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Robin D.G. Kelley's new book, Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, focuses on the career of the eccentric jazz pianist and composer. It reveals new details about Monk's life, music and mental health problems, and provides a glimpse into the New York jazz scene of the mid-twentieth century.

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

Studs Terkel has interviewed some of the world's most familiar musicians. In And They All Sang he's collected interviews with Bob Dylan, Louis Armstrong, Ravi Shankar and others.

Fresh Air's jazz critic reviews Mark Miller's High Hat, Trumpet, and Rhythm: The Life and Music of Valaida Snow. It's a biography of jazz singer and musician Valaida Snow, aka "Little Louis."

In 1957, photographer W. Eugene Smith moved into a lower Manhattan loft which served as a late-night hangout for jazz musicians. He proceeded to make approximately 4,000 hours of reel-to-reel tape recordings, and take nearly 40,000 photos, in and around his apartment.

Every weekday through Hispanic Heritage Month, World Cafe dives into the music of a different country in Latin America.

She's among the last living beboppers, one of the first singers on Blue Note and a pioneer of voice and bass. The legendary Sheila Jordan joins Christian McBride for a career-spanning conversation.

Lorraine Gordon is the keeper of New York's historic Village Vanguard. Recently, Gordon published a set of memoirs, the recollections of a woman who was married to two famous men of jazz.

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

A new book, The Sinatra Treasures, celebrates the life of the legendary crooner with never-before-seen photographs, music and pull-out mementos from the Sinatra Family archives. NPR's Liane Hansen talks with Frank Sinatra, Jr. about his father.