It's the birthday of John Steinbeck (February 27, 1902), a giant of American letters.

Steinbeck is one of the foremost figures in Western literature. He is famous for works such as The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, East of Eden, and In Dubious Battle. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962. 

He wrote 27 books, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and two collections of short stories. Most of Steinbeck's work is set in central California, particularly in the Salinas Valley and the California Coast Ranges region.

The Grapes of Wrath is a story about the Great Depression and describes a family of sharecroppers, the Joads, who were driven from their land due to the dust storms of the Dust Bowl. The title is a reference to the Battle Hymn of the Republic.  It won both the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for fiction and was adapted as a film starring Henry Fonda and Jane Darwell and directed by John Ford.

"I'll be all aroun' in the dark. I'll be ever'where - wherever you look. Wherever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. If Casy knowed, why, I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad an' - I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry an' they know supper's ready. An' when our folks eat the stuff they raise an' live in the houses they build, why, I'll be there.” 

-- Tom Joad, the main protagonist in The Grapes of Wrath

In East of Eden Steinbeck deals with the nature of good and evil in this Salinas Valley saga. The story follows two families: the Hamiltons – based on Steinbeck's own maternal ancestry – and the Trasks, reprising stories about the Biblical Adam and his family. Published in 1952, it was made into a 1955 movie directed by Elia Kazan and starring James Dean.

In 1960, Steinbeck bought a pickup truck and had it modified with a custom-built camper top - rare at the time – and drove across the United States with his faithful 'blue' standard poodle, Charley. Steinbeck nicknamed his truck Rocinate after Don Quixote's "noble steed."  In this sometimes comical, sometimes melancholic book, he describes what he sees from Maine to Montana to California, and from there to Texas and Louisiana and back to his home on Long Island. The restored camper truck is on exhibit in the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas.

It's the birthday of Jack Benny (February 14, 1894). "Well!"

Here's an example of Jack Benny [with Rowan and Martin] getting a laugh without saying anything (at the end of the video).

Jack Benny was famous for his comedic timing. He got laughs with a pregnant pause or a single expression, such as his signature exasperated "Well!" [Clip with Ethel Merman from It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World.]

On his long-running radio program Benny perfected the persona of a tightwad. Click Jack opening his vault to hear the classic bit pertaining to that gag

Here's another "skinflint" bit - with Mel Blanc, a program regular. Mel Blanc, of course, was also the voice of Bugs Bunny.

One of Jack's ongoing bits was perpetually giving his age as 39. When the price of a standard first-class U.S. postal stamp was increased to 39 cents in 2006, fans petitioned for a Jack Benny stamp to honor his stage persona's perpetual age.

Part of Benny's characterization was playing the violin badly. He was of course very proficient. Here is a classic musical comedy bit with Gisele MacKenzie, a frequent guest on his show.

It's Jimmy Durante's birthday (February 10, 1893). "Ha-cha-cha-cha!" "Everybody wants ta get inta da act!"

Click Jimmy's picture ("My nose isn't big. I just happen to have a very small head.") to see him perform with Linda Ronstadt, ending the sketch with his signature exclamation.

With his clipped gravelly speech, New York accent, and comic language-butchery ("It's a castastrostroke!"), Jimmy Durante came on like gang busters and never let up! Legs planted in a defiant stance, slapping the top of the piano, slapping his thighs, grabbing his hat and shoving it over one eye - he took charge of the stage and endeared himself to audiences everywhere. 

He was a vaudeville veteran. He could play the piano, sing (in his own rough-jazzy style), dance, and tell jokes - often all at once! 

Click the "Schnozzola" to hear his signature tune from Two Girls and a Sailor (1944), featuring Harry James and his orchestra. ("That note was given to me by Bing Crosby! And was he glad to get rid of it!")

Jimmy Durante dropped out of school in the seventh grade to become a full-time ragtime piano player. He worked the city's piano bar circuit and earned the nickname, "Ragtime Jimmy." He joined one of the first jazz bands in New York, the Original New Orleans Jazz Band, and was the only member not from New Orleans. His routine of breaking into a song to crack a joke, with the band chord punctuation after each line, became a Durante trademark. 

The band was soon renamed Jimmy Durante's Jazz Band. He was the first white bandleader to feature black musicians in his band.

By the mid-1920s, Durante had become a vaudeville star and radio personality in a trio called Clayton, Jackson, and Durante. Lou Clayton and Eddie Jackson, Durante's closest friends, often reunited with Durante in subsequent years. 

Clicking this shot of Clayton, Jackson, and Durante opens a clip of struttin' Eddie Jackson and Jimmy Durante staging one of their vaudeville routines, ending with a rousing "Bill Bailey!" ("Oh, Jose make way for 'nose-say!'")

