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Roger Humphries (born January 30, 1944 Pittsburgh) is an American jazz drummer.
Born into a family of ten children in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Humphries began playing drums at age four, and went professional at age 14. He led an ensemble at Carnegie Hall at age 16. Early in the 1960s, he began touring with jazz musicians; one of his more prominent gigs was in a trio with Stanley Turrentine and Shirley Scott in 1962. In 1964, he worked with Horace Silver, appearing on the album Song for My Father, where he played on four tracks, including the title tune (on which album Roy Brooks played on two tracks from a session recorded a year earlier) and in 1965, Humphries performed on the Horace Silver album The Cape Verdean Blues with Silver, tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson, trumpeter Woody Shaw, trombonist J.J. Johnson and bassist Bob Cranshaw. Following this Humphries drummed for Ray Charles.
Humphries’s list of credits in jazz, R&B, and pop is extensive. Musicians he has played with, in addition to the above, include Lee Morgan, Grant Green, Billy Taylor, Bill Doggett, Benny Green, Lionel Hampton, Coleman Hawkins, Barry Harris, Clark Terry, J. J. Johnson, Billy Preston, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Dizzy Gillespie, Jack McDuff, Gene Harris, George Harris, George Benson, Jon Faddis, Slide Hampton, Johnny Griffin, Herbie Mann, Randy Brecker, Joe Williams, Milt Jackson, Jimmy Witherspoon, Hubert Laws, Dwayne Dolphin, Isley Brothers, and Illinois Jacquet.
more...spiral galaxy Messier 33 seems to have more than its fair share of glowing hydrogen gas. A prominent member of the local group of galaxies, M33 is also known as the Triangulum Galaxy and lies a mere 3 million light-years away. The galaxy’s central 60,000 light-years or so are shown in this sharp galaxy portrait. The portrait features M33’s reddish ionized hydrogen clouds or HII regions. Sprawling along loose spiral arms that wind toward the core, M33’s giant HII regions are some of the largest known stellar nurseries, sites of the formation of short-lived but very massive stars. Intense ultraviolet radiation from the luminous, massive stars ionizes the surrounding hydrogen gas and ultimately produces the characteristic red glow. In this image, broadband data were combined with narrowband data recorded through a filter that transmits the light of the strongest visible hydrogen and oxygen emission lines. 2.7mly
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Martyn Jerel Buchwald (January 30, 1942 – September 27, 2018 Cincinnati), known as Marty Balin (/ˈbælɪn/), was an American singer, songwriter, and musician best known as a member of Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship.
more...Ahmed Abdul-Malik (born Jonathan Tim, Jr.; January 30, 1927 – October 2, 1993 NY) was an American jazz double bassist and oud player. Abdul-Malik is remembered for integrating Middle Eastern and North African music styles in his jazz music. He was a bass player for Art Blakey, Earl Hines, Randy Weston, and Thelonious Monk, among others. Abdul-Malik recorded six albums as a leader between 1958 and 1964 before moving into jazz education.
more...Edward Brian “Tubby” Hayes (30 January 1935 – 8 June 1973) was a British jazzmulti-instrumentalist, best known for his virtuosic musicianship on tenor saxophone and for performing in jazz groups with fellow sax player Ronnie Scott and trumpeter Jimmy Deuchar. He is widely considered to be one of the finest jazz saxophonists to have emerged from Britain. Hayes died in June 1973, during a second heart operation at the Hammersmith Hospital, at the age of 38.
more...David Roy Eldridge (January 30, 1911 – February 26, 1989 Pittsburgh), nicknamed “Little Jazz“, was an American jazz trumpeter. His sophisticated use of harmony, including the use of tritone substitutions, his virtuosic solos exhibiting a departure from the dominant style of jazz trumpet innovator Louis Armstrong, and his strong impact on Dizzy Gillespie mark him as one of the most influential musicians of the swing era and a precursor of bebop.
