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      2021 in Jazz: Intimacy and Conversation

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherThroughout the coronavirus pandemic, jazz’s flexibility has become an asset. It informed how 2021 played out in the jazz world — the return of Pharoah Sanders with a new, unlikely collaborator, the electronic musician Floating Points; interesting intersections with hip-hop that call back to earlier jazz fusion; duet recordings that emphasize call and response, two artists communicating across the empty transom.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about how the pandemic is continuing to shape the world of jazz recordings, how the genre revives its heroes and also some promising new artists.Guests:Giovanni Russonello, who covers jazz for The New York TimesMarcus J. Moore, who writes about music for The New York Times and othersConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      James Mtume, Whose ‘Juicy Fruit’ Became a Hip-Hop Beat, Dies at 76

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      In a wide-ranging career, he went from playing percussion with Miles Davis to writing and producing sleek R&B to a long stint on political talk radio.James Mtume, the musician, songwriter, producer, bandleader and talk-radio host whose 1983 hit “Juicy Fruit” has been sampled in more than 100 songs, died on Sunday at his home in South Orange, N.J. He was 76.His cause was cancer, his family said.Mr. Mtume started his career as a jazz percussionist. He was in Miles Davis’s band for the first half of the 1970s, appearing on Davis’s landmark 1972 jazz-funk album “On the Corner” and its successors.But in the late ’70s he pivoted to R&B: He co-wrote hits for Roberta Flack and Stephanie Mills, produced albums and formed a group, Mtume, which had major hits with his songs “Juicy Fruit” and “You, Me and He.” His sparse, sputtering electronic beat for “Juicy Fruit” gained an extensive second life in hip-hop when it was sampled on the debut single by the Notorious B.I.G., “Juicy,” a No. 1 rap hit in 1994.Mr. Mtume was born James Forman on Jan. 3, 1946, in Philadelphia. His father was the jazz saxophonist Jimmy Heath, but he was raised by his stepfather, James Forman, a jazz pianist also known as Hen Gates who had played with Charlie Parker, and his mother, Bertha Forman, a homemaker.Jazz musicians including Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Dinah Washington and John Coltrane were frequent family visitors, and the young James Forman grew up playing piano and percussion; his biological uncle, the jazz drummer Albert (Tootie) Heath, gave him his first conga drum.He was a champion swimmer in high school, winning the Middle Atlantic title for backstroke, and attended Pasadena City College on an athletic scholarship.In California, he joined the US Organization, a Black nationalist cultural group that introduced the holiday Kwanzaa, and he took an African last name: Mtume, Swahili for messenger. He also turned seriously to music.In 1969, Albert Heath recorded four modal, Afrocentric jazz compositions by Mr. Mtume on his album “Kawaida,” featuring Mr. Mtume on congas alongside Herbie Hancock on piano, Don Cherry on trumpet and Jimmy Heath on saxophones. Mr. Mtume also worked with Art Farmer, McCoy Tyner, Freddie Hubbard and Gato Barbieri.He joined Miles Davis’s band in 1971 as it was making the transition to the jagged, open-ended, rhythm-dominated funk of “On the Corner.” In an extensive Red Bull Music Academy interview in 2014, Mr. Mtume said that Davis had taught him the value of space and concision — “the appreciation for abbreviation.” He worked with Davis until 1975, touring and appearing on the albums “Big Fun,” “Dark Magus,” “Agharta,” “Pangaea” and “Get Up With It,” which included a Davis composition titled “Mtume.”Working with Davis, Mr. Mtume expanded his sound with electronic effects. “You don’t fight technology, you embrace it,” he said in 2014. “It’s like fire. It’ll burn you, or you learn how to cook with it.”In 1972, Mr. Mtume made his recording debut as a leader with “Alkebu-Lan: Land of the Blacks” on the Strata-East label, credited to the Mtume Umoja Ensemble. It opened with a spoken manifesto that praised “the role of Black music as a functional organ in the struggle for national liberation.” He released a second jazz album, “Rebirth Cycle,” in 1977.Mr. Mtume with Miles Davis in 1973. In a 2014 interview, he said Davis had taught him the value of space and concision — “the appreciation for abbreviation.” R. Brigden/Express, via Getty ImagesWhen Davis stopped performing in 1975, Mr. Mtume and the guitarist Reggie Lucas, another member of the Davis group, joined Roberta Flack’s band. Their composition “The Closer I Get to You,” which she recorded as a duet with Donny Hathaway, reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1978 and was later remade by Beyoncé and Luther Vandross.They formed Mtume-Lucas Productions to write and produce songs. Among the artists they worked with were Phyllis Hyman, Teddy Pendergrass, the Spinners and Stephanie Mills, for whom they wrote the 1980 hit “Never Knew Love Like This Before,” a Grammy Award winner for best R&B song. On Instagram this week, Ms. Mills praised Mr. Mtume, writing, “He was so brilliant and an amazing music mind.”Between production jobs, Mr. Mtume and Mr. Lucas recorded with their core musicians as the group Mtume, which featured the singer Tawatha Agee. Mr. Mtume described the group’s first albums as “sophistifunk,” using plush harmonies and elaborate orchestrations.But one day, Mr. Mtume recalled, he realized that “I was playing something that sounded just like something else I had done. I got up and I walked away, and I disbanded the band, and I decided not to do any more productions.”He put together a second lineup of Mtume, without Mr. Lucas, and turned to a style he described as “neo-minimalism,” using just a handful of instruments and fewer effects. The new Mtume lineup recorded “Juicy Fruit.” At first, Mtume’s record label, Epic, dismissed the song as too slow for daytime radio, but it became a No. 1 R&B hit.The title song of Mtume’s 1984 album, “You, Me and He” — a confession of polyamory — reached No. 2 on Billboard’s R&B chart. On the group’s final album, “Theater of the Mind,” released in 1986, Mtume turned to sociopolitical commentary in songs like “Deep Freeze (Rap-a-Song) (Part 1).” That same year, Mr. Mtume wrote the score for the film “Native Son” and produced a solo album for Ms. Agee.In a radio interview in 1988, during a freewheeling era of hip-hop when samples were widely used without payment or credit, Mr. Mtume denounced hip-hop’s reliance on sampling, calling it “Memorex music” and complaining that the originators were ignored. The hip-hop group Stetsasonic responded with “Talkin’ All That Jazz,” which argued, “Rap brings back old R&B/And if we would not, people could’ve forgot.”Eventually, sampling — by then licensed and credited — would keep Mr. Mtume’s music on the radio. “Juicy Fruit” has been sampled by Alicia Keys, Warren G, Jennifer Lopez, Keyshia Cole, Faith Evans and dozens of others, and many of Mr. Mtume’s other songs and productions have made their way onto new tracks.In 1994, Mr. Mtume scored the TV series “New York Undercover.” At his urging, the show’s story lines featured a nightclub, Natalie’s, where an older generation of musicians, including B.B. King and Gladys Knight, got new TV exposure and younger performers revived old songs. During the 1990s he also produced songs for Mary J. Blige, D’Angelo, and K-Ci & Jojo.Yet by the mid-1990s, Mr. Mtume had grown dissatisfied with the music business. He moved into talk radio, and was a co-host from 1995 to 2013 on the weekly show “Open Line,” heard first on WRKS-FM (Kiss-FM) in New York and then on WBLS-FM when the stations merged, discussing politics, activism, news and culture alongside Bob Slade and Bob Pickett. Over the years, he also traveled to Cuba, Libya, Sudan and South Africa. He recorded a TED Talk in 2018, “Our Common Ground in Music,” in which he discussed “the cross-pollination of culture, politics and art.”He is survived by his wife, Kamili Mtume; his brother, Jeffrey Forman; two sons, Faulu Mtume and Richard Johnson; four daughters, Benin Mtume, Eshe King, Ife Mtume and Sanda Lee; and six grandchildren.“Pressing the boundaries. To me that’s always what it was about,” Mr. Mtume said in 2014. “Never give yourself a chance to look back, because that’s always easier. Looking forward is always harder.” More

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      Harry Colomby, Teacher Who Aided a Jazz Great’s Career, Dies at 92

