duaneiac

Wow. I did not know "Happiness" was an Allen Toussaint song. I only knew it from the version recorded by the late disco diva Sylvester and never bothered to look at the composer credit.

On which the jazz vocalist delivers 11 interpretations of Motown classics.

Thank you Grady Tate for so much instrumental and vocal musical enjoyment. May you rest in peace. "I Think It's Going To Rain Today"

His trio on this 2002 release included Kenny Washington & peter Washington and his special guests for this album were Jim Hall, Frank Wess, Shirley Horn and Tony Bennett.

Disc 1 of 2, which includes the albums Latin Fire and In Indigo.

This album has certainly been a long time in the making. Recorded at the Hollywood nightclub Zardi's on Feb. 2, 1956, this was among the very first recorded projects by Ella Fitzgerald under her new contract with Norman Granz's Verve Records. (Just five days later she went into the studio to begin recording her classic Cole Porter Songbook album.) For some reason, this session has sat in the Verve vaults for 61 years, but it is finally scheduled to be released next month on CD. Ms. Fitzgerald was accompanied on this occasion by Don Abney, Vernon Alley and the recently departed Frank Capp. I have not seen any track listing for the CD yet, but the Discography in Stuart Nicholson's biography of Ella Fitzgerald shows 20 songs having been recorded on this date. Hopefully they will all be included on the CD.

Disc 1.

So the liner notes on this CD reissue don't provide any clue as to the personnel heard on this recording, but they do inform us that Joe Roland was the " son of the Hotel Savoy's chiropodist". I'm glad that's cleared up.

I don't know anything about the woman, but every time I look at that still frame used for the online video I keep expecting to see Junior Samples and Grandpa Jones come out to join that quartet.

Just watched a very funny Western comedy: James Garner is his usual cool, easy-going, charming self. The script did a good job at weaving together the different plot lines, but the ,movie is helped immeasurably by the perfect cast of veteran character actors. Not mentioned on the poster above but playing a key comedic role was Ellen Corby and there's even a brief role for Pedro Gonzalez-Gonzalez. I don't often literally LOL at a movie, but I did for this one. I'd seen James Garner in Support Your Local Sheriff before, but I liked this one much better.

Because today just seemed to need some Mahalia Jackson. This concert, recorded at Lincoln Center on Easter Sunday, 1967, answered that need nicely. There may indeed be a balm in Gilead, but her singing is a balm in itself.

I found some cheap used Western DVDs at Rasputin's last week. The Magnificent Seven (orig. version) was one of them. Also Shane (a favorite of mine) The Train Robbers (a pedestrian John Wayne movie with a thin plot stretched out to feature length by including lots of long shots of the stars' doubles riding on their journey followed by long shots of their pursuers riding after them; the movie does have a twist ending, but otherwise it is very forgettable), The Shootist (which I saw years ago and don't remember much about) and based on the praise it has had here, Open Range (I'd never even heard of it before). Now when am I gonna find time to watch all of them\?