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No jazz
tonight. A trad R&B band is pleasing the full house. Those old enough to
remember the songs being played from their youth gyrate next to kids who wish
their music could be this good. The band during this first set is really not
that good, but the crowd is forgiving. I don't doubt that the musicians and
three singers aren't all great, but it's too much like a high school football
game where every player is doing their part but forgets they're a part of a
team. Their version of Mustang Sally is a cylinder short of a V-8 Shelby engine.
Toss in the band leader's repeated requests for affirmation--"You-all
having fun yet?"--and it is becoming challenging to be sober. Fortunately, the second set is much better.
Music and vocals are harmonizing. Any missed notes aren't as apparent as the
first set. It's actually a credit to all on stage that they have tightened
things up and are so in sync after it was clear that they hadn't played as a
group before. What's not to like about the Theme from Shaft, Brick House, Papa
Was a Rolling Stone, when delivered with verve and passion. The house is
silenced when a timid woman steps on stage and up to the mike. She mumbles
something softly and the audience courteously waits. I’m thinking (as no doubt
everyone else).... Please God, don't let this be a train wreck. She opens her
mouth and sings a Billie Holliday song in the same voice as Billie Holliday. It
was exquisite and what it had to do with the rest of the music no one knows or really cares. From somewhere in the cosmos,
Billie is smiling and maybe even guiding this poor woman as she sings this
random song.
H. T. Webster, aka Harold Tucker Webster, was a
prolific cartoonist who drew more than 16,000 single-panel cartoons in his
career from the 1920s into the 1950s. He disliked his given name so his readers
knew him as H. T. Webster
or simply as Webster, which is how he signed his cartoons. Webster grew up in
Tomahawk, Wisconsin. He sold his first cartoon for $5 when he was 12 to the
magazine Recreation and studied
drawing from a correspondence course when he was 15. Two years later, he left
Tomahawk and high school, moving to Chicago to attend the Frank Holmes School
of Illustration. A few weeks after his arrival, the school closed, thus ending
Webster’s formal education.
Webster’s most famous syndicated cartoon series
is The Timid Soul featuring Caspar Milquetoast, a
wimpy character whose name is derived from milk toast. Webster
described Caspar Milquetoast as "the man who speaks softly and gets hit
with a big stick". The modern dictionary definition of milquetoast
(meaning a very shy or retiring person) comes from Webster's cartoons.