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      A chance encounter with Thelonious Monk led to a 14-year stint as his manager. After seeing a young Michael Keaton at a stand-up club, he became his manager, too.Harry Colomby was a schoolteacher with a love of jazz when he stopped by the Cafe Bohemia in Greenwich Village in 1955 to remind the drummer Art Blakey that he and his band, the Jazz Messengers, were scheduled to perform in a few days at the school where Mr. Colomby taught.While waiting, Mr. Colomby greeted the celebrated composer and pianist Thelonious Monk; they had met once before. “Oh, Harry. Yeah, I remember you,” Mr. Colomby recalled him saying, as detailed in the liner notes to the live 1965 Monk album “Misterioso.” “Say, you got your car here? You can drive me uptown?”In the car, Monk asked if Mr. Colomby was ready to quit teaching. “So I drove Thelonious to his house at 2:30 in the morning and at 3 a.m., a half-hour later, became his personal manager,” he wrote. “I’m still not sure how it happened.”Mr. Colomby’s younger brother, Bobby, the original drummer with Blood, Sweat & Tears and later a record producer and an executive at several record companies, said in a phone interview that Monk viewed Harry as someone who was “bright, honest and would work hard,” adding, “Harry told him, ‘I can’t promise you you’ll be rich, but you’ll be appreciated as an artist.’”Thelonious Monk in 1961. “I realized that Monk was more than a jazz musician,” Mr. Colomby said. “He was potentially a symbol.”Erich Auerbach/Getty ImagesMr. Colomby died on Dec. 25 at a hospital in Los Angeles. He was 92. His brother confirmed the death.When Mr. Colomby began working with Monk, he was little known beyond the jazz cognoscenti and his unorthodox approach divided critics. He was also rarely heard in New York City because he lacked a cabaret card, which in those days was needed to perform in bars and nightclubs there; he had not had one since 1951, when it was revoked because of a drug arrest. In 1957, Mr. Colomby helped Monk get his card back. His subsequent extended engagement at the Five Spot in the East Village was the beginning of his emergence as a jazz star.For most of the 14 years that he managed Monk from obscurity to renown, Mr. Colomby taught English and social studies at high schools in Brooklyn, Queens and Plainview, on Long Island. “I had no illusion about how much money there is in jazz,” Mr. Colomby told the historian Robin D.G. Kelley for his biography “Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original” (2009). “But I realized that Monk was more than a jazz musician. He was potentially a symbol. He was symbolic of strength, stick-to-it-iveness, purity, you know, beyond music, beyond jazz.”Harry Golombek was born on Aug. 20, 1929, in Berlin, and fled with his parents and his brother Jules to New York City in the spring of 1939 to escape Nazi persecution. Family members who had immigrated earlier to the United States changed their surname to Colomby. His father, Saul, who became Fred in the United States, started a watchmaking company in Manhattan. His mother, Elsie (Ries) Colomby, worked there.After graduating from New York University in 1950 with a bachelor’s degree in English, Harry began his teaching career.As a manager, Mr. Colomby had only four clients: Monk; the singer and pianist Mose Allison; the comedian and impressionist John Byner; and the actor Michael Keaton.Mr. Byner said that he met Mr. Colomby in the early 1960s at a John F. Kennedy impression contest. “He was fantastic,” he said in a phone interview. “He knew everybody.” But they parted in 1986 because Mr. Colomby became focused on his business with Mr. Keaton.“He left me for another guy,” Mr. Byner said.Mr. Colomby first encountered Mr. Keaton, then a stand-up comic, performing at the Comedy Store in Hollywood in the late 1970s.“What I saw in Michael was something original,” Mr. Colomby told The Los Angeles Times in 1988. “I also saw charisma onstage. Something about his look and timing was exquisite.”Mr. Colomby was also the producer or executive producer of starring vehicles for Mr. Keaton including the television series “Working Stiffs” (1979) and “Report to Murphy” (1982) and the films “Mr. Mom” (1983), “Johnny Dangerously” (1984) and “One Good Cop” (1991).In addition to his brother Bobby, Mr. Colomby is survived by his wife, Lee, and his son, the actor Scott Colomby. His brother Jules, who briefly ran a jazz record company, Signal, died in the 1990s.Mr. Keaton was Mr. Colomby’s client for about 25 years, and the two remained friends afterward.“What we shared was, we saw things in an offbeat way and we’d talk for hours and make each other laugh,” Mr. Keaton said in a phone interview. “I was probably the only stand-up whose manager was funnier than he was.” More

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      15 Songs We Almost Missed This Year

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      Hear tracks by Sofia Kourtesis, Remble, Caetano Veloso and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Sofia Kourtesis, ‘La Perla’At first, Sofia Kourtesis’s “La Perla” develops like a Polaroid shot of a white sand beach. This is earnest, pulsating deep house: ripples of synths, oceanic drum loops, feather-light hums, the iridescent touch of piano keys. But when the Peruvian producer’s voice arrives, the track transforms into something less picture-perfect. “Tú y yo/En soledad/Igual acá/Tratando de cambiar/Tratando de olvidar,” she intones. (“You and I/In loneliness/Same here/Trying to change/Trying to forget.”) Kourtesis composed the song with the water and her father, who was dying from leukemia, in mind; he used to say that staring at the sea is a form of meditation. Lying somewhere between hope and melancholia, “La Perla” embodies mourning: the on-and-off work of confronting your own suffering, while harnessing fleeting moments of solace when you can. ISABELIA HERRERAYoung Stunna featuring Kabza De Small and DJ Maphorisa, ‘Adiwele’This eight-minute track from South Africa is a collaboration by the singer Young Stunna and the amapiano producer Kabza De Small, from Young Stunna’s debut album, “Notumato (Beautiful Beginnings).” It materializes slowly and methodically, with just an electronic beat at first, then hovering electronic tones and blipping offbeats, then syncopated vocal syllables. Eventually Young Stunna’s lead vocal arrives, breathy and increasingly insistent, tautly bouncing his lines off the beat. “Adiwele” roughly means “things falling into place”; it’s a grateful boast about his current success, but it’s delivered like someone racing toward even more ambitious goals. JON PARELESBabyTron, ‘Paul Bearer’“Bin Reaper 2” — one of three very good albums BabyTron released in 2021 — has several high points. There’s “Frankenstein,” built on a sample of an old Debbie Deb song, and the disco-esque “Pimp My Ride.” But “Paul Bearer” might be the best. BabyTron is a casually talky rapper from Michigan, and in keeping with the rap scene that’s been germinating there for the past few years, he’s a hilarious absurdist, flexible with syllables and also images: “Point it at his toes, turn his Yeezys into Foam Runners,” “High as hell on the roof, dripping like a broke gutter.” JON CARAMANICAMabiland, ‘Wow’For the Colombian artist Mabiland, living with the injustice of anti-Black violence is so surreal, it resembles the worlds of sci-fi and neo-noir films like “Tenet” and “Oldboy.” On “Wow,” she draws comparisons to these cinematic universes, offering a macabre reflection on those who were killed in recent years: George Floyd, but also the five of Llano Verde, a group of teens who were shot in Cali, Colombia, in 2020. Over trap drums and a forlorn, looped guitar, the artist recalibrates her voice over and over, shifting between raspy soul, high-pitched yelps, wounded raps and sweet-tongued singing. It is a subtle lesson in elasticity, creating an expansive vocal landscape that captures her pain in all of its depth. HERRERARemble, ‘Touchable’One of the year’s signature rap stylists, Remble declaims like he’s giving a physics lecture, all punching-bag emphasis and tricky internal rhymes. An inheritor of Drakeo the Ruler, who was killed this month — listen to their collaboration on “Ruth’s Chris Freestyle” — Remble is crisp and declamatory and, most disarmingly, deeply calm. “Touchable,” from his vivid, wonderful 2021 album, “It’s Remble,” is one of his standouts, packed to the gills with sweetly terrifying boasts: “Came a long way from pre-K and eating Lunchables/I just took your life and as you know it’s unrefundable.” CARAMANICAMorgan Wade, ‘Wilder Days’“Don’t Cry,” which Morgan Wade released at the end of 2020, cut right to the quick: “I’ll always be my own worst critic/The world exists and I’m just in it.” “Wilder Days,” from her lovingly ragged debut album “Reckless,” is about wanting to know the whole of a person, even the parts that time has smoothed over. Wade has a terrific, acid-drenched voice — she sounds like she’s singing from the depths of history. And while this song is about wanting someone you love to hold on to the things that gave them their scrapes and bruises, it’s really about holding on to that part of yourself as long as is feasible, and then a little longer. CARAMANICALady Blackbird, ‘Collage’There’s a deep blues cry in the voice of Lady Blackbird — the Los Angeles-based songwriter Marley Munroe — that harks back to Nina Simone, Abbey Lincoln and Billie Holiday. “Collage,” from her album “Black Acid Soul,” rides an acoustic bass vamp and modal jazz harmonies, enfolded in wind chimes and Mellotron “string” chords. It’s a song about colors, cycles and trying to “find a song to sing that is everything,” enigmatic and arresting. PARELESCaetano Veloso, ‘Anjos Tronchos’Recorded during the pandemic, “Meu Coco” (“My Head”) is the first full album on which Caetano Veloso, the great Brazilian musician whose career stretches back to the 1960s, wrote all the songs without collaborators. “Anjos Tronchos” (“Twisted