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Peppermint Patty Charles Schultz Colonel Klink

No changes in diet. I am prepared to accept that Gracie had a seizure - though I really wish we could afford a visit with the vet at least for a consult but since we found a very cheap way to take care of their rabies vaccinations and heartworm tests recently, that's not going to happen unless something else medical pops up. But I have a very hard time with the idea that Coltrane was reacting to something that took place five hours later, or that he did so without once looking at Gracie, checking Gracie out (which he does all the time because when he's giving her kisses and finds a skin blemish from her allergies, he's all over it) or having anything to do with Gracie when it happened. On top of that, it was a classic extreme submission reaction, from a dog who doesn't submit to anyone. As for the question of "nothing much happening" for so long before this started, you shouldn't necessarily be surprised. For instance, its common that activity starts or radically increases, when a house undergoes renovations. Something about spirits being disturbed when "their" home is changed. No, we haven't done any renovating but I have a better example of sudden appearance of activity. Patty has a co-worker who has been living in the same apartment for a couple of years. There were one or two "strange" things happening but now Patty is trying to help this lady out because, out of the blue, activity has really spiked, and their activity is much more aggressive than anything we've had (as in, boyfriend being attacked in bed, feelings of suffocation plus bed sheets that are pulled tight around him, other things). And ironically enough, in January, the woman was concerned that the spirit was following her because she told the same story I did - her pants were tugged while she was on a ladder at work. She came to the front of the store and asked if someone had done it because she thought someone was playing with her. But no one did. (And let me repeat that this happened in January, so it doesn't explain what happened to me in December).

The Patty McGovern tune that appears on The Workshop Of The George Wallington Trio & Eddie Costa Trio , is the ballad , Your Laughter . Patty returned the favor by recording George's Summer Rain (heard on his first Prestige recording) for her Atlantic debut . It , and Matt Dennis' Will You Still Be Mine , were not on the original Wednesday's Child LP , but were added as bonus cuts for the CD reissue .

I'm intruiged with this singer some may know from the (cult)album she made with Tom Talbert (Wednesday's Child, Atlantic, 1956). As pleasing as the album is (my opinion), I'm most of all curious about her songwriting skills. On the album with Talbert she sings two of her own songs; "Love isn't everything" (Jeanne Lee sang it again on her debutlp) and "I Like Snow". A couple of weeks ago I was looking at some items on ebay. One of them, George Wallington Trio + Eddie Costa Trio Workshop (Verve), took my attention especially 'cause one of the numbers was credited to Patty McGovern... I can't recall the title of the number, but I'm sure it wasn't one of the two I mentioned above. Can someone help me with the title? Anyone familiar with other songs of her? And most important what became of her? Thank you. j.

