Before this BBC podcast kicks off, I'd like to tell you about some others you might enjoy.
My name's Will Wilkin and I commission music podcasts for the BBC.
It's a really cool job.
Every day we get to tell the incredible stories behind songs, moments and movements.
Stories of struggle and success, rises and falls, the funny, the ridiculous.
And the BBC's position at the heart of british music means we can tell those stories like no one else.
We were, are, and always will be right there at the center of the narrative.
So whether you want an insightful take on music right now or a nostalgic deep dive into some of the most famous and infamous moments in music, check out the music podcasts on BBC sounds.
BBC Sounds music Radio podcasts hello, I'm.
Lauren La Verne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast.
Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island.
And for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast.
I hope you enjoy listening.
My castaway this week is the photographer and writer Val Wilmer.
She's spent 70 years exploring the music for which she's had a lifelong jazz she's photographed and interviewed the greats, and when jazz and blues begat rock, she had a ringside seat.
Moddy Waters, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, and countless others were all captured in images which are featured in exhibitions in the UK and US.
Since her first major show at the and a in 1973, she has written seminal music texts, most notably as serious as your life, an exploration of the evolution of so called free jazz and its racial and gender politics.
She took her first portrait when she was a teenager.
Borrowing her mothers box Brownie, she turned her lens on the jazz pioneer Lewis Armstrong at London airport.
He broke into a broad smile and the image became one of her classic shots.