Modesto: Check out Dr. Michael White, a clarinetist in the traditional New Orleans style. “Dancing in the Sky” is a fine album, and I’ve heard good things about his new one, “Blue Crescent.”
Also Kermit Ruffins, a trumpeter in the Louis Armstrong mode, though he has yet to make an album that is consistently great. “Swing This!” is the one I’d recommend but even there he indulges himself with dumb novelties like a version of “This Little Light of Mine” sung by his six-year-old dsughter. Then again, Armstrong had a corny streak, too.

Actually it was in Tahoma.

But he still can’t make as much money as his female co-stars!

Well, at least he didn’t ask to see my descender.

I think that the history of the alphabet counts as linguistics. Orthography recapitulates philology and all that.

A friend loaned me a disk of Jelly Roll Morton recently, with whom I was previously unfamiliar. It seems like great stuff.

Are there any contemporary artists who play ragtime or Dixieland-type jazz that sounds fresh and beautiful rather than boring and lazy? Or does jazz only go forward, never back?

He is questioning your tag.

Rounder has a pretty sweet-looking package (and a nice animation of it), though I suspect that that piano keyboard thingy would prevent it from being stored on LP shelves. It seems to be $128, though.

Show us your descender!

Ben, why did you type the word ‘linguistics’? In quotes, no less.