mick laBriola

The planetary nebula NGC 6894 was discovered by William Herschel on 17^th July 1784. With an angular diameter of around 40 arc minutes, it appears about as large as Jupiter, but is much fainter: around 14 magnitudes. The distance is about 1669 pc (about 5400 light years).

Tony Oladipo Allen (20 July 1940 – 30 April 2020) was a Nigerian and French drummer, composer, and songwriter who lived and worked in Paris, France. Allen was the drummer and musical director of Fela Kuti‘s band Africa ’70 from 1968 to 1979, and was one of the founders of the Afrobeat genre. Fela once stated that “without Tony Allen, there would be no Afrobeat”. He was described by Brian Eno as “perhaps the greatest drummer who has ever lived”. Later in life, Allen collaborated with Damon Albarn on several projects, including Gorillaz, the Good, the Bad & the Queen and Rocket Juice & the Moon.

Allen was born in Lagos, Nigeria to James Alabi Allen, a motor mechanic from British Nigeria (now present day Nigeria) and Prudentia Mettle, from the Gold Coast (now present day Ghana). He began playing drums at the age of 18, while working as an engineer for a radio station. Allen was influenced by music his father listened to: Jùjú, a popular Yoruba music from the 1940s, but also American jazz, and the growing highlife scene in Nigeria and Ghana. Allen worked hard to develop a unique voice on the drums, feverishly studying LPs and magazine articles by Max Roach and Art Blakey, but also revolutionary Ghanaian drummer Guy Warren (later known as Kofi Ghanaba – who developed a highly sought-after sound that mixed tribal Ghanaian drumming with bop – working with Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, and Max Roach).

Allen was hired by “Sir” Victor Olaiya to play claves with his highlife band, the Cool Cats. Allen was able to fill the drum set chair when the former Cool Cats drummer left the band. Allen later played with Agu Norris and the Heatwaves, the Nigerian Messengers, and the Melody Makers.

Frank Craig Chicago Blues guitar player.
Born: October 5, 1935 in Greenville, MS
Died: January 14, 1992 in Los Angeles, CA

Left Hand Frank was a fun loving, powerfully built bluesman who liked to amuse audiences in Chicago’s South Side blues clubs with comical Donald Duck imitations and muscle-flexing tricks. But what crowds enjoyed even more was the way Frank Craig played guitar. Employing a confident, four-fingered picking style, he played his axe upside down, like several other left-handed bluesmen, with the treble strings at the top. And he played some of the strongest, most distinctive vintage blues to be heard in Chicago.

Frank worked in countless bands during his nearly 40 years in Chicago. He was probably the best musician in most of those groups. But until 1978, Frank never played guitar or sang on a record. Frank found that it was more fun to be a sideman, and he never thought much about becoming a headliner or leading a band.

“Mainly, I don’t like to be worried with it,” Frank explained. “I’ve had quite a few jobs myself, but guys don’t want to act right. It’s too much of a headache. I’d switch over and put that headache on somebody else. I hate to have a headache.”

So Frank left the band leading headaches to bluesmen like Junior Wells, Little Walter, Hound Dog Taylor, and Willie Cobbs. Frank was happy just to play guitar or bass as part of someone else’s band.

When Frank started playing in his hometown of Greenville, Mississippi, he didn’t even have to worry about bands. He could stroll the streets, playing by himself to earn tips from passersby. He got his first guitar on his fourth birthday, October 5, 1939, and quickly learned both blues and country & western from older musicians who were always at his house buying homebrewed corn whiskey from Frank’s mother. Before moving to Chicago at the age of 14, young Frank performed at the local sheriff’s parties, at the local fairgrounds, and around the countryside, carrying his guitar with him on the bus and playing wherever people would pay to see such a child prodigy.

During the early ‘50s in Chicago, Frank was still a street and house party musician, too young to be allowed in the taverns. But he lived within a block of two blues clubs, The Zanzibar and Vi’s Lounge. Frank and two teenaged friends, guitarist Eddie King and bassist Willie Black, eagerly listened at the door whenever Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Memphis Slim or Howlin’ Wolf were performing. After some intense rehearsals, the trio started playing outside The Zanzibar and Vi’s, sharing wine and whiskey with the onlookers. “We’d have a bigger crowd outside than they did inside!” Frank would laugh.

