Greetings music luvuhs, and welcome to another edition of Manor Music Mondays, today with a singer who's guaranteed to work you over like the world's best anti-depressant. No, for reals. Feeling down in the dumpity-doo and want to feel happy? Feeling happy but want to feel happier? Then this is the gal for you. Tonight only at the Manor's exclusive "Touch-A, Touch-A, Touch Me" lounge and dinette, DJ Li'l Scratch will be spinning all of her tunes, and just wait, you'll be giggling and dancing and drinking and doing who knows what-all because if it. Ready? Make way for "Chee-Chee!" Rose "Chee-Chee" Murphy, to be specific, who had a happy, trilling voice you won't soon forget. If you've only heard her sing a few numbers, you might think her vocals are gimmicky and perhaps not worth a full album, much less a whole bevy of them. Think again. However she did the voodoo she do, she found incredible variety in her high, birdlike voice, ...

Greetings, music sloots, and welcome to another edition of Manor Music Monday, today with music to keep you warm - even scorching - especially for those if you in bone-chilling, snow-laden lands hither and thon. Did you know? At the Manor, every climate is represented. Just turn a corner on our grounds and it's Fall, then Summer, and so forth. We've got that Narnia-type shit going on (sans closets). But I digress. Tonight, at "Sweating Like A Skerd Gerbil" bar and gourmand nuttery, DJ Li'l Scratch is bringing us a songstress who's smooth with a refreshing spike of 'tude, which is really the best way to describe Marlena Shaw, an unheralded diva who conquered jazz, soul, R&B, disco, gospel and blues, and all with equal aplomb. In other words, she's surfed with the times, from The Apollo Theatre as a ten-year-old phenom, to the present day, where she performed at a major jazz festival in the Netherlands. Some divas never stop. Until they have to. Sadl...

I t's time to jump, jam and jive, and there's no cat around who can do that better than DJ Li'l Scratch, am I right? Tonight, at the Manor's exclusive "Cake Shake Lounge," Li'l Scratch will be spinning tunes from the smoothest jazz vocalist around. Can you guess? I'll give you a hint. Who has the vocal smoothness of Etta Jones with the rhythmic snap of Della Reese? If you guessed Helen Humes, you were right.  "For who - and for what?" you might also ask.  Let me explain, first by pointing out that Cincinnati once had its very own popular Cotton Club nightspot .  "Wait - really? Shut up!" you exclaim. I will not shut up, and  for reals, it did . And get this: that's where the incomparable Helen Humes truly kicked off her career in the early 1930s. "Saucy," "rousing," "classy" and "swingin'" are just a few of the adjectives that were used to describe Helen during her heyday, though later...