This year Hummer used Ruth Brown's "This Little Girl's Gone Rockin'" in a television commercial. I don't know if she gets paid for that. The music business has usually not treated well the singer once called Little Miss Rhythm. That was only her nickname. The more impressive nickname is the one given to her label, Atlantic Records, which thanks to all of Ruth Brown's hits in the '50s was known as the House That Ruth Built. Atlantic would, of course, go on to make mint in the '70s with bands like Yes, Led Zeppelin, and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. By then Atlantic (except for fighting with her over royalties) and everyone else in the business had forgotten about Ruth Brown.

Musicians and Brown's fans never forgot her, though, and her music career took her out of the 9-to-5 world again in the '80s thanks to fans like Bonnie Raitt and director John Waters (who put her in "Hairspray"). When I saw Etta James perform at the Hilton a couple years ago, Brown was in the audience and James talked of her not as a peer but as an inspiration.

All of this to say: one of the joys of Las Vegas has been that, health permitting, the 79-year-old Brown performed for free at The Bootlegger Bistro (South on Las Vegas Boulevard near the outlet mall) every Thursday night. But now the Bootlegger has not only fired Brown, they did it in a particularly humiliating way. Norm Clarke of the Review-Journal spoke to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame singer about the situation, and Brown told him: "I worked on Thursday, and I got a letter on Friday saying they were firing me."

The Bootlegger is now saying it was all a misunderstanding and they hope to bring her back for some shows. Whatever. Brown indicates to Norm that she isn't buying it and she isn't going back. I sure hope some other spot in Vegas understands the honor it brings to offer Ruth Brown a stage.