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John Aloysius Fahey (/ˈfeɪhi/ FAY-hee; February 28, 1939 – February 22, 2001 Washington DC) was an American fingerstyle guitarist and composer who played the steel-string acoustic guitar as a solo instrument. His style has been enormously influential and has been described as the foundation of the genre of American primitive guitar, a term borrowed from painting and referring mainly to the self-taught nature of the music and its minimalist style. Fahey borrowed from the folk and blues traditions in American roots music, having compiled many forgotten early recordings in these genres. He would later incorporate 20th-century classical, Portuguese, Brazilian, and Indian influences into his work.
Fahey spent many of his later years in poverty and poor health, but enjoyed a minor career resurgence in the late 1990s, with a turn towards the avant-garde. He also created a series of abstract paintings in his final years. Fahey died in 2001 from complications from heart surgery. In 2003, he was ranked 35th on Rolling Stone magazine’s “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time” list. In 2023, Rolling Stone ranked Fahey as 40th greatest guitarist of all time.
more...William Correa (February 28, 1934 – September 15, 1983), better known by his stage name Willie Bobo, was an American Latin jazz percussionist of Puerto Rican descent. Bobo rejected the stereotypical expectations of Latino music and was noted for combining elements of jazz, Latin and rhythm and bluesmusic.
Born William Correa to a Puerto Rican family, Bobo grew up in Spanish Harlem, New York City, United States. His father played the cuatro, a ten stringed guitar-like instrument. As a teenager, Bobo taught himself the bongos and later the congas, timbales and drums. In 1947, Bobo started working as a band boy for Machito in order to gain entrance to the band’s concerts, sometimes filling in on percussion.
At age 12, he began his professional career as a dancer and two years later made his recording debut as a bongo player.
more...Supernova remnant Simeis 147. Also cataloged as Sharpless 2-240, the filamentary nebula goes by the popular nickname the Spaghetti Nebula. Seen toward the boundary of the constellations of the Bull (Taurus) and the Charioteer (Auriga), the impressive gas structure covers nearly 3 degrees on the sky, equivalent to 6 full moons. That’s about 150 light-years at the stellar debris cloud’s estimated distance of 3,000 light-years. This composite image includes data taken through narrow-band filters isolating emission from hydrogen (red) and oxygen (blue) glowing gas. The supernova remnant has an estimated age of about 40,000 years, meaning light from this massive stellar explosion first reached the Earth when woolly mammoths roamed free. Besides the expanding remnant, this cosmic catastrophe left behind a pulsar: a spinning neutron starthat is the remnant of the original star’s core.
more...Dexter Gordon (February 27, 1923 – April 25, 1990 LA,CA) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist, composer, and bandleader. He was among the most influential early bebop musicians, which included other greats such as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Bud Powell. Gordon’s height was 6 feet 6 inches (198 cm), so he was also known as “Long Tall Dexter” and “Sophisticated Giant”. His studio and performance career spanned more than 40 years.
Gordon’s sound was commonly characterized as being “large” and spacious and he had a tendency to play behind the beat. He was known for inserting musical quotes into his solos, with sources as diverse as “Happy Birthday” and well known melodies from the operas of Wagner. Quoting from various musical sources is not unusual in jazz improvisation, but Gordon did it frequently enough to make it a hallmark of his style. One of his major influences was Lester Young. Gordon, in turn, was an early influence on John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins. Rollins and Coltrane then influenced Gordon’s playing as he explored hard bop and modal playing during the 1960s.
Gordon was known for his genial and humorous stage presence. He was an advocate of playing to communicate with the audience, which was his musical approach as well. His improvisation was remarkably engaging and intelligent, but never gratuitously complex or unusual. It was always a conversation simultaneously delightful and intellectual. One of his idiosyncratic rituals was to recite lyrics from each ballad before playing it.
A photograph by Herman Leonard of Gordon taking a smoke break at the Royal Roost in 1948 is one of the iconic images in jazz photography. Cigarettes were a recurring theme on covers of Gordon’s albums.
Gordon was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his performance in the Bertrand Tavernier film Round Midnight (Warner Bros, 1986), and he won a Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Soloist, for the soundtrack album The Other Side of Round Midnight (Blue Note Records, 1986). He also had a cameo role in the 1990 film Awakenings. In 2018, Gordon’s album Go (Blue Note, 1962) was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.
more...José Melis Guiu (February 27, 1920 – April 7, 2005) was a Cuban-American bandleader and television personality.
