an inconvenient suspicion

If you listened to the Cecil/Braxton concert, you may have heard something about people dressed as chickens. More information (and, especially, a photo) on what that was all about can be found in John Fordham's BBC Jazz Awards report. You can also find this memorable sentence:

an insiders' audience of musicians, promoters, PRs, scribes and broadcasters, that generally exercises a healthy suspicion of star-systems and best-of-this-and-thats

I can only assume he's being sarcastic, as "promoters, PRs, scribes and broadcasters" are precisely the people who create the "star-systems and best-of-this-and-thats".

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The good Prof. McJeebie has taken a commendably firm and principled stance.

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J.B. Spins reviews the autobiography of Frankie Manning, creator of the Lindy hop, and excerpts a great anecdote from it:

All the buses had signs about three-quarters of the way down the aisle that said 'colored.' One day my buddy Claude, and I got on a bus that was practically empty and, for a joke, moved the sign up to the front, so there were only three rows left for white people. Rather than go into the colored section with just the two of us, these folks kept getting on the bus, crowding themselves into the little front area. It was hilarious to see them packing in like sardines.

You can see the book's promo video, but the classic scene from Hellzapoppin' is too great not to post: