Weekend recap – part x.

Kevin Parrott at Hep to the Jive posted his Grammy observances (permalink not working, for some reason) in his usual hilarious verbiage:

5. Robin Williams gave a speech so painfully unfunny that the sheer awfulness of it propelled it twenty years backwards through time and struck Richard Pryor, who immediately burst into flames. Not wanting to cause Robin future embarrassment by repeating what he'd heard, he made up some story about freebasing. How many times is Williams gonna use the "White Courtesy Phone" joke? I thought he was supposed to be some kind of Improv God - oh yeah, that was before there was a videotaped record of everything.

And:

13. What's the big deal with Norah Jones that everyone's creaming all over themselves about? She's all right, and is truly talented, but she ain't ever gonna be no Ella. Jazz singers nowadays are pleasant, but all they really do is pull out a bag of vocal tricks used by older vocalists and hammer them repeatedly throughout their albums. She's sure winning a helluva lot of Grammies, though. Maybe I'm just out of the loop.

More to the point, she's no Duke Ellington. Her jazz is pleasant and poppy and inoffensive, but not great or innovative, which is probably why she won so many awards. Ella and Frank were smart enough to know better than to write their own songs. Why the hell should they when they had the Gershwins, Irving Berlin, Rodgers and Hart, Duke Ellington, Johnny Mercer, and Cole Porter?