Today's post will attempt a first draft of the bio that should be appearing. Maybe we'll record an audio bio to match and get it covered.

This first draft will include the opening I use most when introducing myself to all the cool folks who come on the show and have New Things to talk about. And then I'll fill in some other stuff. First draft...

Hi! My name is Vince Outlaw and I host The New Jazz Thing. Live every Thursday evening from 6 to 9 pm Pacific Time on Jazz 88, KSDS San Diego, 88.3 FM. We hang out at http://KSDS-FM.org/NewJazzThing on and off the air, posting interview clips, hyperlinks galore to music, art, technology, and currents events in and out of this wide, diverse, wonderful world...all in already classic and still emerging Weblog format. The Live show incorporates the weblog, the full blown New section of the Jazz 88 library, and the vibe in and around the Jazz 88 studio to produce 3 hours of right-now, live happenin', and highly improvisational radio for your ears and minds and hearts.

Not too bad for a start. It's something. I want to add something about Jazz-related and other musical influences, something about my now more-than-half-my-life stint in San Diego, what 'Makin' It Real' means at this point in life, and where's going to head. Or what we're going to improvise on in the future.

Representing this weekends only assured post (because I'm posting it now), today's Saturday Morning Post covers the essentials. And packed weekend, for which I must get back to. San Carlos Little League Tee Ball Padres take the field at noon, family get together later, breakfast with friends manana, and oh-so-highly anticipated grout sealing session. Lots of place to improvise from and to. Much Love...VO
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(Click for bigger cooler picture)

This post's Soundtrack is provided by The Red Hot Jazz - Alberta Hunter page. A motherload of RealAudio recordings of Alberta (each requiring individual clicks to listen to, where's the playlist?), mostly from the 20's. That's where she started. I've been wanting to check out the RHJ site since reading a glowing review of it in TNJT guest Loren Schoenberg's NPR Curious Listener's Guide. This was a perfect opportunity, since the RHJ site covers the early years of music...exhaustively it looks like. Enjoy the tunes while you peruse the post. We must have a playlist for those tunes (anyone know how to build a RealAudio playlist?).

Dig Alberta in her Pendleton. Doesn't surprise me. Fits her bluesy soulful ways. And her working class ways. And I thought the photo above was soooo good, acompanying the good also 3/13/03 Union Tribune Night and Day feature. Alberta's getting into her blues. The blues were into her.

"Small and fragile, but still blessed with a distinctive voice and powerful stage presence, Hunter wowed audiences with her artful renditions of classic blues tunes, some of them her own – "Downhearted Blues," which was popularized by "the world's greatest blues singer, that awful Bessie Smith," as Hunter fondly called her; and "Workin' Man," in which she sang, with characteristic double-entendre: There's plenty of good tunes, honey, left in an old violin.

I have a vision in my head of seeing Alberta Hunter joining Eubie Blake on the CBS Sunday Morning show with Charles Kuralt in the late 1970s. Who knows what the details were...they did play and I watched. And had my med-late-teen consiousness raised by her blues. And about the feeling that this meeting of legends was an important moment. Age still playing. Playing. Would be great to find out more about my vision. How true? What details? Video / Audio anywhere? A reason for CBS Sunday Morning to resurrect it from tape archive and share it with us ("Jazzy weblogger blogs an Alberta tome where our fine show played an inspirational / influencial / developmental part...")? Let's contact (and beg) their archivist (or someone who will listen or Comment [] below).

The San Diego Repertory Theatre, a discount-ticket-giving friend of Jazz 88 Members, invited us all to their first public showing. Dress Rehersal! Can't remember the last time I was at Dress Rehersal. A 2 Alberta cast and 4 piece musical blues crew tell the life tale of the cute and soulful and legend Alberta Hunter. We need to find out more.

Looks like they liked Cookin' in Stamford.

"This "entertainment and enlightenment" teaches not only about Hunter, but about musical history, Caffey says. The play features performances of blues and jazz classics, many of which Hunter wrote herself, such as "Down Hearted Blues," "My Castle's Rockin' " and "Rough and Ready Man."

and if fun's not the only reason, younger-Alberta actress Janice Lorraine gives another,

"She was a perseverer. She hung in there. She didn't let anybody steer her from her dream," Lorraine says. "I never knew that this woman did all this. ... I thought, 'How come we haven't heard of her before?'"

The Jazz 88 crew was represented in wide array. Too many to name a second time (that's another story). Great night of sounds. Great picture of Damaja Le and Ron Dhanifu.Oh, and Damaja Le was looking to pick himself up some of these cool skirts from Japan. The secret's out now. The times we get to see the other Jazz 88 family members is rare, as we do our once a week shifts and bail, not stepping foot into the station much other than that. So tonight was good.

Speaking of Jazz 88, maybe we can have 1 or both of the very fine Alberta's (Ernestine Jackson and Janice Lorraine) come down to the Live show before a Thursday gig (man, they work a lot) to talk about Alberta, to talk about J-A-Z-Z, to sing, to chat. Snuck 'sing' in there. What an idea!

More to follow...if you've got something to say about Alberta, pass is along via Comment[] below or outlawv@aol.com.

Alberta Hunter - My Castle's Rockin' - VHS or DVD. Wow, some possibilities with that DVD.
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