mick laBriola

Have you ever seen the Andromeda galaxy? Although M31 appears as a faint and fuzzy blob to the unaided eye, the light you see will be over two million years old, making it likely the oldest light you ever will see directly. The featured image captured Andromeda just before it set behind the Swiss Alpsearly last year. As cool as it may be to see this neighboring galaxy to our Milky Way with your own eyes, long duration camera exposures can pick up many faint and breathtaking details. The image is composite of foreground and background images taken consecutively with the same camera and from the same location. Recent data indicate that our Milky WayGalaxy will collide and coalesce with Andromeda galaxy in a few billion years.

John Paul Hammond (born November 13, 1942 in New York City) is an American singer and musician. The son of record producer John H. Hammond, he is sometimes referred to as John Hammond Jr.

Idris Muhammad was born on November 13,1939-July 29th 2014

and began playing the drums at age 8 in his native New Orleans. By the time he was 16, he was performing in jazz bands. Muhammad became known as one of the most innovative drummers in soul music of the 1960’s, performing with singers Sam Cooke, Jerry Butler, and The Impressions. He played for the popular musical Hair while performing with the house band for the Prestige Label in the early 1970’s. For the rest of that decade, he accompanied popular singer Roberta Flack, led his own band, and worked with Johnny Griffin and Pharaoh Sanders. An excellent drummer who has appeared in many types of settings, Idris Muhammad became a professional when he was 16. He played primarily soul and R&B during 1962-1964 and then spent 1965-1967 as a member of Lou Donaldson’s band. He was the house drummer at Prestige Records (1970-1972), appearing on many albums as a sideman. Of his later jazz associations, Muhammad played with Johnny Griffin (1978-1979), Pharoah Sanders in the 1980s, George Coleman, and the Paris Reunion Band (1986-1988). He has recorded everything from post-bop to dance music as a leader for such labels as Prestige, Kudu, Fantasy, Theresa, and Lipstick. Muhammad’s 1993 recording My Turn includes saxophonist Grover Washington, Jr. and trumpetor Randy Brecker, both of whom are also featured performers in this year’s 25th Annual University of Pittsburgh Jazz Seminar and Concert.

Hampton Barnett Hawes Jr.(November 13, 1928 – May 22, 1977) LA, CA was an American jazz pianist. He was the author of the memoir Raise Up Off Me, which won the Deems-Taylor Award for music writing in 1975.

https://youtu.be/vGjVondfCUk?si=wB86BMmcEhggDd-J

Baaba Maal (Fula: , born 13 June 1953) is a Senegalese singer and guitarist born in Podor, on the Senegal River. In addition to acoustic guitar, he also plays percussion. He has released several albums, both for independent and major labels. In July 2003, he was made a UNDP Youth Emissary.

Maal sings primarily in Pulaar and promotes the traditions of the Pulaar-speaking people, who live on either side of the Senegal River in the ancient Senegalese kingdom of Futa Tooro.

Maal was expected to follow in his father’s profession and become a fisherman. However, under the influence of his lifelong friend and family gawlo, blind guitarist Mansour Seck, Maal devoted himself to learning music from his mother and his school’s headmaster. He went on to study music at the university in Dakar before leaving for a three month stay in Paris to learn musical notation. In the event, he stayed for three years in the French capital, where he took courses at the Conservatoire de Paris, had private tuition and was taken with Mozart.

Samuel Jones (November 12, 1924 – December 15, 1981) was an American jazz double bassist, cellist, and composer.

Sam Jones was born in Jacksonville, Florida, United States, to a musical family. His father played piano and drums and his aunt played organ in church. In 1955, he moved to New York City and began his recording career with Tiny Bradshaw, before working with Bill Evans, Bobby Timmons, Les Jazz Modes, Kenny Dorham, Illinois Jacquet, Freddie Hubbard, Dizzy Gillespie (1958–59), and Thelonious Monk. He is probably best known for his work with Cannonball Adderley, performing in his quintet from 1955 to 1956 and then again from 1959 to 1964, and recording extensively for Riverside Records as both a leader and sideman. He later spent several years working with Oscar Peterson (1966-1970) and Cedar Walton (1972-1977). In the 1970s, Jones recorded several albums as a bandleader for the Xanadu and SteepleChaselabels. Jones wrote the jazz standards “Del Sasser” and “Unit 7” while working with Adderley. Other compositions include “Blue Funk”, “O.P.”, “Bittersweet”, and “Seven Minds”. He died of lung cancer in 1981 at the age of 57.

Booker T. Washington “Bukka” White (born on November 12, between 1900 and 1909; died February 26, 1977) was an American Delta blues guitarist and singer.

Booker T. Washington White was born on a farm south of Houston, in northeastern Mississippi. He was born on November 12; various years between 1900 and 1909 are recorded – census data suggests 1904. Bukka is a phonetic spelling of White’s first name; he was named after the African-American educator and civil rights activist Booker T. Washington. White was a first cousin of B.B. King‘s mother (White’s mother and King’s maternal grandmother were sisters). His father John White was a railroad worker, and also a musician who performed locally, primarily playing the fiddle, but also mandolin, guitar and piano. He gave Booker a guitar for his ninth birthday. White started his career playing the fiddle at square dances. He got married at 16 years old, with his father giving him a new Stella guitar as a wedding present. He and his wife lived at Houston, but after a few years she died of a burst appendix.

Mario Pavone (November 11, 1940 – May 15, 2021) was an American jazz bassist, composer and bandleader. Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead offers that Pavone was not only “great bass player [but also a] big-hearted mensch.”

Pavone was born in Waterbury, Connecticut. Pavone attended B. W. Tinker grammar school, Leavenworth High School, and the University of Connecticut at Storrs, where he graduated with a B.S. in engineering. When his Town Plot neighbor, world-renowned guitarist Joe Diorio, recognized him as an unrealized musician Mario was inspired to take up the bass. Primarily self-taught, he was a natural on his instrument. Pavone began playing bass soon after witnessing John Coltrane at the Village Vanguard in 1961.

Ernestine Anderson (November 11, 1928 – March 10, 2016 Houston, TX) was an American jazz and blues singer. In a career spanning more than six decades, she recorded over 30 albums. She was nominated four times for a Grammy Award. She sang at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Monterey Jazz Festival (six times over a 33-year span), as well as at jazz festivals all over the world. In the early 1990s she joined Qwest Records, the label founded by fellow Garfield High School graduate Quincy Jones.

Delores LaVern Baker (November 11, 1929 – March 10, 1997) was an American R&B singer who had several hit records on the pop chart in the 1950s and early 1960s. Her most successful records were “Tweedle Dee” (1955), “Jim Dandy” (1956), and “I Cried a Tear” (1958).

Baker was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991. The Hall remarked that her “fiery fusion of blues, jazz and R&B showcased her alluring vocals and set the stage for the rock and roll surge of the Fifties”. From 1955 to 1965, 20 of her songs made the R&B charts. Over the years, Elvis Presley recorded eight Baker songs.

Baker was born Delores Evans in Chicago. She was raised in Calumet City, Illinois. Under her mother’s new surname, McMurley, Delores – on December 23, 1948, at age nineteen, in Cook County, Illinois – married Eugene Williams.