mick laBriola

It is actually one of the brightest and most highly detailed planetary nebula known, composed of gas expelled in the brief yet glorious phase near the end of life of a Sun-like star. This nebula‘s dying central star may have produced the outer circular concentric shells by shrugging off outer layers in a series of regular convulsions. The formation of the beautiful, complex-yet-symmetric inner structures, however, is not well understood. The featured image is a composite of a digitally sharpened Hubble Space Telescope image with X-ray light captured by the orbiting Chandra Observatory. The exquisite floating space statue spans over half a light-year across. Of course, gazing into this Cat’s Eye, humanity may well be seeing the fate of our sun, destined to enter its own planetary nebula phase of evolution … in about 5 billion years.

Kenneth Clark Loggins (born January 7, 1948) is an American singer, guitarist and songwriter. His early songs were recorded with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band in 1970, which led to seven albums recorded with Jim Messina as Loggins and Messina from 1972 to 1977. His early soundtrack contributions date back to A Star Is Born in 1976, and he is known as the King of the Movie Soundtrack. As a solo artist, Loggins experienced a string of soundtrack successes, including an Academy Award nomination for “Footloose” in 1985. Finally Home was released in 2013, shortly after Loggins formed the group Blue Sky Riders with Gary Burr and Georgia Middleman. He won a Daytime Emmy Award, two Grammy Awardsand was nominated for an Academy Award, a Tony Award and a Golden Globe Award.

Loggins was born in Everett, Washington, the youngest of three brothers. His father, Robert George Loggins, was a salesman of English and Irish ancestry, while his mother, Lina (née Massie), was a homemaker of Italian descent, from Avezzano.

Earl Wilberforce “Wire” Lindo (7 January 1953 – 4 September 2017), sometimes referred to as Wya, was a Jamaican reggae musician. He was a member of Bob Marley and the Wailers and collaborated with numerous reggae artists including Burning Spear.

While attending Excelsior High School in Jamaica, he played with Barry Biggs, Mikey “Boo” Richards, and Ernest Wilson in the Astronauts, and later played organ in the band Now Generation, and with Tommy McCook and the Supersonics, and the Meters. Aston “Familyman” Barrett heard Lindo and recommended him to play for a Saturday afternoon television program Where It’s At on JBC. Lindo also spent his early days working at Coxsone Dodd‘s Studio One, where he played on innumerable recordings.

In 1973, he was invited to join The Wailers on a US tour, going on to play on Burnin’. He left the Wailers in 1974 to join Taj Mahal‘s band.

Luciano Pozo González (January 7, 1915 – December 3, 1948), known professionally as Chano Pozo, was a Cuban jazz percussionist, singer, dancer, and composer. Despite only living to the age of 33, he played a major role in the founding of Latin jazz. He co-wrote some of Dizzy Gillespie‘s Latin-flavored compositions, such as “Manteca” and “Tin Tin Deo”, and was the first Latin percussionist in Gillespie’s band. According to Rebeca Mauleón, “Few percussionists have played as integral a role in shaping Latin music as Luciano ‘Chano’ Pozo González”.

Luciano “Chano” Pozo González was born in Havana to Cecelio González and Carnación Pozo. Chano grew up with three sisters and a brother, as well as his older half brother, Félix Chappottín, who would later become one of the great Cuban soneros. The family struggled with poverty throughout his youth. His mother died when Chano was aged 11, and Cecelio took his family to live with his long-time mistress, Natalia, who was Felix’s mother. Chano Pozo was shot and killed on December 2, 1948, in the El Rio Bar at 111th Street and Lenox Avenue in Harlem. The El Rio Bar no longer exists — even the small triangular block where it was located has been removed. Pozo’s killer was a local bookie, marijuana dealer, and fellow Cuban named Eusebio “Cabito” (Little Corporal) Muñoz. Pozo is buried in the Colón Cemetery, Havana.

Henry James “Red” Allen, Jr. (January 7, 1908 – April 17, 1967) was an American jazz trumpeter and vocalist whose playing has been claimed by Joachim-Ernst Berendt and others as the first to fully incorporate the innovations of Louis Armstrong.

Allen was born in the Algiers neighborhood of New Orleans, Louisiana, the son of the bandleader Henry Allen Sr. He took early trumpet lessons from Peter Bocage and Manuel Manetta.

Allen’s career began in Sidney Desvigne‘s Southern Syncopators. He was playing professionally by 1924 with the Excelsior Brass Band and the jazz dance bands of Sam Morgan, George Lewis and John Casimir. After playing on riverboats on the Mississippi River, he went to Chicago in 1927 to join King Oliver‘s band. Around this time he made recordings on the side in the band of Clarence Williams.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W022m4oRLr4

Ebo Taylor (born 1936) is a Ghanaian guitarist, composer, bandleader, record producer and arranger focusing on highlife and afrobeat music.

