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Robin Meloy Goldsby has spent decades making "pleasant and unobtrusive" background music as a cocktail lounge piano player. Now she steps front and center with a memoir called Piano Girl: Lessons in Life, Music, and the Perfect Blue Hawaiian.

Celebrated cabaret singer Bobby Short has died at the age of 80 from leukemia. NPR's Ed Gordon remembers the performer who sang for more than three decades at New York's Carlyle Hotel.

Felix Contreras reflects on his four-part series on the plight of aging jazz artists, and how he it came about.

As a World War II veteran and a jazz pianist, Dave Brubeck has seen the best and worst of humanity. He is sustained by his belief that faith in God and love will win over conflict and destruction.

Saxophonist Mike Phillips decided to play professionally by the age of 16, taking his cues from legendary sax player Grover Washington. Phillips discusses mixing business with jazz, touring with Prince and his new CD, Uncommon Denominator.

In the 1970s and '80s, the members of Orchestra Baobab were the masters of Afro-Cuban music. After prodding by the man behind the Buena Vista Social Club, the Senegalese group has returned to the stage.

Organizations such as the Jazz Foundation of America and Billy Taylor's JazzMobile are striving to help older jazz musicians in need. Another group supposed to help musicians is the American Federation of Musicians union, but it has been criticized for failing to cater to jazz artists.

A jazz legend's influence on the genre is detailed in Donald Maggin's book Dizzy: The Life and Times of John Birks Gillespie. Dizzy Gillespie's contributions to jazz included the flavor of Afro-Cuban rhythms and be-bop.

With her 2003 debut album, Salt, singer Lizz Wright established herself as one of the brightest newcomers in jazz. Wright shifts course on her follow-up CD, Dreaming Wide Awake, adopting a folksy singer-songwriter sound.

Marcus Miller's sixth CD, Silver Rain, takes its name from the Langston Hughes poem, "In Time of Silver Rain." NPR's Ed Gordon talks with the soul and smooth jazz bassist about his music and career.