I was researching one of my disquisitions to my tall Jazz

fan friend Michael FitzGerald (unrelated to Ella, but his father knew her, and Ellington and Basie and all the other musicians very very well). For some reason I can't help but remember stuff that I hear, so I was discussing Woody Herman (whom my father was addicted to) and Ben Pollack, a "sweet" dance band out of Chicago and through which passed a number of the greatest white swing musicians, Benny Goodman, Harry James, Jack Teagarden, Dave Tough and Glenn Miller, (whom I would characterize as a "sweet" musician rather than a "hot" musician).

This separation of categories in dance music goes back into the 20's, and is reflected in Ellington's It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got that Swing) lyric, "Makes no difference if it's sweet or hot,/Just swing that thing with everything you've got."

Sweet music was more respectable and tended to be played by society bands, hot music because it was so close to what was played by black musicians was less respectable until its audience grew up and took over in the mid '30's, rather like the young white appreciators of black R&B took over in 1956 with Rock'n'Roll.

What knocked me out was that Marian McPartland, the English pianist who married Jimmy McPartland in the mid 40's began her Jazz interview show on WBAI New York in 1964, and that show carried on and paved the way for her NPR show beginning in 1978 which is still
being broadcast. She turns 92 this year. You can learn so much from listening to her and her guests. Quoted working life span? 1938 to today, which means she's been working just over 70 years !!! The mind bagels.

But what this is really all about is the incredible availibility and breadth of Wikipedia as a source of information. Biographical information is rooted in biographies usually from several different sources. If you're a music nut, it's invaluable, unless you're already so knowledgeable that you don't need it. I like it because it fills in the gaps in quick recall of facts known but not filed readily to hand, like who were the Four Brothers saxaphone line in Woody Herman's Second Herd circa 1949. Stan Getz and Serge Chaloff I can always remember, but the other two always slip my mind. Jimmy Giuffre wrote the song for them. You'd think I could remember that Zoot Sims was part of that storied collection. Herbie Steward is an understandable problem, even if I should be able to get it through association with Rex Steward and his Feetwarmers. Rex was a great trumpeter and another of my father's favourites. He, my dad, had Rex and the boys doing Ten Little Fingers and Ten Tiny Toes on 78.

Rob