Jazz Beat

This edition of Tom Reney’s Jazz Beat podcast looks at Chuck Berry’s place in history as the original rock'n'roller turns 90. Tom features many of Berry's groundbreaking, eternally fresh singles and contemplates what this seemingly simple music says about us as a country.

John Coltrane, whose 90th birthday is Friday, September 23rd, had a short but episodic career. On the latest edition of Jazz Beat, New England Public Radio’s Tom Reney takes a look at an important transition in Coltrane’s life, when he made his final tour with Miles Davis and first began playing soprano saxophone, which was a gift from Miles to the tenor sax-playing icon.

The latest edition of Jazz Beat delivers some great music along with an appreciation of the great jazz saxophonist Houston Person. Person, who frequently plays in Western New England, is an exemplar of why the role of "keeper of the flame" is essential to the tradition and future of jazz.

On Jazz Beat 23, Tom Reney speaks with Benny Golson about his memoir, Whisper Not: The Autobiography of Benny Golson. In their conversation, Golson vividly recalls the impact of seeing Lionel Hampton’s band with Arnett Cobb when he was 14; the challenge of composing I Remember Clifford for his “friend forever,” Clifford Brown; and his friendship with John Coltrane and other aspects of his Philadelphia boyhood. He expands upon a previously undocumented night when Louis Armstrong sat in with Tadd