I've batted around the idea of sharing this with the board for a while but now I figure, what the hell - I can handle a little ridicule and if this brings out any other "personal experiences" people want to share - or they want to tell me they don't think I'm crazy, that's cool too. And since the story is pretty nutty, I figure I should use the poll function and find out what everyone thinks. So please read my story, then answer the poll question. Its long, but (I hope) worth it. This all started in late October. As many of you know, we have two dogs, Coltrane is the smaller black/white dog in my avatar, Gracie is the Weimaraner. Coltrane is the proverbial "big dog in a little dog's body". He is fearless and the most "alpha" dog I've ever known. He doesn't back down from anyone or anything - at least not until we convinced him who was boss back when he was about 9 months old. So - its about lunch time and I went downstairs to take the dogs out and eat. Gracie did her usual race to the back fence after the squirrels. Coltrane however took about two steps off the back door, stopped dead in his tracks, staring, then his ears went back, his head and butt went down towards the ground, and he slunk to the door. When I opened it, he was off like a shot, ran upstairs and refused to come back down the stairs - I even tried using peanut butter to coax him down the stairs but he wasn't budging. Strange behavior to say the least. Its been suggested that an animal might have been in the backyard recently and it was the scent that he reacted to. But his makes little sense as Gracie spent most of the morning downstairs watching for the nefarious squirrels. Had any animal - particularly something rare enough to emit a smell that would frighten him, she would have sounded the alarm. On top of that we simply cannot imagine any animal that would make him behave that way. As I said, the most alpha dog we've ever known. Other dogs, possums, snakes - he doesn't back down. So - eventually Coltrane comes back down the stairs and behaves normally. Now its about 4:30 and time for another out. Coltrane runs off to the back of the yard, so does Gracie. I'm standing by the door, which is open, when Gracie comes up toward me, stops in her tracks, also looking at nothing, and her eyes went wide open in a sort of fearful grimace and she proceeded to start running around the yard in clear distress. She's drooling, her eyes are big and she is totally unaware of her surroundings. She hits the door running, and I think "close the door, keep her inside and get her under control". As I am closing the door, she is heading back out - and even though the door is closing, Gracie is not stopping. I'm convinced that if I had closed the door all the way, she was going through it. As it was, she banged her shoulder on the door, ran to the back, came back to where she had been when it started, and started violently trembling. She went down on her side, in a seizure. It lasted about two minutes and eventually she came out of it, got unsteadily to her feet and a short while later was moving pretty normally. At this point I am talking to my wife and she has determined in her own mind that something paranormal or supernatural or whatever is going on, and that she will follow her Wicca beliefs (that's witchcraft/paganism to those of you who don't know) to try to secure her family and home. I got the dogs in to the house and without really thinking about it, I said aloud "If you want to fuck with someone, fuck with me, not my dogs." My wife was unhappy when I told her this but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Immediately thereafter there were two loud knocks that emanated in the living room where I was sitting with the dogs. I cannot explain them. When my wife got home, she finally told me about some of the things that she hadn't bothered to tell me before. I should say in advance that her and her sister share a history of what I guess would be called "sensitivity" to these things. When they were young teens, they got out a Ouija board - and all hell broke loose in the house. OK, maybe not Poltergeist hell, but really wild shit started happening - and Patty was subsequently told that it would behoove her not to mess around with Ouija boards again. The two of them have long believed that their deceased grandfather has hung around the family. They know this because of the olfactory presence of his preferred cologne. So - a couple of years earlier, Patty was going to stay at our house for several nights in order to reduce her morning commute to her training sessions for a new job. After the first night, Patty decided not to stay and now, Sue informed me that Patty left early because of her extreme discomfort in the house. She felt that she was being watched by a man. Sue also told me of her own experiences, which included a perception of "something" in the house. All of this is just to give a background understanding, you can take what you will from it. The events with Coltrane and Gracie were my first experiences of any kind. I would describe my own beliefs as a skeptic but one who is open to being shown otherwise. Not a Mulder-like "I want to believe" but "I'm willing to believe, if you can show me a reason why I should." As far as the dogs are concerned, Coltrane's behavior doesn't make a lot of sense. I have a very hard time believing the "rational" explanations I've mentioned already. As for Gracie, it could be simply a seizure, which can be preceded by severe alterations in personality. But she's never had another one since, and in the context of what happened with Coltrane, its also very strange. OK, enough about the dogs. My wife came home and did her Wicca thing. She enlisted her friend who she regards as a particularly powerful witch. Copious amounts of salt was involved to "seal" and "protect" the house. Particular attention was paid to the back gate. And interestingly enough, the next time the dogs were let out, they went straight to the back gate, paced back and forth, and their hackles went up - it was as if they themselves sensed what had been done the night before. Weird. OK, so that was how things started. Sue was concerned that my statement "fuck with me, not the dogs" would make myself succeptible to whatever is in the house. In fact, nothing much happened except for some strange events at night. Twice I was awakened