Ruthie Foster

Lena Spencer has to be rolling in her grave over some of the changes her Caffe Lena has gone through in the 35 years since her death, but she was smiling down on a sellout crowd Thursday night whose adulation for Ruthie Foster was reflected back on us as if Ruthie were a parabolic mirror.

Foster opened her show with the self-penned “Brand New Day,” from her 2014 album, The Promise of a Brand New Day. She followed with “Singing the Blues,” another original and the lead track from the same album. For her third song, Foster played Sister Rosetta Tharpe's “Up Above My Head.”

Foster came on the music scene in the 1990s with a powerful and soulful gospel voice often compared to that of Ella Fitzgerald.

Singing wordlessly like the women at her girlhood house of worship, then belting solo, Foster, arms extended wide as if she were about to embrace the entire planet, eventually ended in harmony with her bassist and drummer, eliciting a raucous ovation as Levitt organizers brought her a hard-earned drink.

Ruthie Foster Live In Concert @ The Hamilton Live — 7/30/23

Worthington, UK

Caldwell has a large Czech population that was referred to by the local WASP population as Bo hunks generally a mildly derogatory term for Bohemian.