Jazz & Blues Music News

By Carrie Brownstein And it's naptime. (courtesy of The Patton Veterinary Hospital) It's hard to believe that we've reached the end. For the past two weeks, all of us — the NPR Music Team, a handful of outside contribut...

Back in 2001, I sat in a San Francisco federal courtroom and watched a judge order Napster to shut down. The record companies won their battle against the world's first peer-to-peer file sharing service. But, as everyone now knows, it was a Pyrrhic victory; to reference another Greek myth, Napster turned out to be a Hydra.

The new service will be featured within a standard Google search: Plug in the band or musician's name, and bios, videos and images will pop up. The search results will point you to online music retailers Google has partnered with.

The songs "And Then You're Gone" and "But Now I'm Back" began as one, with a little help from Franz Schubert. With some ingenious songwriting and a little help from NPR's Ari Shapiro, together the songs tell the tale of a love lost — and perhaps won again.

The world has lost another tie to the original New Thing jazz: the bassist and composer Norris Jones, better known as Sirone, has died in Berlin, Germany.

If you're in Los Angeles and you love the blues, Monday nights ought to find you far away from the glitz of the ersatz blues venues on the Sunset Strip. You're likely to be waiting to get into Babe's and Ricky's Inn, a little club in the Leimert Park section of the city that serves as the last link to Los Angeles' storied musical heyday.

It has been almost 10 years since Napster helped launch a revolution that turned the music industry on its head, allowing file-sharing fans to swap songs on the Web. In that time, music industry revenues have dropped by half. Does that mean the music will suffer?

Milo Miles highlights the 30th Montreal International Jazz Festival, the largest event of its kind in the world.

Archaeologists have unearthed the world's oldest musical instruments: flutes. These vulture-bone flutes no doubt helped warm our ancestors' spirits as they pushed north into Europe's hostile Ice Age conditions.

Michelle Obama kicked off a series of musical workshops Monday at the White House. Middle and high school students from across the country fanned out inside the White House for lectures and performance tips from professional jazz musicians.

In two weeks, the Joseph Patelson Music House, neighbor to Carnegie Hall in Manhattan, will close its doors after six decades in the business of selling sheet music. From the most accomplished conductors and soloists to young music students, they've all shopped for music and guidance at Patelson's.