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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.

In a program from 1987, Hancock solos on "Dolphin Dance" and then improvises with Marian McPartland.

Machito emigrated to the United States in 1937, after years of being a professional musician in Cuba. The timing was perfect, as Afro-Cuban jazz (a variety of Latin jazz) was on the verge of becoming popular. Machito and his band became a master of the genre, as displayed on this energetic album.

In 1951, Jimmy Smith began playing the Hammond organ. Within a few years, he was considered to be THE master of the instrument. Smith also was one of the founders of the "hard bop" funk school of the 1950s. Smith's talents, including his quick agility with organ peddles, come through on this album.

In 1958, Brown v. Board of Education was four years old, and the Civil Rights Movement was heating up. As a tribute to the cause of African-American freedom, jazz legend Sonny Rollins recorded Freedom Suite. This classic contains one of the first extended compositions for the tenor saxophone (it's more than 20 minutes long).