For the end of their London Christmas season, English National Ballet dive into Strictly Gershwin with a will. Derek Deane’s production blends ballet and ballroom, with a dollop of tap dancing and a fair bit of padding. The dancers do it all with care and attention. At the back of the American in Paris crowd scenes, you can spot corps dancers giving their steps a flirtatious edge.

This 3CD set attempts to map out the most exhaustive pre-history of rock'n'roll so far committed to one album, and for the most part it does a pretty decent job, tracing the line back as far as the 1916 "The Camp Meeting Jubilee", a pre-blues minstrel-tent recording of such scratchy authenticity it sounds like a parody.

Displaying Olympian knowledge of this protean genre, Gioia combines facts and background information in an absorbing narrative that tootles along, from ragtime which peaked in 1909, to the "struts and prances" of vocalist Jamie Cullum (born 1979).

Pure gold: nearly three hours of classic 1950s Holiday (mostly recorded for Norman Granz on Clef), for about a fiver.

Achingly self-conscious instrumentals for hip NYC ironists, expressly not for the most solemn kind of Fela Kuti fan. "Afro-soul", then, with jazz-ay overtones, psychedelic undertones and a strong current of cop-show theme musicology through its middle; the "Blaxploitation" that dare not speak its name.

The Bob of the title is Bob Wills, one of the daddies of western swing, that jovial place where jazz and country convened to slap their thighs in merriment in the middle of the last century.

The Dickie Davies-haired queen of the rockabilly revival has already been number one in her native Ireland for most of the summer with her third album.

The Young Vic has an admirable tradition of kicking off its year with a production that pulls in the local community to play alongside professionals in the role of chorus – and the venue has had some of its most signal recent successes in this department. It now launches its 40th anniversary season in joyous fashion with the belated British premiere of The Human Comedy. A flawed, affecting show by Hair composer, Galt MacDermot, this piece flopped on Broadway in 1984, but it fits the bill here to an almost parodic degree in its celebration of the healing power of community and the unifying nature of song.

Mainstream jazz gets a bad rep as undemanding pipe-and-slippers music but it has become a valuable medium for players who really know what to do with a good melody.

A 61-year-old jazz dancer who fraudulently claimed nearly £20,000 in disability benefits walked free from court today.

Soon, jazz like this won’t exist any more.

By employing cutting-edge presenters, sometimes with disastrous consequences, BBC Radio 2 has been modernising its output. It wants to be seen as a trendy station for the mid-twenties and above. Generally, this has been effective, making it "the most listened to radio station in the UK", but many long-time favourites have been axed. In July this year, Malcolm Laycock's celebration of pre-war dance band music, Sunday Night At 10, was removed from the schedules, and he was replaced by a rather more contemporary look at swing music from Clare Teal.

Compiled to accompany Jon Savage's book tracing the roots of the notion of the teenager from the late 19th century to the Second World War, Teenage doubles as a fine anthology of early 20th-century swing and jazz