It's the birthday of Ella Fitzgerald - "The First Lady of Song," "The Queen of Jazz," "Lady Ella."

Click Ella to hear her first hit, "A-Tisket, A-Tasket." She co-wrote the lyrics. (The Chick Webb Band, 1938)

Born April 25, 1917, Ella Fitzgerald was noted for her pure tone, impeccable diction, phrasing, and intonation, and a fluent improvisational ability, particularly in her inventive scat singing. 

A special treat: Count Basie dueting with the walking  bass of Keter Betts on Fats Waller's "Honeysuckle Rose." And Ella soars! But dig the musical intimacy between the Count and The First Lady!

This "clickble" Ella opens to her singing-swinging-scattin' her 1936 hit "(If You Can't Sing It) You'll Have to Swing It (Mr. Paganini)."

Ella was noted for her interpretation of The Great American Songbook, i.e., "standards." Here she makes "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" her own. And her swingin' tribute to Louis Armstrong is right-on!

Ella recorded three albums with Louis Armstrong. This "clickable" image connects to their collaboration on "Cheek to Cheek."

Ella recorded four albums with Duke Ellington. His "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" could have been written just for her. Duke and Ella! A mutual groove! 

Her rendition of "Mack the Knife" was a Grammy-winner. Viewing this live performance from Stockholm, Sweden, what hits me is the power of her delivery. Ella had a strong heart! We also get treated again to an Ella-as-Louis impersonation.

Bonus: The link connects to another live performance with Count Basie. The First Lady sings "Lady Be Good."  https://youtu.be/AfMja4l58-k

It's "Lady Day's" day. Billie Holiday - born April 7, 1915.

Clicking this image of Billie admiring the sweet sound of Lester "Prez" Young's sax connects to the classic performance of "Fine and Mellow" from the 1957 TV special, The Sound of Jazz. The line-up included several jazz legends (the first six are listed in the order of their solos): Billie Holiday singing with Ben Webster - tenor saxophone, Lester Young - tenor saxophone, Vic Dickenson - trombone, Gerry Mulligan - baritone saxophone, Coleman Hawkins - tenor saxophone, Roy Eldridge - trumpet, Doc Cheatham - trumpet, Danny Barker - guitar, Milt Hinton - double bass, Mal Waldron - piano, and Osie Johnson - drums. Music and lyrics by Billie Holiday.

This 'clickable' Billie image connects to "I Can’t Get Started" with her musical love, Lester "Prez" Young on tenor, and Austinite Teddy Wilson, piano. In my opinion this is one of the best groupings in all of jazz! (Lyrics by Ira Gershwin, music: Vernon Duke.)

Her voice had a fragile, worldly quality with each note tinged with blues shadings. It was so compelling it influenced the jazz and pop singers who came after her. Frank Sinatra said of her,

"With few exceptions, every major pop singer in the US during her generation has been touched in some way by her genius. It is Billie Holiday who was, and still remains, the greatest single musical influence on me. Lady Day is unquestionably the most important influence on American popular singing in the last twenty years."

"Any Old Time" - This is my all-time favorite Billie Holiday song. (It is not easy picking just one song from her repertoire - and this isn't even one with Lester Young or Count Basie!) But it is with Artie Shaw's band.

When Shaw hired her immediately after she left the Basie band, it was highly unusual at the time because it was an all-white orchestra. This was the first time a black female singer toured the segregated South with a white composer. Shaw defended her as they toured, but it was too much for her. When she was made to use the service elevator at one of their hotels because of guest complaints, she left the group for good.

Click Billie with "Mister" to hear "All of Me." (The Teddy Wilson band with Teddy on piano.)

This Billie "clickable" opens to her recording of "Easy Living."

Clicking this pic connects to Billie singing her biggest hit,"God Bless the Child" (1941, written by Billie and her then pianist Arthur Herzog). It became her most covered number, selling over a million records.  In 1976, the song was added to the Grammy Hall of Fame. Billie got the title for the song when she was having an argument with her mother over money. Before she left the scene, she shouted angrily, "God bless the child that's got his own."

Click Billie's image to hear her sing the protest song, "Strange Fruit."

