Get In the Car, Turn Up the Music

Maybe it's a throwback to all those "rock and roll will make you deaf" warnings, but I don't like iPods and MP3 players. I like my music so I can hear it with all its grandness and whispers, hints and bowl me overs. So I like to play it in my car while I drive and today while I was pulling some CDs to take with me, I decided to put together some lists. First up, my favorite female singers of all time. And since I know most of them well, I'm not fool enough to put them in any order. Aretha Franklin,(everytime she opens her mouth to sing, the heavens open up) Sade (love her dark tones and personal grace), Nora Jones (nothing finer than the duet she did with Ray), Diana Ross (I've worked with her and I'm a fan), Patti LaBelle (when she glisses up over Middle C, oh my), Etta James (extraordinary for longer than most have been around) the much over-looked Mavis Staples, who calls me 'baby sister' and can rock any house; if you have not heard Jessye Norman do Ellington's Sacred Concerts, you've truly missed a treasure and today I put on Gladys Knight, who won the Major Bowles Amateur Hour when she wasn't as big as the trophy they gave her and can make any man believe If She Were Your Woman, there'd be no other woman... yeah, I love me some Gladys and wish we had finished the book together, G. --Ruth Adkins Robinson