INTERESTING STUFF – 28 January 2012

[ATTENTION: Those of you who read this blog via email or rss need to click on the title of the story so it will open in your browser where you can view the videos.]

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“OLD AGE” COMEDY
This young standup comedian is barely 30 years old, but he's nailed the weight gain problem that comes along with age. His name is Andy Woodhull and you can read about him here.

COWS AND A DOG
Nothing really funny here. It's just sweet and it's always interesting to watch different species trying to figure out each other. This is a herd of cows indulging their curiosity about a six-month-old boxer puppy.

HORRIBLE. HORRIBLE. HORRIBLE.
It's apparent that this year's election campaign is going to be one of the nastiest on record but this race for the U.S. Congress is already so out of hand that someone needs to go to jail.

Here is the description from Blue Arkansas earlier this week with an image. Warning: both are hard to look at at. (Jake Burris is the campaign manager for Ken Aden who is running to represent Arkansas' 3rd District.)

”Last night, Jake and his four kids had come back to their Russelville home. As they were getting out of the car, one of his children discovered their family cat dead on the front porch.

“One side of the animal's head had been bashed in and an eyeball was hanging out of its socket. But there was something even more horrifying to be found on the corpse.

“Written across the animal's fur in black marker was the word, 'LIBERAL.'”

People will say this is an isolated incident. You can believe so if you want but people always say that when something awful happens. You can read more about the cat murder here and here and here or just search it: "jake burris cat"

THE WINDY CITY JITTERBUG CLUB
Does anyone under age 50 dance the jitterbug anymore? This is terrific. (Hat tip to Darlene Costner)

PROPOSED NEW KIND OF WIND POWER
Wind power doesn't degrade the environment the way mineral power sources do, but they still cause a lot of damage – birds and bat kills come to mind – and the constant whir, if you live nearby, can be hard to deal with. The esthetics are less than ideal too.

Now comes a New York design firm with an idea for “windstalks” that, like the blades we use now, generate electricity when the wind sets them waving but are completely silent and less likely to be lethal to flying animals.

”Each base is slightly different, and is sloped so that rain will funnel into the areas between the concrete to help plants grow wild.

“These bases form a sort of public park space and serve a technological purpose. Each one contains a torque generator that converts the kinetic energy from the stalk into energy...”

Who knows if windstalks will prove to be a viable energy source, but it's an interesting idea. Read more here.

I CAN'T WAIT TO SEE THIS MOVIE
Robot and Frank stars Frank Langella as an aging, retired jewel thief with his new caregiver, a robot. Plus, the always excellent Susan Sarandon as the love interest. Since I haven't seen it yet, I'll quote Tim Wu who viewed it at the Sundance Festival this month:

“The movie asks whether being truly alive depends in some sense on having a working memory. And the film hits a nerve when it makes clear just how much easier it can be to love our machines than our family members, especially when the former are programmed to help us, and the latter, seemingly, programmed to irritate.”

There are three more clips from the film here.

OH JOY, OH HAPPY DAY
Oh, that the whole world could be this happy. And the music is perfect - Jump, Jive and Wail by Louis Prima. (Hat tip to Heidi McBride)

CHEAP FLIGHTS SONG
This grows on you as it moves along and thank god for the subtitles because the Irish accent gets a bit thick at times. The singing group is called Fascinating Aida (terrific name), they've been around for a long time. You can read about them here and here. (Hat tip to Darlene Costner)

WOW OH WOW OH WOW: ONCE IN A LIFETIME
There can be no end of delight in cute kitties, but this gorilla footage raises animal enjoyment to nirvana. The video was shot near Bwindi National Park in Uganda. Note the man's expression at the end. Yes! Exactly! (Hat tip to doctafil)

You definitely should click in the lower right to watch this full screen.

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Interesting Stuff is a weekly listing of short takes and links to web items that have caught my attention; some related to aging and some not, some useful and others just for fun.

You are all encouraged to submit items for inclusion. Just click “Contact” in the upper left corner of any Time Goes By page to send them. I'm sorry that I probably won't have time to acknowledge receipt and there is no guarantee of publication. But when I do include them, you will be credited and I will link to your blog if you have one.

Mr. President: Don't Sell Out American Elders

[UPDATE: I tried Midori's suggestion of using the email return on White House messages, but it goes to the same page at the White House website that limits messages to 2500 characters.

The shortened version that I sent the president really suffers for being cut in half but I had a mini-brainstorm: I've cut the original in half and resent it to the White House in two parts. Maybe someone will notice. Or not. Still, I've done my best.

