Thank you, Hank!

A year ago last November I was in Tampa, and one of my friends said, "You've got to see the house Derek Jeter is building on Davis Islands." I found it, took a photo, and did a blog post about it. Since then, I've received a fair number of hits on that post off web searches for "Derek Jeter's house" or similar. On February 22, though, my Site Meter showed I was getting a blizzard of hits; when I checked, I saw they were almost all from searches for Jeter's house. Some quick web research got me the reason why. The 23rd proved to be the blog's biggest day ever. Since then, things have tapered off, but I'm still getting lots of "Jeter's house" hits. Not bad for a Yankee-hater.

So, thank you, Hank. You've also given me the opportunity to caption a post with a lyric from a Marshall Chapman song.

Photo courtesy of LestersLegends.com. I suspect Lester of a little Photoshop magic, but I love it.

Johnny Preston, 1939-2011

Johnny Preston had one of the great pop novelty hits of the late 1950s-early '60s in "Running Bear" (thanks to rameyblue for the clip), which was written by J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson, who, along with Bill Hall and (yes!) George Jones, did the whoops and toomba-toombas that accompany Preston's vocal. The Bopper died in a plane crash with Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens before the song became a hit. Yesterday, Johnny Preston went to join Running Bear and Little White Dove "in that Happy Hunting Ground".

Thanks to FB friend Georgene Z. Russell for the tip.

Leonard Bernstein: Ravel's Piano Concerto in G, 2nd movement.

I think of Leonard Bernstein principally as a composer and conductor rather than a pianist, though his performance here, in my opinion, is superb (he can't resist doing a bit of conducting, too, when he can get one hand free). This is the second movement, adagio assai, of Maurice Ravel's Piano Concerto in G (for the first and third movements see here and here). I'm a sucker for impressionist music, just as I am for impressionist and post-impressionist painting.

Thanks to loyal Brooklyn Heights Blog reader and commenter AEB for bringing this to my attention, and to masiurb for the clip.