Re "Sweet Sucker Dance": One last thing, and then I'm going to HAVE to say I've reached my quota of posts for the day (week?) ...
The "degree of difficulty" in singing this Mingus melody has got to be at least an 8 on a scale of 10. I think that's part of what Bob was referring to when he wrote "the way she effortlessly jumps from blue note to blue note." Damn difficult jumps they were! She was no slouch on "Dry Cleaner" and "Pork Pie Hat," either. A good portion of "Mingus" represented a home run for Joni, and it's too bad more of her audience at the time didn't cheer her for hitting it. It seemed to me to be a logical progression from the THOSL, "Hejira" and DJRD albums then, and I felt my opinion was perfectly legitimized by the integration of the Mingus material on "Shadows And Light" (my all-time favorite Joni album - on which her singing, overall, was ther best it's ever been, I think). Jim
