Whenever I watch “Finding Your Roots” with Henry Louis Gates I always start to think about my family tree. Tonight the show focused on immigrant ancestors.
One of Jeff Goldblum’s ancestors left Ukraine, traveled to Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Then he sailed to Halifax Nova Scotia He finally entered the United States from Canada.
Last week I was listening to Memphis Lights the latest release from blues harp player Tomislav Goluban. It was pretty good. Anyway, this morning when I went to Spotify to find some music to listen to on my trip to Trader Joe’s among the albums recommended for me was a group of albums and artist “similar to” Tomislav Goluban. I listened briefly to four of the artists whose names were unfamiliar to me.They were: Fabrizio Poggi and the Chicken Mambo, Dave Nevling, Grant Dermody, and The 44’s. I created a quick playlist grabbing a few songs from each of these blues harp players and I was on my way!!
On this date in 1943, the great vibraphonist and one of my favorites Gary Burton was born in Anderson, Indiana. Whenever I have “One of those days” it’s usually Gary Burton’s vibes that calm and relax me. Here is some background information on Burton from Wikipedia:
So every once in a while I need to take a break from all the murder and mayhem that I read about. Sometimes that break is taken even while staying in the genre and I’ll read a book that’s part of a mystery series like a Stephanie Plum book from Janet Evanovich or one featuring Parnell Hall’s Stanley Hastings or Cora Fenton the Puzzle Lady. But the fist book of 2020 was an outer space adventure from Bruce J Hutchinson Space Team:The Search for Splurt.
So I ended 2019 having read 53 books. That’s 19 books from my unrealistic goal of 72 books. I only read three books in December. The first bookI read was Brad Thor’s Use of Force. That was followed by Torpedo Juice from Tim Dorsey. The last was The Chestnut Man by Soren Sveistrup.
While I browsed around the Internet to discover what happened on past January 2nds, I discovered today is the birthday of Chick Churchill. Chick is a member of Ten Years After one my favorite bands from the 60s and 70s. Churchill was/and is the keyboard player for the band. The other original band members included guitarist extraordinaire Alvin Lee, bassist Leo Lyons and drummer Ric Lee.
