Ella Fitzgerald

Coco Brown: Porn Star Will Blast Into Space, And We Find NASA Mission Names For The Ensuing X-Rated Film

Coco Brown, a porn actress we've heard of even though she's the star of such films as Bomb Ass Pussy 2 and Sperma Hotel, is headed for space. According to media reports which we have a hard time believing, Brown is paying $100,000 to be taken up by private Dutch company Space XC, home for all your ... More >>

Homegrown Houston - 3G

Classic Christmas: Mannheim Steamroller's Christmas

Over the holidays, we're looking back at some classic Christmas albums taking some track by track and just digging on others. ​Let me just get this out of the way right off the bat: I don't care for Mannheim Steamroller. I think their music is odd and a little creepy. But, that doesn't mean 1 ... More >>

Classic Christmas: Ella Fitzgerald's Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas

Over the holidays, we're looking back at some classic Christmas albums taking some track by track and just digging on others. ​There is an admission that I have to make having written all these Classic Christmas posts this year. When I think of Christmas, I don't think of carols or choirs or ... More >>

Pop Rocks: Andy Rooney Is Retiring. You Won't Miss Him.

If a crabby, unpleasant nonagenarian who ceased being relevant 20 years ago retires from broadcasting, does the collective sigh of relief make a sound? Andy Rooney will announce on Sunday's "60 Minutes" that it will be his last regular appearance on the newsmagazine. Rooney, 92, has been featured o ... More >>

10 Awesome, Awful & Odd "Hey Jude" Covers

​This week in 1968, The Beatles inaugurated their Apple Records label in a most auspicious fashion, releasing "Hey Jude" as a 45. The B-side was "Revolution." Written by Paul McCartney and employing a 36-piece orchestra, "Jude" did nothing to dispel the perception that Paul was the "soft" Beat ... More >>

Ella Fitzgerald, Jailed in Houston for Shooting Dice: Photo of the Day

Photo by Pete Vazquez/via Houston ChronicleElla: Shooting dice will get you arrested.​Is this a great picture or what? It's the inestimable Ella Fitzgerald sitting forlornly in a Houston jail, arrested for shooting dice in her Music Hall dressing room with -- get this lineup -- Dizzy Gillespi ... More >>

Shellee Coley's Somber Tidings Of Comfort And Joy

​Shellee Coley is an acoustic siren with an amazingly haunting voice, and one of the many talented acts in the Magnolia Red family. Her debut album, The Girl the Stencil Drew, was a soft, sad, sweet spinning disc of delightfully dark ironies that we still cannot believe didn't make it into our ... More >>

Top 10 Recent TV-Show Soundtracks

​A few choice adjectives come to mind when musing on bawdy Eastbound & Down character Kenny Powers. "Inspiring" is not one of them. However, as Rocks Off watched this week's season finale of the side-splitting HBO series, we were pleasantly surprised as we heard indie troubadour Kurt Vile's a ... More >>

Day Of The Dead: Music In Memoriam 2009-10

itscactus.com​Rocks Off doesn't mean to be morbid, but today is the Day of the Dead, the Mexican holiday and festival honoring those who have gone before. So instead of waiting until the end of the year, the more traditional time for such things, we wanted to compile a list of the notable name ... More >>

She's Got Rhythm: Jazz-Pop Upstart Nikki Yanofsky, 16 And Swingin'

myspace.com/nikkiyanofsky​Nikki Yanofsky has been "singing since I could talk, basically." And doing it well: When her dad asked the Montreal native to sing a few songs with his garage band at a charity event, it was a little different than practicing in the garage. In the audience was the fou ... More >>

Answers To Rocks Off's Musical Nickname Quiz

​Rocks Off hopes you enjoyed our musical nickname quiz earlier today. We have had a few nicknames ourselves over the years - our dad called us "Boog" after former Baltimore Orioles first baseman Boog Powell, and we were known for years around the Austin Chronicle offices as "Weezer," which we ... More >>

Christina Aguilera, Lady Gaga (Again!) Headed Our Way

Hot off the wire this morning is that pop's two preeminent bionic women have penciled in Houston for dates on their upcoming tours. First up is Christina Aguilera, who will bring her tiny frame and prodigious voice to the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion August 12. British diva Leona Lewis, a former ... More >>

Nightfly: Hard to Kill

Is Nouveau Antique Art Bar leading a Midtown renaissance?