[RONNI HERE: It wears me out that every few months President Barack Obama scares the bejesus out old people by saying something about "strengthening" Social Security which everyone knows is code for cutting it. He did it again in the State of the Union address so I sent him a severely edited version of this note - edited because the White House contact form allows only 2500 characters.

It is unlikely, among the thousands of letters sent to the White House, that anyone will read it, let alone respond or act on it. Still, I feel a little better.]

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Dear President Obama:

I am a 70-year-old Social Security and Medicare beneficiary. I publish a popular blog, Time Goes By, about what it's really like to get old.

You might enjoy stopping by sometime – www.timegoesby.net - where you will find a large community of well-informed, thoughtful elders who pay a lot of attention to you, to politics in general and to the moves Washington makes on our two lifelines, Social Security and Medicare.

But to get to my point, in your State of the Union address Tuesday evening, you said this about Social Security:

"As I told the Speaker this summer, I'm prepared to make more reforms that rein in the long term costs of Medicare and Medicaid, and strengthen Social Security, so long as those programs remain a guarantee of security for seniors.

“But in return, we need to change our tax code so that people like me, and an awful lot of Members of Congress, pay our fair share of taxes...”

I worry every time I hear those words and you've been talking about “reform” of and “strengthening” Social Security since you took office. What concerns me the most is that a smart guy like you does not appear to understand the genius of the program's basic functioning as President Roosevelt set it up and how easily it can, with the wrong reforms (which we voters know is code for “cut”), be destroyed.

(I'm ignoring Medicare in this letter. It is a different kind of problem needing different solutions. But don't worry. I'll get back to you on that.)

Let's start with Social Security funding: You should know this and I'm pretty sure you do but just in case: Social Security has no relationship – none, zero, nada, zilch – with the nation's budget. Because it is self-funded through the dedicated payroll tax, by definition it cannot contribute to the nation's deficit.

It does not matter how many times Congressional Republicans (and a few ignorant Democrats) say differently: Social Security does not contribute to the deficit. It would be a very good thing if each time you make public statements about Social Security, you make sure to say that. Repetition works, you know.)

Because Social Security is not funded through the general revenue, it has been sacrosanct from budgetary battles in Congress for all its 75-plus years. That is, it was until last year when you signed the payroll tax holiday and when you extended it this year through February. That shortfall in uncollected Social Security payroll taxes is, as you well know, replaced in the trust fund from the general revenue.

And that is the first ever inroad to potentially cutting Social Security because it is not inconceivable that Congress, which holds the budget purse strings, can decide not to replace those funds. That you supported this move, Mr. President, is a big disappointment to me.

Even so, I'm pretty sure popular uproar would preclude such a theft, but the potentiality is there now. The seal on the door to the trust fund has been breached. That's scary if you're as old as I am – not just for me but all future generations who will need Social Security.

So, as politically useful as it is for you to call the payroll tax holiday a tax cut for the middle class, in reality it shortchanges Social Security and endangers the long term solvency of the program.

What you should be doing is raising the payroll tax by a percentage point or so (yes, even in these hard times) to ensure the program will be there past the next 20 years.

Because what rich people who do not need Social Security (but who are more than happy to take it for pocket change) do not understand is that without it, most Social Security beneficiaries would be living in cardboard boxes.

And by the way, it's not that we didn't try to save our own money for our old age. You perfectly well know – or should – that real wages have been flat for 30 years. For every raise people received during that time, inflation or health care or an emergency took more from their bank accounts.

Don't forget, too, that millions of old people lost trillions of dollars in life savings in the crash of 2008 and have no way to recoup. Personally, I lost a third of my modest savings and I'm among the luckiest for not having lost more.

Oh, and did I mention how many elders who planned to downsize from the large homes in which they raised their families cannot sell them now? Or are underwater? Or have been foreclosed upon – apparently illegally in many cases?

How many whammies is that against old people, Mr. President? I've lost count.

Elders cannot afford any cut to Social Security – and that includes the proposed reduction in the calculation of the cost-of-living adjustment which would affect current beneficiaries.

My appeal to you, Mr. President, is to get over this idea you apparently have to trade the program that modestly supports elders when their working lives are done for a bipartisan agreement to raise taxes on the wealthy.

I know you can't get those tax cuts in this Congress and you should know it too. But go ahead, give it a try. Just don't sell out America's elders in your attempt.

