
This series from 1998 is one of my all-time favorites. It’s appeared here before but not recently. It was inspired by a recent concert I had attended in a renovated small-town theater, an appearance of the “Tommy Dorsey Band.” It was, of course, a pale and threadbare reincarnation of the famous group from the big-band era, but they put on a good show. They had a young female singer who, when she wasn’t singing, demurely sat toward the back of the stage in a folding chair with a shawl over her shoulders. When a numberĀ called for her services, she would shed the shawl and, in a low-cut dress not unlike Janis’, belt out the requisite tune in arresting fashion. She was quite spell-binding, really. Obviously, she made an impression on me. And she did sing “Tangerine.”