Countrywomen Songs
According to Tennessee Walt, for the first quarter-century of commercial country music, female singers were effectively prevented from participating. It was Kitty Wells’s recording “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky-Tonk Angels” that broke the gender barrier in 1952, when it turned her into the first female country superstar.
Walt, a country singer and devotee out of New York, will make his 10th appearance at the East Hampton Library on Saturday at 2 p.m. with “Songs of the Countrywomen,” a free lecture-concert about country music’s celebrated female singers. The show will include hits by Wells and other early country stars including Sara Carter, Patsy Cline, and Loretta Lynn, as well as more recent singers like Dolly Parton, Tanya Tucker, Emmylou Harris, Faith Hill, Miranda Lambert, and Taylor Swift. Walt will talk about the stories behind the songs and the women who sang and often wrote them.
Bee Gees Tribute
In a sign that disco lives, tickets are selling fast for “Stayin’ Alive,” a performance by the New York Bee Gees tribute band at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor on Saturday at 8 p.m. The members of the band have worked with such well-known artists as Meat Loaf, Queen, Blue Oyster Cult, and the Alan Parsons Project.
Audiences can expect such hits as “Night Fever,” “You Should Be Dancing,” “How Deep Is Your Love,” “To Love Somebody,” and, of course, “Stayin’ Alive,” which accompanied John Travolta’s strut during the opening of “Saturday Night Fever.” To further celebrate the era, Bay Street has encouraged audience members to come dressed in their favorite disco garb.
Tickets are $49 to $62. Doors and the lobby bar will open at 7.
Even More Music
Anita Guarino will return to Sag Harbor’s Masonic Temple Friday evening at 7:30 with covers and reinterpretations of pop classics, the Great American Songbook, jazz standards, and requests. She will be accompanied by Bill Cento on piano. Admission is $20, and doors will open at 7 for socializing.
The temple will host Hopefully Forgiven on Saturday at 8 p.m., when the band will draw from its repertoire of traditional folk, country, rock, and blues, which the venue calls a “harmony-soaked cocktail of American music.” The current lineup includes Telly Karoussos on vocals and guitar, Fred Trumpy on drums, and Benjamin Goodale on bass. Tickets are $20.
Hailing Jazz Icons
The East Meets West Jazz Jam Session will return to the Southampton Cultural Center on Sunday at 2 p.m. with “Kind of Blue and Giant Steps: East End Jazz Celebrates Miles Davis and John Coltrane Centenaries.” The free show honors the 100th birthdays of those jazz icons with an ensemble led by Dick Behrke and John Ludlow.
After the performance the stage will open for a community jazz jam. An email to [email protected] can secure a curated song list with charts that can be looked over in advance.
On Shade Gardens
Next up in the lecture series of the Horticultural Alliance of the Hamptons is Leslie Duthie’s “Native Ferns and Wildflowers for Shade Gardens” on Sunday afternoon at 2 at the Bridgehampton Community House. The program will focus on plants that make winning combinations to brighten up the darker part of any garden.
Duthie, who has worked in native plant horticulture throughout her career, is a speaker, educator, plant propagator, and grower of ferns. For 35 years she managed the Norcross Wildlife Sanctuary in Wales, Mass., where she gardened more than 75 acres. Now retired, she is on the board of the Ecological Landscape Alliance and chairwoman of its publications committee.
Tickets are $10, free for members.