to a female voice in the room (and it couldn't be my wife talking in her sleep because my snoring sent her out of our room a couple of years ago). There were some other things, but I have a real hard time paying any attention to something that happens at night, due to my near-deafness and severely limited eyesight. So I don't really regard any of that as significant. Flash-forward to Christmas. I went home to CT to visit the folks, without Sue. The first night I was there, I was awakened by a loud metallic bang, directly above the bed. I sleep pretty soundly, and with a pillow over my head, so this noise was pretty loud to wake me up. I sat up, looked around, went back to sleep. As I said, things that happen while I'm in bed don't constitute much to me. But I do think that something was letting me know it was there - because on Christmas night, after dinner, I was standing by the dinner table, talking to Mom while Dad went back and forth between the table and the kitchen. As we were speaking, the center of the waist of my pants were pulled backwards, such that my butt moved about 4 inches backwards. My immediate thought was that my father had just tugged on my pants and I turned immediately to my right to see if he was there. He was four feet past me and he couldn't have done it anyway as he was using two hands to put a serving dish back where it belongs. (Here is where I tell you that my brother summarizes the story by saying that "a ghost gave you a wedgie" but I have to say that the motion was outward, not upward, so it really wasn't a wedgie. But other than that, yeah, I guess you could say that.) Edit to add a detail I forgot: After dinner was over I went to my room to change into some more comfortable clothes, and I announced aloud, "You ain't impressing me." (Which was a lie because I was seriously impressed and not a little freaked out by having my pants tugged by something unseen). Later that night when it was time for bed, my mother went upstairs and I went to the other wing of the house where the kids bedrooms are. As I closed the bathroom door, immediately outside the door and to the left there was a loud crashing noise, as if the books on the shelves were being violently brought together or thrown on the floor. This noise was really loud and while my mother wondered whether it could have been coming from the outside, I know that what I heard was right outside the bathroom door. Strangely enough, no books were disturbed or had fallen to the floor. OK, so I get back home, tell my wife what has gone on ... and nothing much happens in the house. We actually discussed a theory that what she and her friend did had protected the house and the family, but when I left the house to go home, I wasn't protected anymore. Who knows? I only know for sure that something unseen pulled me backwards, and that somehow, a very loud noise was created in the hallway when I entered the bathroom. Now, we've had two more events in the house, both involving things going missing. I had three new CDs sitting on the desk below my monitor. They sat there for a couple of weeks, and then one Saturday morning three weeks ago, I realized - they aren't there anymore. Did I move them? Did I take them downstairs to listen to later? I turn the place upside down looking for them but they are nowhere to be found. I even looked through a shopping bag I had taken out of the closet which had about 75 CDRs, work stuff that had been backed up (and that I had to go through earlier in the week to find an audio file that needed to be fixed). I went through the house twice, including the shopping bag. So I am thinking to myself "could something have taken them?" just as my wife says "Maybe your little friend took them." In fact, she tells me now that things of hers have disappeared, including wands that she uses for her rituals. They are either in her drawer or in her hand, and two of them have disappeared. So, again with no forethought, I said "ha ha ha, that was a good one. You got me good - now can I please have my discs back?" I made another pass through the house - the office, the music room, downstairs, every room. Nothing. I sat down at the desk, and as my eyes went down toward that shopping bag, my eyes spotted a printed edge and lo and behold, there were the discs. I know what you are thinking - its simple and obvious: you absentmindedly put the discs in with the CDRs when you were looking for the disc you needed for work, and its easy to miss the discs when they are in a bag with 75 other discs. There's just one problem - these CDRs weren't in jewel boxes, or slimlines. They are all in CD mailers, just barely bigger than a disc. And I went through every single CD mailer in that bag - four times in total, and I did so by taking out five or six at a time and turning them sideways to see if any discs were in between. I took out every CD mailer in this way, and then put them back in the same way. And I did that twice. The CDs were not in that bag. It is not possible that I took the CDR mailers out of that bag and put them back in, four times, while missing the three CDs I was looking for. So I called my wife and told her what had happened - and she tells me that in trying to protect the house, she had summoned "Fairies" which are known protectors of animals and also known to be pranksters. According to the head of her "Circle" I did exactly the right thing in asking for the CDs back. So, just last night I knew exactly what to do when my wallet turned up missing. You see on Monday I had grabbed my wallet and brought it to the office to pay for something online. I didn't need to leave the house again until Tuesday night, so it sat there in the office. I went into the kitchen where I keep my car keys/wallet/watch and I saw the keys but no wallet. Then I remembered, I had left it upstairs in the office (in fact, I left it in the exact same place the CDs had been left before they disappeared - take from that what you will). Went upstairs - no wallet. Asked for it back, and I went back to the kitchen. Turned on the light, and there was the wallet in its regular place. And before you ask, let me say that I looked for the wallet five minutes earlier with the light on. It wasn't in the room. Then, it was. So - that's the story of the Gould household. Do we have uninvited guests? Am I crazy? Does anyone have their own story to share?

