I received an email this morning from Ed Danielson reminding me that today is Brick Fleagel’s 102nd birhday. Happy Birthday Brick. If you don’t know about Brick Fleagel, read what I wrote about him three years ago today (drat! tempus is fugiting faster than I’d like!) and this email response from Bill Crow.
And if you don’t know who Ed Danielson is, he’s the host of The Morning Beat, KUVO’s weekday morning drive-time program. (You can listen to KUVO online here.) Ed’s been hosting the Denver program since June of 2001 and I have just learned that he regularly makes note of the birthdays of jazz musicians, both living and departed. In his email Ed asked if I knew when Brick died and while I once thought that date was circa 1981, I now think it was more like 1992 because Billie Henderson (Luther’s widow) remember’s Brick’s death as being shortly before the Broadway opening of Jelly’s Last Jam. Memories are suspect, however, so as a biographer I will have to keep looking for a verifiable date.
And speaking of Billie Allen Henderson, a respected actress and director in her own right, I want to tell you that she has established a Luther Henderson Scholarship Fund within the Juilliard School. A smashing evening benefit gala entitled “Spreadin’ the Rhythm Around†will be held on October 6th at Juilliard’s Jay Sharp Theatre. (Read more about the scholarship and gala here on the LHSF site and  here in JazzTimes magazine.)