Gold Diggers

Class is in session, students! Time for you to learn all about magic in the GD-verse from your professor, Dr. Theodore Diggers, Ph.D. and Th.D. You'll get clear, detailed lessons on the rules, ranges and limits of ether manipulation, both learned and innate. The course will also cover spell circles, magic-user types and magical creature species, with plenty of known examples and illustrations. Learn to cast with the best-or at how to fake it for RPGs, at least! Writer and Artist: Fred Perry --

Harry Warren (1893-1981) was one of the most successful composers in the history of popular American music. Yet, as I put this concert program together, it became clear that most people do not recognize his name. If I mention his songs such as “That’s Amore,” “Shuffle Off to Buffalo,” “The Gold Diggers Song (We’re in the Money)” and “At Last,” then puzzlement turns instantly to familiarity. Warren’s anonymity is surprising when you consider his staggering achievements…

Benny Morton didn't make very many recordings as a leader. What you've got here are apparently all of them. The 1934 band contained several musicians who had worked in Don Redman's orchestra. "Fare Thee Well to Harlem" is one of many preposterous Tin Pan Alley songs depicting a "negro" who yearns to go back to the noble South, in this case because of the questionable assumption that down there people go to church instead of hanging out in bars. Note that Duke Ellington always insisted there were more churches than nightclubs in Harlem. Ellington gave the world the diametric opposite of this song when in 1941 he composed "Jump For Joy," that ode to emancipation with its opening lyric: "Fare thee well, land of cotton, fare thee well"…