Wow, that's right about the age I figured out what Joel was saying all these years and promptly lost all respect for his music and especially his words. ******* A track called "Look No Further" from an album called No Strings (With Strings by Ralph Burns and His Orchestra made me feel all kinds of melancholy. After hearing it for the first time, all I kept remembering was the Peanuts episode "She's a Good Skate, Charlie Brown," the scene where Woodstock whistles "O Mio Babbino Caro" as Peppermint Patty ice skates. (no, I don't know squat about opera; Google and Wikipedia make finding answers so easy these days)

Great prices for the Bird and Billie. The Pres is a great disc. I like the Patty Waters a lot. And the Sun Ra is a trip.

I'm always up for a good burger. Locally, there's a joint called The Peanut Barrel that makes an absolutely killer olive burger. One of the best burgers I've had recently though was from a relatively new organic breakfast joint called Sawyer's Gourmet Pancake House. The burger had blue cheese in the middle of the patty, bacon, and a red onion tapanade along with a special sauce. Man... that is an awesome burger. So delicious. I had them put some jalapenos on it one time and that just put it totally over the top. At home I like to make mine with buffalo or lean ground beef, cooked in a pan with pepper, salt, and garlic and onion powder. Lettuce, stone ground mustard, ketchup, relish, cheese, and possibly bacon (if I have it). Yum.

I went last night and this was awesome. As I recall, this was who appeared: Jerry Lee Lewis Aretha Franklin Annie Lennox Jeff Beck Sting Buddy Guy Metallica Lou Reed Ozzie U2 The Boss Patty Smith Black Eyed Peas Mick Jagger I'm sure I missed a few. It was fabulous. I'm sure you'll never see that amount of talent on one stage at one time again.

It's a great record and the tracks on that comp don't do it justice, save the Patty Waters "Lonely Woman," which is just heartbreaking. Glad to say I bought a copy about two years ago.

Cherry Poptart Johnny Fuckerfaster Patty Melt (The things you know when you used to run a comic book shop... )

