KCSM Highlights
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Shemekia Copeland (ENCORE). Shemekia Copeland has spent a career performing socially-conscious blues with dashes of rock, folk, country and Americana. This week’s radio episode features backstories of her songs and connects her artistry to blues icons from Ruth Brown to Ma Rainey.
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Tribute To Billie Holiday (Originally aired 06.18.2014). In this episode of The Annals of Jazz, host Richard Hadlock pays tribute to the iconic jazz vocalist, Billie Holiday. We’ll hear from Billie herself but also from those that tipped their hat to her influence and honored her with recordings in her memory.
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Plenty of young musicians show promise, but very few enjoy the sort of meteoric rise that pianist, keyboardist and composer James Francies is currently experiencing. At 28, he’s played with jazz headliners like Pat Metheny, Chris Potter, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Stefon Harris, Eric Harland, and Terrace Martin, and racked up equally impressive credits in hip-hop and R&B: from shows with Ms. Lauryn Hill, José James, Common, and NAS, to studio time for Chance the Rapper’s Grammy-winning hit “No Problem”, Mark Ronson , Childish Gambino, YEBBA, Drake, and Kodak Black, to appearances with The Roots on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon alongside his mentor and friend Questlove. James drops by the Doodlin' Lounge for a chat with Pete.
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Pianist/songwriter, Steve Million grew up in a small town in Missouri with the fetching name of Booneville. Looking back now, Steve appreciates the quiet of that environment and the opportunity for freedom, but in his younger years, he couldn’t wait to move on and pursue a life in jazz, a musical passion that started at the tender age of seven when his mother took him to a Count Basie concert. Now based in Chicago, Steve Million keeps a busy performance and teaching schedule and celebrates one of his favorite musicians, Thelonious Monk, in a two-keyboard band with Jeremy Kahn called Double Monk. His latest collaboration is his CD, Jazz Words, with vocalist Sarah Marie Young for which Steve wrote the music and lyrics. I talked to Steve about it all from his home in Chicago.
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Denial of The Funk: The Impact of Racism on Our Nation’s Health. This week on Making Contact, we bring you a talk from noted author, scholar, and self-described intellectual freedom fighter, Dr. Cornel West speaking at the Guild Theater in Sacramento, California in 2023. In his discussion, West uses America’s music legacy as a way to explore catastrophic conditions brought on by our denial of the funk, seen through the impacts of racism on the nation’s health.
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Dr. Karen Drake. Successful delivery of septuplets babies: Dr. Karen Drake was one of the African-American Perinatologist that led the medical team that made history by delivering the first surviving set of septuplets ever born to an American couple, the McCaughey’s, in Iowa in 1997.
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The Ray-O-Vacs. It's staggering, the number of R&B groups that have been left out of the history books and off radio station playlists just because they don't fit into an accepted category of "cool." The Ray-O-Vacs is one of those groups. Though they made the R&B charts 3 times, that didn't guarantee them inclusion. They were more "middle-of-the-road" than the gospel-tinged groups that were gaining popularity in the early 1950s and they weren't a vocal group, so they can't be classified with the emerging doo wop scene of the day. That's probably why the Ray-O-Vacs are just a footnote in the history of Rhythm & Blues, but this week brings them into the spotlight. Formed in Newark, New Jersey in the late 1940s, The Ray-O-Vacs did produce a unique and light jive sound with Lester Harris (real name Harry Lester) on vocals and tubs, "Flap" McQueen on bass, Joe Crump on piano and a smooth and ever-present saxophone played by "Chink" Kinney. They had a hit right out of the gate with "I'll Always Be In Love With You" for the tiny Coleman label in early '49 and then scored again with a double-sider for Decca in 1950. The hits stopped coming and Lester Harris left the group for a solo deal with RCA Victor in '52, but his replacement, Herb Milliner continued voicing some solid singles. They hung it up after one more shot in '55 with vocalist Bill Walker for the small Kaiser label and their reputation was sealed for those in the know, especially in Pittsburgh. Dig out those jukebox nickels and get ready to dig on the sound of the Ray-O-Vacs on this week's R&B spectacular.
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Mary Stallings (NEW!). We celebrate Mary Stallings, a stalwart of vocal jazz, who has shared the stage with many legends -- Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, to name a few. Still swinging at 84 years old, she shows no signs of stopping. She joins the Emmet Cohen trio for a special night of singing from Dizzy’s Club in New York City.
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03/25 Remembering Jelly Roll Morton (Originally aired 07.21.2002) Host Richard Hadlock drops in on jazz greats reminiscing about the pioneer pianist, Jelly Roll Morton, a larger-than-life figure in Jazz. He was many things: pianist, composer, bandleader, hustler, pool shark, and a pimp, who traversed through vaudeville, speak easys, medicine shows, and brothels. But he meant many things to different people, and you’ll the voices from people who knew him best.
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Singer/songwriter Roberta Donnay has a wide variety of musical influences and a broad focus with the music she performs, from sharing the stage with Elvis Costello or Leon Russell, to her ongoing shows of 1920s and ‘30’s music with her group The Prohibition Mob Band, to her most recent CD, Blossom-ing, a collection of songs celebrating the music of vocalist/pianist, Blossom Dearie. Blossom Dearie never had the name-recognition of some of her vocal contemporaries, like Ella Fitzgerald or Sarah Vaughan, but she has always been a favorite with jazz musicians and a particular inspiration for Roberta Donnay. Donnay and Dearie share a similar vocal sound, something Donnay initially resisted but now embraces in this heartfelt tribute to one of her favorite singers.
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The Rise of the New Labor Movement. The last few years have seen a wave of labor organizing as it becomes more and more clear to workers that what they do is not expendable, but actually the heart of every business. From walkouts to unionization, workers everywhere, from Starbucks to Amazon to your local coffee shop have come together to build and exercise their power. In this episode we explore the issues that led people to organize their workplaces, the ins and outs and ups and downs of the process, and the backlash. On the forefront of the next labor revolution, we visit a coffee shop in Maine called Little Dog whose staff starts a union. Then we talk to Robert Chala from the UCLA Labor Center about the rise in unionization efforts among service workers and the social and cultural ethos in a post lockdown country that have led to this new wave of the labor movement.
NPR Jazz News
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Music can shift, uplift or even subvert a scene. This week on 8 Tracks, we play music supervisor, imagining songs by Kamasi Washington and Carin León on the big screen.
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Can you taste color or hear pictures? You might have synesthesia. This week on 8 Tracks: A few songs that pirouette and paint, plus new music by Charli XCX, Mdou Moctar and TikTok shoegazer Wisp.
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The Richmond, Va. band brings its signature hot and funky "solar music" to the Desk.
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You, a Pisces full of wisdom, have discovered a new song that lights up your soul. This week on 8 Tracks: Mild to wild obsessions with SZA, Bat for Lashes and Alice Coltrane.
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The free jazz band with a punk ethos runs through six songs without breaks.
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On Feb. 12, 1924, a sassy fusion of jazz and classical music debuted in New York, sparking a mutual exchange of ideas still debated today.
NPR News
NPR Music News