Capsule Stage Reviews: The Flu Season, Machinal, The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told, The Women

Capsule Stage Reviews: Camelot, True Love Lies, The Women

He Said She Said: Songs For A First Date, Assuming They Still Exist

​It's been a long time since the committed She Said has been on a first date, and while the romantic in her likes to think of how exciting, flustering and fun a first date can be, the realist in her knows that life is full of hundreds of awkward first dates and very few successful ones. She Said h ... More >>

2009 Concert Rewind, August: Weezy, Blondie, Depeche Mode, JoBros, Katy Perry, Mos Def, De La Soul, Blue October, Green Day and an Audience With King George

Shea Serrano​ Asher Roth, Kid Cudi, House of Blues, August 1: "[Cudi has] tapped John Goldstein, Kanye's famed stage light guy, to help him create an actual feel to his show. Hipster rappers get derided a lot as not being "real rappers," but they put on a hell of a show. The crowd is already his." ... More >>

Ghosts of Washington Avenue

Noise goes whistling through the scenester artery's music venue graveyard.

Aftermath: Depeche Mode's Black and Blue Celebration at The Woodlands

Photos by Eric Sauseda​ Far, far away from the group once known for bubbly synth-pop anthems like "Just Can't Get Enough" and "Everything Counts," Depeche Mode circa 2009 has pressed its small army of keyboards and electronics into the service of primal urges and raw sexuality. Not terribly surpri ... More >>

Five Hour Energy

The 2009 Houston Press Music Awards Showcase in 300 minutes or less.

HPMA Aftermath: Ozeal & the Eulypians, Nosaprise, Benjamin Wesley, Tha Fucking Transmissions, Kristine Mills, Peekaboo Theory, Versecity and Spain Colored Orange

Chris Gray​Five hours is not a long time. It is if you're driving from Houston to Texarkana or Uvalde, maybe. But when hopscotching all over downtown trying to take in as much of the Houston Press Music Awards showcase as you can until your feet and your ears cry uncle, those 300 minutes go by in ... More >>

Remembering Martin Luther King Jr. in Song

In the Name of Love

Cool Out on Your Commute

2009 is only a few days old, and Houston's radio climate is already improving. Not on the FM dial, which remains a wasteland north of 91.7 (same as it ever was), but starting at 4 p.m. today, commuters can immerse themselves in the swinging sounds of Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, B.B. Kin ... More >>

Tonight: Randy Weeks at Discovery Green

"The Sounds I See: Photographs of Musicians"

This MFAH exhibit features live shots of popular music's greatest contributors

Houston's Jazz History

Overnight Express: In Case You're Not Sick of Me Going on About Tom Petty...

Sanity Claus: Separating Holiday-Music Gifts from Seasonal Disorders

Patti Austin

Avant Gershwin

Just Released CDs

Azul, Magos Herrera and Lila Downs

The Divinas concert

Texas Tenors Times Two

The Trinity Jazz Festival

A Whole Other Magic

Dianne Reeves's good luck story

Patti Austin

Friday, September 1, through Sunday, September 3, at Jones Hall, 615 Louisiana, 713-224-7575

Yvonne Washington

Tuesday, February 14, McGonigel's Mucky Duck, 2425 Norfolk, 713-528-5999.

Gutbucket Blues, Chopped and Screwed

The North Mississippi Allstars and Houston DJ Jimmy D team up on a revolutionary EP

Pa Rum Pum Pum Pum

Christmas is the weirdest time of the year. Who better to musically document the season than John Waters?

Best Vintage Sounds

KBME/790 AM

Sassy Celebration

Dianne Reeves breathes new life into Sarah Vaughan's songs

One For All

Sax giant Illinois Jacquet helped desegregate Houston audiences

Scat's First Lady

Anita O'Day gets her due in new boxed set

Hillbilly Wheelies

Rotation

Elling's Rant

Press Picks

Punk and Precious

Rasputina offers up a trio of not so mellow cellos

A Day to Remember

Stages digs into the joy, and the pain, of Billie Holiday's life

Wry Fidelity

Picks