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...