Night Lights is a weekly one-hour radio program of classic jazz hosted by David Brent Johnson and produced by WFIU Public Radio. Night Lights airs on WFIU HD1 Saturday at 11:05 p.m.
William Claxton, whose photos of jazz artists became iconic talismans of the music they played, passed away on Saturday at the age of 80.
Jazz pianist Horace Silver, a founding father of hardbop and soul jazz and one of the most renowned figures of the post-World War II jazz scene, turns 80 on September 2, 2008. Many of his compositions, such as “Opus de Funk,” “The Preacher,” “Nica’s Dream,” and “Peace” have become jazz standards heard frequently today.
Saxophonist Phil Urso, who passed away yesterday at the age of 82, was another one of the many high-quality under-the-radar musicians from the 1950s and 1960s who never gained much of a profile beyond the immediate world of fellow artists and jazz devotees. While I’ve longed to hear some of his leader dates (such as the one pictured at left with Bob Brookmeyer), I know him only through the wonderful Chet Baker group of 1956, which…
Alto saxophonist John Handy has made monumental jazz records with bassist Charles Mingus, wowed crowds at the Monterey Jazz Festival, delved into world and classical music, had a chart hit with the 1976 single “Hard Work,” and helped pave the way for the rise of jazz education. On February 3 he turns 75, and this week on Night Lights we’ll be featuring his 1960s Roulette and Columbia recordings (including sidemen such as trumpeter Richard Williams, violinist Michael White, and pianist Don Friedman), in addition to a side that he recorded in 1959 with Mingus. Last week he spoke with me by phone from his home in California, and I’ll be posting portions of the interview throughout the week on this website. In today’s segment, he talks about early encounters with Dexter Gordon and Art Tatum, why he came to favor the alto over the tenor saxophone, and the legendary young bassist Albert Stinson, who was a member of Handy’s late-1960s band.
In 1957 a young Robert Altman (future director of Nashville, MASH, and The Player) co-directed a documentary about James Dean, with a soundtrack written by Leith Stevens (who also scored The Wild One…
Even if you don’t usually listen to jazz, chances are that you’ve heard Sonny Rollins, Phil Woods, Zoot Sims, Hugh Masekela, Chet Baker, and other jazz luminaries… did you know that it was Rollins soloing on the Rolling Stones’ “I’m Just Waiting on a Friend”?…
Several recent Pacific Jazz re-issues of Chet Baker are the focus of this edition of Night Lights, including Chet Baker Ensemble, Chet Baker Sextet, and Chet Baker Sings and Plays. These recordings were all done between 1953 and 1955, when Baker’s star was ascending and he was relatively untroubled by…
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