Rawls in a Locke-Ober stew; Colts owner kicks in

LOVE IS A HURTIN' THING On the phone from San Diego, Lou Rawls didn't sound like his silky self. In fact, the Grammy-winning R&B singer was downright distraught. "I'm in big trouble with my wife," Rawls said, "and I need you to make restitution." The problem, he explained, was an innocuous item that appeared in this column two months ago concerning a lunch he had at chef Lydia Shire's Locke-Ober restaurant. (Shire had met Rawls way back in '71 when she was a cocktail waitress, and thought it'd be nice to host the septuagenarian soul man while he was in town performing at Scullers.) The item detailed the lunch -- Rawls feasted on lobster stew, lemon sole, and warm Indian pudding -- and was accompanied by a photo of Shire, in her chef's whites, serving Rawls and his friend, jazz impresario Fred Taylor. Fast forward to last week. Just days after delivering the couple's first child -- a son, Aiden Allen Rawls was born Jan. 10 -- Rawls's wife of one year, Nina Rawls, got her hands on a copy of the Nov. 20 Boston Globe and, inexplicably, blew her stack. "My wife read the story, and is very much upset about it. . . . It's wreaking havoc with my marriage," Rawls said. How much havoc? "She said, 'If you don't clean this up, I'm going to divorce you,' " he said. That's havoc, all right. Taylor, who's booked and been friends with Rawls for years, tried talking to Nina, but she wouldn't listen. "I told her this was actually a very lovely thing," Taylor said yesterday. "There is absolutely no basis for her to be upset." Shire, likewise, is baffled. The chef, who's happily married and has three grandchildren, said something's wrong when a simple, kind gesture can be so badly misinterpreted. "There's nothing to talk about," she said yesterday. "It's my nature to be generous. Period. End of story."

PUTTING SOME MORE ENGLISH ON IT Celebrity chef Todd English's stable is expanding again. His latest restaurant, to be called English's Italian, is slated to open in two weeks in New York City. Calling from Las Vegas late last week, English said he's teaming with Jeffrey Chodorow, the restaurant mogul who owns China Grill, Pure, and many other restaurants, to open a 280-seat place at 40th Street and Third Avenue. The place will be modeled on the Italian osterias he loves, English said, where for a set price diners can choose from many antipastis, pastas and meat courses, and mozzarella and other dishes will also be made tableside. . . . In other news, English is working with fellow chef Ming Tsai and author Michael Ruhlman on a new, prime-time reality show "Cooking Under Fire" on PBS. The winner of the show, which will have the look of a documentary, gets a chef's position at one of English's Manhattan eateries.

CHARITABLE IN DEFEAT Say this for Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay, he's a charitable guy. After working out at the Sports Club/LA Saturday, Irsay stopped by a table set up by the gym and neighboring restaurant, blu, to raise money for tsunami victims in South Asia. Irsay asked blu manager Tracy Frechette about the fundraising efforts, and told her that if his team prevailed over the Pats he'd return and donate $10,000. As he made his way to the elevator, Irsay stopped suddenly and said, "That's not right." He then returned and emptied his pockets of whatever cash he was carrying, about $700.

BIG SOUND Before the tsunami, Kristin Hersh quite liked the name of her new band. Now, though, she can understand why some people might find 50 Foot Wave unsettling. But there's nothing the former frontwoman of the Boston-based Throwing Muses can do about bad timing. "It's either on my part or God's," Hirsh told the Associated Press. (The band's new CD, "Golden Ocean," will be released in March.) Even after the wave struck, Hersh said she made no connection between the band name and the Asian tragedy. "I wasn't thinking about me," she said. "I was thinking about all of those people." So what does 50 Foot Wave mean? It's an audiophile term for the lowest sound audible to the human ear.

BOOK 'EM Prize-winners were announced at yesterday's annual meeting of the American Library Association at the Hynes Convention Center. Cynthia Kadohata received the John Newbery Award for her book "Kira-Kira," about a Japanese-American girl growing up in the south, and Kevin Henkes won the Randolph Caldecott Award for "Kitten's First Full Moon," a children's book about a kitty who thinks the moon is her bowl of milk. Toni Morrison, author of "Remember: The Journey to School Integration," and Kadir Nelson, illustrator of "Ellington Was Not a Street," each received Coretta Scott King Awards, which the ALA gives to African American authors and illustrators, and Boston native Meg Rosoff won the Michael L. Printz Award for her book "How I Live Now," about a young girl living in a terrorist-occupied England.

Alison Arnett of the Globe staff contributed to this column. Names can be reached at names@globe.com or at 617-929-8253.