Melis was born in Havana, Cuba. He studied at the Havana Conservatory of Music and a Cuban government scholarship enabled him to continue his education in Paris. When he was 16, he arrived in the United States, graduated from the Juilliard School of Music and worked as a lounge pianist. During World War II, while he was serving as the musical director for the USO’s New York City branch of the USO, he met Jack Paar, and the two remained friends for years.
more...Mildred Bailey (born Mildred Rinker; February 27, 1907 – December 12, 1951) was a Native American jazz singer during the 1930s, known as “The Queen of Swing”, “The Rockin’ Chair Lady” and “Mrs. Swing”. She recorded the songs “For Sentimental Reasons“, “It’s So Peaceful in the Country”, “Doin’ The Uptown Lowdown”, “Trust in Me“, “Where Are You?“, “I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart“, “Small Fry“, “Please Be Kind“, “Darn That Dream“, “Rockin’ Chair“, “Blame It on My Last Affair”, and “Says My Heart”. She had three records that reached number one on the popular charts.
She grew up on the Coeur d’Alene Reservation in Idaho, where her mother was an enrolled member. The family moved to Spokane, Washington when she was 13. Her younger brothers also became musicians. Her brother, Al Rinker, started to perform as a singer with Bing Crosby in Spokane and became a member of The Rhythm Boys. As adults, Charles Rinker was a lyricist, and Miles Rinker was a clarinet and saxophone player who later became a booking agent.
Bailey was born Mildred Rinker on a farm in rural Tekoa, Washington. Her mother Josephine was a member of the Coeur d’Alene people and a devout Roman Catholic.
more...This densely populated group of stars is the globular cluster known as NGC 1841, which is found within the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way galaxy that lies about 162 000 light-years away. Satellite galaxies are galaxies that are bound by gravity in orbits around a more massive host galaxy. We typically think of our galaxy’s nearest galactic companion as being the Andromeda Galaxy, but it would be more accurate to say that Andromeda is the nearest galaxy that is not in orbit around the Milky Way galaxy. In fact, our galaxy is orbited by tens of known satellite galaxies that are far closer than Andromeda, the largest and brightest of which is the LMC, which is easily visible to the naked eye from the southern hemisphere (although this is decreasingly the case thanks to light pollution).
The LMC is home to many globular clusters. These celestial bodies fall somewhere between open clusters — which are much less dense and tightly bound — and small, compact galaxies. Increasingly sophisticated observations have revealed the stellar populations and other characteristics of globular clusters to be varied and complex, and it is not well understood how these tightly-packed clusters form. However, there are certain consistencies across all globular clusters: they are very stable and so are capable of lasting a long time, and can therefore be very old. This means that globular clusters often contain large numbers of very old stars, which make them something akin to celestial ‘fossils’. Just as fossils provide insight into the early development of life on Earth, globular clusters such as NGC 1841 can provide insights into very early star formation in galaxies.
more...William Sherille Levise Jr. (born February 26, 1945), known professionally as Mitch Ryder, is an American rock singer who has recorded more than 25 albums over more than four decades.
Ryder was born on February 26, 1945, in Hamtramck, Michigan. He spent his high school years in Warren, Michigan, a suburb north of Detroit.He formed his first band, Tempest, when he was in high school, and the group gained some notice playing at a Detroit soul music club called The Village. Ryder next appeared fronting a band named Billy Lee & The Rivieras, which had limited success until they met songwriter / record producer Bob Crewe. He selected his stage name when he saw “Mitch Ryder” in the Manhattan telephone directory and renamed the group Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels. They recorded several hit records for his DynoVoice Records and New Voice labels in the mid to late 1960s, most notably 1966’s “Devil with a Blue Dress On“, their highest-charting single at number four, as well as “Jenny Take a Ride!” which reached number 10 in 1965, and “Sock It to Me, Baby!”, a number six hit in 1967. The Detroit Wheels were John Badanjek on drums, Mark Manko on lead guitar, Joe Kubert (not to be confused with the comic book illustrator Joe Kubert) on rhythm guitar, Jim McCarty (not to be confused with the Yardbirds drummer of the same name) on lead guitar and Jim McAllister on bass.
more...Chris Anderson (February 26, 1926 – February 4, 2008) was an American jazz pianist, who might be best known as an influence on Herbie Hancock.
Born in Chicago on February 26, 1926, Anderson taught himself piano and started playing in Chicago clubs in the mid-1940s and played with Von Freeman and Charlie Parker, among others.