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At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Nancy Leitz: The Trouble with Four-Door Cars

Tribes of Eden by Dr. Bill Thomas

So much to read; so little time. Of the 200,000 or so books published each year (that's just in the U.S.), I learn of – oh, maybe several hundred through reviews, advertisements, personal internet alerts, publisher requests for blog mentions and friend suggestions.

I would rather not figure out how many I buy each year – too many – and at any given moment there are 20-plus books sitting around the house or on my Kindle that I haven't found time to read yet. One of my regularly occurring dilemmas is choosing the next read.

That's never an issue, however, when a friend publishes a book. It immediately goes to the top of the list as did Tribes of Eden by geriatrician Bill Thomas or, more formally, William H. Thomas, M.D., and I want to tell you about him and the book.

If you have been reading TGB for awhile, you know this guy. He wrote What are Old People For?, one of my continuing inspirations for this blog that I often mention.

In that book is Bill's vision for transforming the lives of elders and he has made astonishing progress with his dream/plan/mission for Greenhouses and the Eden Alternative – two growing, worldwide phenomena that replace the warehousing of elders in old-style, institutional nursing homes with elder-centered communities where residents are partners with their caregivers and one another.

You would think that getting through medical school, becoming a practicing geriatrician, writing a few books about aging and creating something that is changing the entire nature of elder care would be enough for any one person. Not if you're Bill Thomas. Now he's gone and written a novel too.

Tribes of Eden is a work of fiction into which Bill has exuberantly thrown all his passion and belief about the place elders should have in society and what life can be like for everyone when they do.

“Tribes” begins in the near future when the government of the U.S. and the country's institutions have wholly collapsed leaving a nation in chaos where hunger, crime and death are as commonplace as the fear they induce.

After a terrifying journey of escape across half the country, a young mother, her son and her daughter are welcomed into a self-sufficient community, the Shire, isolated from the wreckage of a culture that has lost its way.

The little family flourishes as the children grow up amid the trust, cooperation and love of the members of the Shire where elders are given respect and influence equal to all other adults.

In the outside world, order has been restored through the forced imprisonment of the population within the seduction and power of the GRID - a system that eventually will pit the brother and sister who were adopted into the Shire against one another in an epic battle.

When the GRID begins to fail, threatening not only its captives with destruction but the Shire too, it comes to pass that only a unique alliance between youth and the elders can save the world.

Time Goes By readers who enjoy The Elder Storytelling Place will be delighted, as I was, to learn that elders' stories about life before the Fall into chaos are a crucial aspect of resistance to the GRID.

”We have believed and taught others to believe,” says one of the Shire elders, “in the value of memory, in the power of legacy, in the virtue of a life lived long and well.”

With Tribes of Eden Bill has written classic tale of good and evil built on a solid, substantial world where elders are woven into the everyday fabric of life, valued for their experience, knowledge and wisdom – a story that needs to be repeated far and wide.

Most of all, the book is a load of fun, a page turner that will leave you thinking about it long after you have finished.

Currently, Tribes of Eden is available for US$9.99 in various ebook formats via the book's webpage. The print edition will be published in early April at which time there will be a contest here at Time Goes By for someone to win a copy.

Wait a minute: there is one more thing I want to tack on here. Throughout my time reading Tribes of Eden, I had no trouble picturing it as a movie. It would be good if that came to be.

ADDENDUM:
For people who are being introduced to Bill Thomas for the first time, Time Goes By has an abiding and fruitful association with him. Regular readers may have seen some videos he and I have done together (two examples); a regular column, The TGB Geriatrician, he wrote for this blog in years past. There is an interview I did with Bill you can still read here, not to leave out his own blog, Changing Aging.

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At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Marcy Belson: Fishing on the Salton Sea

Tales of Old Age Memory

On Monday at The Elder Storytelling Place, our friend William Weatherstone entertained us with a 17-year-old column from newspaper editor, Colin McKim, about “losing it” as we get older. A sample line or two:

”These days I find I can’t hold a phone number in my mind long enough to get it punched in. Somewhere between my eyes and my index finger I lose it, or part of it, which amounts to the same thing.

“And then there’s the mystery novel on the bedside table. Now that I am losing it, I understand why they call them mysteries.”

Which is pretty close to what a 90-something woman said that I read somewhere: she now owns only one book, an Agatha Christie mystery, because she never remembers whodunit so she can read it again and again.

I know what that woman and Colin mean; it works that way for me with any given Law & Order episode.

The comments on William's story were fun. This from Herm:

”For the past three weeks I've been looking for my dress shoes and wedding band. My shoes aren't lost nor is my wedding band. They are where ever I put them. I just don't know where that is.

