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      Astrud Gilberto, ‘The Girl From Ipanema’ Singer, Dies at 83

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      It was the first song she ever recorded. And it played a key role in making the Brazilian sound known as bossa nova a phenomenon in the United States.Astrud Gilberto, whose soft and sexy vocal performance on “The Girl From Ipanema,” the first song she ever recorded, helped make the sway of Brazilian bossa nova a hit sound in the United States in the 1960s, died on Monday. She was 83.Listen to This ArticleFor more audio journalism and storytelling, More

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      7 New Songs You Should Hear Now

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      Listen to Jorja Smith, Silvana Estrada, Miya Folick and more recent highlights.Jorja Smith has carved out a lane slightly below the mainstream with her moody, sophisticated R&B and pop.Liz Johnson ArturDear listeners,There’s “weekly,” “biweekly,” even “triweekly” — but is there a word for something that happens once every four weeks?I’m talking about a word more precise than “monthly.” Quadriweekly? Bi-fortnightly? Whatever it is, that is how frequently I’ve been sending out these dispatches of new music culled from the best of our weekly Playlists.And since another two fortnights hath passed since I last sent one, the time has come again for me to tell you about some more songs you should hear right now. Yes, this very instant!As usual, it’s an eclectic selection, mixing perhaps a few familiar names with some new ones. It’s somewhat varied in language and geography, too: two songs in Spanish (gracias a Silvana Estrada and Lido Pimienta), two from across the pond (courtesy of Blur and Anohni and the Johnsons), and at least one from each country in North America, plus a Moose and a cockroach. Just trust me on that.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Anohni and the Johnsons: “It Must Change”Though the heart-wrenching vocalist Anohni has released powerful solo music in the past decade — most notably the political and poetic electronic album “Hopelessness” in 2016 — her new single “It Must Change” is the first time since 2010 that she has released music with her backing band the Johnsons. That doesn’t mean it’s a retread, though. Soulful, slinky and thematically subversive, “It Must Change” is at once a demand for respect — “The way you talk to me, it must change,” Anohni sings — and a call to accept the constant fluidity of all things. (Listen on YouTube)2. Silvana Estrada: “Milagro y Desastre”I always appreciate Jon Pareles keeping an ear out for new artists from a vast variety of cultures and musical traditions. I have him to thank for introducing me to the Mexican singer-songwriter Silvana Estrada, who won best new artist at last year’s Latin Grammys. Usually known for her sparse, guitar-driven folk songs, “Milagro y Desastre” — miracle and disaster — is something new for Estrada: a song composed largely with looped, layered fragments of her own voice. (See also: her recent, charming cover of Suzanne Vega’s “Tom’s Diner.”) The cooed, percussive notes that provide the song’s rhythmic backbone remind me a bit of Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman,” but Estrada’s impassioned singing and distinct ear for melody ultimately take “Milagro y Desastre” somewhere unique. (Listen on YouTube)3. Rob Moose featuring Phoebe Bridgers: “Wasted”What a name: Rob Moose. A prolific string player and arranger for artists like Bon Iver, Brittany Howard and, yes, Phoebe Bridgers, Mr. Moose will, on Aug. 11, release the EP “Inflorescence.” It features guest vocals from all those aforementioned artists, but so far my favorite track is his collaboration with Bridgers, the moody, nocturnal “Wasted.” Though Bridgers has been playing a version of it live for years, Moose’s contributions kick it up a notch — his anxiously plucked notes and graceful crescendos give her existential dread an almost cinematic sweep. (Listen on YouTube)4. Blur: “The Narcissist”Regular Amplifier readers will know about this one already — in its honor, I composed an entire newsletter featuring some of my favorite Blur songs. The British band’s first new single in eight years is, I think, eminently enjoyable; the push and pull between Damon Albarn’s downcast deadpan and Graham Coxon’s cheery backing vocals is classic Blur. (Listen on YouTube)5. Miya Folick, “Cockroach”I’ve been really digging the Los Angeles singer-songwriter Miya Folick’s recently released sophomore album, “Roach.” “Cockroach” is one of its more subdued songs, but it still showcases Folick’s off-kilter edge and her penchant for surprising, emotionally loaded turns of phrase. Though comparing oneself to a cockroach is usually an expression of self-loathing, here Folick employs it as a symbol of grimy resilience: “You can’t kill me.” (Listen on YouTube)6. Jorja Smith, “Little Things”Like many people, I first became aware of the British vocalist Jorja Smith in 2017, when she appeared on Drake’s mixtape “More Life” (“Get It Together” very much still goes). Since then, she’s carved out a lane slightly below the mainstream releasing moody, sophisticated R&B and pop. “Little Things,” which will appear on her upcoming