Ebo Taylor has been a pivotal figure on the Ghanaian music scene for over six decades. In the late 1950s he was active in the influential highlife bands the Stargazers and the Broadway Dance Band. In 1962, Taylor took his group, the Black Star Highlife Band, to London. In London, Taylor collaborated with Nigerianafrobeat star Fela Kuti as well as other African musicians in Britain at the time.

Returning to Ghana, Taylor worked as a producer, crafting recordings for Pat Thomas, C. K. Mann, and others, as well as exploring solo projects, combining traditional Ghanaian material with afrobeat, jazz, and funk rhythms to create his own recognizable sound in the 1970s. He was the inhouse guitar player, arranger, and producer for Essiebons, founded by Dick Essilfie-Bondzie.

Taylor’s work became popular internationally with hip-hop producers in the 21st century. In 1992, Ghetto Concept included his afrobeats in their music. In 2008, Ebo Taylor met the Berlin-based musicians of the Afrobeat Academy band, including saxophonist Ben Abarbanel-Wolff, which led to the release of the album Love and Death with Strut Records (his first internationally distributed album).

Erev Shabbat Service Friday 1-5-24 6pm with Inbal Sharett-Singer, Jayson Rodowsky, Jeff Bailey, Pete Whitman and mick laBriola.

Paul Wertico (born January 5, 1953 in Chicago, Illinois) is an American drummer. He gained recognition as a member of the Pat Metheny Group from 1983 until 2001, leaving the group to spend more time with his family and to pursue other musical interests.

After Pat Metheny heard the Simon and Bard Group with Wertico and bassist Steve Rodby, he invited both to join his band. During his time with Metheny, Wertico played on ten albums and four videos, appeared on television, and toured around the world. He won seven Grammy Awards (for “Best Jazz Fusion Performance,” “Best Contemporary Jazz Performance,” and “Best Rock Instrumental Performance”), magazine polls, and received several gold records.

Laten John Adams Jr. (January 5, 1932 – September 14, 1998), was an American blues, jazz and gospel singer, known as “The Tan Canary” for the multi-octave range of his singing voice, his swooping vocal mannerisms and falsetto. His biggest hits were his versions of “Release Me” and “Reconsider Me” in the late 1960s.

Adams was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, the oldest of 10 children. He became a professional musician on leaving school. He began his career singing gospel with the Soul Revivers and Bessie Griffin’s Consolators, but crossed over to secular music in 1959. His upstairs neighbor, the songwriter Dorothy LaBostrie, supposedly persuaded him to start performing secular music after hearing him sing in the bathtub. He recorded LaBostrie’s ballad “Oh Why,” released as “I Won’t Cry,” for Joe Ruffino’s Ric label. Produced by the teenaged Mac Rebennack (later known as Dr. John), the record became a local hit. Adams recorded several more singles for the label over the next three years, most of them produced by Rebennack or Eddie Bo. His first national hit came in 1962, when “A Losing Battle”, written by Rebennack, reached number 27 on the Billboard R&B chart.

Alvin Ailey Jr. (January 5, 1931 – December 1, 1989) was an American dancer, director, choreographer, and activist who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (AAADT). He created AAADT and its affiliated Alvin Ailey American Dance Center (later Ailey School) as havens for nurturing Black artists and expressing the universality of the African-American experience through dance.

Ailey’s work fused theater, modern dance, ballet, and jazz with Black vernacular, creating hope-fueled choreography that continues to spread global awareness of Black life in America. Ailey’s choreographic masterpiece Revelations is recognized as one of the most popular and most performed ballets in the world.

On July 15, 2008, the United States Congress passed a resolution designating AAADT a “vital American cultural ambassador to the World.”^[4][5] That same year, in recognition of AAADT’s 50th anniversary, then Mayor Michael Bloomberg declared December 4 “Alvin Ailey Day” in New York City, while then-Governor David Paterson honored the organization on behalf of New York State.

Ailey was born to Alvin Ailey and Lula Elizabeth Cliff in Rogers, Texas, in his maternal grandfather’s home at the height of the Great Depression.

Elizabeth “Libba” Cotten Nevills; January 5, 1893 – June 29, 1987) was an American folk and blues musician. She was a self-taught left-handed guitarist who played a guitar strung for a right-handed player, but played it upside down. This position meant that she would play the bass lines with her fingers and the melody with her thumb. Her signature alternating bass style has become known as “Cotten picking”. NPR stated “her influence has reverberated through the generations, permeating every genre of music.”

Her album Folksongs and Instrumentals with Guitar (1958), was placed into the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress, and was deemed as “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. The album included her signature recording “Freight Train“, a song she wrote in her early teens. In 1984, her live album Elizabeth Cotten Live!, won her a Grammy Award for Best Ethnic or Traditional Folk Recording, at the age of 90. That same year, Cotten was recognized as a National Heritage Fellow by the National Endowment for the Arts.In 2022, she was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as an early influence. Cotten was born in 1893 to a musical family near Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in an area that would later be incorporated as Carrboro.