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John William “Long John” Baldry (12 January 1941 – 21 July 2005) was an English musician and actor. In the 1960s, he was one of the first British vocalists to sing the blues in clubs and shared the stage with many British musicians including the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. Before achieving stardom, Rod Stewart and Elton John were members of bands led by Baldry. He enjoyed pop success in 1967 when “Let the Heartaches Begin” reached No. 1 in the UK, and in Australia where his duet with Kathi McDonald “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” reached No. 2 in 1980.
Baldry lived in Canada from the late 1970s until his death, in which he continued to make records there. In the mid 1980’s, he took up voiceover work. Two of his best-known voice roles were as Dr. Ivo Robotnik in Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, and as KOMPLEX in Bucky O’Hare and the Toad Wars.
more...José Arcadio Limón (January 12, 1908 – December 2, 1972) was a dancer and choreographer from Mexico and who developed what is now known as ‘Limón technique’. In the 1940s, he founded the
José Limón Dance Company (now the Limón Dance Company), and in 1968 he created the José Limón Foundation to carry on his work.
In his choreography, Limón spoke to the complexities of human life as experienced through the body. His dances feature large, visceral gestures — reaching, bending, pulling, grasping — to communicate emotion. Inspired in part by his teacher Doris Humphrey‘s and Charles Weidman‘s theories about the importance of body weight and dynamics, his own Limón technique emphasizes the rhythms of falling and recovering balance and the importance of good breathing to maintaining flow in a dance. He also utilized the dance vocabulary developed by both Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman, which aimed at demonstrating emotion through dance in a way that was much less strict and stylized than ballet as well as used movements of the body that felt most natural and went along with gravity.
Limón’s most well-known work is The Moor’s Pavane (1949), based on Shakespeare’s Othello, which won a major award. Other works were inspired by subjects as diverse as the McCarthy hearings (The Traitor) and the life of La Malinche, who served as interpreter for Hernán Cortés. Limón generally sets his dances to music, choosing composers ranging from Ludwig van Beethoven and Frederic Chopin to Arnold Schoenberg and Heitor Villa-Lobos.
more...Fred McDowell (January 12, 1904 – July 3, 1972), known by his stage name Mississippi Fred McDowell, was an American singer-songwriter and guitarist of hill country blues music.
McDowell was born in Rossville, Tennessee. His parents were farmers, who both died while Fred was in his youth. He took up the guitar at the age of 14 and was soon playing for tips at dances around Rossville. Seeking a change from plowing fields, he moved to Memphis in 1926, where he worked in the Buck-Eye feed mill, which processed cotton into oil and other products. In 1928, he moved to Mississippi to pick cotton.He finally settled in Como, Mississippi, around 1940, where he worked as a full-time farmer for many years while continuing to play music on weekends at dances and picnics.
more...George M. Duke (January 12, 1946 – August 5, 2013 San Rafael, Ca) was an American keyboardist, composer, singer-songwriter and record producer. He worked with numerous artists as arranger, music director, writer and co-writer, record producer and as a professor of music. He first made a name for himself with the album The Jean-Luc Ponty Experience with the George Duke Trio. He was known primarily for 32 solo albums, of which A Brazilian Love Affair from 1979 was his most popular, as well as for his collaborations with other musicians, particularly Frank Zappa.
more...James Columbus “Jay” McShann (January 12, 1916 – December 7, 2006 Muskogee,OK) was an American jazz pianist, vocalist, composer, and bandleader. He led bands in Kansas City, Missouri, that included Charlie Parker, Bernard Anderson, Walter Brown, and Ben Webster.
McShann moved to Kansas City, Missouri, in 1936, and set up his own big band which variously featured Charlie Parker (1937–42), Al Hibbler, Ben Webster, Paul Quinichette, Bernard Anderson, Gene Ramey, Jimmy Coe, Gus Johnson (1938–43), Harold “Doc” West, Earl Coleman, Walter Brown, and Jimmy Witherspoon, among others. His first recordings were all with Charlie Parker, the first as the Jay McShann Orchestra on August 9, 1940.
