Joseph Anthony Passalaqua (Joe Pass), guitarist: born New Jersey 13 January 1929; married (one son, one daughter); died Los Angeles 23 May 1994.

Frances Rose Shore (Dinah Shore), singer, actress: born Winchester, Tennessee 1 March 1917; married George Montgomery (one son, one daughter; marriage dissolved 1962), 1963 Maurice F. Smith (marriage dissolved 1964); died Los Angeles 24 February 1994.

THE FIRST time I heard 'How Long Has This Been Going On?' it made an impression very different from the one George and Ira Gershwin intended. I was listening to the record of Judy Garland's 23 April 1961 appearance at Carnegie Hall. She was greeted by the most hysterical adulation of her comeback tour, and her intensity matched it. I assumed that the song concerned adultery, and that the title was the question of a heartbroken wife. The lines 'Kiss me once, then once more/What a dunce I was before]' seemed to support this: the wife confusedly asking her faithless husband for comfort, while berating herself for not noticing the obvious signs. Garland's breathiness as she leaned into the 'How', and the agony with which she gobbled up the final phrases over the pianist's staccato attack convinced me that this was a song about misery and betrayal.

THERE'S a party piece that Stevie Wonder does, if egged on by the people around him. It's an impression of himself 20 years from now, in his early sixties, washed up in some Las Vegas casino, churning out the hits for the supper- club crowd. Just for a few seconds before he cracks up laughing, he becomes a caricature crooner, clicking his fingers, corny as hell. And what he sings is this: 'Yooo-arrrr the sunshine of my life - yeah] - That's why I'll alwaaaaays be arouuunnnnd'. Wonder has a fat songbook to pick from, but this is the number he chooses to ruin for a laugh, ahead of the day when he may have to ruin it for a living.

'With a voice like Ella's ringing out

Paul Acket, administrator, died The Hague 7 October, aged 69. Organiser of the annual North Sea Jazz Festival, which he founded in 1976. Lasting several days, it has featured artists such as Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Lionel Hampton, Stan Getz and Count Basie. Founded the music magazine Muziek Express in 1956.

Jim Nabbie, singer, born Tampa Florida 1920, died Atlanta Georgia 15 September 1992.

WHAT DO you do when you're an international star who can't get a hit, and a tabloid demon in the Scargill and Gaddafi class, and the time comes for that famously difficult third album? Well, if you're Sinead O'Connor, you sign up producer Phil Ramone and a 47-piece orchestra, and wrap your contentious larynx around a sackful of standards, previously made famous by a gamut of legendary women singers; from Julie London to Alison Moyet, via Ella Fitzgerald and Elaine Paige (well, Julie Covington did 'Don't Cry For Me Argentina' first, but I suppose Paige's name was more likely to cause outrage).