How Long Has This Been Going On?

It's hard to believe that anyone can really be called Jazzmeia Horn, but that's what the name tag reads on the most exciting new jazz singer we've heard in a long, long time.  Fred Kaplan, a New Yorker writer, had an article recently praising another singer (with another striking name: Cecile McLorin Salvant), and there was a lot of justified enthusiasm for Amy Winehouse's bluesy style, but while it is a pleasure to hear their work, it is Jazzmeia Horn who sets the place on fire.

She's a 26-year-old Texan, and she's been singing for a while--she won the 2015 Thelonious Monk Institute International Jazz Competition--but her name (and who could forget her name, or her voice, once heard?) seem only recently to have reached these distant shores. Catch her performance on YouTube. Go for "East of the Sun," at Dizzy's Club CocaCola.

It has seemed for a long time that nothing especially surprising was happening in jazz. And to quote Whitney Balliett, the essence of jazz is "the sound of surprise." That's what we get with Jazzmeia Horn.

Fashion News from Victoria

Re: The appearance together yesterday of John Horgan and Andrew Weaver. Did the presumptive premier borrow that purple suit from the Joker?

Summertime, and the rhymin' ain't easy

Of the many summer songs--"A Summer Place," "The Long Hot Summer," "Summer in the City"--"Summertime," by  the Gershwins and DuBose Heyward, is probably the best known. The loveliest may be "Summer Song," music by Dave Brubeck, lyrics--"Love, to me, is like a summer day"--by Iola Brubeck. Louis Armstrong, who sang the words beautifully, said, "This is very good, Mrs. Brubeck."

But certainly the oldest summer song (and the oldest known song in the English language) is this:

Svmer is icumen in
Lhude sing cuccu!
Growep sed and blowep med
and springp pe wde nu.

Aw bletep after lomb,
Ihoup after calue cu,
Bulluc stertep, bucke uertep,
Murie sing cuccu!
Cuccu, cuccu,
Wel singes pu cuccu,
ne swik pu nauer nu!
Sing cuccu nu, Sing cuccu!

Sing cuccu, Sing cuccu nu!

Hammett/Cheever/Wouk

May 27 was the birthday of Dashiell Hammett, John Cheever and Herman Wouk, and wouldn't you like to have been at their party? Hammett was born in 1894, Cheever in 1912, and Wouk in 1915. Hammett and Cheever, not surprisingly, have departed, going to wherever good writers go--probably a bar. But Wouk, happily, is still with us, and even published another book--"Sailor and Fiddler"--two years ago.

Hammett, it's usually said, wrote five novels, but "The Big Knockover" and "Blood Money," taken together, really form one more. The toughest and shortest of Hammett's novels is "Red Harvest." The strangest is "The Dain Curse." "The Maltese Falcon" is generally considered his masterpiece, but his own favourite was "The Glass Key." His last, "The Thin Man," dedicated to Lillian Hellman, has been considered lightweight, but it is really a very rewarding book, and certainly was for Hammett.

Frank Sinatra, speaking of Johnny Hodges, Duke Ellington's longtime alto saxophone soloist, said he "never played an untasty note." One could say of Cheever that he never wrote an ungraceful line. Cheever wrote at least four novels, but he's remembered more for his two hundred or so short stories. Collected into one volume, they won the Pulitzer Prize in 1978.

Herman Wouk's first job was writing gags for Fred Allen, although he said later that he and the other writers spent most of their time clipping newspaper items they thought might interest Allen. When he was in the US Navy in World War Two, Wouk wrote a comedy about radio and advertising called "Aurora Dawn." Not well known, and hard to find, but worth a search, as is his later comedy, "Don't Stop the Carnival." His great success, of course, was "The Caine Mutiny," a true page turner, with a great collection of characters--Keefer, Maryk, Barney Greenwald, and, most of all, the unforgettable Captain Queeg.

Interestingly, some current critics believe the Wouk book likely to endure longest is "Marjorie Morningstar," the story of a young woman whose real name is Marjorie Morgenstern, and her journey through romance and show business.

So this evening, we think you should go to your shelves and pull out three books, one each by Hammett, Cheever and Wouk, mix a martini, put some old Benny Goodman Quartet records on the turntable, and wish the writers a happy birthday.

On to the Cup

Canadian hockey fans, dismayed because once again there will be no Canadian team in the Stanley Cup (And you think you feel bad? How about bartenders in Ottawa?) should remember that all of the players in the NHL, no matter what their jerseys say, are from either Trois Rivieres, Quebec or Loon Lake, Saskatchewan.

Our choice in the finals? We're going for the Predators, because so many good tunes have come out of Nashville. How much music has come out of Pittsburgh?

Meanwhile, Lord Stanley, reached via a seance and Skype, said, "Had I known there would be so much agitation, I would have given the cup to cricket."

For PD Sports, this is Slap Maxwell.

Blessing the Fields

May 21 was Rogation Sunday, an observance coming before Ascension Day, or Holy Thursday. On Rogation Sunday, it was the custom for churchgoers to walk the boundaries of their parishes--"beating the bounds" was the old phrase. Clergy and people would process, blessing the fields and asking protection for the year to come. (The word "rogation" is derived from the Latin "rogare"--"to ask.")

Early spring processions predated the Christian era, but, along with other ancient customs, they were absorbed into the church calendar.

Probably few congregations walk the parish boundaries today--those attending metropolitan churches would have difficulty knowing what those boundaries are. But a few years ago, St. James, on Vancouver's downtown east aside, did observe Rogation Sunday in the old manner, and many church members walked the boundaries, which stretch from Cordova and Gore to Commercial Drive, over the First Avenue Bridge, along Terminal Avenue, and north on Main Street.

Some of us ran the route, and were happy to see a parish refreshment stand by the VIA Rail Station, and happier still to arrive back at the church, to find St. James priests grilling hotdogs and hamburgers behind the Clergy House.

Rule, Victoria!

Today we celebrate the long and illustrious reign of the British monarch under whose rule we gained not only the postage stamp and the Christmas tree, but also Victoria's Secret.

And what was Victoria's secret? Only Albert knew.