The band played both swing and blues numbers, but played blues on most of its records; its most popular recording was “Confessin’ the Blues” with Walter Brown on vocals. The group disbanded when McShann was drafted into the Army in 1944. After his return two years later, he found that small groups were now taking the place of big-bands in the jazz scene.
more...NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) image of the galaxy cluster PLCK G165.7+67.0, also known as G165. A foreground cluster, located 3.6 billion light-years away from Earth, is magnifying and bending the light of the distant universe beyond. In this image, astronomers discovered the light of an exploding star — more specifically, a Type Ia supernova — imaged three times, seen as points of light within the prominent red arc at the right-center of the image.
To achieve three images, the light traveled along three different paths. Since each path had a different length, and light traveled at the same speed, the supernova was imaged in this Webb observation at three different times during its explosion. The multiply-imaged supernova offers astronomers a unique way to calculate a new value for the Hubble constant — the rate at which the universe is accelerating.
The field of G165 is known for a high rate of star formation of more than 300 solar masses per year, an attribute that correlates with higher supernova rates.
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Laurens Hammond (January 11, 1895 – July 1, 1973 Evanston, IL) was an American engineer and inventor. His inventions include the Hammond organ, the Hammond clock, and the world’s first polyphonic musical synthesizer, the Novachord.
more...Lee Mack Ritenour (born January 11, 1952 LA,CA) is an American jazz guitarist who has been active since the late 1960s.
Ritenour’s solo career began with the album First Course (1976), a good example of the jazz-funk sound of the 1970s, followed by Captain Fingers, The Captain’s Journey(1978), and Feel the Night (1979).
In 1979, he “was brought in to beef up” one of Pink Floyd’s The Wall‘s heaviest rock numbers, “Run Like Hell“. He played “uncredited rhythm guitar” on “One of My Turns“. As the 1980s began, Ritenour began to add stronger elements of pop to his music, beginning with Rit (1981). Rit became his only release to chart in Australia, peaking at number 98. “Is It You” with vocals by Eric Tagg reached No. 15 on the Billboard pop chart and No. 27 on the Soul chart.The track peaked at number fifteen on Hot Adult Contemporary chart. He continued with the pop-oriented music for Rit/2 (1982) and Banded Together (1984), while releasing a Direct-Disk instrumental album in 1983 called On the Line. He also provided rhythm guitar on Tom Browne‘s album Funkin’ for Jamaica. He recorded Harlequin (1985) with Dave Grusin and vocals by Ivan Lins. His next album, Earth Run, was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Fusion Performance. The album’s title track was also Grammy nominated in the category of Best Instrumental Composition. Portrait (GRP, 1987) included guest performances by the Yellowjackets, Djavan, and Kenny G.
In 1988, his Brazilian influence came to the forefront on Festival, an album featuring his work on nylon-string guitar. He changed direction with his straight-ahead jazz album Stolen Momentswhich he recorded with saxophonist Ernie Watts, pianist Alan Broadbent, bassist John Patitucci, and drummer Harvey Mason. During the same year, he composed the theme song for the Canadian TV series Ramona.
more...Slim Harpo (born Isiah Moore or James Isaac Moore; February 11, 1924 – January 31, 1970 Lobdell, LA) was an American blues musician, a leading exponent of the swamp bluesstyle, and “one of the most commercially successful blues artists of his day”. He played guitar and was a master of the blues harmonica, known in blues circles as a “harp”. His most successful and influential recordings included “I’m a King Bee” (1957), “Rainin’ in My Heart” (1961), and “Baby Scratch My Back” (1966), which reached number one on Billboard‘s R&B chart and number 16 on its broader Hot 100 singles chart.
more...Aynsley Thomas Dunbar (born 10 January 1946) is an English drummer. He has worked with John Mayall, Frank Zappa, Jeff Beck, Journey, Jefferson Starship, Nils Lofgren, Eric Burdon, Shuggie Otis, Ian Hunter, Lou Reed, David Bowie, Mick Ronson, Whitesnake, Pat Travers, Sammy Hagar, Michael Schenker, UFO, Michael Chapman, Jake E. Lee, Leslie West, Kathi McDonald, Keith Emerson, Mike Onesko, Herbie Mannand Flo & Eddie. Dunbar was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Journey in 2017.
