Phew. Is it hot in here? Is it gas or electric heat I'm feeling? Oh, throw open all the windows! Let the cool ocean breeze wrap around us we dance. Or so you'll be saying while dancing and  cha-cha-cha'ing at The Manor's exclusive "Galactic Muffin Lounge," where our own DJ Li'l Scratch is spinning the best of  Tino Contreras, the head-trippy, vanguard Mexican jazz drummer and composer.  Ay! Even if you haven't heard of Tino, you've  heard  him at one point or another in your life. He's long been cherished South of the Border, but it's taken quite a bit longer for us  gringos  to catch on. Just wait.  His jazz is propulsive, joyful, and dripping with sex, with everything from bongos, big bass swings, trumpets, psychedelic jazz riffs and ritual chants tossed into the mix, all of which you can hear in "Santo," his spaced-out classic:  Tino lived long enough to find himself all but canonized in his country and in jazz circles worldwi...

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...

Welcome music-loving hors to DJ Li'l Scratch's favorite place to jam, the Manor's exclusive "Jenny Talia Lounge." Tonight, Li'l Scratch will be spinning tunes from a jazz master who's always made me smile, and who's the very model of perseverance and sass.  She sang for thirty long years...stopped...worked as a nurse...then twenty years later, in a jaw-dropping comeback, sang again. In a nutshell, that was the career trajectory of Alberta Hunter, whose career spanned from 1921 to the year she died, 1984, at age eighty-nine. As a child, she worked as a servant girl in a brothel. As a teenager, she took off for Chicago to make it as a singer. Her first gig? At a mob-owned bordello and speakeasy. I kid you not. Legend has it that when a mobster was shot dead one night, his body landed right on the stage before her. And she kept on singing. Word spread fast. No more bordellos for Miss Alberta. She was soon playing the best clubs, touring Europe, conquering...

Greetings, Manor hors, and welcome to a brand-new week and a spanking new Monday just bursting with fresh tunes, all thanks to your favorite hot puss, DJ Li'L Scratch. Tonight, he's spinning at the Manor's exclusive club, "Basement Sex Couch." And yet he's not only spinning tunes, but singing the praises of ladies with big hair. You know the type. There's the always fashion-forward Ann Miller:  The perennially delightful Patti LaBelle:  And, of course, Monster: Which brings us to singer Linda Scott, who Li'l Scratch will be playing tonight for your listening and dancing pleasure. She first came to fame as a bubbly junior high school student when she wrote to Arthur Godfrey in 1959, asked for a singing spot on his wildly popular radio show - and to her surprise, he hired her as a regular guest star. It wasn't long before record label execs came knocking on her door.  And her hair? If you wonder "How big is too big?" wonder no more, because...

Welcome, hors and horlettes, to Manor Music Monday. DJ Li'l Scratch has his claws out. Trouble ahead? Hiss! Hard times? Hiss-hiss! Only good times are allowed at the Manor's exclusive "Pink Torpedo Lounge." And, yes, Li'l Scratch will move you body and soul, 'cause tonight he's spinning Miss Tiny.  That's Tiny Irvin, for those in the know. Tiny's talent was huge. She was only a wee teenager when she began singing on tour for Dizzy Gillespie's band. And her voice? She once very accurately compared her vocal style to "Billy Eckstine. I love the deep tonal qualities of his voice (and) the rhythmic hitting and missing of sounds." Yet mass-market fame was not in Tiny's future - and by her own design. She was intensely private by all accounts. After she toured with Dizzy, and performed with the likes of Sammy Davis, Jr., amongst other stars, she returned to hometown Pittsburgh and continued singing at a variety of local clubs for deca...

