This week Tom Waits released his first stu­dio album in sev­en years, and it does­n’t dis­ap­point. Bad As Me, writes Will Her­mes in a four-star Rolling Stone review, may be Waits’ most broad­ly emo­tion­al album to date: “Cer­tain­ly it’s his most sharply focused record since the game-chang­ing tag team Sword­fishtrom­bones and Rain Dogs decades ago.” You can judge for your­self: For a lim­it­ed time, Nation­al Pub­lic Radio is offer­ing a sneak pre­view of the com­plete album.

Bad As Me is more acces­si­ble than many of Waits’ albums. As his long-time ses­sion gui­tarist Marc Ribot told The New York Times, “On this record it was less, ‘O.K. let’s be super rig­or­ous and cre­ate music com­plete­ly with­out prece­dent,’ and more just ‘Let’s rock the house.’ ” The title track is a good exam­ple. It’s a rol­lick­ing blues stomp, with Waits chan­nel­ing the ghost of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins as he shouts:

You’re the head on the spear
You’re the nail on the cross
You’re the fly in my beer
You’re the key that got lost
You’re the let­ter from Jesus on the bath­room wall
You’re moth­er supe­ri­or in only a bra
You’re the same kind of bad as me

On a more seri­ous note, Waits sings of Amer­i­ca’s infan­tile pol­i­tics, its mil­i­tary and eco­nom­ic quag­mires, and the gen­er­al break­down of dis­course in the melan­choly “Talk­ing At The Same Time”:

A tiny boy sat and he played in the sand
He made a sword from a stick
And a gun from his hand
Well we bailed out the mil­lion­aires
They’ve got the fruit
We’ve got the rind
And every­body’s talk­ing at the same time

Waits is joined by a stel­lar group of back­ing musi­cians, includ­ing Kei­th Richards on gui­tar and vocals, David Hidal­go on gui­tar, and Flea on bass. Bad As Me comes in two ver­sions: the stan­dard edi­tion, with 13 songs, and the deluxe edi­tion, with 16. You can hear all 13 tracks from the stan­dard edi­tion on the NPR web­site, and fol­low along with the lyrics on TomWaits.com.

“If you had to give rock and roll anoth­er name,” John Lennon once said, “you might call it ‘Chuck Berry.’ ” The man known as the father of rock and roll turns 85 today and he’s still going strong. To cel­e­brate, we bring you this pow­er­ful 1958 per­for­mance of “John­ny B. Goode.”

Berry was born Octo­ber 18, 1926 in St. Louis, Mis­souri. He devel­oped a love of music ear­ly, and made his debut play­ing a blues song in a high school tal­ent show. While still in high school, Berry was sen­tenced to juve­nile prison for armed rob­bery. After get­ting out, he joined pianist John­nie John­son’s trio. It did­n’t take long before John­son was the side­man and Berry was the band­leader. His big break came in 1955, when he made a road trip to Chica­go and sought out his hero, Mud­dy Waters. Waters sug­gest­ed he go see Leonard Chess at Chess Records. Berry returned to Chica­go with a demo tape that includ­ed an up-tem­po adap­ta­tion of a tra­di­tion­al coun­try song called “Ida Red.” Chess liked it, but said it need­ed a new name. Berry record­ed it as “May­bel­lene.” The song went to num­ber one on the Bill­board rhythm and blues chart. Over the next few years Berry vir­tu­al­ly invent­ed the Rock and Roll form, with songs like “Roll Over Beethoven,” “Rock and Roll Music,” “John­ny B.Goode,” and “No Par­tic­u­lar Place to Go.”

“He was the king of rock and roll,” Jer­ry Lee Lewis said in the biopic Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll. “My mama said, ‘You and Elvis are pret­ty good, but you’re no Chuck Berry.’ ” When Kei­th Richards induct­ed Berry into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, he joked that he had stolen every lick Berry ever played. “The beau­ti­ful thing about Chuck Berry’s play­ing,” Richards wrote in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Life, “was it had such an effort­less swing. None of this sweat­ing and grind­ing away and gri­mac­ing, just pure, effort­less swing, like a lion.”

For one more look at the lion in action–this time play­ing “Roll Over Beethoven”–here’s anoth­er clip from the 1958 tele­vi­sion broad­cast:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bud­dy Hol­ly at Age 12: His First Record­ing

Hunter S. Thomp­son Inter­views Kei­th Richards

The Rolling Stones Jam With Their Idol, Mud­dy Waters

Mud­dy Waters on the Blues and Gospel Train

Take a deep breath and watch this 1964 tele­vi­sion per­for­mance of “The Girl from Ipane­ma” by Brazil­ian bossa nova singer Astrud Gilber­to and Amer­i­can jazz sax­o­phon­ist Stan Getz.

The arrange­ment is from the clas­sic album, Getz/Gilberto, which launched the bossa nova craze of the ear­ly 60’s. The album was pri­mar­i­ly a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Getz and Astrud’s hus­band, the gui­tarist and vocal­ist João Gilber­to, but when some­one got the idea of includ­ing an Eng­lish trans­la­tion of Anto­nio Car­los Jobim’s “The Girl from Ipane­ma,” Astrud was recruit­ed. She had nev­er sung pro­fes­sion­al­ly before. The record­ings launched her as an inter­na­tion­al sen­sa­tion.

Since then, “The Girl from Ipane­ma” has weath­ered a half-cen­tu­ry of heavy rota­tion on the Hol­i­day Inn lounge cir­cuit and Muzak. (Remem­ber the ele­va­tor scene in The Blues Broth­ers?) So it can be hard to imag­ine just how cool the song must have seemed in 1964 with the release of Getz/Gilberto. That sax­o­phone. That voice. As the per­son who post­ed this video on YouTube put it: “Chill, baby, chill…”

When it’s all said and done, you can also meet Heloisa Pin­heiro, the woman who inspired the song all of those years ago.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Clas­sic Jazz Album Cov­ers Ani­mat­ed, or the Re-Birth of Cool

Bil­lie Hol­i­day Sings “Strange Fruit”

Learn Brazil­ian Por­tuguese and 40 Oth­er Lan­guages for Free