Bop (Music)

More blues singer than Broadway, the Bird helped introduce bebop to jazz — and along the way redefined jazz velocity with his scrappy sound and pithy melodic figures.

Considered one of the inventors of modern jazz drumming, Roach helped formulate the language of bebop, along with Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie. Originally broadcast in 1988.

Since 2006, Laurie Pepper, the widow of jazz saxophonist Art Pepper, has been releasing live recordings her husband made during the last years of his life. A new batch of these recordings from 1981 is out. Fresh Air jazz critic Kevin Whitehead says that Art Pepper played like he was making up for lost time.

On Feb. 5, 1953, Powell was uncommunicative face to face at the New York jazz club Birdland. But when he sat at the keys, it was a whole other story.

The drummer known as "Klook" was a founder of bebop — and a man endlessly open to possibilities.

Divine: The Jazz Albums, 1954-1958 packs four CDs with Vaughan's music, recorded live or in the studio with bands big and small. Two live albums from Chicago nightclubs are standouts, partly when a performance threatens to slide off the rails.

Robin D.G. Kelley's new book, Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, focuses on the career of the eccentric jazz pianist and composer. It reveals new details about Monk's life, music and mental health problems, and provides a glimpse into the New York jazz scene of the mid-twentieth century.