A visit with inventive and eccentric jazz composer Carla Bley, who brings wry humor to a conversation about the challenges of writing for her very big bands, her early days as a cigarette girl in NYC jazz clubs, and why America might be famous for baked beans. Then we head southwest and west to the borderlands of Mexican-American music with a stop for conversation with San Antonio’s Belen Escobedo, a master of the traditional conjunto violin. Plus songs from Freddy Fender, Elizabeth Cotten, Sunny and the Sunliners and Flatt & Scruggs.
From the show "Singing and Swinging the Election 2008" originally aired on October 29th, 2008
