Christiern

Yes, I have the book and don't think much of it. It is a slim volume that contains many factual errors (including her christened name and birth date!) and is largely based on her discography. Discographies reflect an important facet in the career of someone like Bessie Smith, but to base a biography upon such information is to account only for a few hours of a life that spanned many years--in this case, four and a half decades. I was, quite frankly, amazed when I read the book, because Oliver enjoyed a good reputation as a blues scholar--I really did not expect his research to be so shallow. He suggests that--at the time of writing--very few people were around to fill in the gaps, yet, in regard to personal accounts, he relied only on old interviews he had done with visiting musicians like Jack Teagarden and Big Bill Broonzy. The book perpetuates all the myths, although it comes close to the truth when he deals with the most prominent one: Bessie's death. Still, it was not very difficult for me to find people with intimate first-hand knowledge of Bessie (including a detailed eyewitness account of the accident scene) when I started my book a decade later. As for Oliver's biography being the first, I believe that is probably so, at least the first to appear in book form. There was a man named Bucklin ("Buck") Moon who in the 1940s-50s wrote articles about Bessie with such enthusiasm that I (and others, I'm sure) fully expected him to come out with the first book. Buck passed away before he could undertake such a project. His wife, Ann Curtis Brown, a literary agent, represented Lil Armstrong and me in the late 1960s, when we worked on Lil's biography. Bottom line, had Oliver done his research properly, there would have been no need for my book.

Sounds like they really have watered down the BN label. If the demo fragment is any indication, the new Wynton album isn't exactly going to make him re-emerge gloriously.

Never heard about that one, but I have no doubt of its veracity--Kofsky was easy to get into an altercation with, and I speak from personal experience.

I got to know Willis, although not through VOA--During the Eisenhower years, I did news broadcasts in Danish and Icelandic from the New York studios (on West 57th Street--the Fisk Building) and didn't meet him until much later. He was a nice guy, altough somewhat stuck in a time warp.

Used to work for VOA, but I spent much more time broadcasting on truly free radio!

Britney and Christina met when both were Mousketeers.

Why don't they sell baby blinders for use during breast feeding? It's ok to shove a tit into a baby's mouth, but all hell and outrage breaks loose when one breast is bared for such a brief moment that the networks had to make a loop of it! Ridiculous.

I believe the decor is more a reflection of Lucille's taste than of Louis'. My favorite room is Louis' office. Haven't been there since they renovated and opened as a museum, but I assume that nothing was changed.

Louis was definitely not a tragic figure, IMO. I did not spend much time with him, but, when Lil and I worked on her autobiography, I spoke to many who knew Louis well. If he was a tragic figure, I think that would have come through, but exactly the opposite seems to have been the case. Sure, Louis experienced racism, which every black person living in America does, to varying degrees, but he did not let that bring him down--nor did he keep quiet about it. Louis' stage demeanor often gave (and continues to give) people the wrong impression of him--he was not the clown Ben Vereen portrayed in an ABC movie many years ago--he is to be taken as seriously as is his music. IMO, no other single performer has impacted the music as enduringly as Louis did, and no other single jazz performer has had as wide a following throughout the world.

My thoughts are with you and yours, Rooster T. I went through the same thing a couple of years ago, so I know the feeling. I hope this turns out to be a false alarm. Chris

Now I understand why there was that special gleam in the eyes of a cow I almost ran down on the outskirts of Göteborg!

Thank you for the kind words, EKE BBB.

He died today, at age 85.

I had shelves built. You should really ask how I had them shipped from New York to Copenhagen. That was quite a task, the lobby of my building was box city.

"Strange Fruit" is probably the most widely known protest song in jazz, although "Black and Blue" is up there, too. However, neither song pioneered the genre. Listen to Bessie Smith's "Poor Man's Blues," for example, and there are many more blues whose lyrics have social significance.

Karl bought my LP collection a few years back -- 18,000 albums. Maybe I should buy some of them back.

...and a half dozen snaps!

Except for monkey finger painting and elephant trunk painting, I cannot thing of any art genre that could possibly be immune from at least occasionally becoming an outlet for political expression. Jazz is no exception.

Weizen, that happens to be the most boring, nothin'-happenin' thread around, but, if one can't get enough of the never-ending, highly capitalized, substance-poor Pat-DEEP dialogues, hey--it's the genre's best. Having said that, I think jazz and politics are too inter-twined to go separate ways.

Is there a limited quantity available?

A groping post: REALITY CHECK: WMD's are known to exist. Reality Check #2 Powell's fantasies to the contrary, far too many of them exist only in the cavity of Bush's mind!

Weizy, if I were a Bush supporter, I would not want to mention WMDs!

If only they could find intelligent life in the White House.

I thought this might interest those among us who see RIAA as the greedy pigs they are.--CA Pepsi iTunes ad to feature RIAA legal targets By Peter Cohen pcohen@maccentral.com January 23, 2004 9:55 am ET Since Apple revealed the Windows version of its popular iTunes software last October, it's been known that Apple and Pepsi would work together to promote the iTunes Music Store by selling bottles of Pepsi products with redeemable codes for free songs from the iTunes Music Store under the cap. Now USA Today has the inside scoop on the vaunted Super Bowl advertisement that Pepsi will show to kick off the promotion. According to USA Today's Theresa Howard, Pepsi's advertisement will feature 20 teenagers who have been sued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which has accused each of them of illegally downloading commercial music from the Internet. The ad will reportedly feature a version of the Bobby Fuller Four classic "I Fought the Law" covered by pop-punk band Green Day. The ad shows a 14-year old Staten Island teenager who proclaims, "We are still going to download music for free off the Internet." The promotion itself will run through February and March, 2004. One out of three specially marked bottles of Pepsi, Diet Pepsi and Sierra Mist will contain a code that users can redeem for one free song from the iTunes Music Store. Apple and Pepsi claim that up to 100 million free songs may be redeemed during the promotion period.

"Things get a lot clearer for me around the 4th week into the dry season." -- DEEP Let us hope so.