“On the other side of this coin, it drives me crazy when I get a certain something stuck in my head and can't get it out.”

Joanne Zimmermann noted that she couldn't “remember what else I was going to say.” And brbrsln2 suggested this:

”Maybe we should have a contest about the scariest or funniest personal description of 'losing it.'”

Well, not a contest, but let's fool around today telling each other our best personal forgetfulness stories.

According to the people who study such stuff, it is our short-term memory (where in the world could Herm's dress shoes be?) that bedevils us the most. Alternately, it is not uncommon in old age for our brains to dredge up long forgotten scenes from childhood.

But let's leave the science out of it today. This isn't about the tragedy of Alzheimer's or the fear of it; it's just normal old-age memory lapses that annoy and irritate but often are absurd and silly too.

My short-term memory has become so poor that I keep paper and pen nearby in most rooms of the house and my handbag to jot things down so they won't disappear into a black hole.

And it's amazing just how short short-term memory can get. It has happened more than once that somewhere between thinking, I must write that down, and putting pen to paper, I've forgotten what it was I wanted to remember.

But my favorite happened nearly 30 years ago when I was in my early 40s and couldn't find my house keys. An hour of searching turned up not a hint. I tried all the usual places and the tricks the experts suggest like retracing your steps from when you know you last used the keys.

Nothing worked. So I was stuck at home when I should have been at work because living in a house where my front door faced directly on the street in New York City, I couldn't leave without locking the door.

With a sigh, I went to the fridge for a drink and lo! There were the keys on a shelf next to some leftover Chinese takeout looking as out of place as a pig in the parlor. And it's not like I'd arrived home the evening before with food that needed storing. Who knows what kind of brain glitch was at work.

It wasn't long afterward that I obtained a nice-looking piece of wall furniture to place next to the door where I could leave mail and other things I wanted to be sure to take with me and, most important, hang the keys as my first act upon entering the house.

Now it's your turn – what are you adventures in “losing it.”

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At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Lyn Burnstine: My Purpose in Life

Money Saving Tips from the Local Power Company

According to the Congressional Research Service, the median annual income of citizens age 65 and older was $30,770 in 2008. Like most elder women, my income is lower than that (men's is higher on average) and although I get by just fine, I am always looking for ways to stem the outflow.

In additional to the electronic bill that arrives via email each month from the local power company, Portland General Electric here in Oregon also sends out a monthly newsletter with information and advice on reducing usage and lowering the bill. Until recently, I hadn't paid much attention but now I have discovered how useful it is.

This month, there is a story on four ways to lower high winter heating bills which led me to an entire page of cooking tips that lower energy usage. Among them, use the microwave whenever possible because of shorter cooking time.

Using lids on pots shortens cooking time too and they suggest that unless precise temperature is critical, skip pre-heating the oven.

There is other good advice for saving energy and therefore money on other large appliances – dishwasher (well, I never use it, but some people do), refrigerator and freezer. For example, I did not know that both freezers and refrigerators run more efficiently when they are full.

In another section of the website, PGE calculates an estimate of electrical use in my home. Here is their first estimate, based on my address, square footage, number of occupants and type of heating showing that three-quarters of my energy bill is taken up by heating and lighting:

Because I have swapped out about half my incandescent light bulbs for CFLs and I am careful about winter heating temperature control, I was pretty certain that couldn't be right.

So I spent the 20 minutes it took to fill out a more detailed form about what appliances I use with what frequency and such details as whether I use cold or hot water for laundry and how often I bathe, etc.

Here is PGE's revised chart showing that although heating and cooling take up more than half of my monthly bill, lighting has dropped to a tiny percentage.

The chart is wrong about that big blue chunk labeled cooling. (UPDATE: This is an error. In the comments below, see comment no. 1 from Cop Car and my response in comment no. 3.) I have yet to even turn on the air conditioner, but there was no choice on the form for “never use it.” That's forgivable; I still have a reasonably good idea of where my energy dollars are going. And look how I stack up with similar homes:

Actually, I spend more per year with PGE indicates, but it is still much lower than similar homes. It helps, of course, that only one person lives in this place. If I had a husband or roommate, the cost would be higher.

The company also supplies appliance-buying guides, upgrade advice with both no-cost and low-cost choices and charts to help lower energy use. This light bulb chart [pdf] compares costs, savings and usability among incandescents, CFLs and LEDs.