Jimmy Durante was known by all to be genuinely one of the nicest persons in show biz. "Be awful nice to 'em goin' up," he would say gruffly in an attempt to hide his sincere heart, "because you're gonna meet 'em all comin' down."

Click Jimmy to see a live 1969 TV performance of "Young At Heart."

Click "Ragtime Jimmy" to hear him belting out, "You Got to Start Off Each Day with a Song" (accompanied by Bing Crosby - "He's got a million of 'em!"). 

Jimmy signed off each show, saying, "Goodnight, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are." This was a pet name for his wife, Jeanne Olsen. Apparently, they were both infatuated with a little town, Calabash, North Carolina, on The Atlantic Ocean.*

Go ahead: It's clickable! Goodnight, Jimmy!

* [A personal note: Calabash is near Sunset Beach, North Carolina, where my cousins, Paul and Shirley Swartz, used to own beachfront property. In September 2013 I enjoyed a delightful week there with them and other cousins of the Horner clan, my mother's side of the family. We had a lot of fun in Calabash, dining and souvenir-shopping.] 

It's Bill Mays' birthday (February 5, 1944). He's a piano player with a distinctive lyrical, tasteful style that never fails to swing.

Clicking this pic of Bill Mays opens to the Bill Mays trio playing, "Dreamin'." (Bill Mays - Piano, Martin Wind - Bass, Matt Wilson - Drums)

Bill Mays is a pianist, composer, bandleader, arranger, and  author. He has won many awards and has performed internationally for over five decades.

From 1969 to the early 1980s Mays worked as a studio session musician in Los Angeles. He's accompanied many great artists - from Frank Sinatra to Sarah Vaughan to Phil Woods and Gerry Mulligan.

Click Bill at the solo piano to hear his moving rendition of Bill Evans' "Your Story/Very Early."

"I started touching the keys of an old spinet in the living room while just a baby. At age five I started piano lessons. In junior high school I took up trumpet and baritone horn. My first exposure to jazz came at 16, my first professional gigs began a year later." - from Bill Mays' website.

Click Bill working on an arrangement to hear his trio playing the Rodgers and Hart tune, "With a Song in My Heart." [Bill Mays (p) Mattias Svensson (b) Joe La Barbera (ds)]

Click Bill with Yoshiaki Masuo to hear them duo on the beautiful Portugese ballad, "Madrugada." 

Bill's book, Stories of the Road, the Studios, Sidemen & Singers - 55 Years in the Music Biz is wonderfully conversational, humorous, and enlightening on what it's like to be a "jazz man."

It is studded with great behind the scenes anecdotes and quips, like,

Pianist to bandleader, on a continuous-music dance gig: 
"We've been up here playing two and a half hours. I gotta take a leak."
Bandleader: "Sorry, man - you've known about this gig for five weeks."


Check out Bill's site https://www.billmays.net/home. It contains some great Bill Mays music.

It's Stan Getz' birthday (February 2, 1927), and I could listen to him (and have) the whole day long! I love this man and his music!

Stan Getz' parents immigrated from the Kiev area in the Ukraine in 1903, tired and fearful of the Pogroms. They wound up in the East Bronx of New York City. When he was 13 his dad bought him an alto saxophone for $35.00. Stan quickly learned to play all of the saxophones and the clarinet, but liked the sound of the tenor the best. That became his instrument. And are we lucky?!

Click Stan's image to hear one of his first solo hits, "Moonlight in Vermont" (1952)

“In my neighborhood the choice was: be a bum or escape. So I became a music kid, practicing eight hours a day. I was a withdrawn, hypersensitive kid. I would practice the saxophone in the bathroom, and the tenements were so close together that someone from across the alleyway would yell, 'Shut that kid up,' and my mother would shout back, 'Play louder, Stanley, play louder.'” 

He mooched quarters off his mom so he could take saxophone lessons every week from an excellent local teacher. He even took up playing bassoon in the school band.

Clicking Stan's portrait opens a mellow rendition of "These Foolish Things" (with a little obbligato sprinkling).

In 1962 Stan Getz and guitarist Charlie Byrd recorded Jazz Samba and started the bossa nova revolution in the United States.

Click the photo of Stan in action to hear him play live two bossa nova hits, "Desafinado" and "Girl from Ipanema." (Jim McNeely, piano; Marc Johnson, bass; Victor Lewis, drums.)

When his son Steve asked Stan what he thought about when he played, Stan said, “It's not forced concentration. Sure, I'm thinking about what I'm playing, but what I'm trying to do is to psyche myself into relaxing so the notes come out of the horn in a natural way.”

Click the old photo of Stan and son Steve to hear the "relaxing notes" of Stan playing a live rendition of "I Can't Get Started." (Kenny Barron, piano; Rufus Reid, bass.)

[Source for the text on this page: All About Jazz website. Click the "2018 Jazz Birthday Calendar" in the Blogs and sites I like menu item in the right margin to visit the site.]