mick laBriola

Emmanuel N’Djoké “Manu” Dibango (12 December 1933 – 24 March 2020) was a Cameroonian musician and songwriter who played saxophone and vibraphone. He developed a musical style fusing jazz, funk, and traditional Cameroonian music. His father was a member of the Yabassi ethnic group, while his mother was a Duala. He was best known for his 1972 single “Soul Makossa“.The song has been referred to as the most sampled African song in addition Dibango, himself, as the most sampled African musician in history. He died from COVID-19 on 24 March 2020.

William Henry “Chick” Webb (February 10, 1905 – June 16, 1939) was an American jazz and swing music drummer and band leader.

Webb was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to William H. and Marie Webb. The year of his birth is disputed. The Encyclopædia Britannica and Allmusic indicate 1905, and this seems to be supported by censusinformation. Other publications claim other years. During Webb’s lifetime, a December 1937 DownBeatmagazine article, “The Rise of a Crippled Genius”, stated he was born in 1909, which is the year that appears on his grave marker. In 1939, The New York Times stated that Webb was born in 1907, the year also suggested in Rhythm on Record by Hilton Schleman.

Webb was one of four children; the other three were sisters (Bessie, Mabel, and Ethel). His sister Mabel married Wilbur Porter around 1928. When an infant, Webb fell down some stairsteps in his family’s home, crushing several vertebrae and requiring surgery, from which he never regained full mobility. The injury progressed to tuberculosis of the spine, leaving him with short stature and a badly deformed spine which caused him to appear hunchbacked. The idea of playing an instrument was suggested by his doctor to “loosen up” his bones. He supported himself as a newspaper boy to save enough money to buy drums, and first played professionally at age 11.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b0sV3NTZRM&list=PLEB3LPVcGcWY64uqsbXgmqroGvfDENO0l&index=4&t=45s

Carole King Klein (born Carol Joan Klein; February 9, 1942 NY,NY) is an American singer-songwriter and musician who has been active since 1958. One of the most successful female songwriters of the latter half of the 20th century in the US, she wrote or co-wrote 118 pop hits on the Billboard Hot 100. She also wrote 61 hits that charted in the UK, making her the most successful female songwriter on the UK singles charts between 1962 and 2005.

King’s major success began in the 1960s when she and her first husband, Gerry Goffin, wrote more than two dozen chart hits, many of which have become standards, for numerous artists. She has continued writing for other artists since then. King’s success as a performer in her own right did not come until the 1970s, when she sang her own songs, accompanying herself on the piano, in a series of albums and concerts. After experiencing commercial disappointment with her debut album Writer, King scored her breakthrough with the album Tapestry, which topped the U.S. album chart for 15 weeks in 1971 and remained on the charts for more than six years.

King has made 25 solo albums, the most successful being Tapestry, which held the record for most weeks at No. 1 by a female artist for more than 20 years. Her record sales were estimated at more than 75 million copies worldwide. She has won four Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. She has been inducted twice into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as a performer and songwriter. She is the recipient of the 2013 Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, the first woman to be so honored. She is also a 2015 Kennedy Center Honoree.

Ernest Dale Tubb (February 9, 1914 – September 6, 1984), nicknamed the Texas Troubadour, was an American singer and songwriter and one of the pioneers of country music. His biggest career hit song, “Walking the Floor Over You” (1941), marked the rise of the honky tonk style of music.

In 1948, he was the first singer to record a hit version of Billy Hayes and Jay W. Johnson’s “Blue Christmas“, a song more commonly associated with Elvis Presley and his late-1950s version. Another well-known Tubb hit was “Waltz Across Texas” (1965) (written by his nephew Quanah Talmadge Tubb, known professionally as Billy Talmadge), which became one of his most requested songs and is often used in dance halls throughout Texas during waltz lessons. Tubb recorded duets with the then up-and-coming Loretta Lynn in the early 1960s, including their hit “Sweet Thang”. Tubb is a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Walter Sylvester Page (February 9, 1900 – December 20, 1957) was an American jazz multi-instrumentalist and bandleader, best known for his groundbreaking work as a double bass player with Walter Page’s Blue Devils and the Count Basie Orchestra.

Page was born in Gallatin, Missouri, on February 9, 1900, to parents Edward and Blanche Page. Page showed a love for music even as a child, perhaps due in part to the influence of his aunt Lillie, a music teacher. Page’s mother, with whom he moved to Kansas City in 1910, exposed him to folksongs and spirituals, a critical foundation for developing his love of music. He gained his first musical experience as a bass drum and bass horn player in the brass bands of his neighborhood. Under the direction of Major N. Clark Smith, a retired military bandleader who provided Page his first formal training in music, Page took up the string bass in his time at Lincoln High School.

Maria do Carmo Miranda da Cunha GCIH, OMC (9 February 1909 – 5 August 1955), known professionally as Carmen Miranda, was a Portuguese-born Brazilian singer, dancer and actress. Nicknamed “The Brazilian Bombshell”, she was known for her signature fruit hat outfit that she wore in her American films. As a young woman, she designed hats in a boutique before making her first recordings with composer Josué de Barros in 1929. Miranda’s 1930 recording of “Taí (Pra Você Gostar de Mim)”, written by Joubert de Carvalho, catapulted her to stardom in Brazil as the foremost interpreter of samba.

During the 1930s, Miranda performed on Brazilian radio and appeared in five Brazilian chanchadas, films celebrating Brazilian music, dance and the country’s carnival culture. Hello, Hello Brazil! and Hello, Hello, Carnival! embodied the spirit of these early Miranda films. The 1939 musical Banana da Terra (directed by Ruy Costa) gave the world her “Baiana” image, inspired by Afro-Brazilians from the north-eastern state of Bahia.

Floyd Dixon (February 8, 1929 – July 26, 2006) was an American rhythm-and-blues pianist and singer.

Dixon was born in Marshall, Texas. Some sources give his birth name as Jay Riggins Jr., although Dixon himself stated that Floyd Dixon was his real name and that his parents were Velma and Ford Dixon. Growing up, he was influenced by blues, gospel, jazz and country music. His family moved to Los Angeles, California, in 1942. There Dixon met Charles Brown, who had an influence on his music.

The self-dubbed “Mr. Magnificent”, Dixon signed a recording contract with Modern Records in 1949, specializing in jump blues and sexualized songs like “Red Cherries”, “Wine Wine Wine”, “Too Much Jelly Roll” and “Baby Let’s Go Down to the Woods”. Both “Dallas Blues” and “Mississippi Blues”, credited to the Floyd Dixon Trio, reached the Billboard R&B chart in 1949, as did “Sad Journey Blues”, issued by Peacock Records in 1950.

Alonzo “Lonnie” Johnson (February 8, 1899 – June 16, 1970) was an American blues and jazzsinger, guitarist, violinist and songwriter. He was a pioneer of jazz guitar and jazz violin and is recognized as the first to play an electrically amplified violin.

Johnson was born in New Orleans, Louisiana and raised in a family of musicians. He studied violin, piano and guitar as a child and learned to play various other instruments, including the mandolin, but he concentrated on the guitar throughout his professional career. “There was music all around us,” he recalled, “and in my family you’d better play something, even if you just banged on a tin can.”

In 1917, Johnson joined a revue that toured England, returning home in 1919 to find that all of his family, except his brother James, had died in the 1918 influenza epidemic.