album “Falling or Flying,” is a relatively carefree and kinetic track for Smith — conjuring a sweaty summer night on the dance floor — but that jazzy piano riff adds a signature touch of elegance. (Listen on YouTube)7. Lido Pimienta, “Ein Sof, Infinito”The visionary Colombian-Canadian musician Lido Pimienta wrote this song for “Ein Sof,” a brightly hued short film by the director Orly Anan. Atop a playful though gradually transcendent arrangement of pizzicato strings and soaring synthesizers, Pimienta repeatedly sings with all her heart “cuando sueño contigo” (“when I dream of you”) — a welcome invitation into her vivid imagination. (Listen on YouTube)Quadrilaterally yours,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“7 New Songs You Should Hear Now” track listTrack 1: Anohni and the Johnsons, “It Must Change”Track 2: Silvana Estrada, “Milagro y Desastre”Track 3: Rob Moose featuring Phoebe Bridgers, “Wasted”Track 4: Blur, “The Narcissist”Track 5: Miya Folick, “Cockroach”Track 6: Jorja Smith, “Little Things”Track 7: Lido Pimienta, “Ein Sof, Infinito”Bonus tracks: Your Pride songsHappy L.G.B.T.Q.+ Pride Month, everyone! Later this month, well be publishing a special Pride installment of The Amplifier featuring some of your stories and song suggestions. So, tell me: Was there a certain song that first gave you the courage to come out? Or is there a particular track that, to you, embodies the spirit of Pride? Share your answers here, and you just might be featured in an upcoming newsletter. More

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      Jenny Lewis Keeps Finding the Magic

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      Jenny Lewis didn’t mean to wind up with the marimba.But for the last year, a vintage percussion instrument has occupied pride of place in the singer-songwriter’s forest green home studio. She inherited it from her godfather, Jerry Cohen, a music editor for TV and movies and an amateur musician, who died suddenly last spring. He was a surrogate dad to her, the kind who surreptitiously bought Hanukkah presents when money was tight in her household, and introduced her to jazz records when she was 10. She was the only person in the room with him when he passed away.“He was my mentor and my best friend and the most Jewish of all people in my life,” she said. “Jerry would want me to get lessons on the marimba.”Lewis, the 47-year-old indie artist whose country-rock troubadour style and evocative lyricism has earned her comparisons to songwriting greats from Nashville’s Music Row to Laurel Canyon, has suffered a lot of loss lately. Her mother’s death, in 2017, was the backdrop for her last album, “On the Line,” in 2019. Now, after losing Cohen and another mentor, the album designer and her “rock ’n’ roll dad” Gary Burden, there is “Joy’All,” an album out June 9 that grapples with aging, life cycles and romantic (im)possibility and yet somehow feels vivacious.Lewis inherited the marimba from her godfather, Jerry Cohen, a music editor for TV and movies and amateur musician, who died suddenly last spring.Ariel Fisher for The New York Times“My 40s are kicking my ass,” she sings on the third track over peppy acoustic guitars, “and handing them to me in a margarita glass.” The song is called “Puppy and a Truck,” her latest — and perhaps most lasting — prescription for happiness; she scored them both. “Having survived this moment, I felt like it was important to project something joyful,” she said.The dog, Bobby Rhubarb, a shiny black cockapoo, greeted me with a waist-high leap when I visited Lewis recently at her home at the end of a wildflower-lined canyon road in the San Fernando Valley. The house is called Mint Chip — there’s an ice cream cone etched in stained glass by the garage — and Lewis acquired it after promising to maintain the whimsical touches that the Disney animator who built it in the 1950s installed. It attracts the fantastical too: during the pandemic, Lewis said, she discovered a baby squirrel had been sneaking in and hiding acorns under her pillow.There is more than a little magic to her life. It’s in the way Lewis amplifies the space around her (she decked out that truck, a Chevy Colorado, with ersatz Gucci seat covers) and even the way she made it out of a career as a child actor to succeed in another artistic universe.“She’s a unicorn,” said Soleil Moon Frye, her fellow child star (“Punky Brewster”) and a friend for decades. Even as a preteen, Lewis had musical skills, said Moon Frye, who documented their Hollywood crew’s adolescence in home movies, released as the 2021 documentary “Kid 90.” “We would memorize these hip-hop songs — she was always so good at rapping.”Though she’s pegged as a country-tinged folk rock songwriter, Lewis’s keystone is still hip-hop, reggae, soul and funk — “finding the story in rap-style verses and picking up an acoustic guitar, and kind of marrying the two worlds,” she said. A printout of the Wikipedia entry for “3 Feet High and Rising,” the landmark album by De La Soul, rested on the music stand in her studio; she was paging through it to understand all the samples they had used.Though she’s pegged as a country-tinged folk rock songwriter, her references for “Joy’All” included Tracy Chapman, Portishead and Frank Ocean.Ariel Fisher for The New York