"Strange Fruit" is a song-poem" by teacher Abel Meeropolis and his singer-wife Laura Duncan. Published in 1937,  they performed it as an anti-lynching protest song in New York City venues in the late 1930s, including Madison Square Garden. Billie Holiday first sang and recorded it in 1939.

Lynchings reached a peak in the South at the turn of the century, but continued there and in other regions of the United States. According to the Tuskegee Institute, 1,953 Americans were lynched, about three quarters of them black. The lyrics are a metaphor linking a tree’s fruit with lynching victims.

Barney Josephson, founder of Café Society in Greenwich Village, New York's first integrated nightclub, heard the song and introduced it to Billie. She said that singing it made her fearful of retaliation but, because its imagery reminded of her of her father, who was denied medical treatment for a fatal lung disorder because of racial prejudice, she continued to sing the piece, making it a regular part of her live performances.

Because of the power of the song, Josephson drew up some rules:

• Holiday would close with it,
• the waiters would stop all service in advance,
• the room would be in darkness except for a spotlight on Billie's face,
• there would be no encore.

During the musical introduction, Billie stood with her eyes shut, as if in prayer.

On July 17, 1959, she died in Metropolitan Hospital, New York, of pulmonary edema and heart failure caused by cirrhosis of the liver. As she lay dying, The Federal Bureau of Narcotics, who had been targeting her since at least 1939, arrested for drug possession and handcuffed her to her bed. Her hospital room was raided and she was placed under police guard.

In 1978, Holiday's version of "Strange Fruit" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

It's Merle Haggard's birthday (April 6, 1937). He died on his birthday 2016 and I miss him!

Click Merle to see him perform his "Sing Me Back Home." The song was based on his three-year stint in San Quentin and his relationships with Caryl Chessman, the "first modern American executed for a non-lethal kidnapping," and James "Rabbit" Kendrick, who was executed in 1961 for killing a California Highway Patrolman after escaping from prison, having failed to persuade Merle to escape with him.

As a kid, he was a rail-ridin', hitchhikin', thieving vagabond. He wound up in San Quentin at 21 years of age. Seeing Johnny Cash perform there inspired him to get serious about music. Twelve years after he was released in 1972, and after launching a successful performing career, Governor Ronald Reagan gave him an unconditional pardon.  Later, as a top-selling recording artist, it was Johnny Cash who would persuade Merle to go public about his criminal past.

This 'clickable' connects to "Mama Tried."

Clickin ol' Merle opens to one of his signature songs, "Working Man Blues." It's a tribute to a core group of his fans: the American blue-collared working man. The strong electric guitar beat typifies the Bakersfield Sound.

Along with Buck Owens, Merle and his band, The Strangers, helped create the Bakersfield sound, which is characterized by the twang of Fender Telecaster and the unique mix with the traditional country steel guitar sound. He scored over 10 Number One albums during his career.

When Merle toured with Bob Dylan, Dylan wrote "Workingman's Blues #2" as a tribute to Merle. It appears on Dylan's Modern Times album (2006). (Austin's own Denny Freeman is on lead guitar. Tony Garnier, Dylan's longest-running sideman and fellow Minnesotan on bass guitar and cello.) 

"Are the Good Times Really Over (I Wish a Buck Was Still Silver)" [with Ray Benson and Asleep at the Wheel"]

"Silver Wings." One of my favorites of his.

"If I Could Only Fly." It's a Blaze Foley song, but it's a good one to say, "So long, Merle" on. Still missing you, man! 

He invented the modern stand-up monologue. Others, like Will Rogers, told jokes on stage and contributed to the genre early-on, but Bob Hope crafted the snappy, brash monologue jam-packed with one-liners.

Today (May 29) is his birthday. 

Click Bob's image to see a short clip on his legacy to the world of comedy.

After a short stint as a boxer ("I was called Rembrandt Hope in my boxing days, because I spent so much time on the canvas!") and after working the vaudeville circuit ("When vaudeville died, television was the box they put it in."), Bob Hope’s career took off with his appearance in The Big Broadcast of 1938. He and Shirley Ross were cast as a divorced couple who meet again on a transatlantic ocean liner and sift through the ashes of their marriage. The duet, “Thanks for the Memory,” has been called "one of the most beautifully written and performed musical numbers in all of movies.” This five-minute-plus piece of film gave him a career-long theme song and made him a star.