DJ Li'l Scratch is all over it, especially tonight at the Manor's exclusive "Sausage Slap" after-hours club. Why? Because he knows you like to start the week with a jolt - or the musical equivalent of cocaine, or dirty low-down booty sugar, as the kids call it. Ride that wild white pony all the way till Friday, amireet?  Wheeeeeee! And the best way to do that? Pizzicato 5, of course.  In the late 90's, I was all over Pizzicato 5 - or P5, for those in the know - a gleefully screwball Japanese group that was labeled, in America, at least, as "electronic," though I liked the label I once heard a DJ give them, "electro fizzy-pop," because I thought it best described their freakishly happy music. I didn't get them at first, not until a friend told me to think of them as the musical equivalent of Godard on ecstasy cut with speed (and without the politics). That sounds a mite pretentious (and how!), but it's really not, because in a vein simi...

Do you sizzle when you burn? Does your bomba go boomba? Of course it does. DJ Li 'l Scratch knows this, and he's only too happy to provide you and yours with tunes to keep the fires burning at "The Smokin' Pole," the Manor's exclusive after-hours lounge. Speaking of all things sizzling and going boomba in the night,  is your figure is svelte as Helen Grayco's? Probably not, but then Helen had lots of competition growing up - being the tenth of eleven children born to her Italian Catholic parents  - plus, she got her very first singing gig when she was just eight-years-old. "She sings like Hollywood!" exclaimed her earliest fan, Bing Crosby, and from there, she was on her way.  She dabbled in movies for a bit, but really hit her stride with singing, collaborating with the starry likes of Stan Kenton, Chuck Cabot, and fellow singer and comic, Spike Jones, whom she'd later marry. And let's be blunt, Helen was a dish. Which meant that every m...

Welcome, fellow felines, to Manor Music Monday! There's a bit of a chill in the air, so tonight - at the Manor's exclusive Cooch Cork Lounge - DJ Li'l Scratch will be blasting tunes to warm your spirits. Yes, it's true, he's letting Caterina Valente have free reign.  And goodness, just look at Caterina! All shiny and pink - and with a startling, gleaming yellow background. I swear the illustrator must have been flying on dexies because it's all so bright-bright-bright!  And so unreal, but then maybe that's as it should be, because Caterina, the multitalented, French-born daughter of itinerant Italian circus performers - her mother was a clown; her father played accordion - sounds as if somebody combined one-part Charo, two parts Carmen Miranda, a dollop of Sophia Loren, then pressed puree on a blender. Wheeeeee! How can she be real? But she is. And she's wonderful. Caterina spoke six languages fluently - and sang in them, too, recording hundreds upon hu...

It's February, hors, or as DJ Li'l Scratch laments, the shortest damn month to gather up your mortgage or rent. Which means he's taking on extra gigs at the Manor's Tickle Stick Lounge, but, hey, gotta keep that catnip and Alaskan cod coming, amirite? Today, Li'l Scratch presents you with an artist you're likely very familiar with. She has many sobriquets: Madge. Nonnie. Esther. Vadge. Gammy. So many names for a pop star who's determined to stay "relevant." Is she succeeding? For many decades she did, and then - ka-boom! - she ran out of gas, drove off a cliff and exploded in a fiery blaze of meh, whatever and pff with her 2008 release, "Hard Candy," her first album in which, as many critics noted, she followed pop music trends instead of making them, utilizing near-passe hit producers, like Timbaland, The Neptunes, and, of all people, Justin Timberlake, whose careers were already flagging or soon to extinguish. Every song is lazy, prog...

Welcome, party hors, to another Manor Music Monday - plus a very special holiday surprise. But first, DJ Li'l Scratch has pawed his way into the Manor's Beeftube Lounge, ready to spin you some tunes. Today, he's all about the one and only Ann Richards. Are you familiar with Ann? Back in the day, she gained fame for her jazz vocals and notoriety for her sizzling spread in "Playboy" magazine in 1961 (one of the more demure shots is above, sans staples). The "Playboy" spread tended to overshadow her accomplishments as a vocalist, yet ever since a salacious 2010 book about Stan Kenton, whom she was married to, was released, there's been renewed interest in her music and life. Amongst the book's many details: their son Lance was arrested in 1978 for attempted murder after putting a rattlesnake in his lawyer's mailbox (you can't make this stuff up). But let's put all that messy violence aside (and agree that Stan was a horrible person who...