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…
Eric Dolphy emerged from the thriving mid-20th-century Los Angeles jazz scene and became an important player in the groups of Chico Hamilton, John Coltrane, and Charles Mingus. A highly-skilled musician who played alto sax, bass clarinet, and flute, Dolphy created a bracing, unique sound forged in both bop and the avant-garde that many consider to be his masterpiece, Out to Lunch, which displayed impressive strides in both his playing and compositional abilities.
The Birth of the Cool was a milestone in modern jazz—a handful of arrangements, compositions, recording sessions, and performances that, as historian Ted Gioia notes, “turned the jazz idiom on its head.” It extended the idea of what a jazz combo could sound like, and it provided an aesthetic head of steam for several of its creators. Recorded at the end of the 1940s by a group led by Miles Davis, these sides were obscure at first…
Gil Evans, a Canadian-born pianist and composer, “enormously expanded the vocabulary of the jazz orchestra,” as writer Gene Lees pointed out, reducing the standard big-band instrumentation, restraining its vibrato, and adding flutes, oboes, English and French horns, and tubas. Self-taught as an arranger, he created a quietly dramatic, dark-hued sound-world that drew on a multiplicity of influences ranging from Spanish music and the French Impressionists to Duke Ellington and…
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Archived Audio and playlists for the previous week's program are posted each Monday morning.
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- Conover’s Coming Over: Willis Conover and Jazz at the Voice of America
- Jazz Goes Folk
- Dolphy ‘64
- The Birth of the Cool Songbook
- Individualism: Gil Evans in the 1960s
- Red Trane: the Collaborations of John Coltrane and Red Garland
- The Nocturne Records Story
- Jazz, Spiritually Speaking
- The Carla Bley Songbook
- Jazz Impressions of Brubeck
- Soulful Days: the Cal Massey Songbook
- Detour Ahead: Mary Ann McCall
- Jazz Goes Disney
- Too Little, Too Soon: Booker Little
- Emily Remler: a Musical Remembrance
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