Angels”) is musically sparse; for much of it, Veloso’s graceful melody is accompanied only by a lone electric rhythm guitar. But its scope is large; the “twisted angels” are from Silicon Valley, and he’s singing about the power of the internet to addict, to sell and to control, but also to delight and to spread ideas. “Neurons of mine move in a new rhythm/And more and more and more and more and more,” he sings, with fascination and dread. PARELESCico P, ‘Tampa’The year’s pre-eminent hypnosis. Put it on repeat and dissociate from the cruel year that was. CARAMANICACassandra Jenkins, ‘Hard Drive’“Hard Drive,” which includes the lyrics that provided the title for Cassandra Jenkins’s 2021 album, “An Overview on Phenomenal Nature,” plays like Laurie Anderson transported to Laurel Canyon. With unhurried spoken words and an occasional melodic refrain, Jenkins seeks insight and healing from people like a security guard and a bookkeeper, who tells her “The mind is just a hard drive.” The music cycles soothingly through a few chords as guitars and piano intertwine, a saxophone improvises at the periphery and Jenkins approaches serenity. PARELESFatima Al Qadiri, ‘Zandaq’On “Zandaq,” Fatima Al Qadiri looks 1,400 years into the past to illuminate a view of the future. Inspired by the poems of Arab women from the Jahiliyyah period to the 13th century, the Kuwaiti producer arranges plucked lute strings, echoes of bird calls and dapples of twisting, vertiginous vocals, fashioning a kind of a retrofuturist suite. The song draws on classical Arabic poetry’s ancient reserve of melancholic longing, considering the possibilities that emerge by slowing down and immersing oneself in desolation. HERRERANala Sinephro, ‘Space 5’The rising United Kingdom-based bandleader Nala Sinephro plays harp and electronics, with a pull toward weightless sounds and meditative pacings, so comparisons to Alice Coltrane are inevitable. But Sinephro has her own thing going entirely: It has to do with her lissome, contained-motion improvising on the harp, and the game versatility of the groups she puts together. Her debut album, which arrived in September, contains eight tracks, “Spaces 1-8.” On “Space 5,” she’s joined by the saxophonist Ahnasé and the guitarist Shirley Tetteh; it’s a jeweled mosaic of a track, with the components of a steady beat — but they’re distant and dampened enough that it never fully sinks in on a body level. Instead of head-nodding, maybe you’ll respond to this music by being completely still. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOKaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Emile Mosseri, ‘Moonweed’“Moonweed” is only two minutes long, but contains all the reverie and tragedy of a big-screen sci-fi drama. (It’s a collaboration between the experimental artist Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and the film composer Emile Mosseri.) With its unhurried piano and slow gurgle of galactic synths that arrive like an extraterrestrial transmission sent from the stars, the track manifests as both earthen and astral bliss. HERRERAJohnathan Blake, ‘Abiyoyo’The jazz drummer Johnathan Blake is used to playing as a side musician in all-star bands; when he leads his own groups, he also tends to field a formidable squad. On “Homeward Bound,” his Blue Note debut, Blake is joined by the alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins, the vibraphonist Joel Ross, the pianist David Virelles and the bassist Dezron Douglas — today’s cats, basically. Blake has a swing feel that’s both densely powerful and luxuriously roomy, and he deploys it here across a set that includes some impressive original tunes. On “Abiyoyo,” the South African folk song, he strikes the drums softly, with a mallet in one hand and a stick in the other, while Virelles handles a similar balance, using the full range of the piano but never overplaying. RUSSONELLORan Cap Duoi, ‘Aztec Glue’Vertigo alert: Ran Cap Duoi, an electronic group from Vietnam, aims for total disorientation in “Aztec Glue” from its 2021 album, “Ngu Ngay Ngay Ngay Tan The” (“Sleeping Through the Apocalypse”). Everything is chopped up and flung around: voices, rhythms, timbres, spatial cues. For its first minute, “Aztec Glue” finds a steady, Minimalist pulse, even as peeping vocal samples hop all over the stereo field. Then the bottom drops out; it lurches, slams, races, twitches and goes through sporadic bursts of acceleration. It goes on to find a new, looping near-equilibrium, spinning faster, but it doesn’t end without a few more surprises. PARELES More

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      Sandra Jaffe, Who Helped Preserve Jazz at Preservation Hall, Dies at 83

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      With her husband, she opened a club in New Orleans in 1961 to showcase traditional jazz. Defying changes in musical fashion, it has been open ever since.In 1961, Sandra and Allan Jaffe stopped in New Orleans on their way home to Philadelphia from an extended honeymoon in Mexico. They heard music playing all around them in the French Quarter and stepped into an art gallery on St. Peter Street where a combo was playing traditional jazz.The Jaffes, then in their 20s, were transformed by what they heard. They came back a few days later to hear the combo again. The gallery’s owner, Larry Borenstein, told them that he was moving his business next door and offered to rent the couple the modest space (31 by 20 feet) for $400 a month.“We didn’t even think twice about it,” Mrs. Jaffe told the alumni magazine of Harcum College, from which she graduated, in 2011. “‘Of course,’ we said, and that was the beginning of Preservation Hall. We never left New Orleans.”Preservation Hall — which serves no alcohol, has no air-conditioning and seats 50 or so on six benches — has celebrated jazz for 60 years in a city widely regarded as its birthplace. It defied segregation laws in the early 1960s. It survived Mr. Jaffe’s death in 1987, and it survived Hurricane Katrina. The coronavirus pandemic shut it down, but it reopened triumphantly in June.And it has nurtured musicians, some of whom played with Louis Armstrong (like the guitarist Johnny St. Cyr) and even (like the bassist Papa John Joseph) with the cornetist Buddy Bolden, said by many jazz historians to have been the music’s first significant practitioner. Many of them had been largely forgotten amid the growing dominance of rock ’n’ roll and other more modern forms of music.“There is no question that Preservation Hall saved New Orleans jazz,” George Wein, the impresario who produced the Newport Jazz Festival and the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, told Vanity Fair in 2011. “When it became an institution in New Orleans, everybody who went down there went to the hall. They paid a dollar to go hear people like George Lewis or Sweet Emma Barrett and made them national figures.”Mrs. Jaffe with the impresario George Wein at the 2010 Newport Folk Festival. “There is no question,” Mr. Wein once said, “that Preservation Hall saved New Orleans jazz.”Douglas Mason/Getty ImagesMrs. Jaffe died on Monday in a hospital in New Orleans. She was 83.Her son Ben, the creative director of Preservation Hall, confirmed the death.The Jaffes played different roles at Preservation Hall. Allan Jaffe, who played the helicon, a brass instrument, was the link to the musicians and sent them out on the road as the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Mrs. Jaffe, who shared management duties with her husband, was usually stationed at the hall’s front gate, basket on her lap, collecting money from the patrons.“That’s how she was remembered by many: as the first to interact with people,” Ben Jaffe said in an interview. “She was also the de facto bouncer and security; she’d have to step in when people were being inappropriate or espousing racist language. My mother would bite first, then assess the situation.”Preservation Hall was integrated at a time when there were still Jim Crow laws that banned the mixing of races. Mrs. Jaffe was once arrested there, along with Kid Thomas Valentine’s band, for flouting the ban on integration.