more...Friday January 10th 2025 6pm. Music with Inbal Sharett-Singer, Jayson Rodovsky, Jeff Bailey, Pete Whitman and mick LaBriola.
more...An unassuming region in the constellation Taurus holds these dark and dusty nebulae. Scattered through the scene, stars in multiple star systems are forming within their natal Taurus molecular cloud complex some 450 light-years away. Millions of years youngand still going through stellar adolescence, the stars are variable in brightness and in the late phases of their gravitational collapse. Known as T-Tauri class stars they tend to be faint and take on a yellowish hue in the image. One of the brightest T-Tauri stars in Taurus, V773 (aka HD283447) is near the center of the telescopic frame that spans over 1 degree. Toward the top is the dense, dark marking on the sky cataloged as Barnard 209.
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Sir Roderick David Stewart (born 10 January 1945) is a British rock and pop singer and songwriter. Known for his distinctive raspy singing voice, Stewart is among the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold more than 120 million records worldwide. His music career began in 1962 when he took up busking with a harmonica. In 1963, he joined the Dimensions as a harmonica player and vocalist. In 1964, Stewart joined Long John Baldry and the All Stars before moving to the Jeff Beck Group in 1967. Joining Faces in 1969, he also launched a solo career, releasing his debut album, An Old Raincoat Won’t Ever Let You Down, that year. Stewart’s early albums were a fusion of rock, folk music, soul music, and R&B. His third album, 1971’s Every Picture Tells a Story, was his breakthrough, topping the charts in the UK, US, Canada and Australia, as did its ballad “Maggie May“. His 1972 follow-up album, Never a Dull Moment, also reached number one in the UK and Australia, while going top three in the US and Canada. Its single, “You Wear It Well“, topped the chart in the UK and was a moderate hit elsewhere.
After Stewart had a handful more UK top-ten hits, Faces broke up in 1975. Stewart’s next few hit singles were ballads, with “Sailing“, off the 1975 UK and Australian number-one album, Atlantic Crossing, becoming a hit in the UK and the Netherlands (number one), Germany (number four) and other countries, but barely charting in North America. A Night on the Town (1976), his fifth straight chart-topper in the UK, began a three-album run of going number one or top three in the US, Canada, the UK and Australia with each release. That album’s “Tonight’s the Night (Gonna Be Alright)” spent almost two months at number one in the US and Canada, and made the top five in other countries. Foot Loose & Fancy Free (1977) contained the hit “You’re in My Heart (The Final Acclaim)” as well as the rocker “Hot Legs”. Blondes Have More Fun (1978) and its disco-tinged “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy” both went to number one in Canada, Australia and the US, with “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy” also hitting number one in the UK and the top ten in other countries. Stewart’s albums regularly hit the upper rungs of the charts in the Netherlands throughout the ’70s and in Sweden from 1975 onward.
After a disco and new wave period in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Stewart’s music turned to a soft rock/middle-of-the-road style, with most of his albums reaching the top ten in the UK, Germany and Sweden, but faring less well in the US. The single “Rhythm of My Heart” was a top five hit in the UK, US and other countries, with its source album, 1991’s Vagabond Heart, becoming, at number ten in the US and number two in the UK, his highest-charting album in a decade. In 1993, he collaborated with Bryan Adams and Sting on the power ballad “All for Love“, which went to number one in many countries. In the early 2000s, he released a series of successful albums interpreting the Great American Songbook.
In 2008, Billboard magazine ranked Stewart the 17th most successful artist on the “Billboard Hot 100 All-Time Top Artists”.[7] A Grammy and Brit Award recipient, he was voted at No. 33 in Q Magazine‘s list of the Top 100 Greatest Singers of all time.[8] As a solo artist, Stewart was inducted into the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2006, and he was inducted a second time into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012 as a member of Faces.[9][10] He has had 10 number-one albums and 31 top-ten singles in the UK, six of which reached number one. Stewart has had 16 top-ten singles in the US, with four reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100. He was knighted in the 2016 Birthday Honours for services to music and charity.
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