Jive

Every time I hear politicians condemn the entertainment industry for its lack of morality I roll my eyes at their self-righteousness. But Jive Records President Barry Weiss' comments ("That Awkward Phase," by Jeff Leeds, Dec. 2) gave me pause: "The beauty of what has happened with these pop artists is they've gotten kids into buying CDs and concert tickets earlier than they had heretofore." Is he joking, or just so driven by commerce and greed that he can't see the absurdity of his comment?

Welcome to Week 2 of “Dancing With the Stars: All-Stars,” ballroom fans! Now that we've worked out all the Week 1 jitters and the contestants have sized up their fellow stars, the competition can really begin. Certainly, it's a whole new Mirrorball playing field this season. No one can be content to rest on laurels. One bad step can leave you simmering under the red lights of jeopardy. This week's dances zipped back and forth between the quickstep and jive, and the all-stars and their pro partners were risking life and limb to gain that cutting edge.

This week, our contestants danced the tango and the jive. And, you know, the jive totally wasn't what I was expecting. I'll tell you what the judges were expecting: The jive should be fun, and the tango should be angry. The jive must be attacked! The tango requires acting! These dances were really quite different, and the costumes this week showed it: The group was a motley crew of gangsters, prostitutes, flappers and strippers. That said, we also saw some changes of fortune. Let's start with the three front-runners.

RCA Music Group is slimming down for the holidays by shuttering its Arista, Jive and J Records subsidiaries, a move by new label execs to strengthen the identity of the RCA brand. Artists who have been with those three imprints, which have been home to Britney Spears, Alicia Keys, Rod Stewart, Pitbull, Whitney Houston, Justin Timberlake, Barry Manilow, R. Kelly, Kelly Clarkson, Fantasia, Dido, Jennifer Hudson, Leona Lewis and others, will be shifted to RCA. Jive produced several of the biggest-selling albums of all time in the midst of the youth pop boom a decade ago, including the multi-platinum hits for 'N Sync, the Backstreet Boys and Spears.

Hit Factory: An article in the July 22 Calendar section about the Hit Factory studio in Miami said that the Bee Gees song "Jive Talking" was produced by Karl Richardson. The song was called "Jive Talkin' " and was produced by Arif Mardin.

RCA Music Group is slimming down for the holidays by shuttering its Arista, Jive and J Records subsidiaries, a move by new label execs to strengthen the identity of the RCA brand. Artists who have been with those three imprints, which have been home to Britney Spears, Alicia Keys, Rod Stewart, Pitbull, Whitney Houston, Justin Timberlake, Barry Manilow, R. Kelly, Kelly Clarkson, Fantasia, Dido, Jennifer Hudson, Leona Lewis and others, will be shifted to RCA. Jive produced several of the biggest-selling albums of all time in the midst of the youth pop boom a decade ago, including the multi-platinum hits for 'N Sync, the Backstreet Boys and Spears.

Welcome to Week 2 of “Dancing With the Stars: All-Stars,” ballroom fans! Now that we've worked out all the Week 1 jitters and the contestants have sized up their fellow stars, the competition can really begin. Certainly, it's a whole new Mirrorball playing field this season. No one can be content to rest on laurels. One bad step can leave you simmering under the red lights of jeopardy. This week's dances zipped back and forth between the quickstep and jive, and the all-stars and their pro partners were risking life and limb to gain that cutting edge.

Possibly no musician has ever had more fun than Slim Gaillard, a guitarist and jive singer popular in the late '40s and early '50s.... (Hang on, there'll be a food angle eventually. Just wait.) Gaillard invented a much-quoted jive-talk language, exemplified in hit songs such as "Flat-Foot Floogie (With a Floy Floy)." It was big on nonsense words like "vout-o-rootie" and "vootimo" and all-purpose suffixes like "-oroonio."

Prison dramas are usually informed with a hyperextended sense of realism, its inmate characters condemned to life behind naturalistic bars. The action in "Short Eyes," for example, could happen. That's why these plays are so easy to make into movies. Whatever your stance on Rick Cluchey's "The Cage" at the Odyssey, one thing is beyond debate: This is one prison drama that will never be made into a movie.

