It is always humbling and, of course, deeply appreciated, when a fellow writer points out an error, a goof, a screwup. DevraDoWrite did me that favor when she came across an, er, ambiguity in the Food entry in the right-hand column. I have repaired the damage. If you insist on seeing the misbegotten original, click on the link in the previous sentence. And let that be a lesson to me. … [Read more...]

“No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft.”—H.G. Wells … [Read more...]

It is startling how many knowledgeable jazz listeners do not know about Tom Talbert. Let's do something about that. Tom died on Saturday, a month short of his eighty-first birthday. An elegant, soft-spoken man, he was an early and drastically overlooked composer, arranger and band leader on the west coast before West Coast Jazz was a category. His mid-to-late-1940s Los Angeles bands included Lucky Thompson, Dodo Marmarosa, Hal McKusick, Al Killian, Art Pepper, Claude Williamson and other … [Read more...]