“The judge banged his gavel and said, ‘In New Orleans, we don’t like to mix our coffee and cream,’” Ben Jaffe said, recalling what his parents had told him. “She burst out laughing and said, ‘That’s funny — the most popular thing in New Orleans is café au lait.’”Mrs. Jaffe watched and listened as the trombonist Freddie Lonzo sang when Preservation Hall reopened in June after the Covid lockdown.Chris Granger/The Times-Picayune/The Advocate/Associated PressSandra Smolen was born in Philadelphia on March 10, 1938. Her parents were Jewish immigrants from Ukraine. Her father, Jacob, held various jobs, including running a gas station and a taproom; her mother, Lena (Kaplan) Smolen, was a homemaker.Sandra studied journalism and public relations at Harcum, in Bryn Mawr., Pa., and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1958. She worked for an advertising agency for two years and married her husband on Christmas Day 1960. After honeymooning in Mexico, they headed to New Orleans, where one of his fraternity brothers lived; Mr. Jaffe had gotten to know the city during his military service.After their first musical encounter at the art gallery, the Jaffes decided they would stay three more days, until the combo that had entranced them was to appear again. “Our parents were expecting us back in Philadelphia any day,” she told the Harcum magazine, “but we had to stay a little longer.”After making the rental deal for the gallery, the Jaffes joined with other fans of its jam sessions to form the New Orleans Society for the Preservation of Traditional Jazz to book musicians; several months later, the couple opened the hall. For the first year or so, they kept the jobs they had found in New Orleans, Mrs. Jaffe at a typesetting business and Mr. Jaffe at a department store.They did not charge admission at first. Instead, patrons dropped money in a basket that Mrs. Jaffe passed around; she would shake it if someone appeared unwilling to contribute. Eventually, they began charging $1 (today, tickets cost $25 to $50).Mrs. Jaffe was usually stationed at Preservation Hall’s front gate with a basket, collecting money from the patrons.via Jaffe FamilyBusiness was propelled early on by a laudatory two-and-a-half-minute piece about Preservation Hall — which featured Mr. Jaffe but not Mrs. Jaffe — on NBC’s “Huntley-Brinkley Report.”Mr. Jaffe started sending musicians on tour in 1963, and various versions of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band have been playing around the world and recording ever since. The band members have included the pianist Sweet Emma Barrett, the brothers Willie and Percy Humphrey (who played clarinet and trumpet) and the husband and wife Billie and De De Pierce (she played piano and sang, he played trumpet and cornet). Ben Jaffe currently plays sousaphone in the band.“I took the band on tour for many years,” Resa Lambert, one of Mrs. Jaffe’s sisters, who worked at the Hall for many years, said in an interview. “I was a roadie. For seven men. It was great.”In addition to her son Ben and her sister, Mrs. Jaffe is survived by another son, Russell; four grandchildren; and another sister, Brenda Epstein.The Preservation Hall Jazz Band received the National Medal of Arts from President George W. Bush in 2006. The ensemble was cited for “displaying the unbreakable spirit of New Orleans and sharing the joy of New Orleans jazz with us all.”Mrs. Jaffe, who accepted the award with her son Ben, remained involved in the Hall until recently, although she no longer had a hands-on role.“She would call every day asking questions about ticket sales and touring,” Ben Jaffe said. “She always felt engaged and always was engaged, even when she wasn’t physically there.” Until recently, he said, she would grab a broom and sweep the sidewalk in front. More

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      A Trip Through Pop, Rap and Jazz’s Past, in 27 Boxed Sets

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      Collections from labels like Fania and Armabillion, icons including Ray Charles and J Dilla, and living artists such as Beverly Glenn-Copeland and Radiohead were welcome additions this year.In an era of abundance when every day brings a deluge of new music to consume, it may seem particularly futile to turn to the past. But this year’s resurrections and recontextualizations in boxed sets and reissues gathered up what’s been forgotten or overlooked — or in some cases, what’s been dissected ad nauseam but still commands attention — and put it back at center stage. As Taylor Swift proved this year, there’s no reason the old can’t be experienced as new, too.‘Almost Famous 20th Anniversary’(UMe; multiple configurations with deluxe editions starting at $169.98)Cameron Crowe’s 2000 film, “Almost Famous,” was his fond reminiscence about writing for Rolling Stone during the hard-partying, all-access 1970s. The expanded anniversary editions are overstuffed with familiar songs alongside a few live rarities. They also include a disc of mostly folksy soundtrack instrumentals by Nancy Wilson, from Heart, and the complete recordings of the film’s invented band, Stillwater — a Led Zeppelin/Bad Company knockoff stomping through songs written by Crowe, Wilson and Peter Frampton — along with, in boxed-set style, the demo versions. (A Stillwater EP, minus the demos, is also available separately.) Stillwater’s vintage style was meticulously reconstructed — booming drums, screaming lead guitar (from Mike McCready of Pearl Jam) — with hints of meta self-consciousness in the lyrics. “It was juvenile, it was something wild,” the band shouts in “You Had to Be There.” JON PARELESArmabillion Recordz(Armabillion.com; albums start at $30)One of a handful of obscurantist rap reissue labels that have emerged in recent years, Armabillion is based in Italy but specializes in limited-run vinyl pressings of undersung gangster rap classics from around the United States, especially the South and the Bay Area. This year’s slate of releases has been impressive, among them Gank Move’s dreamy, tough-talking “Come Into My World”; Coop MC’s slinky “Home of the Killers”; Ant Banks’s essential debut album “Sittin’ on Somethin’ Phat”; and the rowdy “Straight From tha Ramp!!!” by Tec-9 (of U.N.L.V.), an early release on Cash Money Records. JON CARAMANICALouis Armstrong, ‘The Complete Louis Armstrong Columbia and RCA Victor Studio Sessions 1946-1966’(Mosaic; seven CDs, $119)The period covered by this boxed set mostly fits within what’s considered to be Armstrong’s long midcareer lull, but when it comes to the creator of the modern jazz solo, even the mellow years can support a certain level of fascination. And this loving revisitation from the jazz archivalists at Mosaic spares no enthusiasm: The scholar Ricky Riccardi’s liner notes clock in at roughly 30,000 words, illustrated by 40 photographs, most of them never before seen. And the recordings — covering the full sweep of Armstrong’s studio dates for Columbia and RCA over a 20-year span — have been transferred directly from the originals and remastered. There are two discs of singles that include midsize- and large-ensemble performances, a rare duet with the German singer and film star Lotte Lenya on “Mack the Knife,” and even a promotional track, “Music to Shave By,” that Armstrong recorded on behalf of the Remington Company. Also included are his Columbia LPs from this era, plus outtakes from the sessions: “Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy”; “Satch Plays Fats” (that’s Fats Waller); and his musical-theater collaboration with Dave Brubeck, “The Real Ambassadors.” GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOPastor T.L. Barrett and the Youth for Christ Choir, ‘I Shall Wear a Crown’(Numero Group; five CDs, $35; five LPs, $90)Half a century ago, T.L. Barrett was far from the only pastor in Black America — or even on the South Side of Chicago — fusing gospel standards with funk. But good luck finding anyone who did it with more flavor, more hooks or more genuine frontman flair. “I Shall Wear a Crown” pulls together the four albums and various singles Barrett released throughout the 1970s, all with his Youth for Christ Choir joined by a crackling rhythm section. The end of the ’60s was a golden moment for youth choruses on wax, with the era’s each-one-teach-one activism shining through. (See also: the Voices of East Harlem; Sister Nancy Dupree’s classroom choir in Rochester, N.Y.; and the loose group of neighborhood kids whose voices are captured on James Brown’s “Say It Loud — I’m Black and I’m Proud,” from 1968, possibly helping to set off the trend.) But Barrett’s music evolved through that moment, and he kept finding new ways to use the choir. By the mid-70s, he was dealing with synthesizers and crunchy electric guitar and cosmic slow-jam textures. This is the era that provided Kanye West with one of his most brilliant “Life of Pablo” samples, “Father Stretch My Hands,” a sultry, tantalizingly slow song in multiple parts. The box’s 24-page booklet features evocative and scholarly liner notes by Aadam Keeley and Aaron Cohen shining light on what has been, in many ways, a life of bridged contradictions and extraordinary achievement. RUSSONELLOThe Beach Boys, ‘Feel Flows: The Sunflower & Surf’s Up Sessions 1969-1971’(UMe; five CDs and hardcover book, $125)The Beach Boys revisit a less-heralded era in their history in “Feel Flows.”