Reveille With Beverly

12 for 12: Big 12's best coaches

Oklahoma State head coach Eddie Sutton waves to the crowd in Stillwater, Oklahoma, Saturday, January 15, 2005, after receiving an award for career wins after a victory over Iowa State put him in seventh place on career victories in the list, ahead of his mentor Henry Iba, in Stillwater. One of only 13 NCAA coaches with at least 800 wins, 368 Sutton piled at his alma mater.

In 1996, the Great Eight and a half of the Southwest Conference came together to create a super league called the Big 12. In hindsight, keeping the name of Southwest would have been wise.

This fall, the old Big Eight members of the Colorado and Nebraska are leaving the Big 12 with 10 members by category for the Pac-12 and Big Ten, respectively.

While the Big 12 will not be numerically correct - and neither will the Big Ten - it will keep the name because of the brand recognition built through 15 years of playing.

On the rest of the summer, the Express-News takes a look back at those years with the best - and worst times - the league had to offer.

Did Betty Roché Miss The Duke's A-Train? « GEEZER MUSIC CLUB

Although the legendary Duke Ellington is remembered for a number of his own compositions, Billy Strayhorn’s “Take The A-Train” is considered by many to be the Duke’s signature song. But it’s a piece with an interesting history, one that includes a young singer who seems to have mis-timed the train’s biggest moments.

When Wilmington-born Mary Elizabeth Roché won an amateur contest at Harlem’s Apollo Theater in pre-war New York, she knew it would give her a chance at a musical career. What she didn’t know was that it would lead to her getting a job a couple of years later with Duke Ellington’s immensely popular and respected orchestra.

Betty arrived just in time to sing at the Duke’s successful Carnegie Hall concert, performing in part of his “Black, Brown and Beige” to great reviews, and was also onboard later when the band appeared in the movie, Reveille With Beverly .  It was her first chance to make a statement with “Take The A Train” (video below). The song had already become a standard as an instrumental and had previously been vocalized by others, including Joya Sherrill, who had written some of the original lyrics. (The song’s lyrics often differed from singer to singer, and even from performance to performance, and was a scat-singer’s delight.)