mick laBriola

Performing with Jayson Rodovski, Jeff Bailey, Pete Whitman and Ernest Bisong for Cantor Inbal Sharret-Singer.

Enoch Henry Light (August 18, 1907 – July 31, 1978) was an American classically trained violinist, danceband leader, and recording engineer. As the leader of various dance bands that recorded as early as March 1927 and continuing through at least 1940, Light and his band primarily worked in various hotels in New York. For a time in 1928 he also led a band in Paris. In the 1930s Light also studied conducting with the French conductor Maurice Frigara in Paris.

Throughout the 1930s, Light and his outfits were steadily employed in the generally more upscale hotel restaurants and ballrooms in New York that catered to providing polite ambiance for dining and functional dance music of current popular songs rather than out-and-out jazz.

At some point his band was tagged The Light Brigade and they often broadcast over radio live from the Hotel Taft in New York, where they had a long residency. Through 1940, Light and his band recorded for various labels including Brunswick, ARC, Vocalion and Bluebird. In 1955, Light founded Grand Award Records and served as president and A&R chief. In 1959 he founded a subsidiary label, Command Records. Grand Award and its subsidiary labels were sold to ABC-Paramount Records in October 1959. Light’s name was prominent on many albums both as musician and producer.

Light was born in Canton, Ohio, on August 18, 1907. While he was a student at Johns Hopkins University, he formed his initial orchestra. When he took that group on tours of Europe in 1928 and 1929, he studied classical conducting at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and the Opera Comique in Paris. He also studied at Ohio State University and the University of Pittsburgh.

The Soleá is a slow, solemn, and majestic flamenco form that likely comes from the Spanish word soledad, meaning solitude or loneliness. Tragedy, death, and desperation are the common subject matter for the Soleá cante (singers). Guitarists evoke these feelings in their playing as well. This tragic form is also known as the “Cante Jondo” category.

The Soleá is synonymous with the Soleares, known as the “Mother of Flamenco”. Flamenco guitarists usually begin their study with the Soleá since it has a relatively slow BPM (usually 50-110BPM). As a result, students have ample time to feel comfortable with the compás accents.

Luther Allison (August 17, 1939 – August 12, 1997) was an American blues singer-songwriter and guitarist. He was born in Widener, Arkansas, although some accounts suggest his actual place of birth was Mayflower, Arkansas. Allison was interested in music as a child and during the late 1940s he toured in a family gospel group called The Southern Travellers. He moved with his family to Chicago in 1951 and attended Farragut High School where he was classmates with Muddy Waters‘ son. He taught himself guitar and began listening to blues extensively. Three years later he dropped out of school and began hanging around outside blues nightclubs with the hopes of being invited to perform. Allison played with the bands of Howlin’ Wolf and Freddie King, taking over King’s band when King toured nationally. He worked with Jimmy Dawkins, Magic Sam and Otis Rush, and also backed James Cotton. Chicago Reader has called him “the Jimi Hendrix of blues guitar”.

Luther Sylvester Allison was born on August 18, 1939, in Widener, Arkansas, the fourteenth of 15 children. His family moved to Chicago when he was 12, in search of better opportunities. Several of Allison’s siblings sang in a gospel group called the Southern Travellers. One of his older brothers, Ollie, soon began working as a guitarist on Chicago’s booming South Side blues scene. Seeking to emulate his brother, Luther took up the guitar himself. By the middle of his teens, Allison was good enough to sit in with his brother’s band on club dates. During his tour in the summer of 1997, Allison checked into a hospital on July 10, 1997 for dizziness and loss of coordination. It was discovered that he had a tumor on his lung that had metastasized to his brain. He began radiation therapy on July 16, which lasted through August 1. In and out of a coma, Allison died at around 2:30 A.M. on August 12, 1997

Floyd Westerman, also known as Kanghi Duta (“Red Crow” in Dakota) (August 17, 1936 – December 13, 2007), was a Dakota Sioux musician, political activist, and actor. After establishing a career as a country music singer, later in his life he became an actor, usually depicting Native American elders in American films and television. He is also credited as Floyd Red Crow Westerman. As a political activist, he spoke and marched for Native American causes.

