This would have been my grandad Army Brown's 98th birthday. He spent most of his twenties and thirties gigging around the South in a swing band back during the Depression. One of his bandmates and best friends was Sidney Chilton, Alex's dad. I wrote "Ponotoc" on my last album for my grandad; he was one of the first people to take me out and buy records and explained all the different instruments in the symphony orchestra. And whenever we had family reunions the evenings would end with Army sipping scotch and playing endless medlies of Tin Pan classics. Along with my father, he is one of the central reasons why I ended up devoting most of my life to music.