TimesHer references for “Joy’All” included Tracy Chapman, whose conversational delivery she admires, Portishead and Frank Ocean. About half of the tracks for the LP were created over two years in Los Angeles. The rest she made in Nashville, where she has also had a home since 2017. It’s her fifth studio album as a solo artist — she started out in popular indie bands, Rilo Kiley and the Postal Service — and her first release on Blue Note Records, the storied jazz label. (After her own tour, she’ll be joining the Postal Service on the road this fall.)Dave Cobb, the Nashville producer (Brandi Carlile, John Prine, Chris Stapleton) who worked on the album, was awe-struck by her ease and perennial good moods. “If you don’t like Jenny Lewis, you don’t like people,” he said. Their sessions, tracking instruments like pedal steel and Mellotron, along with birdsong from Lewis’s Nashville backyard, flowed easily. “To say she led is absolute, because we all played to her,” he said, adding: “Everything she writes about is true. She literally showed up every day with the puppy and her truck.”She has the openness of someone who has spent a lifetime cheerfully talking about herself, and the staggeringly eccentric stories of a showbiz veteran. Sitting on the midnight blue couch in her minimalist living room, Lewis, in a sweatshirt, sunset-hued corduroys and a single gold hoop earring inscribed with her last name, touched on being Jewish; the spiritual guru Ram Dass; the female Elvis impersonator who was her childhood babysitter; the time her mother convinced Lucille Ball to have a sitcom wrap party in their ramshackle house (“Lucy walks in, and she goes, ‘What a dump!’”); and the swap meet in Atlanta where she buys knockoff Gucci socks by the armful. “I would never buy a real Gucci sock — that’s so silly,” she said.Telling stories about Cohen, she cried. When she was a child, he took her to his job on the Universal Studios lot and let her draw and animate her own movies using giant old film machines. Being with him when he died “was probably like the most important moment of my whole life,” she said.Lewis’s parents, itinerant lounge musicians, split when she was a toddler. Her acting career in the ’80s changed the family’s fortunes, for a time, but her mother’s drug addiction and instability outpaced her sitcom earnings. She was estranged from her parents for decades, then reconciled with each late in their lives. Her father’s bass harmonica sits on a stand on her mantel.“On my dad’s deathbed, he basically was like, ‘learn musical theory,’” she said. “So there has been this pressure, from my people, to do better and learn more.”Jess Wolfe, one half of the duo Lucius, befriended Lewis and sings backup on “Joy’All.” “I really understand the need for trying to lift yourself up through your art and hoping that it can do the same for other people — she did that, in her cool, effortless Jenny Lewis kind of way,” Wolfe said.“She’s always had to figure it out and take care of herself,” she added. “She is incredibly resourceful and incredibly clever about how to do something, effectively, efficiently and affordably. Truly, I’m always blown away by her in that sense — I will always feel creative when I’m around her.”“Everything she writes about is true. She literally showed up every day with the puppy and her truck,” the producer Dave Cobb said.Ariel Fisher for The New York TimesAt age 40, after Lewis separated from her longtime partner, the musician Johnathan Rice, she moved to New York for the first time, realizing a teenage ambition. She lived in her pal Annie Clark’s (St. Vincent) apartment for two years, starting the side project NAF there with some friends. Then came Nashville, where she learned how to two-step at a honky-tonk across from the Ryman Auditorium.In a rehearsal at a space covered in red velvet in Nashville last week, which she shared over a video call, Lewis directed her all-female backing band (she seeks out women for the stage and, for this outing, even has a female tour manager — a relative rarity in the industry, and a first for her). “You guys just pedal on that, and let me do my thing,” she said, as they prepared to sing “Acid Tongue,” the title track off her 2008 solo debut. “Let’s get those ‘oohs,’” she instructed. The harmonies rolled in. “Well done,” she told them. “It’s just feeling confident.”Back in L.A., Lewis had confided that aging as an unfiltered, undoctored music star isn’t easy. “I see myself and I don’t always love it,” she said. “But I’m trying to embrace being a woman in her 40s, and all that has to offer.”She is contentedly single now, though trying out a dating app, and itching to write about it — even, she admitted, enjoying that more.“My life is outrageous,” she said, although her songwriting is not straight autobiography. “But if I’m being honest, I’m in every single line.” More

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      Taylor Swift Halts Morgan Wallen’s Run at No. 1