“Sunflower” (1970) and “Surf’s Up” (1971) were the Beach Boys’ most ambitious attempts to stay relevant in the 1970s while living up to Brian Wilson’s vision of merging complex music with mass popularity. “Sunflower” celebrated the joys of music and romance; “Surf’s Up” was as topical as the Beach Boys would ever be, worrying about environmental pollution, fatal student protests and the end of youthful innocence, with lyrics that sometimes reveled in literary conundrums. The boxed set includes both of the full albums and some complete outtakes, along with concert performances, alternate versions and stripped-down instrumental and a cappella tracks. The tracks are an education for aspiring producers, unveiling elaborate arrangements and savoring every earnest nonsense syllable of the band’s defining vocal harmonies. PARELESThe Beat Farmers, ‘Tales of the New West’(Blixa Sounds; two CDs, $19.99)The debut album from the San Diego band the Beat Farmers, released in 1985, is a dynamic and sturdy roots-rock gem, with flickers of the cowpunk sound that had been coursing through the region in the years just prior. The band’s best known song from this album, “Happy Boy,” scans as a novelty in retrospect, but the rest is full of savvy guitar work, slinky, yelpy singing and a rollicking rhythm section, peaking on the uproarious and blowsy “Lost Weekend.” The reissue’s bonus disc is an assured and easeful concert recording, “Live at the Spring Valley Inn, 1983.” CARAMANICAThe Beatles, ‘Let It Be (Super Deluxe)’(Capitol; five CDs, one Blu-ray audio disc and hardcover book, $140; five LPs and hardcover book, $200)An expanded boxed set for the Beatles’ “Let It Be” includes two discs of studio conversation.Anyone who didn’t get enough Beatles outtakes, dialogue and rehearsals in Peter Jackson’s documentary “Get Back” can try the expanded boxed set of “Let It Be,” which includes a new mix of the original album and singles (including the goopy orchestral arrangements), two discs of studio music and chatter, and another of the engineer Glyn Johns’s rough 1969 mixes from the album sessions. After making elaborate, groundbreaking studio albums, for “Let It Be” the Beatles dared themselves to record live in real time in front of a film crew — no pressure — joined only by the keyboardist (and unifier) Billy Preston. As in the documentary, the outtakes contrast Paul McCartney’s goal-oriented consistency with John Lennon’s casual restlessness. The find is the 1969 mixes: more open, more revealing, sounding even more live than the original album tracks. PARELESBush Tetras, ‘Rhythm and Paranoia: The Best of Bush Tetras’(Wharf Cat Records; three LPs, $98.98; two CDs, $29.98)With their most-loved songs scattered across various 7” singles and EPs, the delightfully prickly New York art-rockers Bush Tetras are the perfect candidates for a best-of collection like “Rhythm and Paranoia,” a chronologically sequenced triple album that puts their long, rich career into proper context. Thanks to underground hits like the walking-after-midnight anthem “Too Many Creeps” from 1980 and the groovy kiss-off “You Can’t Be Funky” the following year, the group was often associated most closely with the post-punk and no wave scenes. But the latter half of this set proves that for decades it continued to evolve in surprising yet intuitive new directions, as heard on the 1996 Fugazi-like wailer “Page 18” or the billowing blues-rock of “Heart Attack” from 2012. LINDSAY ZOLADZEva Cassidy, ‘Live at Blues Alley (25th Anniversary Edition)’(Blix Street Records; two LPs, $37.98)A new Eva Cassidy reissue presents her first solo album fully remastered, in the highest fidelity available.Though the vocalist Eva Cassidy didn’t write her own songs, and could sometimes slip into an almost exact approximation of Aretha Franklin or Bonnie Raitt’s phrasing, it never made sense to question her legitimacy or intent. Cassidy’s heart was right there, laid bare in her voice. When she saved up the money to record “Live at Blues Alley,” her first solo album, in January 1996, Cassidy wasn’t even a known figure on the small Washington, D.C., music scene. Just months after it came out, she died of cancer at age 33. It would be another couple of years before she broke through to a wider audience, thanks to a posthumous compilation CD, “Songbird” (drawn partly from the “Blues Alley” recordings), and the stream of cobbled-together releases that followed. This new reissue, pressed at 45 r.p.m. onto a pair of heavyweight LPs, presents the original document fully remastered, in the highest fidelity available. RUSSONELLOWhat to Know About ‘The Beatles: Get Back’Peter Jackson’s seven-plus hour documentary series, which explores the most contested period in the band’s history, is available on Disney Plus.Re-examining How the Beatles Ended: Think you know what happened? Jackson may change your mind.Yoko Ono’s Omnipresence: The performance artist is everywhere in the film. At first it’s unnerving, then dazzling.6 Big Moments: Don’t have time to watch the full documentary? Here’s a guide to its eye-opening scenes.‘Changüí: The Sound of Guantánamo’(Petaluma; three CDs and hardcover book, $63)When he realized there were very few recordings of local, rural changüí — music for all-night neighborhood parties in Guantánamo province, at Cuba’s eastern tip — the journalist Gianluca Tramontana began making his own with a hand-held stereo recorder, capturing the music live, acoustic and unadorned. This extensive boxed set, annotated with lyrics and musicology, offers Afro-Cuban music at its most elemental and kinetic: endlessly syncopated riffs picked on a tres (Cuban guitar) backed only by percussion and the plunked bass notes of a marímbula (a box with metal prongs), topped by singers who may well be improvising rhymes, answered by backup refrains. The lyrics offer history, advice, love, pride in the changüí tradition and up-to-the-minute commentary on what’s going on at the party or in the world. More important, the percussion and tres make the music eternally danceable. PARELESRay Charles, ‘True Genius’(Tangerine; six CDs and hardcover book, $105)“True Genius” collects decades of Ray Charles’s work.For me, and others, America’s greatest male singer was Ray Charles. His voice was grainy, earthy and wise; his emotional impact was unmistakable and complex, merging pain and strength, sorrow and humor, flirtation and heartache. Of course, he was no slouch as a pianist, either. This straightforward, career-spanning compilation covers his early years as he forges his fusion of gospel, swing, blues, country and pop, though for his pivotal 1950s Atlantic singles — “Hallelujah, I Love Her So,” “I’ve Got a Woman” and “What’d I Say” — it swaps in live versions instead of the studio classics. It moves through his decades as an interpreter, when he homed in on the soul within other people’s hits, and includes a rambunctious 1972 concert set from Stockholm and latter-day duets with admirers like Willie Nelson, Norah Jones and Billy Joel. PARELESJ Dilla, ‘ Welcome 2 Detroit — The 20th Anniversary Edition’(BBE Music; 12 7” singles for $129.99)A box of 7” singles includes instrumental versions and alternate mixes of J Dilla’s 2001 debut studio LP.By the time the tastemaking Detroit hip-hop producer J Dilla released his 2001 debut studio album, “Welcome 2 Detroit,” he was already somewhere in the realm of mythos. A member of the Soulquarians and the Ummah production collectives, he was known for music that was both luscious and thumping — he was wildly influential and essentially uncopyable. (He died in 2006.) “Welcome 2 Detroit” is a musically wide-ranging album, but never thrums with anything but his particular vibration, the J Dilla feel that exists somewhere just beneath the skin. This immaculately detailed boxed set features 7” singles of the album’s songs along with instrumental versions, alternate mixes and a book detailing the making of the album. CARAMANICAWillie Dunn, ‘Creation Never Sleeps, Creation Never Dies: The Willie Dunn Anthology’(Light in the Attic; two LPs, $35; MP3 download, $10)Willie Dunn (1941-2013) was a Canadian songwriter, filmmaker and Indigenous activist; this set offers just a sampling of his extensive recorded catalog. He emerged in the 1960s with songs rooted in folk and country, sometimes incorporating Indigenous instruments and melodies. His voice was a kindly but forthright baritone, with hints of Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and Gordon Lightfoot. Dunn was a cleareyed storyteller, and in songs like “The Ballad of Crowfoot” he chronicled individual lives, historical injustices and the power and majesty of nature. PARELESBob Dylan, ‘Springtime in New York: The Bootleg Series Vol. 16 (1980-1985)’(Columbia/Legacy; five CDs, hard-bound book and memorabilia, $140)The latest excavation of Bob Dylan’s archives is from the first half of the 1980s, when he let go of the certainties of his born-again phase and returned to thornier, more enigmatic songs that still grappled with morality, love, history and responsibility on the albums “Infidels” (1983) and “Empire Burlesque” (1985). He also tried 1980s-style production, which left those albums with overblown drum sounds and a dated electronic sheen. Two discs from the 1980 sessions and rehearsals for his 1980 “Shot of Love” are mostly throwaways, except for the murky, ominous “Yes Sir, No Sir.” But the songs from sessions and tours for “Infidels” and “Empire Burlesque” offer more. The set unveils a full-band version of “Blind Willie McTell” and a boisterous, bluesy rock song that only surfaced briefly on tour in 1984, “Enough Is Enough.” It finds more vulnerable, less gimmicky versions of familiar songs, and it details the evolution — and sometimes overnight rewrites — of the songs that became “Foot of Pride” and “Tight Connection to My Heart,” a close-up of Dylan’s constant tinkering and improving. PARELESBeverly Glenn-Copeland, ‘Keyboard Fantasies’ and ‘Keyboard Fantasies Reimagined’(Transgressive; LP, CD, cassette or download, from $6.99 to $27.99)This is the latest installment of the campaign to resurrect the work of Beverly Glenn-Copeland, the Canadian new age/electronic music producer and singer whose recordings were rediscovered a few years ago. “Keyboard Fantasies,” originally released in 1986 in a limited cassette run, is entrancing and almost uncannily soothing. “Welcome to you, both young and old/We are ever new, we are ever new,” Glenn-Copeland softly warbles, a beacon of safety and possibility. The original