Do you remember one of the first Mary Tyler Moore shows where perky, perky Mary tries to make a really great first impression by showing the old curmudgeon newsroom boss, Lou Grant, that she's well...really, really perky?
"You've got spunk," Lou says. Pause. "I hate spunk."
Well, Mississauga's own Alex Pangman has spunk, and you've got to love it.
Pangman, who is a real Mississaugan who attended Froebel School in Erindale Village, high school at Erindale Secondary and university at Erindale College. She has just released her third CD of old-time jazz and swing tunes.
It wasn't easy. Despite all kinds of critical praise from across the country, where she's toured and played so many festivals, no major label was interested.
"I'm no business woman, I'm a singer," Alex said recently. Nevertheless, she's managed to set up her own label and got the fabulous music, recorded with her top-flight A-list band of Toronto musicians called The Alleycats, on Real Gone Gal Records.
If you want to succeed in music these days, you often have to become your own corporation: booking agent, travel agent, manager and, if you have time, star.
Pangman clearly is in charge of her own career. She's been thinking for a long time about the next studio album, which was to have been recorded in New Orleans next month. Oops.
She's written some of her own songs and is writing more. She's already recorded a couple of duets with the jazz singer and pianist Denzal Sinclaire, who attended Applewood Heights once upon a time, and is coming to LAC for a Dec. 16 show.
There's also a little bit of country creeping into Pangman's soul, probably as a result of the influence of boyfriend Tom "Colonel" Parker, the leader of The Backstabbers Country Stringband. That roots group which plays mountain music, country, bluegrass and variations in between, has the same eclectic taste in old-timey music as Pangman.
Alex is also learning to pluck the mandolin and she and another talented singer of throwback material, Tara Hazelton, are teaming up with Doug Paisley on double bass at the Col. Tom's Swinging Door sessions, Wednesdays from 7-9 p.m. at the Cameron House downtown. It's just a fun side project for now. They call themselves Three's Country.
Pangman and Parker are also making a ’78 together. That's right, you can still make 78 RPM recordings though, of course, not for commercial distribution.
Pangman fell in love with the music of Connie Boswell, Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, Velida Snow and others by listening to the old records.
"I'm not trained vocally," she said recently. "I just listened to every piece of vinyl and shellac I could get my hands on."
Now she'll have one more to listen to in a very impressive collection.