4d (edited) • General discussion
Harvey Thompson shares an intimate moment with The "Fabulous" Jo Thompson
January 18, 2026 (Tokyo, Japan) - This is an excerpt from jazz singer Harvey Thompson's biography. Harvey shared this with me while writing his biography and so I decided to put a clip up of The "Fabulous" Jo Thompson singing a tribute to Lena Horne. Here is the excerpt from Harvey's book:
"One of Harvey's most intimate and memorable experiences came during a trip to New York to visit his brother Johnny and attend to personal matters. After spending an evening at Dizzy's Club with Johnny, sharing a bottle of wine and taking in the show, Harvey traveled by bus to the suburbs the next day to visit Jo Thompson at the nursing home where she was living. When he arrived and asked to see her, Jo came down to the lobby a short while later. They went over to the piano, where Jo played and Harvey sang. He believes it was either "Our Love Is Here to Stay" or Nat King Cole's "Love," though he can't recall with certainty.
If it was "Our Love Is Here to Stay," there was a genuine intimate moment shared between them: George Gershwin's final composition before his death in 1937, now shared between two friends. It was an unadorned, precious moment: Jo in casual clothes without makeup, Harvey beside her, two artists sharing music one last time. Harvey would be among the last to "perform" with Jo Thompson, the "female Bobby Short", mother, grandmother, and beloved musical legend, before her death in March 2021 from COVID-19 complications. Tragically, her brother, Dr. Walter Thompson, died of COVID-19 three months before she did."
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Harvey Thompson shares an intimate moment with The "Fabulous" Jo Thompson
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Listen to jazz vocalist Harvey Thompson through recordings and live sessions from Japan. Detroit-born, he moved there in 2002.
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