As former Jets executive Pat Kirwan was preparing to open his radio program, he couldn't stop shaking his head at the numbers spinning around him. Not yardage and tackles and touchdown statistics. Dollar signs. Lots and lots of dollar signs. "The Albert Haynesworth deal to kick off the (free agency) season was really bad," Kirwan told his Sirius NFL Radio audience. "The money doesn't jive with the economy. It doesn't jive with the end of the CBA (collective bargaining agreement)

As former Jets executive Pat Kirwan was preparing to open his radio program, he couldn't stop shaking his head at the numbers spinning around him. Not yardage and tackles and touchdown statistics. Dollar signs. Lots and lots of dollar signs. "The Albert Haynesworth deal to kick off the (free agency) season was really bad," Kirwan told his Sirius NFL Radio audience. "The money doesn't jive with the economy. It doesn't jive with the end of the CBA (collective bargaining agreement)

Hit Factory: An article in the July 22 Calendar section about the Hit Factory studio in Miami said that the Bee Gees song "Jive Talking" was produced by Karl Richardson. The song was called "Jive Talkin' " and was produced by Arif Mardin.

Is you is or is you ain't a Louis Jordan fan? The famed 1940s vocalist, band leader and saxophonist from Arkansas gave the world a "jumpin' jive" sound that influenced Ray Charles, B.B. King, Chuck Berry, James Brown and others. Jordan's mix of jazz and blues, playful lyrics and strong rhythms excited audiences and made him among the first black performers to have crossover appeal with whites. Called the "King of Rhythm and Blues," Jordan was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987 and celebrated in the Broadway hit "Five Guys Named Moe."

This week, our contestants danced the tango and the jive. And, you know, the jive totally wasn't what I was expecting. I'll tell you what the judges were expecting: The jive should be fun, and the tango should be angry. The jive must be attacked! The tango requires acting! These dances were really quite different, and the costumes this week showed it: The group was a motley crew of gangsters, prostitutes, flappers and strippers. That said, we also saw some changes of fortune. Let's start with the three front-runners.

First produced in 1993, "A Jive Bomber's Christmas" has become an on-again, off-again tradition at the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo. Set in the Japanese internment camp at Manzanar, this original musical by Saachiko and Dom Magwili is a broadly comic, unabashedly sentimental holiday entertainment that makes a touching statement about resiliency during hard times. Plans for a cabaret-style Christmas pageant are made by Jackson, a.k.a.

It's just 'round midnight at the Howling Monk, and the old refurbished Inglewood storefront has taken on the fervor of a revival meeting. Drummer Winard Harper's jazz sextet has a crowd of about 60 people--mostly African American, mostly over 30--clapping time to a version of Bobby Timmons' "Moanin'," shouting out from their rows of chairs, steaming up the plate glass windows, dancing in the doorways thrown open to Market Street.

In Randal Kleiser's article on "Grease," the song "Sandy" is credited solely to Louis St. Louis (" 'Grease' Is Still the Word," March 15). The song was actually co-written with Scott Simon of Sha Na Na. Screamin' Scott deserves his due. Also, Sha Na Na, which I have been a member of for 29 years, contributed six performances of songs from the original Broadway production and other rock 'n' roll classics to the enduring "Grease" soundtrack: "Blue Moon,"...

Redefining the absurd: directions to anywhere that include the phrase, "It's right near the Starbucks." MARK LIFLAND Santa Monica

The arrest of Mystikal this week in Louisiana on sexual assault and extortion charges adds yet another entry to a list that has reached a dizzying length: rappers whose gritty street rhymes seem to echo in their personal lives and in the nation's courthouses. The arrest also endangers the career of one of the genre's most potent stars. The funk-minded rap of the raspy-voiced Mystikal has sold 6.1 million albums in the U.S.

The durability of Fran Charnas' 1975 perennially staged musical nostalgia-fest, "The All Night Strut!," a revue of American standards mostly from the 1930s and '40s, attests to the cross-generational resonance in such sentimental classics as "GI Jive," "In the Mood," "As Time Goes By" and "I'll Be Seeing You."