Willie Cobbs, originator of the blues standard “You Don’t Love me,” hired the young bluesmen (who had boldly named themselves the Chicago All-Stars) to work with him in the West Side clubs and on the road. Jimmy Rogers and Lee Jackson let Frank sit in on bass at The Squeeze Club, and in the mid-‘50s, Frank began a long association with his steadiest employer, guitarist James Scott, Jr., at Joe’s 1015 Club on 43rd Street. There were also gigs with Jimmy Dawkins at The Pink Poodle, with Delta bluesman Boyd Gilmore in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and with Good Rockin’ Charles at a West Side club where the crowds “barn danced” to Frank’s country breakdowns. In the ‘60s, Frank, who was working as a manual laborer during the daytime, played with Junior Wells, Junior Simpkins, Willie Williams, Carey Bell, Little Arthur Gray, Hound Dog Taylor, Little Walter and others, including Willie Cobbs and James Scott again at times. Frank recorded, as a bass player, on an Eddie King single in 1960 and on later sessions behind Morris Pejoe, Little Eddie Newell and Willie Williams.

Frank was just as active, and just as sought after by various bandleaders, in the ‘70s. He was a regular with Johnny Bernard’s group at Louise’s, Porter’s, and other South Side clubs, and continued to work on and off with James Scott. He was a familiar face at the famed Sunday afternoon jam sessions at Florence’s, where Hound Dog Taylor held forth for years. In the late ‘70s, Frank teamed up with two young white newcomers, Dimestore Fred and Pocketwatch Paul, who appeared on his recording debut on Alligator’s Living Chicago Blues series. Frank’s session proved him to be totally rooted in the raw, Delta-based Chicago style of the 1950s, bringing to mind his friends Magic Slim, Jimmy Rogers and Brewer Phillips.

In the 1980s, Frank moved to Los Angeles to live with his sister. His declining health and a series of surgeries led to his abandoning music, and he eventually died in California. An album of a live performance is still in print on a French label.

While hunting for comets in the skies above 18th century France, astronomer Charles Messier diligently kept a list of the things encountered during his telescopic expeditions that were definitely not comets. This is number 27 on his now famous not-a-comet list. In fact, 21st century astronomers would identify it as a planetary nebula, but it’s not a planet either, even though it may appear round and planet-like in a small telescope. Messier 27 (M27) is an excellent example of a gaseous emission nebula created as a sun-like star runs out of nuclear fuel in its core. The nebula forms as the star’s outer layers are expelled into space, with a visible glow generated by atoms excited by the dying star’s intense but invisible ultraviolet light. Known by the popular name of the Dumbbell Nebula, the beautifully symmetric interstellar gas cloud is over 2.5 light-years across and about 1,200 light-years away in the constellation Vulpecula. This impressive color image highlights details within the well-studied central region and fainter, seldom imaged features in the nebula’s outer halo.

Sandra “Puma” Jones (October 5, 1953—January 28, 1990) was an American singer, best known as a member of the Grammy Award-winning reggae group Black Uhuru.

Born in Columbia, South Carolina, Jones graduated from Columbia University in New York City with a master’s degree and served as a social worker. She studied dance with the Chuck Davis troupe where she took a particular interest in African dance. After becoming disillusioned with city life she declared a need to “discover her roots” and moved to Jamaica.

Deciding to build a singing career, Jones briefly sang with Miriam Makeba (then using the name Mama Africa), and sang with the band Sons of Negus led by Ras Michael. In 1978, she was introduced by a mutual friend to Derrick “Duckie” Simpson, the leader of reggae group Black Uhuru. That group was undergoing a significant lineup change that also included the addition of singer Michael Rose. Jones became a full member of Black Uhuru and sang on seven studio albums, starting with Showcase in 1979 and also including the critically acclaimed Red in 1981 and the Grammy Award-winning Anthem in 1983.That album won the award for Best Reggae Album in 1985, the first year of that award’s existence.

Jones was noted for adding lyrics on religious and social topics to Black Uhuru songs, during a period when reggae musicians were often accused of being trite and dismissive of women, and she was also known for her haunting voice. Her last full album with the group was Brutal in 1986, which was nominated for another Grammy Award and reached the charts in New Zealand and the Netherlands. Before sessions began for the album Positive in 1987, Jones was diagnosed with breast cancer. She had to withdraw from Black Uhuru and was replaced by singer Olafunke. Jones returned to the United States for treatment and died at age 36 on January 28, 1990. She was buried near her family home in South Carolina.