jay/day

Well, here's my odd contribution for jay\day 2008.

Of all of the links I've discovered on YouTube, I think this is my all-time favorite. It's an excerpt from Lena Horne's show she performed at the Nederlander Theatre beginning in the summer of 1981, my second year in NY. It was amazingly hot and she didn't like air-conditioning, so everybody in the theatre was in agony. She seemed to thrive. The show, which was a concert, ran for over a year. I can't imagine anybody doing that today.

This is the finale. I don't know if you ever saw it, but she performed "Stormy Weather" in the first act very simply, just as she always did. Then, at the end of the second act, she sang it again, this time ripping the ceiling off of the theatre. Despite the memory of the heat in the theatre, I still get goosebumps watching this.

I went to see this with Eve Luppert. I was working at C/D at 666 Fifth Ave. and on this night, I was so grateful for being alive and in NY (thanks to Jay) so I could see this. I knew this was why I had come to the big city.

She was 67 when she did this. She turns 91 on the 30th of June.

The jay\day message? "If you believe, just as I believe in you."

Steve