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      After 12 straight weeks at the top, the country star’s “One Thing at a Time” yields to Swift’s “Midnights,” which was reissued in expanded editions.For 12 weeks, nothing could stop Morgan Wallen’s domination of the Billboard chart with his latest album, “One Thing at a Time.” Not Metallica. Not Ed Sheeran. Not the Jonas Brothers or solo projects from two members of BTS.Then came deluxe reissues of “Midnights,” Taylor Swift’s seven-month-old LP.With two expanded editions featuring bonus tracks, “Midnights” returns to No. 1, notching its sixth time at the top. One of the new versions, called “The Late Night Edition,” was primarily sold as a CD at Swift’s current stadium tour, though for 24 hours it was also available as a download from the singer’s website. Counting all variations, “Midnights” logged the equivalent of 282,000 sales in the United States last week, including 196,000 copies sold as complete packages and 108 million streams, according to the tracking service Luminate.“Midnights” has been a steady hit since it came out last October. In its 32 weeks on the chart, it has never left the Top 10, and in all but three of those weeks it was in the Top 5. In the United States, “Midnights” has had the equivalent of nearly five million sales and been streamed 3.2 billion times.Lately, as Swift’s Eras Tour has become a cultural juggernaut, her wider catalog has also dotted the upper ranks of the album chart. Last week, Swift had nine titles in the Top 40. (“Lover,” from 2019, is No. 6 this week.) Swift also announced recently that a rerecorded version of her 2010 album “Speak Now” — featuring the hits “Mine,” “Back to December” and “Mean” — will come out in July.The return of “Midnights” bumps Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” to No. 2. Its 12-week consecutive run at the top was historic, falling just one week short of tying a record set by Stevie Wonder in 1977 among albums that open at No. 1 and hold there. Wallen’s last release, “Dangerous: The Double Album,” is No. 5 this week, its 122nd appearance in the Top 10.Also this week, “Almost Healed,” the new album by the Chicago rapper Lil Durk — featuring guest appearances by Alicia Keys, 21 Savage and Wallen — starts at No. 3 with the equivalent of 125,000 sales, including 168 million streams and 2,000 copies sold as a complete package. SZA’s “SOS” is No. 4. More

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      Cynthia Weil, Who Put Words to That ‘Lovin’ Feeling,’ Dies at 82

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      With her husband and songwriting partner, Barry Mann, she wrote lyrics for timeless hits by the Righteous Brothers, the Animals and Dolly Parton.Cynthia Weil, who with her writing partner and husband, Barry Mann, formed one of the most potent songwriting teams of the 1960s and beyond, churning out enduring hits like the Drifters’ “On Broadway” and the Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feelin’,” signature tunes of the baby boomer era, died on Thursday at her home in Beverly Hills, Calif. She was 82.Her death was confirmed on Friday by her daughter Jenn Mann, who did not specify a cause.“​​We lost the beautiful, brilliant lyricist Cynthia Weil Mann,” the chart-topping singer and songwriter Carole King wrote in a statement posted on social media.Recounting the friendship and rivalry that she and her former husband and songwriting partner, Gerry Goffin, shared with Ms. Weil and Mr. Mann (a friendship memorialized in Broadway’s “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical,” from 2014), Ms. King added, “The four of us were close, caring friends despite our fierce competition to write the next hit for an artist with a No. 1 song.”Ms. Weil and Mr. Mann, who were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2010, notched their first hit — “Bless You,” recorded by Tony Orlando — in 1961, two years after the music supposedly died with the Iowa air crash that claimed the lives of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. Richardson, known as the Big Bopper.In fact, the pop and rock explosion of the 1960s was just beginning, thanks in no small part to key contributions from songwriters like themselves, Burt Bacharach, Neil Sedaka, Neil Diamond and Ms. King, who were part of the star-studded songwriting community centered on the Brill Building, the storied hit factory on Broadway and 49th Street in Manhattan.Ms. Weil and her husband toiled two blocks away, in fact, at 1650 Broadway. It was a humble setting in which to create musical masterpieces.“There were, like, three or four writing rooms there, and each room had an upright and an ashtray, because everybody smoked like crazy back then,” Mr. Mann said in a telephone interview on Friday. “Even though it was sparse, we worked and worked, and,” he added with considerable understatement, “some good things came out of there.”Ms. Weill with her husband and songwriting partner, Barry Mann, during the induction ceremony. Chad Batka for The New York TimesThose good things included two soaring, almost sepulchral No. 1 singles for the Righteous Brothers: “You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feelin’,” from 1964, which in 1999 the music licensing agency BMI ranked as the most played song on radio and television of the 20th century, and “(You’re My) Soul and Inspiration,” from 1966.Another potential hit written for the Righteous Brothers, “We Gotta Get Out of this Place” (1965), ended up in the hands of Eric Burdon’s band, the Animals, who added some grit to it that helped it become an anthem for battle-weary