Click Shirley Ross and Bob Hope to see them performing what became his theme song, "Thanks for the Memory" from The Big Broadcast of 1938.

In his vaudeville days Bob Hope perfected his dancing skills. ("I grew up with six brothers. That's how I learned to dance - waiting for the bathroom.") Clicking Bob dancing connects to a great dancing scene with James Cagney, who was a superb song and dance man before he became a movie gangster.

Many early TV sketches played off of vaudeville routines. Click Jack Benny and Bob to see them playing it for laughs with a birthday cake Jack presents to Bob. Slapstick at its messiest!

Bob had a staff of writers who helped him fill a vault of cataloged jokes throughout his career. He was known for relying on cue cards, and some critics considered the jokes to be the weakest part of his act. The strongest part was his crisp, I-dare-you-not-to-laugh delivery. He used this formula in a record number of appearances as an Oscar show host (nineteen, including his co-host stints - He frequently joked about never winning an Oscar: "Welcome to the Academy Awards, or as it's known at my house, Passover!"), his annual Christmas visitations with the troops (which would then be packaged as specials), and his guest appearances on other television programs with their own monologists, like Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show.

Click Bob in action to see an example of his delivery.

Want more Hope? Here are some quotable quips:

A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove you don't need it.

I do benefits for all religions - I'd hate to blow the hereafter on a technicality.

I always like to go to Washington D.C. It gives me a chance to visit my money.

The older you get, the tougher it is to lose weight, because by then your body and your fat are really good friends.

I don't do a lot of political jokes. Too many are getting elected.

I love flying. I've been to almost as many places as my luggage.

Bigamy is the only crime where two rites make a wrong.

A sense of humor is good for you. Have you ever heard of a laughing hyena with heart burn?

Incredibly, this show is coming to you live, no matter how I may look to you in this suit!

It's the birthday of "The King of the One Liners!" Henny Youngman was born March 16, 1906.

In a time when many comedians told stories, Henny Youngman's routine consisted of one-liner jokes, occasionally with interludes of violin playing. The jokes depicted simple, cartoon-like situations, eliminating lengthy build-ups and going straight to the punch line. The famous gossip columnist, Walter Winchell, labeled him, "The King of the One Liners." A stage performance by Youngman lasted only 15 to 20 minutes but contained dozens of jokes in rapid-fire succession.

Click the Henny image to see and hear him trade insults with Milton Berle. And, play the violin! (Aw, click the image anyway!)

Henny Youngman began as a comedian after he had worked for years at a print shop, where he wrote "comedy cards" containing one-line gags. The comedy cards were discovered by up-and-coming comedian Milton Berle, who encouraged Youngman and formed a close friendship with him. Berle said about him, "The only thing funnier than Henny's jokes is his violin playing."

Click the Jest(er)-Henny image for some rapid-fire delivery!

Youngman never retired. He performed his stage act all over the world until his final days. (He died in 1998.) He never considered himself aloof or above others, and he never refused to perform a show in a small venue or unknown club.

Roger Ebert illustrated this point as follows:

"I once observed Henny Youngman taping a TV show in the old NBC studios at the Merchandise Mart. We got into an elevator together. It stopped at the second floor, a private club. A wedding was under way. Youngman got off the elevator, asked to meet the father of the bride and said, 'I'm Henny Youngman. I'll do 10 minutes for $100.'"

When the New York Telephone Company started its Dial-a-Joke in 1974, over three million people called in one month to hear 30 seconds of Youngman's material—the most ever for a comedian.

Henny's traveling salesman joke!

Henny on the David Letterman Late Night show, talking about this career and the origin of "Take my wife, please!"

... More Henny!

If you're going to do something tonight that you'll be sorry for tomorrow morning, sleep late.

I once wanted to become an atheist, but I gave up - they have no holidays.

I've got all the money I'll ever need, if I die by four o'clock.

What's the use of happiness? It can't buy you money.

If at first you don't succeed... so much for skydiving.

You can't buy love, but you can pay heavily for it.

It's the birthday (March 15) of blues guitarist Sam Lightnin' Hopkins ...

