Joya Sherrill (1927–2010)

The news comes this morning from Chris Albertson’s Stomp Off in C that the singer Joya Sherrill has died. She sang with Duke Ellington in the 1940s (and again in 1957 and 1963), starting in July 1942, with her mother as chaperone:

“I opened in Chicago at the College Inn in the Hotel Sherman, July of 1942. Ivie Anderson, I shall never forget, was still with the band. You called me to sing ‘Mood Indigo’ (it was Ivie’s song), and she pulled me back before I walked out to sing, and said, ‘Sing it good, or I’ll come behind you and sing it too!’ I was terrified, but determined to do a good job.”

Quoted in Duke Ellington’s Music Is My Mistress (New York: Doubleday, 1973).

Here, from 1943, is a sample of Sherrill’s work with Ellington: “The Blues,” from Black, Brown and Beige.

Joya Sherrill later hosted two children’s television shows on WPIX in New York. Here, from 1970, are the surviving audio clips of Duke Ellington’s appearance on Time for Joya. Listen as Sherrill sings “Heritage” and Ellington answers children’s questions and mistells the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Sherrill and the kids then correct him. It’s eight o’clock in the morning, it’s charming and hilarious, and thank goodness that it lives on.

[To listen to .ram files without RealPlayer, use VLC media player.]

Visualizing the Gulf oil spill

Type in your location and better understand the size of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill: If It Was My Home.

Here in the American midwest, the spill would stretch from west of St. Louis to east of Indianapolis.

(Yes, if it were my home is right, as the site’s maker Andy Lintner acknowledges in the FAQ.)

Stanley carpenter’s rule

[Click for a larger view.]

Of all the items in the Museum of Supplies, this one might be the oldest. It’s a carpenter’s rule that belonged to my grandfather. As I remember it, the young people were allowed to take something from the basement when my grandparents sold their house. This item was my choice, probably because I had never seen anything like it.

It’s a Stanley double-folding carpenter’s rule, unfolding to twenty-four inches, made of boxwood and brass. The ruler is marked in eighths of an inch on the outside surfaces, sixteenths on the inside. Note that the inches are numbered from right to left. That convention of American ruler-making apparently disappeared in the 1940s. How did it get started? One collector suggests that it was a matter of “simple perversity,” as British manufacturers marked from left to right. One tiny alignment pin, just visible to the right of the 17, helps keep the halves together when folded. Descriptions of these rulers mention up to three pins. This ruler was made with only one. It is a tribute to the manufacturer’s art that after seventy or eighty or ninety years, the halves of the ruler hold together as if magnetized.

Reading about rulers got me looking closely enough to realize that the manufacturer’s name is legible, barely, to the right of the 10. And there’s a model number to the right of the 9: № 32½, I think. That number was indeed a Stanley model number. I like thinking about a world in which model numbers involved fractions, the world in which my grandfather used this ruler.



[“Stanley” and “№ 32½.”]

[This post is the eighth in an occasional series, “From the Museum of Supplies.” The museum is imaginary. The supplies are real. Supplies is my word, and has become my family’s word, for all manner of stationery items. Photographs by Michael Leddy.]

Also from the Museum of Supplies
Dennison's Gummed Labels No. 27
Fineline erasers
Illinois Central Railroad Pencil
A Mad Men sort of man, sort of
Mongol No. 2 3/8
Real Thin Leads
Rite-Rite Long Leads

No Beach Boys reunion

Just a couple of weeks ago, Mike Love was talking up a Beach Boys reunion with Brian Wilson:

“We began in the fall of 1961, and our first tour was in 1962, and it’s been nonstop since then. Now we’re gearing up for the 50th anniversary, and Brian Wilson, who has been working on some unfinished Gershwin music project, will rejoin us.”

Now Love has retracted that claim, with the usual Lovely arrogance: “At this time there are no plans for my cousin Brian to rejoin the tour.”

Brian Wilson, getting through high school

Brian Wilson, at the Beach Boys’ 1988 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction: “When I was a teenager, I listened to the Four Freshmen and Frank Sinatra. That got me through high school.”

What music got you through high school? Me: the Beatles, Canned Heat, John Lee Hooker, Mississippi John Hurt.

The Beach Boys’ Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, 1988

Brian Wilson was a model of humble eloquence at the Beach Boys’ Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. But Mike Love — the story is that he’d been fasting for a week. His monologue stands as one of the most embarrassing moments in Beach Boys history. My favorite bits: “intersistine sqaubbles” and “Okay, I don’t care what anybody in this room thinks.“

The Beach Boys’ Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, 1988 (Language a little NSFW at the end)

Music for cello, uke, and two hands

“Sweet Georgia Brown,” as performed by Mike Karoub (cello), Rob Bourassa (tenor ukulele), and Gerry Phillips (The Manualist).

(Thanks, Elaine and Carrie!)

Orange telephone art

[Photograph by Rachel Leddy.]

My daughter Rachel spotted this telephone in an Anthropologie. It’s not faux-old: it’s a 1950s–1960s telephone, refurbished and painted. “Hand-restored in Argentina,” says the Anthropologie website. Steep price ($198) and mixed customer reviews, but lovely to look at.

Thanks, Rachel!

Other posts with orange
Crate art, orange : Orange art, no crate : Orange crate art : Orange crate art (Encyclopedia Brown) : Orange flag art : Orange mug art : Orange notebook art : Orange soda art : Orange timer art : Orange toothbrush art : Orange train art

Domestic comedy

“But two days ago you liked her!”

“But that was before I knew her!”

Related reading
All “domestic comedy” posts

A McChrystal thought

At least General Stanley McChrystal hasn’t attempted to explain his remarks to Rolling Stone as “a poor choice of words,” the usual fallback after someone lets us see what’s inside their head. But still, he’s gotta go.

(Yes, singular they. It’s okay sometimes.)