Music

Fresh Air's jazz critic reviews two new CD reissues originally recorded in the fall of 1958.

Everybody Digs Bill Evans, featuring the legendary jazz pianist, includes a track left off the original issue of the recording.

We Three, featuring the Tennessee-born pianist Phineas Newborn, showcases his phenomenal technique alongside the contributions of drummer Roy Haynes and bassman Paul Chambers.

During his heyday in the early 1970s, shock-rock icon Alice Cooper dressed like a ghoul with a gaunt face and mascara-streaked eyes. His hits included "I'm Eighteen," "School's Out" and "Welcome to My Nightmare." In a memoir — Alice Cooper: Golf Monster, he recounts how he used his obsession with golf to overcome his addiction to alcohol.

This interview was originally broadcast on May 17, 2007.

On his third album, Up Front & Down Low, singer-songwriter Teddy Thompson covers classic country songs including "She Thinks I Still Care," "(My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers," and "I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone." On his earlier discs, including his self-titled 2000 debut and 2006's Separate Ways, Thompson performed more of his own songs. He's also appeared on various recordings with his parents, the British folk-rock legends Richard and Linda Thompson.

Sinatra, Streisand, Rosemary Clooney and Tony Bennett — even Fred Astaire — have all recorded their songs: The husband-and-wife team of Marilyn and Alan Bergman has been writing irresistible tunes together for 50 years.

Saxophonist Harry Allen and singer-instrumentalist Eddie Erickson are just two of the performers on a new CD, The Harry Allen-Joe Cohn Quartet Perform Music From 'Guys and Dolls'. Erickson, who's best known as a guitarist, is featured on the disc as a vocalist, singing Frank Loesser's tunes alongside Rebecca Kilgore.

Max Roach, the pioneering jazz drummer and bebop innovator, died this week at age 83. Roach was considered the greatest drummer of all time by his peers. He played with Duke Ellington, Thelonius Monk and Miles Davis. "Max was one of the founders and original members of the A-Team of bebop," said musician Quincy Jones. "Outside of losing a giant and an innovator, I've lost a great, great friend. Thank God he left a piece of his soul on his recordings so that we'll always have a part of him with us." Roach spoke to Terry Gross on June 25, 1987.

Eugene Hütz is the charismatic front man of the gypsy punk band Gogol Bordello. The multinational, multiethnic group includes a violinist, guitarist, accordionist and bass player. Hütz himself hails from Ukraine; he appeared in the film Everything is Illuminated alongside Elijah Wood. Gogol Bordello's new album is Super Taranta.

Celebrated salsa musician is the subject of the film El Cantante. Our music critic takes a look at his career, marked by dazzling musical highs and personal lows including heroin addiction and a suicide attempt.

Singer-songwriter Ben Vaughn talks with Fresh Air producer Amy Salit about Lee Hazlewood, who died Saturday at age 78. Hazlewood was best known for writing Nancy Sinatra's hit "These Boots are Made For Walkin'," and his songs were recorded by other pop stars including Elvis Presley, Nick Cave and Courtney Love. But he had a recording career of his own as well, and he influenced a generation of rockers. Vaughn is a singer, songwriter, producer and composer who's scored many network TV shows and films, in addition to recording 12 albums of his own.

Fresh Air's jazz critic reviews a new reissue of Folk Songs for Far Out Folk, an obscure but iconic 1958 album created by jazz cellist Fred Katz — a student of classical giant Pablo Casals and a player in Chico Hamilton's legendary '50s quintet.

Singer Pegi Young has just released a self-titled debut album after many years of singing backup for her husband, Neil Young. Pegi wrote many of the songs on the album, too. Her main focus in life, however, has been the creation of the Bridge School for special-needs children like her son Ben, who was born with cerebral palsy. Now, with her kids grown (the Youngs also have a daughter named Amber), she's found time to get into the studio to record her own music.

Critic Milo Miles reviews a pair of what he considers rarities — all-instrumental albums that don't belong to a clear school or style of music. But in the case of the band Massacre and the Claudia Quintet, he says that's a good thing.

British blue-eyed soul singer Nick Lowe played London's pub scene in the '70s in the band Brinsley Schwarz, produced five albums for Elvis Costello, and played with Ry Cooder and Jon Hiatt in Little Village. Now he's back with a solo album, his ninth, called At My Age, and he joins Terry Gross for an interview and an in-studio performance.

Fresh Air's resident rock historian remembers soul singer Lorraine Ellison, who recorded a handful of albums and dozens of singles in the '60s and '70s; though she charted a few R&B hits, she never quite broke through to stardom.

Ellison's biggest success was with the string-saturated ballad "Stay With Me," which topped out at No. 11 on the R&B charts and has since been covered by everyone from Bette Midler to teenybopper idol Rex Smith.

Kelly Willis' Translated From Love is the first release from the "new traditionalist" country singer since 2002's widely acclaimed Easy.

The 12-track album features originals and covers — including the title tune (by Stephen Yerkey) and Willis' reading of Iggy Pop's "Success."

Translated From Love was produced by Willis' longtime collaborator Chuck Prophet.

Chu Berry, otherwise known as Leon Berry, was a tenor saxophonist who backed singers like Billie Holiday and Mildred Bailey in the 1930s, and jammed with Fletcher Henderson's and Cab Calloway's bands. He died in 1941, at the age of 33, in a car accident.

Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews a sprawling limited-edition box set from Mosaic, titled Classic Chu Berry Columbia and Victor Sessions.

She was a home-grown phenomenon, an operatic soprano trained entirely in the U.S. in an era when most singers developed their craft in Europe, and she made a notable second career after her retirement as a formidable arts administrator and advocate. Fresh Air spoke with her in 1985.

Beverly Sills, the Brooklyn-born opera star with the charming smile and the clean, silvery coloratura, died Monday at the age of 78. Fresh Air's classical music critic pays tribute.

British singer-songwriter Bryan Ferry is probably best known as the frontman for Roxy Music, the experimental synth-pop band he founded in 1971.

But over the years, in between his Roxy music, he's recorded albums devoted to songwriters he admires.

The latest? It features his takes on tunes from "Simple Twist of Fate" to "Make You Feel My Love," and it's called Dylanesque.

Singer Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, who helped bridge '50s doo-wop and '60s rock 'n' roll, are celebrated in a new four-CD box set called Jersey Beat. The group released two dozen Top 40 hits, including "Big Girls Don't Cry," "Sherry" and "Walk Like a Man." Jersey Boys, the Tony Award winning Broadway musical, is based on the lives of the Four Seasons.