Big Sole Blog (BSB)

Coach Shakira matched Sasha Allen ("At Last") with Shawna P. ("Maybe I'm Amazed"), and I think Shakira was sincere presenting that knock-out-round match-up. Sasha won, rightfully so, but Shawna was a fierce competitor. At least Shakira tried to offer a real battle. Coach Adam Levine, on the other hand, played the audience a bit, pitting Orlando Dixon ("All My Life") against the

I was glad to come across this film about Count Basie. Here is the info on it:Filmmaker Gary Keys' heartfelt tribute to Count Basie and his Orchestra. - Jazz great William "Count" Basie comes back to life in this rich documentary, which traces the history of the pianist, composer, and bandleader over several decades. Filmmaker Gary Keys juxtaposes a roundtable discussion among old cats from

State Laureate of Louisiana, Julie Kane April is gone and with it National Poetry Month. For some, that thirty days of appreciation of the ancient art may be the only time they think about poets and verse or consider how much poetry adds to our lives. Sadly, too, for others, the only time they will hear a poem outside of school may be when someone dies or moves on in some other way.

Birmingham police arrested Martin Luther King Jr. on 12 April 1963, and he penned his famous "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" while imprisoned, slipping it as a crumpled wad of paper to his friend Clarence Jones. Jones did not know what it was until later. On its 50th anniversary, rather than comment on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," I'm commemorating its

I don't know what to say. Police report that two people have died and others have had limbs blown off. CNN.

I am on an Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie kick right now with frequent turns back to Nancy Wilson. Here's Ella singing "Make Me Rainbows" with the Count Basie Orchestra. There's something about listening to this music that makes me feel my parents, now both deceased, are still very near. Also, a love for this kind of music is one of the things my brother and I shared. He died last year. I

I've said before that Candice Glover is too good for American Idol. I mean that I'd buy her CD right now, especially if she has tracks on it like her rendition of the Cure's "Lovesong." She slayed that song tonight on Ido, seeming to draw on Adele's version of the song but throwing in some Jill Scott flavor. Whatever or whomever Candice drew on tonight, she conjured magic, or as Keith Urban,

The story of Brian Banks moved me and many others last year when we heard that he had been released from prison after serving five years on bogus rape charges and then five years on probation. The young woman who falsely accused him of kidnapping and raping her when they were in high school tried to friend in on Facebook after he had moved on with his life. With the help of private detective, he

Phenomenal movie critic Roger Ebert passed away today. I knew he had cancer and had been suffering with the disease for years and that he was older than I am, so perhaps I should have perceived that he may pass away soon. Yet even when I saw in my news feed yesterday a headline saying that his cancer had returned, I did not expect only two days later to hear of his death. Why would I expect to

I'm having an attack of "Am I the Same Girl" fixation tonight, listening to its different versions again. This fit comes around every eight or nine years, I'm starting to think, and I have loved almost every version of this song, including its incarnations as the instrumental "Soulful Strut" by Young Holt Limited in 1968-69 (according to Wikipedia session musicians actually were the ones playing

This month the Barman's Fund of New Orleans will give a boost to the city's only street paper, the New Orleans Street Exchange. According to the newspaper's newsletter, "the Barman’s Fund is a motley assortment of bartenders who pledge all earnings from one shift a month for charitable organizations." The N.O. Street Exchange is a street newspaper benefiting the city's homeless community and

One look at this video showing how officers of the New Orleans Police Department killed a likely suicidal man and you may doubt the competence of the NOPD. One look and you may understand why Mayor Landrieu should not be allowed to let the city escape its consent decree with the Department of Justice in place to reform the city's police department. The video below shows a listless 39-year-old