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Born in the '60s, soul-jazz is a groove-oriented style built from the bottom up. You take a strong bass line, establish a steady groove between the bass and drums, and then embellish that groove with riffs and melody lines that draw heavily from gospel, blues and R&B.

This special summer festival episode features a clever synthesis of hip-hop, R&B and soul, recorded live across two music festivals in New York City.

"Free to Stay" has all the makings of a left-field radio hit, including a smooth R&B rhythm and a hook that's an instant earworm. On paper, it's easy to see Smoosh's youth as a gimmick, but the song is infectious enough to chase away the doubts.

As an artist, Michael Franti has run the gamut from politically conscious hip-hop to a passionate blend of soul, hip-hop and R&B. But what his music has lost in harsh intensity, it has gained in emotional compassion.

Over the course of 70 years, more than 60 albums and four Grammys, The Blind Boys of Alabama's members become synonymous with gospel soul. The innovation never ends, however, as they infuse their new album, Down in New Orleans, with Dixieland jazz, funk and R&B.

For more than 20 years, filmmaker Peter Brosnan has been working to unearth and restore the "Lost City" of Cecil B. DeMille: the massive set of his epic The Ten Commandments, which was buried in the California desert in the 1920s.

Hot Club of Cowtown's five albums revive Western swing, a musical style made famous more than half a century ago by groups such as Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys. Group members stop by NPR's Studio 4B for a performance chat with NPR's John Ydstie.

Nick Lowe's new At My Age, his first album in six years, combines amiable, little-known country covers with rangey, vaguely R&B-ified originals. The weirdest and wittiest of these is "I Trained Her to Love Me."

While most record companies of the 1940s and 1950s made money in one genre, Cincinnati-based King Records spread the love to R & B, rockabilly, bluegrass, western swing and country. Jon Hartley Fox tells the story in his new book King of the Queen City.

In the '50s, Jamaican musicians combined Caribbean calypso and American jazz and R&B to create ska — the foundation of future developments like reggae. Now, jazz musicians are closing the circle of influence. For late summer, here are five songs inspired by the island's characteristic riddims.