soldiers in the Vietnam War. (“In this dirty old part of the city,” Ms. Weil’s lyrics began, “Where the sun refused to shine, people tell me there ain’t no use in tryin’).Whatever the style or genre, Ms. Weil supplied a trademark touch of poetry and wit. In her statement, Ms. King said her favorite Weil lyric is in the song “Just a Little Lovin’ (Early in the Mornin’),” recorded by Dusty Springfield in 1968: “Just a little lovin’ early in the mornin’ beats a cup of coffee for startin’ off the day.”While many of their songs became emblems of the 1960s, Ms. Weil’s lyrical success continued well after the mud of Woodstock had dried.In 1977, Dolly Parton hit No. 1 on the Billboard country chart and No. 3 on the pop chart with the Weill-Mann song “Here You Come Again.” (The song brought Ms. Parton a Grammy Award for best female country vocal performance.) In 1980, the Pointer Sisters hit No. 3 on the pop charts with “He’s So Shy,” which Ms. Weil wrote with Tony Snow.“There’s no reason a person shouldn’t write better 20 years after they start,” she said in an interview with The Los Angeles Times in 1986. “Writers know more and have more life experience to draw on.”Which is not to say that she found it easy to stay on top in the music business. “You kind of have to sit through the trends,” she continued. “Live through bubble gum and disco and everything else we’ve lived through. You’ve got to be a creative survivor.”Ms. Weil was born on Oct. 18, 1940, in New York City, the younger of two children of Morris Weil, who owned a furniture company, and Dorothy (Mendez) Weil.Growing up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and later on the Upper East Side, she trained as an actress and dancer and dreamed of a life in theater, a subject she later majored in at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y.“I was always fixated on Broadway,” she said in a 2016 video interview with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. “I wanted to write for Broadway, I had always pictured myself doing something on Broadway.”She channeled those youthful longings into the lyrics for “On Broadway,” which she originally wrote from the point of view of a small-town girl dreaming of a future on the Great White Way — a dream that, the lyrics acknowledged, often comes with dashed hopes:They say the neon lights are bright on BroadwayThey say there’s always magic in the airBut when you’re walking down the streetAnd you ain’t had enough to eatThe glitter rubs right off and you’re nowhereMs. Weil eventually changed the song’s protagonist to a male for the Drifters’ version, which charted No. 9 as a single in 1962. Sixteen years later, George Benson lodged his own jazz-inflected version at No. 7.In addition to her husband and daughter, Dr. Mann, a psychologist, she is survived by two granddaughters.Despite her Broadway ambitions, Ms. Weil’s career took a different turn in 1960, when she met Mr. Mann, who had already co-written a couple of Top 40 hits, including one he recorded himself in 1961, the doo-wop sendup “Who Put the Bomp (In the Bomp Bomp Bomp),” which he wrote with Mr. Goffin.It was Ms. Weil who first noticed the man with whom she would craft a career and life. As her daughter recalled by phone, her mother had asked Don Kirshner, the Brill Building power broker music publisher, to find her a writing partner, hoping it would be Mr. Mann. She “thought he was really hot,” Dr. Mann said.Instead, Mr. Kirshner set up a meeting with a different up-and-coming songwriter. On the day of that meeting, Ms. Weil “was sitting and waiting,” Mr. Mann recalled, “and in walks Carole King. She thought, ‘Oh, what a drag, I don’t want to have to write with that chick.’”He added, “It worked out fine for both of them.” More

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      Redd Holt, Drummer on ’60s Instrumental Pop Hits, Dies at 91

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      He played in the Ramsey Lewis Trio when it released “The ‘In’ Crowd” in 1965, and a group he co-led recorded the funky hit “Soulful Strut.”Redd Holt, a drummer who in the 1960s, before jazz fusion became a popular term, struck a beat that had both the kick of funk and the delicacy of jazz on a number of surprisingly popular instrumental tunes, died on May 23 in Chicago. He was 91.The death, at a hospital, was caused by complications of lung cancer, his son Reginald said.Mr. Holt scored his biggest hit as the drummer with the pianist Ramsey Lewis’s trio, whose original lineup also included Eldee Young on bass.In 1965 — nearly 10 years after the band’s first record — they came out with “The ‘In’ Crowd,” a live album whose title track was a cover of a recently popular song by the R&B singer Dobie Gray.The Lewis Trio version superseded Mr. Gray’s, reaching the top of the Billboard R&B chart and No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. Their “‘In’ Crowd” won the 1965 Grammy Award for best instrumental jazz performance by a small group or soloist.The group had found a winning formula — repeating a catchy melody over and over, as in a pop tune, adding a bluesy rhythm and leaving room for improvisation. Later in 1965 they released the album “Hang On Ramsey!” It included two bluesy instrumental covers of pop songs that also appeared as singles: the Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Hang On Sloopy,” which the McCoys had made a No. 1 hit in 1965. The trio played each of them to shouts of encouragement from a live crowd.Success, however, proved the be the group’s undoing. In 1966, following disagreements over artistic direction and money, Mr. Holt and Mr. Young left Mr. Lewis to form the Young-Holt Trio, later renamed Young-Holt Unlimited. (Mr. Lewis replaced Mr. Holt with Maurice White, who went on to found Earth Wind & Fire.)Mr. Holt, left, and Mr. Young in about 1968, after they had broken with Ramsey Lewis to form their own jazz ensemble, Holt-Young Unlimited. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesMr. Holt and Mr. Young continued making music in a pop-friendly vein. Their 1968 single “Soulful Strut,” with a funky, danceable groove, reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, behind Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It on the Grapevine” and “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me,” a joint release by Diana Ross & the Supremes and the Temptations.(“Soulful Strut” sounded a lot like an instrumental version of “Am I the Same Girl?,” a late-’60s single by the soul singer Barbara Acklin. Some questioned whether Mr. Young and Mr. Holt had actually played on the recording credited to them, suggesting rather that they had allowed their band name to be used for work done by studio musicians who had backed Ms. Acklin. Reginald Holt said that Carl Davis, the producer of both songs, told him that his father and Mr. Young had indeed played on “Soulful Strut,” and that his father would laugh when questioned about it.)Another Young-Holt single, “Wack Wack,” reached No. 40 on the charts in 1967. With a monotone male voice repeating the word “whack” in the manner of a quacking duck, the song expressed the merry spirit of Mr. Holt’s style of jazz.Isaac Holt was born on May 16, 1932, in Rosedale, Miss., a Mississippi River town in the northern part of the state. He got his nickname when he was young, a reference to his light-toned skin. His father, Willie, worked in a lumber yard, and his mother, Mary (Gilliam) Holt, was a homemaker who sometimes taught crocheting and worked as a nurse’s aide.Redd’s father took him to see traveling minstrel shows when he was a boy, and he was particularly struck by the one-legged tap dancer Peg Leg Bates moving to the rhythm of a trap drummer.“I went home and from the moment on, I was banging on my mother’s pots and pans and buckets,” Mr. Holt told The Journal and Courier of Lafayette, Ind., in 1992. “That’s how it all came to be.”The family moved to Chicago as part of the Great Migration. Redd grew up in the city and lived there the rest of his life, mostly on the South Side. He served in the Army from 1954 to 1956.He played with Chicago jazz luminaries as a teenager, and he belonged to a local seven-piece jazz band called the Clefs. When several members were drafted, only Mr. Holt, Mr. Young and Mr. Lewis remained. They formed a trio, calling themselves the Gentlemen of Jazz, but changed the name when they were advised that it made more commercial sense to name the group after their pianist.In later years Mr. Holt performed in his own band, Holt Unlimited, and occasionally played reunion shows with Mr. Young and Mr. Lewis. Mr. Young died in 2007, and Mr. Lewis died last year.Mr. Holt married Marylean Green in 1954. In addition to his son Reginald, she survives him, along with two other sons, Isaac and Ivan; a brother, Benjamin; eight grandchildren; and 10 great-grandchildren.Mr. Holt kept up a regular Friday night gig in Chicago until the onset of the pandemic, and he loved to talk about his craft with high school students.“Kids are hip,” he told The Journal Herald of Dayton, Ohio, in 1977. “They have open heads.” More

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      A Lost (and Found) John Coltrane Recording, and More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Claud, Silvana Estrada, Hannah Georgas and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. 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, and The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.John Coltrane featuring Eric Dolphy, ‘Impressions’The strongest live recordings John Coltrane ever made — the ones that seem to capture his locomotive, shape-shifting powers at full speed, totally unbridled — come from his lengthy run at the Village Vanguard in fall 1961. At that point he had moved away from writing in complex, Fibonacci-like patterns of harmony; studying spiritual music, especially from India and Africa, he’d redoubled his commitment to structural simplicity. In short order, he would assemble the lineup that we now know as his classic quartet. On those Vanguard recordings you can hear it all happening: He’s moving fast, unburdening himself of the past, trying out new lineups and reworking his repertoire in real time.But this was a process that had been ongoing. There is always a back story. And this week, Impulse! Records announced that in July it will release an album of newly unearthed recordings that Coltrane made at the Village Gate, just blocks away from the Vanguard, two months before that run.There are a few big headlines here. For one thing, the album includes the only known live capture of Coltrane performing his composition “Africa.” But the big attraction is that Eric Dolphy — the visionary multi-reedist who played a key part in Coltrane’s musical development, and stars in those Vanguard tapes — plays almost as prominent a role here as the bandleader. On the album’s lead single, a 10-minute version of Coltrane’s “Impressions,” Dolphy’s bass clarinet doubles with McCoy Tyner’s piano as Coltrane plays the “Pavanne”-inspired melody, then both horn players turn in spiraling, fuming solos, drawing smoke out of the song’s simple form. The drummer Elvin Jones and the bassist Reggie Workman charge ahead so intensely, they barely even have time to swing. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOBizarrap and Peso Pluma, ‘Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 55’The Mexican songwriter Peso Pluma continues his push toward global audiences in a collaboration with Bizarrap, the hitmaking Argentine electronic-music producer. He sings about being spurned, drunk, rebounding and flaunting his blingy Patek Phillipe watch as Bizarrap quantizes regional Mexican acoustic sounds — the syncopated chords and trombone of a brass band, the slapping bass lines of a bajo sexto, solos on high-strung Mexican guitars — into a computerized track. It sounds like there’s some Auto-Tune added to Peso Pluma’s growl, too. Near the end, Bizarrap plays a few EDM synthesizer chords that suggest club tracks are only a remix away. JON PARELESThe Weeknd with Playboi Carti and Madonna, ‘Popular’Here’s a cowbell-driven critique of a dystopian social-media dynamic, from the soundtrack of the new HBO show “The Idol.” Over a sleekly minimal funk track, the Weeknd sings, “Kill anyone to be popular/Sell her soul to be popular.” He enlisted the ultimate celebrity-savvy pop star, Madonna, to pop in with backups: “Spent my whole life running from your flashing lights,” she claims. “You can’t take my soul.” It’s not everyone’s predicament, but the Weeknd bets listeners care about it. PARELESTy Dolla Sign, ‘Motion’Ty Dolla Sign finds a new groove on the breezy, house-inflected single “Motion,” which is driven by a looped piano and an insistent beat. “Something takes over when we dancin’,” he croons nimbly on the summer-ready track, which was produced by Will Larsen and Stryv. “Bodies around us caught up in the wave.” LINDSAY ZOLADZBettye LaVette, ‘Hard to Be a Human’“Hard to Be a Human” is from Bettye LaVette’s next album, “LaVette!,” due June 16; it’s a set of songs by Randall Bramblett. LaVette sings about humankind as a flawed creation — “You gotta stop and wonder/Baby, why were you born?”— over a sputtering, tumbling Afrobeat groove, anchored like Fela’s music by a burly baritone saxophone. Every rasp and break in her voice sounds like one more obstacle overcome. PARELESHigh Pulp featuring James Brandon Lewis, ‘Dirtmouth’High Pulp, a Los Angeles collective with Seattle origins, blurs jazz, funk, math rock and indie rock. Its third album is “Days in the Desert,” due July 28. For “Dirtmouth,” a musicianly, meter-shifting fusion piece, it enlisted the saxophonist James Brandon Lewis, who bursts into its minimalistic cycles with breath and gusto: a leaping, sprinting, stop-start human presence roiling the systematic composition. PARELESHannah Georgas, ‘Better Somehow’The Canadian songwriter Hannah Georgas digs into her own insecurity to fight against it, pushing herself to confront someone who can “insult me so casually.” She doesn’t want a rupture; as the production ascends from a modest folk-rock strum to a big harmony chorus, she only hopes honesty will clear the air, so “I can love you better.” PARELESClaud, ‘Crumbs’“I can feel the little things adding up, the little crumbs I hate cleaning up,” the Chicago singer-songwriter Claud murmurs on this tender, muted acoustic tune from “Supermodels,” due in July. The sweetly shrugging register brings Clairo to mind, as Claud, who uses they/them pronouns, stacks vivid, accumulating snapshots of a relationship in stasis. In the end, though, they sing with a resigned sigh, “I will for you, I will for you, whatever you want.” ZOLADZSilvana Estrada, ‘Milagro y Desastre’Most of the songs the jazz-loving Mexican songwriter Silvana Estrada released in 2022 — on the album “Marchita” and the EP “Abrazo” — were sparse and pensive. “Milagro y Desastre” (“Miracle and Disaster”) begins in the same spirit, with plain keyboard chords and the possibility that “No one is going to save themselves.” But midway through, she finds companionship. She decides to stay with someone until morning; she’s joined by a growing string ensemble and bolstered by a traditional beat and vocal harmonies. As she repeats the title, she sounds content, and ready, to face down miracles or disasters. PARELESGunn Truscinski Nace, ‘On Lamp’The guitarists Steve Gunn and Bill Nace and the drummer John Truscinski, improvisers whose paths have overlapped in various ensembles, have made a trio instrumental album, “Glass Band,” that’s due in July. It includes “On Lamp,” an undulating, not-quite-ambient piece that threads a wandering, slow-motion melody through a stereo dialogue of acoustic guitars and subdued tom-tom syncopations, like a glimpse of a distant caravan. PARELES More

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      Moons, Junes and 7 Summer Tunes

