One Born Every Minute

came across this on youtube




The following post accompanied the clip:

"I have in my possession what I believe to be an original and unreleased reel-to-reel recording of what sounds like Ol' Blue Eyes himself. 

I got the recording in a box of old recording equipment and tapes that were sold on auction from a storage facility in Hollywood two years ago. The reel-to-reel tape is titled "A7May66Reprise", and no other information came with it. I have digitized a sample of the recording and uploaded it for you to listen to. I think there may be other recordings on the tape but due to my time limitations, I haven't checked. 

I am asking $19,500 (o.b.o.) for this obviously rare reel recording:

Leave it to Jane!

pic by James Gavin on Facebook

Singer Jane  Harvey (right) after her show last night (3/28) at the Regency in New York. Here she is with jazz scholar Dan Morgenstern, singer-pianist Daryl Sherman, and Cinderella.

ACTUALLY WATCHABLE / LISTENABLE MUSIC TV

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See Sue  Raney (even better) "live" April 25 w/ Alan Broadbent at Vitello's in North Hollywood, CA

Will Friedwald weighs in on Jane Harvey

Feinstein's at Loews Regency 

540 Park Ave.
(212) 339-4095, Monday (March 28)

Feinstein's offers an abundance of musical riches, with an appealingly wide generational span. The featured attraction is the delightful Nellie McKay: eclectic, irreverent, funny, sad, poignant, silly, often all at once, whether she is re-tooling a standard or offering one of her originals (which are also heard on a special weekend late show). On Monday, the main event is, quite possibly, the last major active female vocalist of the swing era. Jane Harvey headlined at Café Society and with the big bands of Benny Goodman and Desi Arnaz. Later, she recorded a short but choice series of albums that culminated in what is still the best overall jazz vocal take on the songs of Stephen Sondheim. Ms. Harvey, whose New York appearances are far too infrequent, is such a vital performer that when she sings "I'm Still Here" (lately an overdone anthem for veteran divas), it almost seems redundant.

But "Why"?

It's more than obvious that the Japanese govt knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that attempts to salvage the Dai-ichi nuclear power plant are beyond hopeless.  Nearly every public statement from TEPCO now contains the phrase "we don't know. . .."

I refer you to the very most recent revelation (3/24) of vegetables grown in TOKYO becoming contaminated with radioactivity. And so why allow the ongoing actions to  allegedly restore the facility to continue---at clearly the cost of hundreds (thousands?) of lives with each passing day? It is not a pretty picture. I say Chernobylize the dump and get it over with. Surely Tokyo Electric Power can find some way of writing this off their taxes if they are unable to salvage the plant. If one didn't know better, one might begin to suspect that the powers-that-be don't give a feather or a fig whether people live or die. It's all beginning to feel like a version of Kiss Me Deadly starring the Marx Brothers. (revised 3/25)

He couldn't be righter

New York Observer
March 22, 2011
Rex Reed


Back in the good old days, People Who Knew Things praised Jane Harvey as one of the big-band era's most exalted song stylists. A little thrush from New Jersey, she was discovered at the Blue Angel by Desi Arnaz, who got her on "The Bob Hope Show" and showcased her with his band at Ciro's. She followed Peggy Lee with the Benny Goodman orchestra, replaced Doris Day with Les Brown's Band of Renown and recorded some memorable albums that are collector's items now.

She still lives in Hollywood, but at Feinstein's at the Regency, where she knocked their socks off last Sunday and makes one final appearance on Monday, March 28, she is living proof that real talent never fades. The first singer to record the jazz side of Sondheim, she brought that out-of-print album out of mothballs last year. Rave reviews and a lot of cash-register action followed, and here she is, better late than never. It would be hard to imagine a more natural or heartfelt interpreter of this material, and the sensational pianist Mike Renzi provides beautiful chords for her to swing in.

On everything from a gentle reading of "Would I Leave You" from "Follies" to a heartbreaking "Not While I'm Around" from "Sweeney Todd," she is different from everyone else, and even on the overexposed stuff like "Ladies Who Lunch," she stamps the arrangement with a unique style as personal as a tattoo. Almost
conversational in tone, her phrasing is unlike anything you've experienced in the past, and her ideas are fresh and startling. Who else would think of using the ossified "Send in the Clowns" as a lead-in to Rodgers and Hart's sad, exclusive "It Never Entered My Mind"? Presuming (correctly, alas) that as much as we admire him, we're so up to our eyeballs with a glut of Sondheim during the never-ending celebration of his 80th birthday that we're beginning to feel like force-fed geese with exploding livers in preparation for foie gras, Ms. Harvey wisely moves into the Great American Songbook for the balance, with easy, unforced and warmly intimate classics like Jerome Kern's "Remind Me," Oscar Levant's "Blame It on My Youth" and Harold Arlen's "This Time the Dream's on Me." (She plans more of the same on March 28, so plan ahead.) Rich, subtle and earthy, Jane Harvey is a true treasure brought back to life just when we need her most.

Life Goes On

New CD by Pinky Winters displayed on Tokyo's Ginza at Yamano Music Store.

From Eden Atwood to Japan

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Deep Doctor C.

My understand­ing is that U.S. nuclear agencies initially offered their support to Daiichi.. . .IN TURNING THE PLANT INTO A PARKING LOT. I never saw news of this on American TV, but it was reported on the Japanese internet. And that is why U.S. assistance was, at first, rebuffed. Tepco obviously wanted to gamble on saving billions of dollars worth of investment at the price of what will clearly end up being the loss of hundreds of thousands of Japanese (and where else?) lives in the long run. If world powers can get it together to sufficient­ly bomb Libya into oblivion, I can't understand why they can't also stand together and force the powers-tha­t-be in Japan to shut the nuclear plant down for good. . .before it is too late. Time is running out. The buck stops "somewhere­": in Japan and whoever is finally responsibl­e for this ever-growi­ng disaster should seriously be contemplat­ing ritual seppuku at this juncture..

Jane Harvey alert

Just a reminder for those in the NYC area that singer Jane Harvey makes her first appearance there in 25 years this Sunday at Feinstein's with an encore the following Monday, March 28.

Tori* Amor (*Japanese for chicken)

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