Born On This Day- October 31st... Straight, But Not Narrow Baritone, Brian Stokes Mitchell

The Baritone voice in song is my favorite sound on earth or in the heavens. Check out Broadway leading man Brian Stokes Mitchell's stunning baritone on his self titled album from 2006. Perfection. He produced & did the arrangments!

Mitchell is that rare commodity, a really masculine musical theatre leading man in the mode of Richard Kiley, John Raitt, or Alfred Drake. He is a 5 time Tony Nomineee & winner for Kiss Me Kate. I loved him as Frasier Crane's nemesis & neighbor on Frasier. Other credits: George Gershwin's Oh, Kay!, Jelly's Last Jam, Kiss Of The Spider Woman, Ragtime, King Hedley II & Man of La Mancha . This season he appeared in th new musical Woman On The Edge Of A Nervous Breakdown, for which he one a Drama Desk award. Mitchell also appeared in the City Center Encores! productions of Jule Styne's Do Re Mi, Bob Merrill's Carnival!, & Kismet ,& the title role in th Kennedy Center revival of Sweeney Todd, part of Stephen Sondheim's 70th birthday celebration.

I am sorry to bring it down to this level, as always, but OMG!, isn't he just too yummy?

Straight, But Not Narrow... Gavin Newsom

Gavin Newsom is the former mayor of San Francisco & current Lieutenant Governor of the great state of California. He’s is unashamedly in favor of full equality for gay people & he has always been a strong voice for us. There are very few politicians as open as this handsome man. I am pinning my hopes on Newsom being president some day. He turns 44 years old today.

"Not every Democrat in Washington agrees with gay marriage. But I will make the case, based on some strong evidence that an overwhelming majority do. But they just can’t say it. & that is a limitation that is causing more damage than the issue. Because, again, it shows a weakness of character.

This is really one of the great final civil rights struggles, & again I say to my colleagues in the Democratic party: Why are you a Democrat if you can’t stand on a fundamental construct that has always distinguished our party. That we didn’t sit around. We advanced the issues of equality. We engaged the American people head on.”

Newsom describes our one night together

Born On This Day- September 26th... Song Stylist- Miss Julie London

Around this time of the year, the Husband & I have traditionally traveled a bit. We have had major, marked, momentous, meaningful journeys: Northern Italy, NYC several times, Vancouver BC, San Fransisco. Even in lean times we would pack up the dogs & rent a cabin on the Washington Coast. The trips to the coast were always very perfect, really. We would bring books, magazines, whiskey, pot & a big stack of perfect beach CDs. There was nothing as sexy, seductive & special as playing Julie London's or Chet Baker’s music on the sound system, as waves crashed, the wind rattled the little WPA era cabin that we frequently rented, & we would get a little drunk & a little dreamy while listening to Julie London’s perfect music.

Now, in the 21st century, I also hear a perfect sound for my mind wrapping around this season’s Mad Men. It could be made that the phrase “bedroom community” was coined with London in mind.


I love the economy of London’s singing. Her phrasing is spot on & yet surprising in its nuance. With her throaty, smoky voice, playfully seductive as any voice I have heard, London was a skilled temptress. But she never played the goddess. Her appeal wasn’t like an unattainable Rita Hayworth or Lauren Bacall. She cleverly cast herself as the not quite as wholesome, non-Doris Day girl, the chick at cocktail parties who would send every man in the room fumbling for his lighter whenever she reached for a cigarette. As a recording artist she was, perhaps more so than any other, entirely a product of her time. No wonder her career began in the mid-1950s, just as the USA was starting to discover sex as recreation, & ended in 1969.

The character London played on her albums was no pushover: My Heart Belongs to Daddy, An Occasional Man, Take Back Your Mink could reduce a real man to jelly. When suggested that Nice Girls Don’t Stay for Breakfast, her closing line was “pass the jam”.


If you only know London for her 1955 gigantic hit -Cry Me A River, (despite 100s of other versions, London’s remains definitive),or for her role as nurse Dixie McCall on the long-running NBC series Emergency, you would be surprised by the depth & breadth of her recording career From 1955-1969, London released 29 studio albums, a live session & greatest hits compilations. Among the adult pop singers, she rivaled the biggest sellers of the day: Sinatra, Mathis, Streisand in terms of output, & easily out sold Fitzgerald, Vaughan, & Tormé.


I was slightly scandelized & somewhat aroused by the covers of my parent’s Julie London Albums. They seemed to have some relation to my father’s Playboy magazines. There was- Julie, featuring a seemingly naked London reclining in a wire mesh chair & Whatever Julie Wants with her sporting nothing but a mink stole. I think I don't understand the vetting process... why is Julie London not a Gay Icon or the basis for a drag persona?

London fully appreciated her vocal limitations & her ability to make the most of them: “It’s a thimbleful of a voice, & I have to use it close to the microphone. But it is a kind of over-smoked voice, & it automatically sounds intimate.”