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

Although he was with Duke for only a couple of years, Louie Bellson must be regarded as the last of the great Ellingtonians, for he had a lasting effect on the band. He replaced Sonny Greer, who had been the drummer in the Ellington band since it began in the Twenties, and he brought in a new and powerful style that brought Ellington’s music out of the almost classic style of the Forties into the new, more aggressive sounds of the Fifties.

The recording is far from hi-fi but this 1975 session catches the Arkestra on absolutely stonking form and at a musical juncture – Sun Ra meets disco and proto-rap – that emphasises the continuities linking much black music.

In contrast to the big band orthodoxy of Maria Schneider and Vince Mendoza – all woodwind sighs and whispers – composer Barratt has a refreshingly heavy touch.

Further to Jon Lusk's obituary of Hector Zazou (10 September), writes Ken Hunt, Pierre Job's alias had a far greater resonance than merely alluding to a post-war hipster subculture. Les Zazous were the French manifestation of an anti-fascist youth subculture that sprang up in many occupied countries in the 1930s and 1940s. They allied themselves with swing jazz – labelled degenerate by the Nazis – and listened and danced to it at great personal peril. Such a person in France was a Zazou, in Czechoslovakia a Potapky (ducking and diving like "great crested grebes") and in Germany and Austria a Schlurf – a taunting term of abuse for sluts and louts turned around.