album, now released on CD and vinyl for the first time, was followed by a collection of remixes and reinterpretations by acolytes, most notably Kelsey Lu’s ecstatically elegiac take on “Ever New.” CARAMANICAGeorge Harrison, ‘All Things Must Pass (50th Anniversary Edition)’(Capitol/UMe; Uber Deluxe Box, $999.98; Super Deluxe Box with eight LPs, $199.98, or five CDs, $149.98; other configurations from $19.98 to $89.98)Seek out the discs featuring 42 previously unreleased demos from George Harrison’s solo debut, “All Things Must Pass.”Anyone who has watched “Get Back” knows how creatively stifled George Harrison was feeling in the final days of the Beatles. His first post-Fab Four solo album, the sprawling, tenderly spiritual masterwork “All Things Must Pass” from 1970, became a repository for all those pent-up ideas. The joy of creation is palpable throughout the 50th anniversary deluxe edition of the album, which features a meticulous and punchy new mix derived from the original tapes by Paul Hicks. The set’s most revelatory material is on the discs featuring 42 previously unreleased demos, which strip Harrison’s compositions down to their bare essentials and showcase the almost otherworldly outpouring of song-craft that accompanied his musical liberation. This season of retroactive Beatlemania is the perfect opportunity for a deep dive into Harrison’s long-gestating opus — consider it “Get Back,” Part 4. ZOLADZ‘It’s a Good, Good Feeling: The Latin Soul of Fania Records (The Singles)’(Craft Latino; four CDs, one 7” vinyl record, $63.98; two LPs, $29.98)While it was on its way to becoming New York salsa’s equivalent of Motown Records, Fania was also helping to boost the Latin-soul hybrid known as boogaloo. In the late 1960s and early ’70s, Fania put out a stream of albums and singles with English-language lyrics, mixing funk, rock ’n’ roll and son rhythms; dollops of doo-wop vocals; and more than enough cowbell. This box culls together 89 such singles that Fania released between 1965 and 1975; most weren’t hits, but plenty were by hitmakers: Ray Barretto (whose smash “El Watusi” had presaged boogaloo), Joe Bataan, Willie Colón. Boogaloo could sometimes feel like a fusion of related but not directly compatible parts (“Everybody gather ’round,/I’m gonna introduce the Latin soul sound,” Joe Bataan sings, with something of a heavy hand, on “Latin Soul Square Dance”), but some of the most fun to be had here is on the covers of pop and soul hits sprinkled throughout, which embrace the task directly: Larry Harlow’s orchestra covering “Grazing in the Grass,” Harvey Averne’s take on “Stand,” Joe Bataan’s “Shaft.” The LP version of the box is abridged, including 28 tracks across two discs. RUSSONELLOThe KLF, ‘Solid State Logik 1’(Streaming services)In 1992, the KLF — the British Dada prankster dance-music anarchists who had become global hitmakers in the previous two years — fired machine-gun blanks at the audience at the BRIT Awards and announced their retirement from the music business. Shortly thereafter, they took their whole catalog out of print and, later, burned one million pounds in royalty payment cash. So it’s cause for excitement, and perhaps skepticism, that the group’s catalog began to trickle onto streaming services this year. Most crucial is the compilation “Solid State Logik 1,” which contains all the stratospheric, ornate, deeply ambitious hits: the spooky “What Time Is Love? (Live at Trancentral),” the ecstatic and triumphant “3 a.m. Eternal (Live at the S.S.L.)” and “Justified & Ancient,” with those Tammy Wynette vocals that still, three decades on, are disorienting in just the right way. Is the reissue series a scam? A prelude to a prank? Or a concession to permanence from a musical act that seemed content to live on only as a memory? CARAMANICANirvana, ‘Nevermind: 30th Anniversary (Super Deluxe Edition)’(Geffen; five CDs, one Blu-ray videodisc and hardcover book, $200)A 30th-anniversary edition of “Nevermind” features four concert recordings from 1991 and 1992.GeffenAs if Nirvana ever had to, it proves its punk bona fides yet again with the 30th-anniversary expansion of “Nevermind.” The newly remastered album adds a little additional clarity that brings out both the songs’ pop structures and the rasp and yowl of Kurt Cobain’s voice. It’s packaged with four live concert recordings of variable fidelity from 1991 and 1992 — Amsterdam (included as both audio and video), Melbourne and nearly mono-sounding sets from Del Mar, Calif., and Tokyo — that show Nirvana bashing the music out night after night, screaming and blaring, overloading with physical impact and probably spurring some wild mosh pits. Wherever the tour led, as Cobain sang, there was “no recess.” But the 20th-anniversary “Nevermind” box, in 2011, included a better-sounding 1991 concert, “Live at the Paramount,” and more rarities. PARELESOutkast, ‘ATLiens (25th Anniversary Deluxe Edition)’(Legacy Recordings/Sony Music; four LPs, $69.98)A sublimely sinuous Southern funk album full of jackhammer rhymes, “ATLiens,” the second Outkast album, from 1996, is perhaps the duo’s most overlooked from its pre-pop-breakthrough era — not the scrappy statement of purpose that preceded it (the 1994 debut, “Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik”) nor the psych-rock philosophy lesson that followed (“Aquemini,” from 1998). But it’s crucial to the Outkast worldview formation — it shows the duo both at ease with the languor of laid-back Southern production but also champing at the bit to incorporate small moments of explosion. This release includes the original album alongside, for the first time, the full set of instrumentals. CARAMANICA‘R&B in DC 1940-1960’(Bear Family; 16 CDs, $273.04)Probably the heavyweight champion of boxed sets this year (it weighs 10 pounds), “R&B in DC 1940-1960” collects nearly 500 singles recorded in the nation’s capital back when doo-wop, mambo, early rock ’n’ roll, jump blues and big-band jazz were first being lumped together in the pages of trade magazines into a category called “R&B.” It’s all contextualized engagingly in a 352-page book, full of closely researched history, images and song-by-song notes. You can tease out the presence of some major figures and themes: Marvin Gaye lingers in the backing vocals on at least one track; his mentor, Bo Diddley, also makes an appearance; the recordings of the Clovers and Ruth Brown, as the notes attest, played a role in keeping Atlantic Records afloat in the label’s fledgling days. But the point of this collection is to get you to listen more broadly, and more completely, to an entire musical and social moment: Jay Bruder, the researcher who compiled the collection, wisely included commercials, jingles and other radio-broadcast ephemera in this collection. These are the sounds of Washington in the midcentury, when it was home to one of the country’s most thriving Black middle classes and an incubator of musical talent to match. RUSSONELLORadiohead, ‘Kid A Mnesia’(XL; three CDs, $23; three LPs, $60)Radiohead dig out songs that didn’t make the cut for “Kid A” or “Amnesia” on a new box taking in both releases.Radiohead thoroughly dismantled its rock reflexes to make “Kid A” (2000) and “Amnesiac” (2001), two albums drawn almost entirely from the same sessions. Its former arena-rock guitars and anthemic choruses receded behind fragments, loops, electronic beats, orchestral experiments and ominous noises; disquiet and malaise floated free. “Kid A Mnesia” unites the two companion albums and adds a disc of alternate takes, stray instrumental tracks and songs Radiohead had not quite committed to disc: “Follow Me Around” and “If You Say the Word.” They’re not revelations, but they extend the mood. PARELESThe Replacements, ‘Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take out the Trash (Deluxe Edition)’(Rhino; four CDs, one LP, one 7,” $79.98)Snarling, thrashing and defiantly tuneful, the Replacements’ 1981 debut album, “Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash,” has always sounded like a power-pop LP stuffed into a blender and flicked on to high. But this comprehensive, 40th-anniversary deluxe edition is a sustained reminder of the craft and winning chemistry behind an album that was never quite as anarchically tossed-off as it seemed. Across 100 tracks — 67 of them previously unreleased — it becomes clear that the sturdy melodic core of Paul Westerberg’s songwriting and the ramshackle fury of Bob Stinson’s solos were present from the earliest days of the Minneapolis band’s existence. Some of the most fascinating tracks on this reissue, though, point to where the Replacements were headed on “Let It Be” from 1984 and beyond: A handful of Westerberg’s solo home demos, the best of which is the gut-wrenching “You’re Getting Married,” foreshadow the ragged-heart balladry of a ’Mats classic like “Answering Machine.” Nearly four hours of material is plenty to sift through, but a high percentage of this “Trash” is treasure. ZOLADZThe Rolling Stones, ‘Tattoo You’(Interscope; four CDs, picture disc and hardcover book, $150; five LPs and hardcover book, $198; two CDs, $20)Beyond the kick of “Start Me Up” and the unexpected tenderness (and Sonny Rollins saxophone solo) of “Waiting for a Friend,” “Tattoo You” (1981) was a second-tier Rolling Stones album: vigorous performances of merely passable material. With