And here are 24 energy saving tips ranging from “without spending a dime” to “larger investments with big payoffs.”

I mention all this because although I do not recall such rich, useful websites for the power companies in Maine and New York where I previously lived, that doesn't mean they don't have them and perhaps your power company is equally informative.

Anything that helps save a few dollars is a good thing.

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At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Don (Greywolf) Ford: Gone Fishin'

How We Might Come to Terms with Death

I am aware that what I'm about to write is a long-ish, roundabout way of getting to my point today, but I think it is relevant. If it's not, I'm sure you will let me know.

A recent email exchange with Ashleigh Burrows began when she commented on last week's story here about age and the U.S. presidency.

“...there you are, up and down ladders and schlepping boxes,” she wrote, “and I remember your post when you moved in and all that work was overwhelming and exhausting and you were bummed. Seriously bummed. And today you write about it in a matter of fact way.”

That observation got me to sit up and pay attention. Ashleigh is absolutely correct. For years, I have repeatedly bitched on this blog and elsewhere in life that one of the most irritating things for me about getting old is that I tire more easily and can't get as much done as quickly as when I was younger.

But in that post, as Ashleigh pointed out, I wrote about tiredness after more-than-usual physical activity without annoyance and discontent, instead portraying it as a given, as an accepted part of where I am in life right now. Which is what I felt as I wrote it.

So I emailed Ashleigh to thank her for remarking on a change in myself I had not yet consciously noticed:

”How nice of you to point that out,” said I. “It's the best kind of life learning, isn't it - realizing you've come to something new in your own time as the necessity presents itself. Now that you've put it into words, it feels familiar and I have done it in other ways in the past unrelated to aging.”

Once again, in response, Ashleigh mined a thought I'd knocked off without giving it the weight it deserves:

”...come to something new in your own time as the necessity presents itself. Three pieces there ring true - something new, in your own time, as necessity presents. Getting my head around it isn't easy, but necessity presents itself and so I go on.

“Because, honestly, what's the alternative? Lying in bed with a blanket pulled over your head? Not for us, we Jewish girls from NY - no f'ing way!”

Ha! For decades in New York City there were big poster ads in the subway and on bus shelters for Levy's bread. They changed every couple of months and each succeeding one showed a person of different ethnicity or nationality with the line, “You don't have to be Jewish to love Levy's.”

Ashleigh is right (again) about us Jewish girls from New York but I think it probably applies to old people anywhere, too – eventually acknowledging the changes that come with age as we need to do, to get on with what's next.

Which finally brings me to my point today. Another recent post about making peace with death and a book giveaway on that topic drew a large number of thoughtful comments about facing the inevitability of our own demise. Here is a handful of the wide variety of perspectives:

"Do not seek death. Death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfillment." - Dag Hammarskjöld

I hate the topic but I know I have to deal with it.

As I viewed the video I got choked up and tears started. That is my usual approach to this topic. I think I need the book so that I can, at least, be calm as the end approaches.

He who is not ready to die cannot fully live. As a culture we have this taboo - as if we mention death the Grim Reaper will swoop in. I had to face my own mortality at 27, with two small children at home. It gave the rest of my life a different perspective.

Aging has a way of changing the things that are important to you each and every day.

We go through the largest part of our lives mostly ignoring the fact of our future deaths which is as it should be, I think. As the date gets closer, however, it needs to be addressed and, in time, accepted.

But as much as we yearn for acceptance and would like to “be calm as the end approaches,” thinking the thought doesn't make it so. What I believe can happen, however, is a lot like what Ashleigh pointed out to me about acceptance of my waning energy and stamina.

If, as we get on each day living in the present, we spend some time seriously thinking about it; if we talk about it now and then – here, perhaps, and with friends and relatives; if we seek out and read what others have written about it; if we ponder it quietly from time to time -

Then one day we will realize it has come to pass that we understand; that leaving this world is the completion of the circle of life and that we will welcome it, in its time, as the next great adventure.

And we will realize then, too, that we will have arrived at our equanimity each in our own time as necessity presents itself.

At least, that's how I hope it happens.

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At The Elder Storytelling Place today, from William Weatherstone: What Do You Do When You Find You're Losing It

ELDER MUSIC: Georgia on my Mind

This Sunday Elder Music column was launched in December of 2008. By May of the following year, one commenter, Peter Tibbles, had added so much knowledge and value to my poor attempts at musical presentations that I asked him to take over the column. He's been here each week ever since delighting us with his astonishing grasp of just about everything musical, his humor and sense of fun. You can read Peter's bio here and find links to all his columns here.

