Music & Culture

Music & Culture

Remembering Horace Silver, Hard Bop Pioneer

3:00pm June 20, 2014

by Kevin Whitehead

Jazz pianist, bandleader and composer Horace Silver died Wednesday at age 85. Fresh Air critic Kevin Whitehead says that Silver had been off the scene awhile, but his influence is as strong as ever.

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Note the message on Kevin Eubanks' cap: "Meet You at the Blue Room." It's a nice club in Kansas City, in the historic district where Count Basie, Lester Young and Mary Lou Williams used to play.

Music & Culture

Kevin Eubanks On JazzSet

10:25am June 20, 2014

by Becca Pulliam

At the annual Detroit Jazz Festival on Labor Day 2011, an amphitheater full of Motor City music lovers grooves with the Kevin Eubanks Band — outdoors, free, and in Surround Sound on JazzSet.

Regina Carter (right) with Yacouba Sissoko.

Music & Culture

Regina Carter, Wynton Marsalis On JazzSet

3:12pm June 19, 2014

by Becca Pulliam

From a traditional blessing to a children's dance, hear a violin address the African diaspora — and a trumpet tell a bedtime story.

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Music & Culture

A Double Dose Of Ronald Shannon Jackson's Free-Funk

3:06pm June 18, 2014

by Kevin Whitehead

Ronald Shannon Jackson and the Decoding Society's Man Dance and its sequel Barbeque Dog are now available again as downloads, after being out of print for ages.

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Music & Culture

Album Review: 'While You Were Sleeping'

11:28am June 18, 2014

by Tom Moon

Singer-songwriter Jose James' music lives at the intersection of jazz harmony, pop songcraft and hip-hop rhythm.

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Music & Culture

Parquet Courts' Misery Is Exhilarating

2:36pm June 17, 2014

by Ken Tucker

The quartet has drawn comparisons to the Velvet Underground, the New York Dolls, and Sonic Youth, but rock critic Ken Tucker says this album proves Parquet Courts is an original.

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Music & Culture

Just In Time For Father's Day: Bad Dads In Opera

8:19am June 17, 2014

Renee Montagne talks to music commentator Miles Hoffman, who says his candidate for opera's most evil father is the character of Alberich from Richard Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelung.

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Music & Culture

'Fresh Air' Remembers Jazz Singer Jimmy Scott

8:19am June 17, 2014

Scott, who had a rare genetic condition that made him sound like a woman, was popular in '50s but didn't make any records between 1975 and 1992. He spoke with Terry Gross in 1992 about his comeback.

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Like the song says, his wife's gone to the country and, well, you fill in the blanks.

Music & Culture

Nobody Panic! It's Only A Pop Song About Sex

11:36am June 15, 2014

Jody Rosen says that 1909's "I Love My Wife — But Oh! You Kid!" not only spurred guardians of public morality to action but also changed American popular music forever.

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Jenny Scheinman made her name in the New York City jazz scene, but she grew up on a bluff in Northern California's Humboldt County, where she now lives again.

Music & Culture

Jenny Scheinman Reaches Out To Her Father In Song

9:31pm June 13, 2014

Scheinman says that since writing and performing The Littlest Prisoner's "Just a Child," the song has "really transformed" her relationship with her father.

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