Marian McPartland continues to showcase the world's top musicians on NPR's longest-running and most widely carried jazz program, Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz. In 2001, the long list of honors bestowed upon Marian and the show added a "Gracie" (the Gracie Allen Award given annually by American Women in Radio and Television) and the National Music Council's American Eagle Award.

Shorty Rogers was more significant for his arranging, both in jazz and in the movie studios than as a great trumpeter. Rogers rose to fame as a member of the Woody Herman and Stan Kenton big bands. It would be hard to find a more radical recasting of a familiar song than the opener, "We're Off To See The Wizard," which was originally written as a jaunty march down The Yellow Brick Road.  Rogers re-imagines it as an Afro-Cuban dance extravaganza, and yet is faithful enough to the original to retain the 6/8 feel.  The scoring sounds not only like his earlier Latin experiments but also like the Puerto Rican ballet music written by Leonard Bernstein for West Side Story. Rogers and his Orchestra perform five familiar songs from Oz, plus "The Jitterbug," which did not make it into the final cut. This date is rounded out by fresh versions of five of Arlen's most famous songs, including "Get Happy," "Blues In the Night" and "That Old Black Magic." Wonderful music.