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Blues singer and guitarist B.B. King celebrated his 80th birthday on Sept. 16, 2005, and also released the new album 80, featuring blues duets with musicians including Elton John and Eric Clapton. This interview originally aired on Oct. 22, 1996.

Renee Montagne talks to Louisiana bluesman Tab Benoit about his new CD, Voice of the Wetlands. Benoit and an all-star group of Louisiana musicians recorded the album in January to call attention to the state's vanishing wetlands.

It's funny how the best track on Do the Boomerang, Don Byron's tribute to legendary R&B saxophonist Junior Walker, gives James Brown's "There It Is" a makeover. Byron, arguably his generation's premier jazz clarinetist, covers James Brown on one of the year's zestiest jazz discs.

A collection of miniatures brought to life via multi-tracking, Spirits finds Jarrett using a total of 18 instruments to bring simple, sometimes folk-song-like melodies to life. He plays everything himself, including hand drums and soprano saxophone.

For over 100 years, the composer's "Allegretto" movement from his Seventh Symphony has haunted musicians and music lovers. Once you start to listen, says pianist Helene Grimaud, you simply can't do anything else.

Soul diva Gladys Knight talks about her new album of jazz standards, Before Me, with Farai Chideya.

Maybe it's an indication that the initial weirdness of listening to it has worn off, but pianist Jason Moran's scrupulous practice of using pre-recorded dialogue as a guide for etching melodic statements has never sounded as moving as it does on "Artists Ought to Be Writing."

Steven Bernstein mashes the sound of big band era jazz with well-known pop songs. His latest band, the Millennial Territory Orchestra, has just released its first album: 'MTO Volume One.'

Muddy Waters' 1968 blues-rock hybrid Electric Mud works as an intermittently spirited experiment, a loosely structured attempt at moving an icon beyond the traditional. The legend sounds like a lost soul from the Delta who's wandered into the exaggerated druggy debauchery of a hippie movie.

Many contemporary listeners know Ry Cooder as the producer and guitarist behind Buena Vista Social Club, the 1997 project that revived the careers of long-forgotten Cuban ballad singers. Lost among his early works is an eclectic little under-loved gem: Boomer's Story.