Jackie Shane RIP

I did say that I was going to cut down on memorial posts in the blog, though I decided to make an exception for Jackie Shane due to her strong connections to Toronto.  She sang mostly soul and r & b at local clubs, lighting them up with her electrifying stage presence.  Then she vanished from the scene in 1971, returning to the States, primarily to care for her mother.  While this was far before my club-going time, I actually had been slightly aware of her (due to a relatively recent reissue of her work discussed below) and was somewhat bemused when placards on the TTC discussed her in the context of the "Alternate History of Toronto."  The Star has much more about her life and career here, though The Star is moving towards a paywall system unfortunately.  This column should be available, however, and has some classic photos of Jackie.

A few years back, Numero Group managed to get in touch in touch with her and released an authorized anthology, Any Other Way, which included a live gig at the Sapphire Tavern.  This is still available, including on iTunes* and Spotify.  For the last year or so, there were rumours that Jackie would come out of retirement to do a show in Toronto, though sadly this never came to pass.


* Just a while back, I discussed the dilemma of having too much music available at one's fingertips.  I've been following Numero Group for many, many years and even managed to get to one of their pop-up sales in Chicago, but I stopped buying their releases a while back (along with pretty much everyone else in the western world).  At any rate, it looks like they have made their entire catalog available on iTunes, so it looks like I have an awful lot of catching up to do!  Pretty much everything they put out is interesting, and often terrific, but I do have a special weakness for their Eccentric Soul series (though in terms of actual purchases, I tended to get the ones in the Cult Cargo series).