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Teddy Pendergrass grew up in Philadelphia, PA, where he learned to sing in church and accompanied his mother to her job at Sciolla’s supper club, where he was able to see performers such as Chubby Checker and Bobby Darin perform up close. Pendergrass played drums in bands as a teen. His local Philadelphia band, the Cadillacs, merged with the reforming Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes in the late 1960s. Pendergrass moved to the front of the stage and became the lead singer for the Blue Notes under the direction of producers Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff when the band signed a record deal with their label, Philadelphia International Records. The friction caused by Harold Melvin being relegated to a backup singing position in his own band soon caused a rift and Tedd Pendergrass began a solo career as a singer, with Philadelphia International Records.

Pendergrass suffered a spinal cord injury, due to an auto accident in 1982. After a period of recovery and physical therapy he returned to singing. Here he is at the Apollo Theater in New York in 1993, expressing his joy and gratitude for being alive and able to pursue his art. On this Thanksgiving day let us all think of those things that bring us joy and be as grateful, as Teddy Pendergrass.

Emma Barrett (1897-1983) was a piano player and singer in New Orleans during the jazz age. She worked with the Original Tuxedo Orchestra between 1923 and 1936 and performed with other local New Orleans musicians. Barrett was known as “Bell Gal” because she wore a set of Christmas sleigh bells around her calf and kept time with her playing by tapping her foot, ringing the bells.

Barrett was unknown outside of Louisiana until 1961, when she recorded an album for the Riverside Records “Living Legends” series, The Bell Gal And Her Dixieland Boys. She then began to tour with the newly formed Preservation Hall Jazz Band and became quite famous in trad jazz circles.

Here is a piece of film made at Preservation Hall in New Orleans, of Emma Barrett singing a double-entendre song I Ain’t Gonna Give Nobody None Of My Jellyroll, which I believe was written by Clarence Williams. This would have been considered very risque and daring in the 1920s and was, of course, a very popular genre.

Even if you have never heard of Toots Thielemans, I guarantee that you have heard his music, whether it’s the jaunty whistling on commercials for Old Spice, that familiar song you can’t quite name that came on the jazz station late at night (it’s called Bluesette), or playing harmonica on the closing credits for Sesame Street, Toots music permeates our culture.

Jean Thielemans was born in Brussels Belgium in 1922. He learned to played accordion, then harmonica and finally guitar as a child. In 1949 he sat in on a jam session with a few musicians, including Sidney Bechet, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Max Roach. Somehow he survived that ordeal and found himself in New York playing in Charlie Parker’s All Stars the next year. He has performend and recorded with a very long list of people over the years. A few of them are Quincy Jones, Bill Evans, Paul Simon, Billy Joel, Astrud Gilberto, Shirley Horn, Elis Regina and Jaco Pastorius. Toots is still performing. In fact he is on an American tour right now.

His playing has a kind of musicality that is not always evident in modern jazz. Toots plays the melody, or if not , he plays his own melody, but it’s always melodic. He is fond of quoting from other pieces of music in the middle of an improvisation. Here is a sample, taken from a festival appearance, somewhere. On very sparse evidence I think it might be in Finland.