Kevin Whitehead
Kevin Whitehead is the jazz historian for NPR's Fresh Air. He's been a contributor to the show since 1987. In 2021 he received the Jazz Journalists Association's Lifetime Achievement Award in Jazz Journalism. Currently he reviews for The Audio Beat and Point of Departure.
Whitehead's articles on jazz and improvised music have appeared in such publications as the Chicago Sun-Times, Village Voice, Down Beat, and the Dutch daily de Volkskrant.
His books include Play the Way You Feel: The Essential Guide to Jazz Stories on Film (2020), Why Jazz: A Concise Guide (2010), and New Dutch Swing (1998, revised 2023). He has taught at Towson University, the University of Kansas and Goucher College, and lives in upstate New York.
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Wilson, who died Sept. 1, spiced her singing with funk, hip-hop and blues. Kevin Whitehead offers an appreciation, and we listen back to Terry's 1988 interview with Wilson.
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Bennett, who died in 2023, was known for a string of hits, including "I Left My Heart in San Francisco." Kevin Whitehead offers an appreciation and remembers some of Bennett's lesser-known songs.
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Critic Kevin Whitehead reviews biographies of two musicians who transcended jazz, and to whom recognition was slow in coming: James P. Johnson, born in 1894, and Alice Coltrane, born in 1937.
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Critic Kevin Whitehead reflects on the jazz notables who died this year, including Sheila Jordan, Andy Bey, Ray Drummond, Bunky Green, Chuck Mangione, Eddie Palmieri and Jim McNeely.
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The jazz singer's 1960s concert career is amply documented on record, with live albums from Berlin, LA, Tokyo and the French Riviera. Now comes a newly released concert of Fitzgerald in Oakland, Calif.
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Born March 13, 1925, Haynes was a drummer who liked to prod his fellow players. Over the course of his career, he played with Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Sarah Vaughan, Chick Corea and many others.
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Born Sept. 27, 1924, Powell helped set the style for jazz piano after WWII. While earlier pianists played busy bass patterns, he helped establish a more fragmented, punctuating role for the left hand.
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Bley, who died Oct. 17, led her own large and small touring bands from the 1970s until a few years ago — but jazz musicians had been playing her enigmatic compositions long before that.
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The tenor sax player came up in Chicago and toured in the '60s with Charles Mingus, Max Roach and Randy Weston. Jordan's forgotten album, Drink Plenty Water, mixes singers with a small ensemble.