Several months later... Giuseppe Logan (who spells his first name with an "e" at the end) appeared again at (though not in) the Vision Festival in NYC this year and seems to be in better circumstances. He told us that he has an apartment of his own now in the East Village, which I was told by a very reliable source was acquired with the help of the Jazz Foundation. He's trying to play his alto saxophone with very few teeth, which is virtually impossible; the only other person I've known to do it successfully was the great Clarence "C" Sharpe. Mr. Logan seems to have trouble playing the alto saxophone for more than a few minutes, and it's hard to know why for sure, teeth or otherwise, but it seems to me that he stops because he's not happy with his playing. On the other hand, there was an upright piano in back of the room used as a dining hall by the Vision Festival for six nights, and Giuseppe Logan sat there and played the piano for hours on end for several evenings, and what he played was really lovely and fascinating, hesitantly delivered, but with exquisite harmonics. (He was working on "Giant Steps" for most of one evening while we were there.) This is from a man who probably hasn't had the opportunity to spend time with a piano for half a century. According to “The Encyclopedia of Jazz in the ‘6O’s" (Leonard Feather) and some other sources, Giuseppe Logan was born in Philadelphia on May 22, 1935. After singing in choirs and playing in his school band, he made his professional debut at 15. He studied with Dennis Sandole and others, and also at New England Conservatory. When interviewed for “The Encyclopedia,” he stated that politics, religion, and philosophy play an active role in all arts, and his ambition was to write a symphony. A somewhat mysterious figure, Mr. Logan was self-taught on piano and drums from age 12 before switching to reeds. At 15 he began playing gigs (his most conventional job was with Earl Bostic). In 1964 he moved to New York and became closely involved with the “free jazz” scene. Mr. Logan (who at that time played alto, bass clarinet, flute, tenor, piano, and Pakistani oboe) worked with Bill Dixon, Pharoah Sanders, and Archie Shepp, then formed his own quartet, which also included a young Don Pullen, Eddie Gomez, and Milford Graves; they appeared at the October Revolution in Jazz in 1964. Later on, Giuseppe Logan had a different quartet with Dave Burrell, was a member of Byard Lancaster‘s band, and toured with Patty Waters. He recorded three sets as a leader for ESP (reissued on CD) and also made guest appearances on records by Ms. Waters and Roswell Rudd (the latter for Impulse!). About his recordings, these comments appear in the "All Music Guide" and elsewhere: One of the most uncompromisingly “out” free jazz records of its time is The Giuseppe Logan Quartet (re-released on ESP CD in ‘O8). This 1964 session features Giuseppe Logan on tenor and alto sax, Pakistani oboe, clarinet, flute, and even bass, backed with a piano-bass-drums trio featuring drummer Milford Graves, who doubles on tabla, adding the then-unique Indian percussion sound to the opener, “Tabla Suite.” The other four tracks are slightly more restrained than that wild start, but while pianist Don Pullen and bassist Eddie Gomez occasionally slip into recognizable chord patterns and time signatures (particularly on the almost conventional opening section of the 15-minute “Bleeker Partita”), the completely free playing of Mr. Logan and Mr. Graves keeps the set firmly in free jazz territory. “More” with the same quartet was released on ESP in ‘65 and reissued on Calibre in 2OO2; and “At Town Hall” was released on ESP also in ‘65 and is not known to have been rereleased. Sonny Murray made these comments to "Paris Transatlantic": "They had a nice band with Giuseppe Logan. I was never sure when they first started if any of them knew what to do (laughs) but then I found out Giuseppe had a Masters degree, Don Pullen was highly educated, and Milford was good on all that Latin percussion. It was a great group, really. Giuseppe Logan lost his mind, which was really sad. That came about because his wife left him and took his son with her. He had a twelve-year-old son who could read music backwards, play the trumpet, and was a real genius. Giuseppe was very proud of his boy. When his wife left, that threw him into a tailspin he never recovered from, and he searched down south, everywhere, and he could never find his son or his wife." Coming back to this year's Vision Festival, Henry Grimes and Giuseppe Logan felt an immediate rapport, and Henry invited Giuseppe to play during Henry's solo set. It was the first time they had played together, there was no piano in that particular space, and Giuseppe only played his alto saxophone with Henry for about two minutes, but those were the most beautiful and emotional two minutes imaginable. It was the first time, but let's hope it won't be the last. http://www.henrygrimes.com musicmargaret[@]earthlink.net

Hi Clifford. PM sent on: Ronnie Boykins - The Will Come, Is Now (ESP) $6 great session w/ Daoud Haroom, Art Lewis, Jimmy Vass et al. Sun Ra - Some Blues But Not the Kind that's Blue (Atavistic) $5 no obi, great 70s session Alexander Von Schlippenbach - Piano Solo '77 (FMP) $10 fantastic mind-expanding solos Patty Waters - The Complete ESP-Disk Recordings (ESP) $7 fantastic compilation of music from College Tour and Patty Waters Sings, now oop. Tx.

