How ironic - - the Diva/Mensch pair for this week is "Ol' Man River," with the diva being Tony Bennett and the mensch Paul Robeson. The Tony Bennett recording features a thrilling bongo solo by "the great Candido," as Tony calls him. I grew up listening to that recording (*Tony Bennett at Carnegie Hall*) and was nuts for the bongo solo. I went to Wikipedia to see if I could confirm that Candido was playing the bongos and not the congas or something else, and would you believe that he died just a few days before, on November 7th? And he doesn't have an obit in The Times. I mentioned this to Richard:
RICHARD: Someone has to tell them that he died.
ME: You think Tony would call them and tell them! But I guess he has better things to do.
RICHARD: He's trying to make it to 100.
Here's a wonderful interview and performance from 1996:
And Norm Crosby! Classic comedian, big in the 70s. Here he is laying some malapropisms on Johnny Carson:
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