USA Today reports that Frank Sinatra (pictured left) is the greatest singer of the 20th century, according to a BBC poll of listeners, singers, and music experts. Elvis Presley placed second and Nat “King” Cole was third. Ella Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby, John Lennon, Aretha Franklin, Billie Holiday, Barbra Streisand, and Queen’s Freddie Mercury rounded out the top 10. In the same issue, USA Today also reported that 67% of Americans drink the milk left in the bowl after the cereal is eaten, while 25% leave it, according to a survey from the Gallup Organization for Wheat Foods Council. We’re not sure what the other 8% do, but we’ll keep passing on third-hand information as it becomes available.
Originally PublishedRelated Posts
Sonny Terry/Brownie McGhee: Backwater Blues
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading

Jonathan Butler: The Simple Life
Jonathan Butler’s optimistic music belies a dirt-poor childhood growing up in a South Africa segregated by apartheid. Live in South Africa, a new CD and DVD package, presents a sense of the resulting inner turmoil, mixed with dogged resolve, that paved the way to his status as an icon in his country and successful musician outside of it. Looking back, the 46-year-old Butler says today, the driving forces that led to his overcoming apartheid-the formal policy of racial separation and economic discrimination finally dismantled in 1993-were family, faith and abundant talent.
“When we were kids, our parents never talked about the ANC [African National Congress] or Nelson Mandela,” he says. Butler was raised as the youngest child in a large family. They lived in a house patched together by corrugated tin and cardboard, in the “coloreds only” township of Athlone near Cape Town. “They never talked about struggles so we never knew what was happening.”
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading
Kurt Elling: Man in the Air
Nate Chinen makes the argument that Kurt Elling is the most influential jazz vocalist of our time

Scott LaFaro
Previously unavailable recordings and a new bio illuminate the legend of bassist Scott LaFaro