The Divine Sarah

Queen of Bebop: The Musical Lives of Sarah Vaughan by Elaine M. Hayes (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2017) is a true page-turner. One memorable scene is the one in which Sarah Vaughan and her bandmates were touring the South in the band's bus in, I think, the 1950s. A vehicle rode alongside the bus and one of its occupants started shooting at it. Everyone quickly ducked for cover. Miraculously no one was hit. One of the perils of being black Down South at that time.

A Humorous Prediction?

Is this a humorous prediction for Sean "P. Diddy" Combs? His 2014 honorary doctorate from Howard University in Washington, D.C., was taken back because of what the administrators called behavior that they considered  "fundamentally incompatible with [the university's] core values and beliefs." In addition, they returned his one-million-dollar contribution.

Combs had been caught on a 2016 hotel surveillance video brutally assaulting his then-girlfriend, Cassie Ventura.

It has also been alleged that he was involved in sex trafficking.

The Two Amigos

Me (on the left) and Robert Toro, my friend of nearly twenty (?) years, in his Manhattan apartment, circa Christmas 2020 or 2021.

A Ghost In Harlem

                              Harlem, West 120th Street, near Lenox Avenue.

A Desert Island Disc

This Al Jarreau album, Breakin' Away, released in 1981, is one of the jazz albums I would want to have with me if I were stuck on a desert island. (My favorite song on the album is "Roof Garden," a foot-tapping number.)

As you can see, Jarreau, who died in 2017, unlike many men, was not afraid to be seen wearing pink, especially on an album cover.
 

The "Summer Of Soul" Movie

 

Summer of Soul, released in 2021, is a movie I hope to see on a DVD. It's a documentary about the Harlem Cultural Festival in 1969. Among the performers who appeared on stage were Stevie Wonder, Sly and the Family Stone, Nina Simone, B. B. King, and Mahalia Jackson. The above wall mural appeared on the side of a building that's located on the corner of West 124th Street and Lenox Avenue in Harlem. The building is one block from Mount Morris Park (renamed Marcus Garvey Park), where the historic event took place.

A Tale Of Two Harlem Churches

One church in Harlem is not Obama-friendly, the other is.