band members estranged, it was built largely by finishing lyrics and vocals atop outtakes from previous albums. Its 40th-anniversary expanded version includes nine previously unreleased songs that casually continue the album’s 1981 strategy, revisiting tracks from the vault; Mick Jagger sings some obviously anachronistic lyrics in songs like “It’s a Lie,” which mentions eBay. (More deluxe versions add a two-CD 1982 Wembley concert recording.) The new tracks offer familiar pleasures: hearing the band romp through every song. PARELESNina Simone, ‘The Montreux Years’(BMG; two LPs, $29.99; two CDs, $19.98)Between 1968 and 1990, Nina Simone played the Montreux Jazz Festival five times.The most arresting scene in Liz Garbus’s 2015 Netflix documentary “What Happened, Miss Simone?” is a performance from the 1976 Montreux Jazz Festival, during which a weary but incandescent Nina Simone performs her interpretation of Janis Ian’s “Stars.” Simone’s reading is one of the most damning and deeply felt critiques of fame I have ever heard — and luckily it is featured on “Nina Simone: The Montreux Years,” a new and beautifully packaged two-album collection of live material. Between 1968 and 1990, Simone played the Swiss jazz festival five times; each performance was both a reflection of a specific moment in her career and a testament to her continued virtuosity. For all her ambivalence about jazz festivals and her noted preference for performing in classical music halls, Simone clearly had a special connection to Montreux and, as this collection attests, brought her best to its stage decade after decade. ZOLADZWadada Leo Smith’s Great Lakes Quartet, ‘The Chicago Symphonies’(TUM; four CDs, $71.99)The trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith turned 80 this month but continues to compose and perform prolifically. And his projects have only been growing grander in scale, while still centering his stark, epigrammatic style of playing and writing. Smith’s latest effort (it isn’t an archival recording) is “The Chicago Symphonies,” four extended works, carefully composed but minimalist in craft, written not for an orchestra but for a quartet: the Pulitzer Prize winner Henry Threadgill on alto saxophone, John Lindberg on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums. (The saxophonist Jonathon Haffner replaces Threadgill on the fourth and final symphony.) It’s the same group that was featured on Smith’s celebrated “Great Lakes Suite,” from 2014. This new collection of music is dedicated not to the natural beauty of the region, but to the lives of great Midwesterners, from politicians like Abe Lincoln and Barack Obama to Smith’s own colleagues in the avant-garde. The simpatico between Smith and Threadgill is an exciting and rarely documented thing, and it gives these already spellbinding compositions the allure of a privileged conversation. RUSSONELLOThe Who, ‘The Who Sell Out (Super Deluxe Box Set)’(UMe/Polydor; five CDs, two 7” singles, hardcover book, memorabilia, $139)A new boxed set pulls together the Who’s scattered trove of recordings from 1967-69.The Who tried multiple directions while writing and recording “The Who Sell Out,” amid tour dates and the general psychedelic ferment of 1967. Pete Townshend was coming up with character sketches, expanding songs toward mini-operas and layering voices and instruments ever more ingeniously. To hold together its hodgepodge of songs, “The Who Sell Out” was sequenced as a pirate radio show, including jingles and parody commercials. The boxed set pulls together the Who’s scattered trove of recordings from 1967-69. It expands the original album (in mono and stereo versions, plus non-album singles) with three discs of recordings from 1967-68 along with sketches that Townshend would mine for “Tommy” in 1969 and, newly unveiled, a dozen of Townshend’s increasingly ambitious demos, including a thoroughly unrelaxed “Relax” and a smoldering, baleful “I Can See for Miles” that fully maps out the album version, which would be one of the Who’s pinnacles. PARELES More

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      For Jazz Musicians in 2021, Two Was the Magic Number

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      A host of outstanding duet albums emphasized musicians not only collaborating but truly listening to each other.The violinist and multimedia artist Laura Ortman stood onstage at the Stone earlier this month clad in a bejeweled paisley jacket with a bow under her arm. She welcomed the crowd with an interested smile, and explained that the music that evening would be “dedicated to distance.” After the set she spoke again, saying that throughout it she had been meditating on the feeling of “never being close enough.”The first 20 minutes were played only in duet with the pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn, and they were probably the most affecting part. The musicians weren’t heavy-handed about the set’s theme, but about 15 minutes in, after a hefty silence, Ortman played a few sharp, playful curlicues on the violin and Alcorn responded with a restive note held in the lower register. They carried on like this for about a minute, and the tension was noticeable from below: two communicators, stuck at opposite ends of multiple spectra at once — melody/drone, high/low, rhythmic/unfixed — finding a way to direct and follow at the same time.Throughout 2021, I often got the most out of records made by duos, which allowed me to hear musicians not just collaborating but conversing directly. It likely wasn’t just the pandemic that brought me there, or that led to so many great duet recordings this year: We’ve been tunneling toward mutually assured isolation for a long time, embracing a digital existence that has reorganized, among other things, how we talk to each other and how we make music.The pair of electromagnetic, almost sensual albums released by the saxophonist Sam Gendel and the bassist Sam Wilkes seem to be having an intimate conversation with this moment. They recorded “Music for Saxofone & Bass Guitar,” released in 2018, and its follow-up, “Music for Saxofone & Bass Guitar More Songs,” out this year, live to tape during a series of casual performances outside restaurants in Los Angeles, with each musician manning a setup of loops, effects and other manipulators. They hardly sound like live albums, but they’re not studio recordings either.Sam Wilkes, left, and Sam Gendel recorded two albums live to tape during a series of performances outside restaurants in Los Angeles.Her Productions“Honestly, it’s an extension of hanging out and connecting on some stuff and then saying, ‘Oh, let’s jam,’” Gendel said in a video interview with Wilkes last week. “Then after we jammed, it’s like, ‘Oh, let’s move the jam down the street and play in front of some people, low-key, just unannounced.’” Some members of their impromptu audience were transfixed; others, they said, carried on eating and chatting.It works: Gendel and Wilkes seem so intently focused on each other, they might not need an audience. But there’s plenty of room for your ears, if you tap into the space they’ve created.Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, a pair of hip-hop producers with Hall of Fame résumés, teamed up a few years ago with a shared goal: to challenge themselves to take their chops up a notch, not just as producers but as instrumentalists.“That became the aspiration — to go beyond just sampling, to really understand, like, Man, what were they thinking about when they played this?” Muhammad said in a video interview, referring to the jazz musicians whose recordings he has sampled so heavily from, as a member of A Tribe Called Quest and after.Younge and Muhammad invited some of their ’70s jazz heroes — Roy Ayers, Brian Jackson, Gary Bartz — into the studio, and recorded a series of short albums through a process that was heavily improvised. They’ve been releasing those records throughout the pandemic on their own label, Jazz Is Dead. Loose and vernacular and charged with reverence, these LPs have the ambient feeling of a studio outtake from a recording session that never happened, caught somewhere in the airspace between 50 years ago and today.The pianist Jason Moran self-released a duet performance he’d given at the Big Ears Festival in 2019 with the drummer Milford Graves.Tony Cox, via Big Ears FestivalUnlikely cross-generational collaborations bore rich fruit in other realms of the jazz world this year, too. In the spring, the pianist Jason Moran self-released an arresting duet performance he’d given at the Big Ears Festival in 2019, alongside the drummer and polymath Milford Graves. The young vocalist Nick Hakim and the elder saxophonist Roy Nathanson created a tender and playful album, “Small Things,” in Nathanson’s basement in early 2020. The eminent jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders teamed up with the electronic musician and composer Floating Points, né Sam Shepherd, to record “Promises,” which both expanded and cooled down each musician’s natural aesthetics. It landed at the top of many critics’ best-of-2021 lists, including mine.The duet has a long and fertile history in jazz, though in the course of an artist’s career it’s usually seen as a detour, not a main road. Even Louis Armstrong, jazz’s first great soloist, made some of his finest early recordings