Greetings, music sloots, and welcome to another edition of Music Manor Monday! Tonight at the Manor's exclusive Kweef Korner Lounge, DJ Li'l Scratch will introduce a forgotten artist who'll remind you of people nowadays that give their children names like Kathron or Mellowdee or Creeklyn or Amaziyah and other such fuckery. Back in the day, all you had do was an an extra letter to be dIfFeReNt. Like an extra "n." As in Annita. No, really. I'm not sure why this was done. It's like meeting someone named "Johnn" or Suue" or "Maaggy" (and how do even you pronounce Annita?) (do you stutter?). Regardless, the one and only Annita Ray had a unique career. In the 1960s, she and singer Diane Hall were known as "girl bookends" for bandleader Ray Anthony - or singing window-dressing for the more "important" Ray and his musicians. By that time, Annita was likely used to being undervalued. But she kept on keeping on, even reco...

  Fred Astaire had the skills and the polish. Gene Kelly had the skills and the sex. Though he left us in 1996 at age 83, he remains the premiere Hollywood practitioner of dance as brash bravado and potent, earthy sexuality.  Some might say that Rudolph Valentino was the better dance-as-sex practitioner, but time has not been kind to his tango scenes, which now look strained, and at times, comical. It really was another time. Gene's endures because of his seemingly effortless moves and brawny masculinity, which was at once thrilling, but never crude. The old adage "women wanted him, men wanted to be him" must have been conjured up with him in mind.  Before Fosse revitalized dance for the modern age - giving it a refined and cooler-than-cool touch of sleaze - Gene was the go-to for dance and eroticism. Only Cyd Charisse was his rival, a dancer whose every move seemed to say, "Touch me if you dare." Together? They were a bonfire.  Yet no matter how many dancers an...