Public Memorial Held For Jennifer Hudson's Relatives

A public memorial service took place this weekend for Jennifer Hudson's mother, brother and nephew. Hundreds of Chicago residents attended the memorial, which took place at the city's Pleasant Gift Missionary Baptist Church. "They are all in Heaven having a 'hallelujah good time," Reverend Quentin Washington said of the deceased, "Their lives...were not in vain. Their legacies live on." A private memorial was scheduled to take place today in Chicago. Jennifer Hudson did not attend the public service.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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