Music

Walter Jacobs, aka "Little Walter," was a harmonica virtuoso whose life was consumed by blues music. A new five-disc Hip-O Select re-release of Walter's complete recordings for the record label Chess is on shelves now.

Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews a new album from the prolific composer and pianist Fred Hersch. It's called Fred Hersch Pocket Orchestra, Live at the Jazz Standard.

Hombre Lobo is the first studio album in five years by the act known as Eels. Frontman Mark Oliver Everett — better known to his fans as "E" — turns in what he calls "12 songs of desire."

Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews The Complete Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Recordings, a two-CD set from Concord Music Group.

Rock critic Ken Tucker reviews Patterson Hood's new album Murdering Oscar and Other Love Songs. It's Hood's second solo album featuring songs from the early 90's as well as some more recent ones, all of them have been freshly recorded over the past few years.

Fresh Air TV critic David Bianculli remembers pop icon Michael Jackson, who died Thursday in Los Angeles. He was 50.

The band Fiction Family may be new, but its members are old hands at the music business. Jon Foreman of Switchfoot and Sean Watkins of Nickel Creek collaborated on the new album. Ken Tucker has a review.

With the release of her sixth album Seya, Oumou Sangare has gone from an outsider who sang about taboo subjects like polygamy and forced marriage to a major national celebrity.

Rock critic and Fresh Air regular Ken Tucker joins the show to review Wussy, the self-titled third album from the Cincinnati, Ohio quartet.

Singer, songwriter and performer Janelle Monae earned a Grammy nomination for her 2007 album Metropolis, and caught the eye of Sean "Diddy" Combs, who signed her to his Bad Boy roster.

The San Francisco, Chicago and Boston symphony orchestras have all released new live albums recently; classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz had a listen, and he has a review.

American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato released a dazzling CD of Handel arias — Furore, a collection of set-pieces from operas and oratorios in which Handel's characters experience flights of passion.

Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews Lucky Thompson: New York City, 1964-65 featuring rare live recordings of saxophonist Lucky Thompson.

The Godfather of Punk has released a new album called Preliminaires, featuring standards like "Autumn Leaves" and "How Insensitive," as well as an original song inspired by Louis Armstrong.

Rock critic Ken Tucker looks back on American Idol's most recent season, when Adam Lambert and Kris Allen vied for the top spot. He says the wrong aspiring idol won.

Sarah Borges and the Broken Singles are a Boston-area quartet raised on punk rock and country music. Rock critic Ken Tucker reviews their new album, The Stars Are Out.

Best known as founder and frontman for the Los Angeles punk band X, musician John Doe has always had a weakness for country music — and X's sound, in fact, sometimes had a twang to it. After that band's dissolution, Doe explored his countrified yearnings further, and in recent years he's turned in some eminently satisfying roots rock. With Country Club, Doe dives headlong into the genre, collaborating with the Canadian band the Sadies on a collection of classic covers originally recorded by titans like Merle Haggard, Tammy Wynette and Willie Nelson.

The rise of the San Francisco rock scene in the mid-1960s is a well-known story, but one which might have taken an entirely different direction if Frank Werber's fortunes had played out differently.

Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews Emperor March — Live at the Blue Note, the new album from the Charles Tolliver Big Band.

A power-pop supergroup, Tinted Windows consists of one member each from the bands Fountains of Wayne, Smashing Pumpkins, Cheap Trick and Hanson. Rock critic Ken Tucker says the band's debut album pays off on its pop-rock promise.