"I'm not familiar with her recordings,"

Well, I am. And I paid full price for them with my own hard-earned money. The trouble with CDs is if you feel like you didn't get your money's worth,you don't get your money back. When that happens, I feel entitled to complain about the product.

"but I just happened to see her on Austin City Limits yesterday, after reading the OP here. I recommend watching that concert before disparaging her abilities."

Her live clips are all over the internet and I posted a number of them some years ago when I still believed she was the best thing going in jazz.

"Looking to popularity contests such as the Grammys as an indication of whether or not a form of music is alive and well is very silly."

Then why do we have Grammys at all?

"Since when have the Grammies been the arbiter of what constitute's a particular form of music?"

My question exactly.

"It is unfortunate that the cycle is degenerating for both genre."

Jazz musicians are well aware that their genre has been degenerating. That's why we're looking for that new Louis, that new Lester, that new Bird, to come along and shake things up. Spalding looked like she was it and that nothing was going to stop her from doing it and then suddenly she stopped on her own and went Grammy-chasing instead at the most crucial point in her career. That third CD needed to start exploring jazz at a very deep level and, if you listen to anything from it, you'll hear just the opposite. So we're still looking. I think Chris Dahlgren deserves that recognition but, amazingly, few people--even other jazz musicians--have heard of him.

"And by chance my wife chose Sarah Vaughan as background for food."

Sarah was the Shit.