Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify.

The long-running debate over what defines a jazz singer simply dissolves when Betty Carter’s name comes up. She transcended the entire category and took her place in the music pantheon as one of jazz’s most profound and game-changing innovators. Her impact was pervasive: not only did she influence a wide range of artists with her music, but the ‘University of Betty Carter’ stands alongside Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers as one of the jazz world’s elite finishing schools, training many of today’s most acclaimed jazz artists. The new CD, “The Music Never Stops,” features Ms. Carter in a previously unreleased live performance from 1992, six years before her untimely passing and during the early days of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

     With his new release, “Song for All of Us,” veteran saxophonist Mike Lee shows the breadth of his musical pallet. Lee draws on his wide-ranging musical associations and weaves them together with innovative compositions as well as standard repertoire. There are several different band configurations within this offering. From the core trio of tenor saxophone, bass and drums to several different quartet and quintet settings, each grouping contributes to the unified sound. Drummer Lenny White and bassist Ed Howard appear throughout adding their masterful propulsion to this set. Lee’s rotating front-line partners include guitarist Dave Stryker, saxophonist Bruce Williams, and Mike’s son, saxophonist Julian Lee.

Also this week, Norwegian-born drummer and composer Snorre Kirk unveils his fourth release as a leader, “Beat”; 

drummer Mark Walker, an 18 year veteran of the band Oregon, releases “You Get What You Give,” featuring NEA Jazz Master Paquito D’Rivera;

and Pearl Django, longtime favorites in the Pacific Northwest and one of the best known Gypsy jazz-style groups in the U.S., offers up their first-ever and long-awaited concert recording, “Pearl Django Live.”