Music

Jackie McLean, the legendary jazz saxophonist who died last week at age 74, began playing at the age of 15 in his native New York City. Schooled in bebop at the start of his career, the alto sax player names Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young and Charlie Parker as influences. We offer a rebroadcast of a conversation with McLean.

At a time when hip-hop dominates the R&B scene, it's often easier for a rapper to achieve commercial success than a singer. Our music critic examines why that is, in his review of two new albums by R&B vocalists: Ghetto Classics by Jaheim and On the Jungle Floor by Van Hunt.

Rock historian Ed Ward reviews Talking Heads Brick, a box set of music and DVDs featuring the David Byrne-fronted band.

Lead singer and songwriter for The Kinks, Ray Davies started The Kinks in 1964 with his brother, Dave. They are said to be the pioneers of the rowdy garage band genre of rock music. Davies is now 61 and on tour for his first solo album, Other People’s Lives.

Rock Historian Ed Ward on the history of African-American musicians in Nashville. He plays music from Night Train to Nashville a double CD put out by the Country Music Hall of Fame (in conjunction with a Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum Show).

In the age of the sampler, three innovative guitar players are taking their instruments to new heights: Richard Leo Johnson, Dominic Frasca, and Jonas Hellborg.

You Don't Know Me: The Songs of Cindy Walker is the new CD by Willie Nelson. Cindy Walker died last week at the age of 87.

Sidney Bechet played soprano saxophone in the early decades of jazz, before John Coltrane popularized the instrument. A new anthology, Mosaic Select: Sidney Bechet, offers listeners a chance to hear Bechet's music, transferred and restored from rare recordings from 1923 to 1947.

The girl group Reparata and the Delrons worked its forward-looking magic on songs like "Captain Of Your Ship," "Boys and Girls," "Shoes," and "Whenever a Teenager Cries." The band became far more popular overseas than in America, however.

The new CD from the Mary Lou Williams Collective is Zodiac Suite: Revisited. The trio, created by pianist Geri Allen, plays the tunes of Mary Lou Williams.

Drummer Paul Motian has spent more than 50 years in music, working with jazz luminaries like Bill Evans and Thelonious Monk. At 75, he has a new CD of bebop jazz: Garden of Eden, featuring his own band.

Echoing music from the 1950s and '60s, Pay the Devil is the new album from Van Morrison. The album has Morrison reprising songs made famous by Hank Williams, Webb Pierce and Connie Smith.

Guitarist and singer Ali Farka Toure of Mali died March 7 at the age of 66. Farka Toure was a booster of Mali's march toward independence.

Rabbit Fur Coat is the debut solo album by Jenny Lewis, the former child-actress who is also the former lead singer of the cult-indie rock band Rilo Kiley.

Stuart Murdoch is the front man for the Scottish indie-pop band Belle and Sebastian. For the group's new CD, The Life Pursuit, they've broken two long-standing traditions: making quietly precious music, and refusing to embrace the media.

The jazz trio headed by Sam Rivers has a new CD out, Violet Violets (Stunt label). Rivers' horn work is complemented by bassist Ben Street and Danish drummer Kresten Osgood.

The British music press is hailing a new band, the Arctic Monkeys, as being as big as the Beatles — or at least as big as Oasis. The first-week release of the band's debut album, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, sold over 118,000 copies.

The video-sharing Web site YouTube.com has changed the way some people see the Internet. But it's also changing how people hear vintage artists, from the late Wilson Pickett to the up-and-coming Arctic Monkeys.

The Joy of Cooking, a band led by two women out of Berkeley, Calif., in the late 1960s, is enjoying something of a revival. The group's brand of folk-rock included elements of jazz, blues and Latin music.