Cotton Club

It's getting on toward midnight in Toronto and Lena Horne has her slacks on and her feet stretched out in boots and she's wearing a blousy man's jacket and she still looks as eerily glamorous as the star-struck Canadian night. She looks as good up-close as she did on stage, and she looks very good indeed on stage. Her luminous eyes and her high cheekbones and the rich curve of her flawless neck defined beauty for a couple of generations of American women, and men too. She's just finished her two-hour show, freshened up a bit and entertained a dozen admirers in her dressing room.

Versatile singer and actress Parris Lane returns to her hometown on May 10 with her one-woman show, Parris in Springtime, at Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts. Lane will return from Las Vegas to stage this concert benefiting Chrysalis House, a residential treatment program for chemically dependent women in recovery and their children. Featured on Maryland Public Television's Bob the Vid Tech as Brianna, Lane divides her time between Annapolis and Las Vegas, where she pursues her singing career and works with her recording company - Raven Productions, named for her daughter.

What: Jazz at the Garrett-Jacobs Mansion Where: 11 W. Mount Vernon Place When: 2 p.m. Sunday. Why: Because Chris Calloway Brooks and the Nu Yook City Cotton Club Ensemble are playing in one of the prettiest rooms in Baltimore. Brooks is the grandson of band leader (and onetime Baltimorean) Cab Calloway. At the concert, Brooks will talk a bit about his grandfather's work and how it changed American music. Information: Call 410-433-0354. Admission: Tickets are $15 and can be purchased at www.missiontix.

* Charles "Honi" Coles, 81, a Broadway tap dancer so graceful he was once said to make butterflies look clumsy, died in his sleep yesterday of lung cancer at his home in Queens, N.Y. His career on Broadway spanned 50 years and dozens of musicals, but the tall, lean dancer was best known for an effervescent grace and fluidity in his footwork. Mr. Coles had leading roles in the original Broadway versions of "Hello, Dolly" and "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes." He also appeared in the movie "Cotton Club."

Jazz -- The Baltimore-Washington JAZZfest's "Claude Ligon House of JAZZ," scheduled from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. tomorrow at Historic Oakland, includes simultaneous performances in five rooms by Fuzzy Kane in "Birdland," Carlos Johnson in "The Blue Note," Greg Thompkins in "18th & Vine," Saisa in "Village Vanguard" and Steve Guyger in "The Cotton Club." A chill-out room, "Club 1-7-5," displays vintage jazz memorabilia. The cost is $65, and includes a buffet and cash bar with happy-hour prices.

It's not often in judging the biography of a great artist that you can just pick up the phone and call one of the people who knew him best - and remains a principal keeper of the historical flame. But that is exactly the case with Cab Calloway, the Baltimore-raised jazz bandleader, singer and actor who is profiled in TV's "American Masters" series at 10 p.m. Monday on PBS. Camay Calloway Murphy, the performer's daughter, lives here and is happy to talk about her late father and how she feels he is treated in "American Masters Cab Calloway: Sketches.

4Kids: Featured Site of the Month What is the wingspan of the giant flying foxes that live in Indonesia? TICKLE YOUR FUNNY BONE Laughter may just be the best medicine, according to the ThinkQuest Web site Laughing Out Loud to Good Health. Giggle your way to library.thinkquest. org / 25500 / You'll find tons of information about the positive benefits of laughter. The site examines emotions and how they contribute to the things we find funny. Kid Quest: What three factors help you to form the "right attitude" as an "antidote to stress"?

Richmond B. Sullivan, 61, Baltimore Co. Times founder Richmond Brewster Sullivan, founder of the Baltimore County Times and a filmmaker for the Internal Revenue Service, died Wednesday of complications from a stroke at the Hospice of Northern Virginia. He was 61. Born in Lutherville, Mr. Sullivan graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in journalism. He founded the Times in 1968, leaving the paper in 1974 to work briefly as a spokesman for Towson State University. He moved to Virginia Beach, Va., in 1975 to edit the Suffolk News-Herald, where he received honors for producing the "Best Front Page in the State."

Joanie Weston,62, a strapping power hitter who passed up a promising, respectable future in softball to become the gum-chewing, power-skating, hip-bumping golden girl of Roller Derby, died of a brain disorder May 10 at her home near San Francisco.Thelma Carpenter,77, whose long roller-coaster career as a singer took her to the heights with the big bands of the 1930s and 1940s, out of show business into years as a file clerk and back to the big-time on Broadway in the title role of "Hello, Dolly!

At a time when a fellow Baltimorean named George Ruth was barely in knickers, Joe Gans was the biggest star in town. Along with Cardinal James Gibbons — the Cardinal Gibbons — Gans was one of the most famous people in the country. Maybe even the world. Boxing fans knew Gans, who died a century ago Tuesday, as the world's first African-American champion, but he was more than that. Those in Baltimore knew Gans as the proprietor of the city's hottest nightclub who tooled around the cobblestone streets in Henry Ford's newfangled automobile.