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Bettye LaVette (born Betty Jo Haskins, January 29, 1946 Muskegon, MI) is an American soulsinger who made her first record at sixteen, but achieved only intermittent fame until 2005, when her album I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise was released to widespread critical acclaim, and was named on many critics’ “Best of 2005” lists. Her next album, The Scene of the Crime, debuted at number one on Billboard‘s Top Blues Albums chart and was nominated for Best Contemporary Blues Album at the 2008 Grammy Awards. She received the Legacy of Americana Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2023 Americana Music Honors & Awards.
LaVette’s eclectic musical style combines elements of soul, blues, rock and roll, funk, gospel, and country music. In 2020, she was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.
more...Year of the Snake. In Chinese culture, the snake is a symbol of wisdom, intuition, and transformation.
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NGC 3718, also called Arp 214, is a galaxy located approximately 52 million light years from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major. It is either a lenticular or spiral galaxy.
NGC 3718 exhibits a warped, S-shape similar to NGC 6872, possibly a result of gravitational interaction with NGC 3729, another spiral galaxy located 150,000 light-years away.
Beverly Kenney (January 29, 1932, Harrison, New Jersey – April 13, 1960, Greenwich Village, New York City) was an American jazz singer. Kenney attempted suicide twice and succeeded the third time ingesting a combination of alcohol and Seconal on April 12, 1960, in a one-room apartment in the University Residence Hotel located at 45 East 11th Street in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York.Her father, Charles J. Kenney, had dinner with her two nights earlier and said “everything seemed fine”. She died at age 28.
more...James Lee Jamerson (January 29, 1936 – August 2, 1983 Edisto Island, SC) was an American bassist. He was the uncredited bassist on most of the Motown Records hits in the 1960s and early 1970s (Motown did not list session musician credits on their releases until 1971), and is now regarded as one of the greatest and most influential bass players in modern music history. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Famein 2000. As a session musician he played on twenty-three Billboard Hot 100 number-one hits, as well as fifty-six R&B number-one hits.
In its special issue “The 100 Greatest Bass Players” in 2017, Bass Player magazine ranked Jamerson number one and called him the most important and influential bass guitarist. In 2020, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Jamerson number one in its list of the 50 greatest bassists of all time.
Long troubled by alcoholism, Jamerson died of complications from cirrhosis, heart failure and pneumonia on August 2, 1983, in Los Angeles. He is interred at Detroit’s historic Woodlawn Cemetery.
more...Edwin Thomas “Ed” Shaughnessy (January 29, 1929 – May 24, 2013) was a swing music and jazz drummer long associated with Doc Severinsen and a member of The Tonight Show Band on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
Shaughnessy was born in Jersey City, New Jersey and grew up in the New York Cityarea, working in the 1940s with George Shearing, Jack Teagarden, and Charlie Ventura. In the 1950s he worked in the Charlie Ventura, Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorseybands. In the 1960s he played for Count Basie prior to joining The Tonight Show Band. He was the drummer on Bashin’: The Unpredictable Jimmy Smith in 1962 which featured big band arrangements by Oliver Nelson, including the pop hit “Walk on the Wild Side” which peaked at #21 on the Billboard chart. Shaughnessy recorded extensively throughout his career and was known for his drum competitions with Buddy Rich.
Although best known as a big band drummer, Shaughnessy also performed small group work with Gene Ammons, Roy Eldridge, Billie Holiday, Mundell Lowe, Teo Macero, Charles Mingus, Shirley Scott, Jack Sheldon, Horace Silver, and many others. For several years Shaughnessy was a member of the house band at Birdland and other New York clubs. In the early 1970s he was doing similar work in Los Angeles and is credited with discovering Diane Schuur, whom he introduced at the 1976 Monterey Jazz Festival. Shaughnessy played in an early incarnation of the “Sesame Street” orchestra along with percussionist Danny Epstein, reed player Wally Kane, and, on occasion, guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli.
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