Click the image to see and hear Lightnin' in action.

... born in Centerfield, deep in the heart of the Texas pine wood and  cotton country.

Lightnin' wrote and sang and recorded a monumental catalog of blues songs. He played on street corners, in small clubs, and at Carnegie Hall. His voice evoked his rugged past as a field hand and rambler. His guitar work was highly imaginative and improvisational, and was steeped in the deep blues of his soul. Go, Lightnin'!

This "clickable" connects to Lightnin' doing "Mojo Hand," backed up by legendary bluesmen, Willie Dixon on bass and Clifton James, drums.

Clicking ol' Lightnin' lets you see and hear him telling a young Joan Baez how to party!

Lightnin" bogeying' the blues.

"Ain't No Cadillac" - Austin City Limits ("That's what I'm talkin' 'bout! ... Yeah.")

Click the pic of Lightnin' going down home after a gig to hear him do a boogie-woogie blues about the black cat and the white cat and that "Margon Davis wine."

Bonus Lightnin'!: "Shake that Thing!"

It's Ralph J. Gleason's birthday (March 1, 1917) - jazz writer, co-founder of Rolling Stone magazine, and more ...

[Photo of Ralph J. Gleason by Peter Breinig. © Gleason.]

... He also co-founded  the Monterey Jazz Festival and produced a TV program, Jazz Casual, that showcased every important performer who passed through San Francisco. He championed a young Bob Dylan when Dylan was panned for "going electric" and for writing far-out lyrics that didn't belong on mainstream radio. He defended the new "San Francisco Sound" (e.g., the Grateful Dead and the Jefferson Airplane) when most music listeners were tuning in to Your Hit Parade music. That stance was not always appreciated by his jazz compatriots.

Click the image to view Ralph J. Gleason talking about what a jazz musician does.

As a kid living in San Francisco I never missed reading Ralph's column on jazz music. I was already listening to the music at night in my bed going to sleep. It flooded into my ear via the single ear bud plugged into my transistor radio. I didn't greatly appreciate the sounds, but I had to listen! It was an assignment I gave to myself. Something in my head told me someday my heart would be glad I did.

Ralph J. Gleason helped me appreciate jazz. His writing put me in touch with the greats - Miles, Louis, Diz, John Coltrane, Carmen McRae, Brubeck, Duke, and the rest. His heroes became mine!

When Gleason wasn't writing, he was showcasing jazz music on public TV station KQED, San Francisco. His Jazz Casual ran from 1961 to 1968. He featured every top jazz musician to hit town, including the likes of Louis Armstrong, John Coltrane, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Vince Guaraldi, Carmen McRae, & MJQ. Click the image to see him groovin' to the great Count Basie (piano), Freddie Green (guitar), Norman Keenan (bass), and Sonny Payne (drums), doing about a 30 minute set. Ralph also engages the Count in conversation about the good old days.

But Gleason wasn't just a jazz enthusiast. He championed Lenny Bruce, Joseph Heller (Catch 22), the Free Speech Movement, and the Fillmore Auditorium when the City was going to close it down.

On the right, Miles Davis introduces Ralph to drummer Tony Williams, 17 years old when he joined Miles' "Second Greatest Quartet."

Click the image of Bob Dylan and Ralph J. Gleason to see part of the San Francisco press conference during which he answers Ralph's question, "Do you think of yourself as a singer or a poet?" by saying, "I think of myself more as a song and dance man."

"When I first heard Bob Dylan at Monterey (Folk Festival, 1963)  I did not like him," Gleason wrote. "I was deaf."

That changed.  He later wrote that listening to Dylan changed his life. Gleason arranged and hosted a remarkable press conference with Dylan in 1965.

Leading Dylan through the crowded room, Gleason made the introduction while Dylan settled into a seat behind a table. 

"Welcome to KQED's first poet press conference," Gleason said. "Mr. Dylan is a poet. He will answer questions on everything from atomic science to riddles and rhymes. Go."

Click to hear the Airplane's "Wooden Ships."

Go, indeed! Thank you, Ralph for all your insights and for your love of music. As the Jefferson Airplane sang at the end of "Wooden Ships," "Go ride the music!" 

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.