[Dixielandjazz] An Evening With Lena Horne

[tcashwigg at aol.com]

Hi Steve: and all:

Lena Horne has been one of my favorite OKOM singers forever, and one of 
her Cd stays on my office five disc machine at all times so I get
  to appreciate her marvelous talent a couple of times a day anyway,  
she never sounds 90 to me either, she i sone of those magical ladies 
that I prefer to recall as forever young and beautiful classy lady and 
a great singer.

Cheers,

Tom


Subject: [Dixielandjazz] An Evening With Lena Horne

    My wife was watching Survivor on TV so I went into my office to see 
what was
on WYBE, a PBS "artsy" station in South NJ which we get on cable. 
Recently I
had seen Titan Hot 7 from a Bix Festival on that channel, then another 
time
Bob Draga, and am often surprised at their jazz programming.

Tonight was "An Evening with Lena Horne", from Denoyer's Supper Club  in
NYC, circa 1994 when she would have been 77 years old. It was a stunning
performance by a great singer, usually not called a jazz singer, even 
though
she has sung with a lot of great jazz musicians/bands, etc.

She sang with the then current edition of the Count Basie Band and the 
one
hour performance was electrifying. As an old guy, I remember her from 
about
1947 onward and loved the way she sang from first hearing.

And so tonight on TV, though she was a little more frail, she sent 
shivers
up my spine. Nostalgia? Nah, she was just radiating an aura that her
audience caught, that the band caught, and she had everyone in the palm 
of
her hand. What a great lesson I got in how to connect.

I asked Martha to come in during the second song and she was also 
hooked.
Lena replaced Survivor on the big screen TV and we watched spellbound 
as she
wove her magic and the band supplied exactly the right mix behind her. 
Wow!

If you ever see a TV listing for "AN EVENING WITH LENA HORNE" from NYC 
and
Denoyer's Supper Club, backed by the Basie Band, don't miss it. I 
believe
Michael Cuscuna produced it.

Jazz singer or not, Lena Horne belongs to that rare elite group of
performers who define the word "professional".

She's 90 this year, bless her.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone


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