A little more than half way through. Attendance not so great on many shows...although Tahoe and Portland were good. Anyone who lives in the Bay area and has wednesday night free should come down to The Amnesia Bar in SF. We play at 10pm with a open jam to follow. Also, check us out today (St. Patty's Day) in Davis at the Delta of Venus, Eugene at Cozmic Pizza on Thursday and Seattle at the Triple Door on Friday. Happy Spring ya'll! -john

A little more than half way through. Attendance not so great on many shows...although Tahoe and Portland were good. Anyone who live in the Bay area and has wednesday night free should come down to The Amnesia Bar. We play at 10pm with a open jam to follow. Also, check us out today (St. Patty's Day) in Davis (Delta of Venus), Eugene at Cozmic Pizza on Thursday and Seattle at the Triple Door on Friday. Happy Spring ya'll! -john

THis is hard... I may forget some Some nobody has mentioned I think: Bob Marley Jack Bruce Joao Gilberto Gram Parsons Toots Hibbert Steve Winwood John Lennon Paul McCartney Little Richard Chuck Berry Ray Charles Mick Jagger Greg Allman Mercedes Sosa Country singer favorites: Willie Nelson George Jones Tammy Wynette Hank Williams Merle Haggard Patty Loveless More: Bob Dylan Sandy Denny Muddy Waters Howlin' Wolf Van Morrison BB King Otis Redding Sam Cooke Marvin Gaye Dionne Warwick Joni Mitchell Rod Stewart Levon Helm (and the other Band singers too) and I am sure I am leaving out a favorite

Oh yes! How could I space on her? Lee is a very diverse singer - able to sing or recite lines "straight" yet with an ineffable sense of depth. And her production of free, non-lyric sounds is unparalleled. I particularly like her work with Gunter Hampel. Still, my desert island vocal disc would be Patty Waters' You Thrill Me (Water).

Find the singers who most fit with the instrumental sounds/approaches you like. The vocalists who, for me, have made the most impact are those who treat their voice as a conduit for deep personal feelings and not just singing the lyrics pat. Some whom I like in particular: Patty Waters, Sheila Jordan, Annie Ross. YMMV.

I've heard recordings of Brotzmann and Kowald with Jazzrealities and it's pretty interesting from a historical point of view but of course the Fontana LP does it all way better without them. Keep in mind that Brotzmann couldn't read music at that time (not sure about Kowald). I believe that Giuseppi's reading was pretty good, from what I've been told. Everywhere may be a little off balance in Giuseppi's favor, but I have the sneaking suspicion that he was not playing very loudly or projecting that much. If you listen to his commentary on Patty Waters' College Tour LP, it's definitely off in the distance. Maybe that was intentional, or psychological, OR a result of poor miking.

Booklets are provided as a matter of course by some of the smaller classical companies - Chandos, Gimmel etc. I recently bought the recent Patty Loveless album via iTunes and the full booklet was part of the download package. We're thinking about reproducing the packaging of the past. It's not something that I care too much about (though I like a distinctive 'cover' that identifies the recording at a glance). But I wonder if this new way of distributing music might generate some highly novel ways to 'packaging' - doesn't have to come shaped like a CD booklet! I imagine a sort of 'goody bag' being attached to pop recordings (plus plenty of advertising!).