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      Listen to a playlist that summons the heady days of a fresh season.Florence Welch, presumably in a June mood.Djamila Grossman for The New York TimesDear listeners,I do not know how this happened, but it did: It is already June.When I think June, I think moons … and spoons — that most infamously clichéd of all rhyme patterns, which Joni Mitchell both mocks and (internally) capitulates to in the second verse of “Both Sides Now,” when she admits that sometimes love does feel exactly the way those mushy, sing-songy ditties from your youth predicted it would:Moons and Junes and Ferris wheelsThe dizzy dancing way you feelAs every fairy tale comes realI’ve looked at love that wayMaybe Mitchell was thinking of Doris Day and Gordon MacRae (yes, that rhymes too) singing “By the Light of the Silvery Moon” in a 1953 film of the same name. Or maybe she was thinking of any of the countless versions of that oft-covered standard, which was written back in 1909. In any event, she wasn’t the first songwriter to bemoan that rhyme pattern’s overuse: By 1923, the Tin Pan Alley satirist Billy Murray was already tired enough of the whole moon/June/spoon thing that he included this line in his song “Stand Up and Sing for Your Father”:Oh I’m so sick of all these ditties about “moon” and “spoon” and “June”So will you stand up and sing for your father an old time tuneRest assured, there will be no such ditties on today’s playlist. But there will be a collection of songs that reference the month of June, or summon those heady days of late spring/early summer. Two of them are by artists with “June” in their names, which is sort of cheating, but I doubt you’d begrudge any opportunity to hear Johnny duetting with Ms. Carter.I tend to think of June as a time of excitement and joy — Juneteenth! Pride! Kids getting out of school for the summer! — so I was a little surprised that most of the songs I know about the month skewed melancholy. Maybe the phenomenon of June Gloom isn’t limited to Southern California, spiritually speaking. Or maybe there’s a bit of sadness inherent in any transitional moment. Regardless, may this playlist — featuring songs from the Kinks, the Everly Brothers, the Decemberists and more — help you over that hump and into the light.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Nina Simone: “Memphis in June”I love the slow, swooning pacing Simone brings to this 1961 version of Hoagy Carmichael’s song — as if the early summer heat had made her contentedly woozy. The tempo and sparse arrangement allow the listener to linger on the scene she describes, which is as vivid as an imagistic poem: “Memphis in June/A shady veranda/Under a Sunday blue sky.” Sounds divine. (Listen on YouTube)2. The Everly Brothers: “June Is as Cold as December”Released on their 1966 album “In Our Image,” this mid-period Everly Brothers tune is a warning to stay away from that icy gal June, who apparently “doesn’t have a heart to offer anymore.” The Beatles, the Beach Boys and the Byrds were all influenced by the harmonies and arrangements of the Everly Brothers, but here — listen to that rich, chiming guitar sound — they’ve clearly learned a thing or two from their students. (Listen on YouTube)3. The June Brides: “In the Rain”Here’s a jaunty little ditty from the British indie-pop band the June Brides, who in the mid-80s put out a string of skittishly melodic singles and EPs that were beloved by a cult audience that included, among others with discerning tastes, a teenage Dave Eggers. You’ve got to love a rock band with a trumpet player and a violist. (Listen on YouTube)4. The Kinks: “Rainy Day in June”Speaking of rain, here’s a drizzly mood piece from the Kinks’ great 1966 album “Face to Face.” Ray Davies gets points for rhyming “June” with “gloom,” “tomb” and “doom” — no moons and spoons for this guy, thank you very much! (Listen on YouTube)5. Florence + the Machine: “June”On this track from Florence + the Machine’s 2018 album “High as Hope,” Florence Welch sings wistfully of “those heavy days in June, when love became an act of defiance.” (Listen on YouTube)6. The Decemberists: “June Hymn”Like “Memphis in June,” this song from the Portland, Ore., group the Decemberists (featuring backing vocals from the folk greats Gillian Welch and David Rawlings) is full of crisp imagery that evokes, as the vocalist Colin Meloy puts it, “summer’s early sway”: “Pegging clothing on the line/Training jasmine how to vine/Up the arbor to your door.” (Listen on YouTube)7. Johnny Cash & June Carter: “Jackson”I couldn’t resist. (Listen on YouTube)Up jumps the moon to make it so much grander,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Moons, Junes and 7 Summer Tunes” track listTrack 1: Nina Simone, “Memphis in June”Track 2: The Everly Brothers, “June Is as Cold as December”Track 3: The June Brides, “In the Rain”Track 4: The Kinks, “Rainy Day in June”Track 5: Florence + the Machine, “June”Track 6: The Decemberists, “June Hymn”Track 7: Johnny Cash and June Carter, “Jackson”Bonus tracksThe Fontane Sisters, too, have that moon, June, spoon feeling.Plus, in this week’s Playlist, we have a long lost recording from John Coltrane, along with new music from the Weeknd, Claud and more. More