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It’s time for another variation on a single song. It also gives me an opportunity to play a rather diverse range of performers in the one column. The song is Georgia on my Mind.

It was written by Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell. The song has been adopted by the state of Georgia (that’s the American one, not the country that used to be part of the Soviet Union) as its official song in spite of Stuart, who wrote the words, saying he wrote it about Hoagy’s sister, Georgia Carmichael.

Given that, the appropriate place to start is therefore with the version by HOAGY CARMICHAEL himself.

Hoagy has been called the "most talented, inventive, sophisticated and jazz-oriented" of the songwriters composing pop songs in the first half of the 20th century. Looking through the songs he wrote, that’s not too far off the mark.

Hoagy recorded the song in 1930 and if you listen carefully, you’ll hear Bix Beiderbecke playing along as well on this version. Unfortunately, this is one of the last tunes Bix recorded. Hoagy was a good friend of Bix and always ensured he had a job when he was down on his luck and boy, did Bix get down towards the end.

♫ Hoagy Carmichael - Georgia On My Mind

Probably the best known version is by RAY CHARLES.

Indeed, it was Ray singing the song, with which he had a number one hit in 1960, at the Georgia state legislature in 1979 when the state adopted it. Ray was originally from that state so it was apposite that his version would be chosen.

I can’t imagine he would have been given that honor in 1960, but that’s neither here nor there. Sing it, Ray.

♫ Ray Charles - Georgia On My Mind

For a complete change of pace we turn to the DAVE BRUBECK QUARTET.

This version has a lovely sax solo by Paul Desmond and, it goes without saying, a wonderful piano piece from Dave. This was taken from an album called “Gone With the Wind” which had, as you can probably guess, songs of the south.

♫ Dave Brubeck - Georgia On My Mind

An unlikely version is by THE BAND.

The Band mostly recorded their own songs (and occasionally a couple of Bob’s). However, on one album, “Moondog Matinee,” they recorded music that had inspired them to take up instruments and perform in the first place.

Georgia wasn’t on that album, it was from a later one. This has the soulful voice of Richard Manuel performing the vocals on their version.

It’s taken from the “Islands” album, generally considered the one they recorded purely as a contractual agreement album and the last studio album made by the original band.

♫ The Band - Georgia on My Mind

BILLIE HOLIDAY was born Eleanora Fagan in Philadelphia.

She led what is generally described as an “interesting” life. One that deserves a column of her own and you won’t be at all surprised to learn that she will get one.

During her recording career, she was often given second rate songs to sing by the powers that be. Naturally, her version turned them into first rate performances. Of course, there were the occasional first rate tune as well, like this one.

♫ Billie Holiday - Georgia on my Mind

Yet another instrumental version, this time by OSCAR PETERSON.

Oscar was born in Montreal and was influenced by the jazz scene around where he lived. He started playing trumpet and piano at a young age but decided to concentrate on the piano after a bout of tuberculosis rather put paid to the trumpeting.

He studied classical piano but he was always taken by jazz musicians, particularly Teddy Wilson, Nat King Cole and Art Tatum, and that won out in the end. Let’s hear Oscar play the tune.

♫ Oscar Peterson - Georgia On My Mind

WILLIE NELSON recorded an album called “Stardust” – another song of Hoagy’s – in 1978 containing old standards, and what a fine job he did of them too. I’ve always looked upon Willie as a jazz singer anyway and this album is more evidence of that.

This was released as a CD a couple of years ago with another album with similar songs he’s recorded over the years. That second album was pretty good too; well, it is Willie, so how could it not be? Here’s Willie’s version of the song.

♫ Willie Nelson - Georgia On My Mind

I think LOUIS ARMSTRONG may have played every song known during his lifetime.

I’ve also featured him quite a bit over the years and, like Billie, there’s a column in works as well.

Louis was the most important popular musician in the first half of the twentieth century. No one else in that time set the parameters for music as he did. His remarkable musicianship set him apart from his contemporaries. I’ll just let you hear what he does for the song.

♫ Louis Armstrong - Georgia On My Mind

Ah, the dynamic duo, ELLA FITZGERALD and JOE PASS.

I really don’t need to tell you about Ella. She and Joe made several albums together and this is the way I like Ella best, with just Joe backing her with impeccable guitar playing (okay, there’s a bass player in there as well). I don’t think any more instruments are needed.

Here they are with the song of the day.

♫ Ella Fitzgerald and Joe Pass - Georgia On My Mind