Phil Harris Arville Harris Patty d'Arbanville

Nice to hear your thoughts on KD, Mr. Weiss. As to JALC and "regional" survival...from personal experience in and around Grand Rapids, MI...can't say that it is directly true. There are tiers to hiring touring groups and the venues that would have previously hired, say, a Columbia Artits Touring Package with Joe Williams and George Shearing and Joe Pass all on the same bill, for instance, The Gathering of Friends tour, would now be hiring JALC Big Band, as they have: Congo Square played Grand Rapids in '08 (DeVos Hall) and Branford in '06, maybe, Meijer Gardens . But that level, that price and audience size, never really impacted what went on at the mid-sized theaters around town, or the non-profits, let alone restaurants. Local musicians could manage to mount a larger concert if they had the gumption and hustle to make it happen, if they could talk The West Michigan Jazz Society into it. JALC wouldn't really effect that. Right now there are two big bands that play nothing but a jazz book in West Michigan and at least two more who play a swing book with jazz. Can't say that's much changed over the last 25 years. If fact, it is an improvement. There was always The Grand Rapids Jazz Orchestra, essentially, and The Truth in Jazz Orchestra is a great addition to Muskegon. The Beltline Big Band has been going for 9 years now thanks in large part to the swing dance revival. I mean, while serving on the music committee/board at both the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts and St. Cecilia Music Society that wasn't/isn't an issue. UICA is a small venue flexible enough to grab avant garde jazz bands -- Steve Lacy, Vinny Golia, Rova, even Lee Kontiz -- while on the road and give them a Thursday night or weekend afternoon and I was able to pull musicians out of Chicago for shows here over a 15 year period, which ended when we had kids and that type of volunteerism became impossible. Other producers there who took it more mainstream would be presenting Patty Barber or Fred Hersch. The non-profit, 120 seat theater and artists who were affordable for that scene had nothing to do with JALC. Randy could bring his craziest music in there, or The Northwoods Improvisers from Mount Pleasent could make a go of it. The JALC musicians often played in local college or high school concerts over the same period. The educators especially champion them. St. Cecilia, which is primarily a classical music venue with a 600 seat theater, has one big expensive concert a year that occurs outside of their classical and jazz series concerts, and that's where you'll find JALC or Branford's band playing, or the Julliard String Quartet. The trouble with St. Cecilia bookings is that there just aren't as many jazz "stars" a place such as Grand Rapids recognize or know enough about to fill the place. It takes an across the board appeal to make a jazz audience: old/young, black/white, well off and working class. If you're just getting one aspect of that mix, that just won't make it. So artists who appeal in the broad sense and have any commercial value are harder to come by. Joe Lovano and Kurt Elling recently did ok, not sell outs, but close. Bill Frisell and Jim Hall were scheduled this fall (Hall was replaced at the last minute by Russell Malone) and there may have been 300. Now in the past Ramsey Lewis, Billy Taylor, Ahmad Jamal and even Oliver Jones could fill the place up, but as they age and their fees rise, there aren't as many musicians with a "name" who can step in and fill the house who are affordable (say $10,000 - $12,000 for everything: fee, hotel, travel). The State Theater in Kalamazoo seemed un-affected by this aspect of JALC, too. Yes, I don't doubt they've sucked the air out of a lot of places which in part explains this phenomenon of fewer jazz "stars," yet at the same time, without that -- without Wynton and Branford and their activities pulling in all the school kids, as well as middle of the roaders who know about them from television, plus the black audience -- it's tough to find jazz instrumentalists with "star" power these days. Rollins, Herbie, Brubeck -- very expensive now. Was pretty shocked by the audience pianist Marcus Roberts drew up in Sutton's Bay, Michigan, a year ago. Big, for a small resort town, and wildly enthusiastic. Mentioned to Jason Marsalis that I was M.C.ing then joked they might not be able to trust me up there because of my love of Cecil Taylor's music. We talked about that a bit and Jason basically said, after admitting his respect for Taylor and Ornette etc., that they're from "another generation." It's within this generation, musicians in their 40's or so, that they were most concerned with knowing who James P. Johnson was, for instance. In any case... This is not the best time to judge audience size in Michigan. The state's been in recession since 2000 and now...the Lions can make it 0-16 today, the perfect metaphor for Goldman Sacks Socialism.

Perhaps my favorite new release in a non- jazz vein is Patty Loveless's "Sleepless Nights"

I was rather taken by Devorah Day's Light of Day a few years back, but it doesn't seem that that many others were. But hey. Strong Seconds on the Patty Waters You Thrill Me disc as well. Some of that stuff is as cut-to-the-quick real as it can get. Sarah Vaughn - Swingin' Easy This is what Sarah did, done about as well and as unencumbered as she ever did it save for maybe some of those Musicraft sides. Billie - All Or Nothing At All At the end of the day, this is the one I keep coming back to. The fifth? Whatever is handy (and right) at the time, when the time comes, if it does. some good people already mentioned, too many others not to narrow it down to just one.

Here are a few more, the list may not be "well-informed" only because I'm not a huge follower of jazz vocals... but these four I find extraordinary. All of Jeanne's and Patty's work is major, of course. Sheila Jordan - Portrait of Sheila Patty Waters - You Thrill Me Jeanne Lee w/ Ran Blake - The Newest Sound Around John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman