KAREN MELTON, 73, on June 29 in St, Louis, MO following a series of debilitating strokes. A diploma graduate of the Research Hospital School of Nursing in Kansas City, Missouri, she had a 45-year ministry of caregiving, including nearly 10 years at Bothwell Hospital in Sedalia. MO and almost 35 years at Mercy Hospital in Washington, MO.
She and her husband Larry co-founded the first Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival in Sedalia in 1974.
Lew Shaw started writing about music as the publicist for the famous Berkshire Music Barn in the 1960s. He joined the West Coast Rag in 1989 and has been a guiding light to this paper through the two name changes since then as we grew to become The Syncopated Times. 47 of his profiles of today's top musicians are collected in Jazz Beat: Notes on Classic Jazz. Volume two, Jazz Beat Encore: More Notes on Classic Jazz contains 43 more! Lew taps his extensive network of connections and friends throughout the traditional jazz world to bring us his Jazz Jottings column every month.