He was born Floyd Westerman on the Lake Traverse Indian Reservation, home of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, a federally recognized tribe that is one of the sub-tribes of the Eastern Dakota section of the Great Sioux Nation, located in the U.S. state of South Dakota. His Indigenous name Kanghi Duta means “Red Crow” in the Dakota language (which is one of the three related Siouan languages of the Great Plains).

At the age of 10, Westerman was sent to the Wahpeton Boarding School, where he first met Dennis Banks(who as an adult became a leader of the American Indian Movement). There Westerman and the other children were forced to cut their traditionally long hair and forbidden to speak their native languages. This experience would profoundly impact Westerman’s development and entire life. As an adult, he reclaimed his heritage and became an outspoken advocate for Indigenous cultural preservation.

Westerman graduated from Northern State University with a B.A. degree in secondary education. He served two years in the US Marines, before beginning his career as a country singer.

Columbus Calvin “Duke” Pearson Jr. (August 17, 1932 – August 4, 1980) was an American jazz pianist and composer. Allmusic describes him as having a “big part in shaping the Blue Note label’s hard bopdirection in the 1960s as a record producer.”

Pearson was born Columbus Calvin Pearson Jr. in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, to Columbus Calvin and Emily Pearson. The moniker “Duke” was given to him by his uncle, who was a great admirer of Duke Ellington. Before he was six, his mother started giving him piano lessons. He studied the instrument until he was twelve, when he took an interest in brass instruments: mellophone, baritone horn and ultimately trumpet. He was so fond of the trumpet that through high school and college he neglected the piano. He attended Clark College while also playing trumpet in groups in the Atlanta area. While in the U.S. Army, during his 1953–54 draft, he continued to play trumpet and met, among others, the pianist Wynton Kelly.Pearson himself confessed in a 1959 interview that he was “so spoiled by Kelly’s good piano” that he decided to switch to piano again. Also, it seems that dental problems forced him to give up brass instruments. He was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in the 1970s, from which he died in 1980 at Atlanta Veterans Hospital.

Jack Sperling (August 17, 1922 – February 26, 2004) was an American jazz drummer who performed as a sideman in big bands and as a studio musician for pop and jazz acts, movies, and television.

In 1941 he played with trumpeter Bunny Berigan. After World War II, he and Henry Mancini joined the Glenn Miller band when it was led by Tex Beneke. Sperling drew attention with his performance on the song St. Louis Blues (1948). He then joined Les Brown and His Band of Renown, which played regularly for the Bob Hope radio program. Sperling and other members of Brown’s band joined Dave Pell‘s octet in 1953. He recorded with octet on Plays Irving Berlin (1953) and on The Original Reunion of the Glenn Miller Orchestra (1954). From 1954–57, he was a member of Bob Crosby‘s Bobcats. During the rest of his career, he worked in bands led by Charlie Barnet, Page Cavanaugh, Pete Fountain, and Benny Goodman.

Ike Abrams Quebec (August 17, 1918 – January 16, 1963) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. He began his career in the big band era of the 1940s, then fell from prominence for a time until launching a comeback in the years before his death.

Critic Alex Henderson wrote, “Though he was never an innovator, Quebec had a big, breathy sound that was distinctive and easily recognizable, and he was quite consistent when it came to down-home blues, sexy ballads, and up-tempo aggression.”

Quebec was born in Newark, New Jersey, United States. An accomplished dancer and pianist, he switched to tenor sax as his primary instrument in his early twenties, and quickly earned a reputation as a promising player. His recording career started in 1940, with the Barons of Rhythm. Quebec’s comeback was short-lived; it was ended by his death in January 1963, at the age of 44 from lung cancer. He is buried at Woodland Cemetery, Newark, New Jersey.