in duet with the pianist Earl Hines; ever since, the format has offered listeners a close perspective into both the playing and the listening of jazz’s great improvisers. And from the 1960s it has been a preferred format on the avant-garde, where free-form improvising can really reward a smaller format. When Graves, who died this year, was in his 20s and already well into a Promethean career, his duet with the piano titan Don Pullen became a vehicle for artistic innovation, economic self-determination (through their collaborative label) and political visioning.Sylvie Courvoisier and Mary Halvorson are contemporary improvisers who approach abstraction from two different angles: Courvoisier as a pianist at the bridge between free jazz and European classical music, and Halvorson as a deconstructive guitar improviser, strongly affiliated with (for lack of a better term) the Brooklyn jazz scene. Their second duo album, “Searching for the Disappeared Hour,” was a chance to mine the jazz canon for inspiration while finding ways to playfully disrupt each other’s style.They re-listened closely to “Undercurrent,” the famed album of duets by the guitarist Jim Hall and the pianist Bill Evans, and sought to create something with a similar quality of attentive mystery. Courvoisier and Halvorson each contributed about half the compositions on “Disappeared Hour,” and each one wrote with the other player in mind. Then, once the pieces were written, the other musician went in and tinkered with them.“I love her melodies: She has this typical Mary sound, a very unique way of writing,” Courvoisier said in an interview. “Sometimes I’d ask her, ‘Can I reharmonize that one?’ She said, ‘Sure.’” This worked in both directions. “She does the same with my songs,” Courvoisier said. “She’ll hear me and say, ‘Can I bend that note?’ I’ll say, ‘Great.’”When improvised music comes wild and untethered, as theirs often does, some listeners lose their bearings. But when someone says they’re not sure how to engage with music like this, I suggest listening to it simply as a feeling, not as a bunch of strategies or linguistic parts. In duo scenarios, it’s especially easy to listen that way, mostly because that’s how each player is hearing the other: through feeling.Sara Schoenbeck is one of the few improvising bassoonists of her pedigree, but she rarely makes music as a leader. When she decided a few years ago to make an album under her name, a duet format made sense: Hers is a quiet, unwieldy instrument; playing in duos allows her “not to have to stress about using amplification, or not have to change the way that I would naturally want to play,” she said in an interview.The self-titled album that she released last month consists of nine duets, each with a different musical partner; including original compositions, open-ended improvisations and one cover of a tune by the slowcore band Low, each track is arresting in a different way. One of the quietest — and the one that most rewards careful listening — features the saxophonist and avant-garde eminence Roscoe Mitchell. Playing with him, Schoenbeck said, made her think about patience. It was a reminder that the way to show someone you’ve heard them isn’t always to respond.She said she’d challenged herself with this question: “How much can you start from a small idea, and not move too quickly?” And Mitchell, she said, is “kind of a master at that.”“When you’re performing, your endorphins change; your idea of time and space changes, and it’s really easy to move too quickly,” Schoenbeck added. “So that’s something I’ve come back to: How do you not move too quickly, how do you stay in a space, how do you gradually change the language that’s happening? It’s hard.” More

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      Tame Impala’s Disco-Prog Shrug, and 9 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Alice Glass, Jean Dawson and Mac DeMarco, Girlpool and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Tame Impala, ‘No Choice’“No Choice” sums up the stasis of the pandemic: limited mobility, boredom, yearning, questioning, resignation. To be released as part of the expanded version of Tame Impala’s 2020 album, “The Slow Rush,” it’s one of Kevin Parker’s era-straddling solo productions: disco drums and percussion, prog-rock phasing on his voice, a guitar solo that sounds like Ernie Isley in the 1970s and lyrics that wonder, “What are we living for?” JON PARELESAlice Glass, ‘Fair Game’A listener doesn’t have to be aware of Alice Glass’s own story to recognize the crescendo of psychological manipulation — humiliation disguised as sympathy — in “Fair Game.” “I’m just trying to help you,” Glass deadpans in a little-girl coo alongside assessments like “You screw up everything” and “I’m so embarrassed for us.” A deep industrial thump, Gothic choir harmonies and a screamed backup refrain — “Where would you be without me?” — make clear that it’s actually a hellscape. PARELESJean Dawson and Mac DeMarco, ‘Menthol’The pop-punk revival of 2021 is alive in the melodic, middle-finger yelps of Jean Dawson, the genre crusher behind “Menthol” who was raised on the border between the United States and Mexico. This is gritted-teeth pop-punk, music for cheap cigs and driving with too many friends in the car. There is angsty precocity here, sure, but signs of versatility, too: Halfway through the track, Dawson takes a pause from screaming into the mic and melds his voice into a lonely R&B melody. The sun-dappled guitar tones of Mac DeMarco arrive, curling out of the track’s heavier, chugging riffs. And before it’s over, the sagacious DeMarco drops off a fatherly piece of advice for his host: “You should take it easy on yourself. Enjoy what you’re doing. And if you stop enjoying it at some point, no problem. Don’t do it anymore.” ISABELIA HERRERARuel, ‘Growing Up Is _____’Understatement of the year: “Growing up is weird.” The Australian songwriter Ruel admits but doesn’t quite take blame for his relationship misdeeds in this song, thumping along as he hops between tenor and falsetto, trying to justify himself. Even though he knows he failed, he tries to assign himself, “No regrets, no mistakes.” PARELESMitski, ‘Heat Lightning’How much did U2 change the landscape of rock? Mitski’s “Heat Lightning” is the kind of echoey and allegorical march that U2 forged decades ago, underpinned by a Velvet Underground drone. As its guitars and strings swell, the song surges forward steadfastly: “I’ve held on to feel the storm approaching,” Mitski sings, and then, “I give it up to you — I surrender.” PARELESLittle Dragon, ‘Drifting Out’“Drifting Out” has Yuri Nagano singing about precisely that feeling — “Deep sleep, crashing waves, heavy tide/Mmm, ooh love carry me down” — on an EP with three versions of the song: one with piano, one with cellos, one mixing all the sources with electronics. The cello version is the keeper; brawny arpeggios and rhythmic chords delivered by a pair of cellists including none other than Yo-Yo Ma. PARELESFlores, ‘Fools Gold’Some relationship send-offs surrender to despair; others are tokens of personal fortitude, reminders that there will always be a way forward. Flores’s “Fools Gold” is about an estrangement from a partner, but the Texas singer-songwriter is the one who comes out sure of herself. With the smokiness of a ’90s R&B icon, she oozes coldhearted pity for her ex over a funky bass line and operatic strings. “I got all your things to the left of me/You won’t be the death of me,” she sings. “Let me get one good look at you/Ain’t that a shame.” Ouch. HERRERAGirlpool, ‘Faultline’A country guitar twang, Harmony Tividad’s breathy coos and a sense of impressionistic abandon conjure a cinematic intensity on “Faultline.” But Girlpool doesn’t stop there — instead, it returns with the same propensity for piercing, bleeding-heart lyricism that has defined its work since “Before the World Was Big” in 2015. When Tividad sings, “I loved you so traumatically that I/Can barely lift the world you left for me,” there is little left to do than pull the covers over your head, turn off your alarm and let yourself decay under the sheets. HERRERAJeff Parker, ‘Ugly Beauty’There’s an almost alluring feeling of remove, of darkened vision but not necessarily a darkened attitude, in the sound of Jeff Parker’s guitar playing. When he’s unaccompanied, that feeling doubles. A collaborator with Meshell Ndegeocello and Makaya McCraven, among plenty others, he’s an expert at shooting friction into the groove of a group, one jagged single-note line at a time. But in solo-guitar moments, there’s nothing to disrupt but himself. Parker gets halfway into covering Thelonious Monk’s “Ugly Beauty,” from his new solo-guitar LP “Forfolks,” before he starts toying around with a sustain effect, giving his rich chords an electrified, ghostly power. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOCarmen Villain with Arve Henriksen, ‘Gestures’This meditative but constantly changing instrumental begins with the assembly of a steady-state percussion pattern on bells and hand drums. It’s joined by the trumpeter Arve Henriken, improvising a solo that’s backed by loops and washes of his harmonized, electronically warped trumpet. It’s a clear homage to the continuing influence of the trumpeter and “fourth world music” innovator Jon Hassell, who died in June. PARELES More