Velzoe Brown's 96th birthday
For my 50th birthday party three and a half years ago, we were blessed with the presence of Velzoe and the Upbeats. (I made brief mention of it a month later.)
Tonight, Velzoe and her band were playing at
the Kuumbwa Jazz Center and we got to be there! She was celebrating her 96th birthday (yesterday) and is still an amazing lively presence, vivacious, full of great stories about walking to school with her pony touring with the Pollyannas, her all-woman band, touring various gigs, driving across country in 1928 or so.
How amazing it must be, to have stories that relate to events you participated in, almost eighty years ago!
For a bit of ambience, here's a sampling from the songs that they performed tonight: Chattanooga Choo Choo, The A Train, Besa Me Mucho, Spanish Eyes, the Jersey Bounce, and I'll add more later.
I was somewhat surprised by how familiar so many of those songs were.
Here's a couple of links to stories about Velzoe:
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