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Each year, more than 600,000 people visit Martin Luther King Jr.'s boyhood home in Atlanta. NPR's Fred Child goes on a special tour of the house to learn more about the role that music played in King's young life.

A predictable yet wondrous event has begun around the country: the American dogwood is in bloom. For many, the ancient plant's flowers bring music to mind.

Elaine Heinzman offers a diary of five days in March at South By Southwest, the annual music festival in Austin, Texas. She sifted through an eclectic mix of 1,300 bands to fine-tune her sense of emerging trends.

Thelonious Monk proves the theory that great innovators often take a while to catch on. Monk's unusual sound repelled some listeners when he broke on the jazz scene in the 1940s. By 1964, he was on the cover of Time magazine and considered a legend. This 1959 album captures one of the few moments when Monk recorded with a large ensemble.

Many critics consider Duke Ellington to be the most important composer in the history of jazz. Along with his jazz compositions, he wrote film scores and stage musicals. The Duke at His Best has more than an hour of Ellington's most revered works, including "Take the 'A Train," "Caravan," and "Don't Get Around Much Anymore."

Pianist and composer Dave Burrell was an important part of the free jazz scene of the 1960s, recording with Pharoah Sanders, Marion Brown, Archie Shepp and others. His new CD with his Full-Blown Trio, Expansion, marks Burrell's first recording for a U.S. label in almost 40 years.

When saxophonist Frank Foster played with the Count Basie Orchestra in the 1950s, the band took out deductions for Social Security and a union pension. But the retirement benefits don't cover his expenses and a debilitating stroke left him unable to earn a living.

A native of California, Jon Nakamatsu performs music from Scarlatti and Liszt at NPR.

NPR's resident film music buff Andy Trudeau picks his top ten movie scores of all-time.

In popstrological terms, Britney Spears is a "daughter" of Olivia Newton-John, born under the 1981 hit song "Let's Get Physical." Ian Van Tuyl's Popstrology: The Art and Science of Reading the Popstars shows how pop music's powerful forces affect us all from the day we're born.