This is FRESH AIR. Here on the show, we memorialize jazz composer Benny Golson and drummer Roy Haynes. Jazz historian Kevin Whitehead remembers a few more musicians who passed in 2024. For some of ...

The 1950s and early '60s were a high point for jazz. Jazz was popular. You could hear it on TV, on college campuses, and on US State Department tours. It was an era of mind-boggling creativity. Cool ...

Albert "Tootie" Heath has died at age 88. He played drums with basically all the greats of the 1950s, '60s and beyond and is on the first albums that Nina Simone and John Coltrane made as bandleaders.

Originally published in London in 1986 by Quartet Books LTD, Bob Gordon's seminal work on the jazz styles and groups that developed primarily in Los Angeles in the 1950s has long been out-of-print and ...