Despite the respect of his peers, Anderson had difficulty finding work or popular acclaim due in large part to his disabilities. He was blind and his bones were unusually fragile, causing numerous fractures, which at times compromised his ability to perform at the times or places requested, although he continued to record until he was well into his 70s. A Down Beat profile indicated he had “Osteogenesis”, probably meaning osteogenesis imperfecta.
He died of a stroke on February 4, 2008, in Manhattan, New York City, at the age of 81.
more...John R. Cash (born J. R. Cash; February 26, 1932 – September 12, 2003) was an American countrysinger-songwriter. Most of Cash’s music contains themes of sorrow, moral tribulation, and redemption, especially songs from the later stages of his career. He was known for his deep, calm bass-baritonevoice, the distinctive sound of his Tennessee Three backing band characterized by train-like chugging guitar rhythms, a rebelliousness coupled with an increasingly somber and humble demeanor, free prison concerts, and a trademark all-black stage wardrobe, which earned him the nickname the “Man in Black“.
Born to poor cotton farmers in Kingsland, Arkansas, Cash rose to fame during the mid-1950s in the burgeoning rockabilly scene in Memphis, Tennessee, after serving four years in the Air Force. He traditionally began his concerts by simply introducing himself, “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash”, followed by “Folsom Prison Blues“, one of his signature songs. His other signature songs include “I Walk the Line“, “Ring of Fire“, “Get Rhythm“, and “Man in Black“. He also recorded humorous numbers like “One Piece at a Time” and “A Boy Named Sue“, a duet with his future wife June called “Jackson” (followed by many further duets after their wedding), and railroad songs such as “Hey, Porter“, “Orange Blossom Special“, and “Rock Island Line“. During the last stage of his career, he covered songs by contemporary rock artists; among his most notable covers were “Hurt” by Nine Inch Nails, “Rusty Cage” by Soundgarden, and “Personal Jesus” by Depeche Mode.
Cash is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold more than 90 million records worldwide. His genre-spanning music embraced country, rock and roll, rockabilly, blues, folk, and gospelsounds. This crossover appeal earned him the rare honor of being inducted into the Country Music, Rock and Roll, and Gospel Music Halls of Fame. His music career was dramatized in the 2005 biopic Walk the Line, in which Cash was portrayed by American film actor Joaquin Phoenix.
more...Antoine Dominique Domino Jr. (February 26, 1928 – October 24, 2017), known as Fats Domino, was an American singer-songwriter and pianist. One of the pioneers of rock and roll music, Domino sold more than 65 million records. Born in New Orleans to a French Creole family, Domino signed to Imperial Records in 1949. His first single “The Fat Man” is cited by some historians as the first rock and roll singleand the first to sell more than 1 million copies. Domino continued to work with the song’s co-writer Dave Bartholomew, contributing his distinctive rolling piano style to Lloyd Price‘s “Lawdy Miss Clawdy” (1952) and scoring a string of mainstream hits beginning with “Ain’t That a Shame” (1955). Between 1955 and 1960, he had eleven Top 10 US pop hits. By 1955, five of his records had sold more than a million copies, being certified gold.
Domino was shy and modest by nature but made a significant contribution to the rock and roll genre.Elvis Presley declared Domino a “huge influence on me when I started out” and when they first met in 1959, described him as “the real king of rock ‘n’ roll”. The Beatles were also heavily influenced by Domino.
Four of Domino’s records were named to the Grammy Hall of Fame for their significance: “Blueberry Hill“, “Ain’t That a Shame”, “Walking to New Orleans” and “The Fat Man”. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as part of its first group of inductees in 1986. The Associated Press estimates that during his career, Domino “sold more than 110 million records”.
more...By 3:30 am in Iceland, on a quiet September night, much of that night’s auroras had died down. Suddenly, unexpectedly, a new burst of particles streamed down from space, lighting up the Earth’s atmosphere once again. This time, surprisingly, pareidoliacally, the night lit up with an amazing shape reminiscent of a giant phoenix. With camera equipment at the ready, two quick sky images were taken, followed immediately by a third of the land. The mountain in the background is Helgafell, while the small foreground river is called Kaldá, both located about 30 kilometers north of Iceland’s capital Reykjavík. Seasoned skywatchers will note that just above the mountain, toward the left, is the constellation of Orion, while the Pleiades star cluster is also visible just above the frame center. The 2016 aurora, which lasted only a minute and was soon gone forever — would possibly be dismissed as a fanciful fable — were it not captured in the featured, digitally-composed, image mosaic.
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