In 2002 John Leitham became Jennifer Leitham, and of course her talent transcended that journey. Since 1979 this artist has performed with a who’s who of the jazz world, from Mel Torme, Woody Herman, George Shearing, Doc Severinsin, Peggy Lee, Cleo Laine, and on and on. She has played on over 125 albums. You’ve got…

If ever there was a CD that I was predisposed to absolutely adore before hearing it, well, it’s this one. And I do. Jesse Hultberg has remained a favorite artist of mine for many, many years, despite accomplishing that by only releasing one CD, in 1994. That CD was just called “Jesse Hultberg” and I…

Deidre McCalla is a long-time favorite recording artist of mine, and I was listening to the title track from her album “Everyday Heroes & Heroines” and realized that to me, though the song is from 1992, it spoke to the recent (and ongoing) efforts of countless people to pass and defend the Houston Equal Rights…

Tona Brown checked off a lot of boxes as she got my interest in covering her in this blog entry. One, I love featuring the music of transgender artists, and I don’t do enough to feature Black artists, and I certainly should showcase more artists who do classical music. Add to that three songs on…

The Montrose Men were a short-lived local Houston group, and at least on this rare recording they were Very influenced by The Village People and the disco sounds of the day. Below are every mention of them from the publication This Week in Texas (TWT), spanning 9/21/79 to 3/21/80. The flip side was an instrumental…

In the 1930 film “Blue Angel” Marlene Dietrich introduced her signature song “Falling In Love Again,” and the song become iconic. Now, there are some interesting cover versions of this song to be found on YouTube, such as by Bryan Ferry and Klaus Nomi, but the one I wanted for this blog wasn’t there, so…

My 200th Blog Entry I have been following the music of Micah Barnes for quite a few years, starting with his stint with the Canadian a cappella group The Nylons in 1989, on to his more rock and award-winning 1998 CD “Loud-Boy Radio,” though several released in the 2000s (“Hard,” “Micah Barnes,” and “Domesticated). The…

Watch the Preview “The Trouble With Ray” [ I’ve been thinking of Ray a lot this week after watching the wonderful preview of the documentary film on him ] I met Ray Hill on April 20, 1981, and I even took notes. You may wonder how I know that so specifically and what I was…

Ian Axel and Chad Vaccarino have exploded onto the pop scene, and very quickly. As the act A Great Big World they have been very visible. For example, their song “This Is the New Year” got great exposure by being performed by the cast of Glee last season, but that was just the beginning. They…