What nationally known entertainer holds the record for most Pantagraph career profiles, you ask?

You didn’t ask? Never mind, then.

Well, actually, scratch that: do mind, please, since the record-holder is about to grace us with another of her periodic homecomings.

And anyone that faithful to her home base deserves the recognition, we say.

We’re talking about former downtown (yes, d-o-w-n-t-o-w-n) Normal club fixture Suzy Bogguss, whose very first Pantagraph profile appeared 28 years ago this fall.
Sheesh, yeah: 28 years.

Flashing forward, Suzy’s most recent interview was published around 21 months ago, as a GO! cover story, all the better to advance her 2007 Christmas show at the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts.

That’s where she’s making a return appearance this weekend, at 7:30 p.m. Saturday.

By popular demand, notes the BCPA (tickets are $27 to $33 at the BCPA box office).

All told, Suzy has been a Pantagraph entertainment section cover girl a record four times, as well as an inside story subject several more.

And the coverage couldn’t have happened to a sweeter person, trust us.

Over the years, we’ve chatted with the Aledo native about her life and times just about everywhere, it seems.

There was the highly informal occasion sitting in the downstairs pizza den of her primo Twin Cities hangout, the long-gone Galery on East Beaufort Street (now the site of u-p-t-o-w-n Normal’s recently shuttered NV Ultra Lounge).

At the time, Suzy was still deep into her long-haired-hippie-chick phase: a campus-club folk singer who more than held her acoustic own against the amplified onslaught of most Galery players.

Then there was the time we interviewed her in, ahem, um, well … just the facts, ma’am … her hotel room, on, um, er, her, well … let’s be frank … bed at a Days Inn in Springfield.

Stifle all salacious thoughts, however: she’d just checked into the hotel, bags in tow … the room was tiny … there was no place for the nervous young reporter to sit comfortably while taking notes … and Suzy graciously said, “come on, let’s just sit here!”

Far be it from us to have rudely declined the suggestion.

At that point, Suzy had advanced to the big time as a Nashville heavyweight, scoring hit records, this way and that.

She did it, as you may recall from that record number of Pantagraph profiles, by driving herself to Nashville, circa the mid-1980s, and landing a gig at Dolly Parton’s Dollywood amusement park.

That led to a most fateful meeting: country singer Doug Crider, soon to become her mate for life.

The rest is history, with the added twist that, in her last two Twin Cities shows, in 2003 and 2007, her sound had taken a turn for the jazzy.

In 2003, her “Swing” album had just come out, and the music did just what the title said. In 2007, her new album, “Sweet Danger,” had just entered the Billboard Contemporary Jazz Chart at No. 4.

The latter even came with a warning sticker affixed to the cover, a la the “parental advisory” caveats we all know and love. It cautioned, “This music is NOT what you expect! Listen with an open mind.”

To heck with minds.

For our part, we’ve been listening with open ears.

And we’ve been doing it for a long, long time.

And the most-covered entertainer in Pantagraph history has never made us wish otherwise.

Dan Craft is Pantagraph entertainment editor. He can be reached at (309) 829-9000, Ext. 259 or via e-mail at dcraft@pantagraph.com.