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Henry Blackburn (Jimmie Lunceford at a Saturday Night Dance in a Cotton Warehouse ) once again guides us on a journey to the days of the big swing bands and the bigger stars whose innovations and magical talents defined the Golden Age of Jazz. This new installment from his real-life Jazz Journal conveys the young man's joyous experience of a music that, in shattering absurd racial barriers, liberated the heart, mind, body and soul. jpt remains pleased and honored to introduce documentary history that takes its place amid the rich lore of American music.

Jonathan Deere (Lawnmower) won jpt’s gala essay-submission contest of 2007 with this fine memoir of bygone folkways and folderol.  He has published in Black Mask, The Old Farmer’s Almanack,  Idaho Byways Magazine, The Trufflehound’s Gazette, Godey’s Ladies Book and other fine periodicals in a Grub Street career spanning six decades.  He lives alone on a fungus farm near Walla Walla, Washington, with three spaniels and an uncounted cadre of cats.

Uwanda Dorfmann (10 Books to Read) is a long-established cheerleader for books and reading, now facing an unequal struggle with MP5 players, computers, GameBoyz, Z-Boxes, Blueberries, videomicroplayers and every other kind of gadget to deflect anyone under the age of 50 from ever opening a text.  She had written for children (Lumpy’s Harvest Moon Adventures, 1987, winner of the Nudeberry Metal), for teens (The Old Castle Romp, 1975) and adults (Gwenda Falls In and Out of Love, 1968).

Tawny Fossille (Kalamity Kinema) is hereby welcomed back in jpt after her much-kudoed excursion to the Creation Museum in Issue No. 4 .  Here she unveils another string to her bow, for a bright feather in her cap—a microscopic knowledge of B-grade movies and their multitudinous denizens.  This she revealed also in her best-selling romp through Tinseltown, My Five Years in a Popkorn Tub and How They Grew (Random Hut, 2003), now (as they say in movieworld) “under spec” to become a computer-animated musical and X-Box game by the fabled Dreadwerks studio.  Good luck, and be kareful out there on the kelluloid kontinent, Ms. Fossile, we say!

William J. Le Petomane (Olde Tyme Quiz Showes) is a direct descendent of the infamous French musical hall fartiste, though he never learned the secret of highly musical flatulence.  He did, however, inherit a penchant for show biz oddities and has edited many volumes of forgotten lore about weird and unique acts from stages around the world, including 101 Ball-Juggling Legends (1998), They Swallowed Swords and Lived (2001) and Sufi Secrets of Ventriloquism Exposed (2006).  He is currently writing the script for a musical based on his ancestor’s tuneful and noisome career, to be called either Listen to the Smells or Smell That Music!

Willis Quick (Backdrop for Murder) is back, or rather, jpt has again plumbed the bottomless steamer trunk of Pooleabilia in our back room, to hand you yet another sample from his first corporate-dick adventure (having received kudos and favorable queries when we ran the first bit in jpt Issue No. 3).  Quick’s lightning prose and electric suspense will put you right on the edge of your super-comfy ergonomic computer chair!