mick laBriola

Steven Benjamin Goodman (July 25, 1948 – September 20, 1984) was an American folk and country singer-songwriter from Chicago. He wrote the song “City of New Orleans“, which was recorded by Arlo Guthrie and many others including John Denver, The Highwaymen, and Judy Collins; in 1985, it received a Grammy award for best country song, as performed by Willie Nelson. Goodman had a small but dedicated group of fans for his albums and concerts during his lifetime. His most frequently sung song is, “Go Cubs Go” about the Chicago Cubs. Goodman died of leukemia in September 1984. Goodman was born on Chicago’s North Side to a middle-class Jewish family. He began writing and performing songs as a teenager. He graduated from Maine East High School in Park Ridge, Illinois, in 1965, where he was a classmate of Hillary Clinton. During high school he began his public singing career by leading the junior choir at Temple Beth Israel in Albany Park. In the fall of 1965, he entered the University of Illinois and pledged the Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity. In college he formed a cover band called The Juicy Fruits, with Goodman on lead guitar, Ron Banyon on rhythm guitar, Steve Hartmann on bass, and Elliot Englehardt on drums. He left college after one year to pursue his musical career. In the early spring of 1967, Goodman went to New York, staying for a month in a Greenwich Village brownstone across the street from the Cafe Wha?, where he performed regularly.

On September 20, 1984, Goodman died of leukemia at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle, Washington. He had anointed himself with the tongue-in-cheek nickname “Cool Hand Leuk” (other nicknames included “Chicago Shorty” and “The Little Prince”) during his illness. He was 36 years old.

Alfarita Constantia Marley OJ, OD (née Anderson; born 25 July 1946) is a Cuban-born Jamaican singer, songwriter and entrepreneur. She is the widow of reggae legend Bob Marley. Along with Marcia Griffiths and Judy Mowatt, she was a member of the reggae vocal group the I Threes, the backing vocalists for Bob Marley and the Wailers.

Rita was born in Santiago de Cuba, to Leroy Anderson and Cynthia “Beda” Jarrett, her parents moved to Kingston, Jamaica, when she was three months old. In her memoir No Woman No Cry: My Life with Bob Marley, she describes how she was raised by her Aunt Viola after her parents separated. She was raised in Trenchtown in Kingston, Jamaica.

Donald Johnson Ellis (July 25, 1934 – December 17, 1978) was an American jazz trumpeter, drummer, composer, and bandleader. He is best known for his extensive musical experimentation, particularly in the area of time signatures. Later in his life he worked as a film composer, contributing a score to 1971’s The French Connection and 1973’s The Seven-Ups.

Ellis was born in Los Angeles, California, on July 25, 1934. His father was a Methodist minister and his mother a church organist. He attended West High School in Minneapolis, MN. After attending a Tommy Dorsey Big Band concert, he first became interested in jazz. Other early inspirations were Louis Armstrongand Dizzy Gillespie. He graduated from Boston University in 1956 with a music composition degree.

Cornelius “Johnny” Hodges (July 25, 1907 – May 11, 1970) was an American alto saxophonist, best known for solo work with Duke Ellington‘s big band. He played lead alto in the saxophone section for many years. Hodges was also featured on soprano saxophone, but refused to play soprano after 1946. Along with Benny Carter, Hodges is considered to be one of the definitive alto saxophone players of the big band era.

After beginning his career as a teenager in Boston, Hodges began to travel to New York and played with Lloyd Scott, Sidney Bechet, Luckey Roberts and Chick Webb. When Ellington wanted to expand his band in 1928, Ellington’s clarinet player Barney Bigard recommended Hodges. His playing became one of the identifying voices of the Ellington orchestra. From 1951 to 1955, Hodges left the Duke to lead his own band, but returned shortly before Ellington’s triumphant return to prominence – the orchestra’s performance at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival.

Hodges was born in the Cambridgeport neighborhood of Cambridge, Massachusetts, to John H. Hodges and Katie Swan Hodges, both originally from Virginia. After moving for a short period of time to North Cambridge, the family moved to Hammond Street in the South End of Boston, where he grew up with saxophonists Harry Carney (who would also become a long-term member of Duke Ellington’s big band), Charlie Holmes and Howard E. Johnson. His first instruments were drums and piano. While his mother was a skilled piano player, Hodges was mostly self-taught.

Graham Lear (born July 24, 1949) is an English-born Canadian rock drummer, best known for his time with Gino Vannelli, Santana and REO Speedwagon. He was born in Plymouth, United Kingdom.

In 1952 his family moved to London, Ontario, Canada. He began his professional career at the age of 13 with the London (Ontario) Symphony Orchestra. During his teenage years he practised, played and toured with several bands in Canada and the United States. Gino Vannelli was the first major recording artist to recognize Graham’s talents and he recorded with Gino on some of his most important work (The Gist of the Gemini, Storm at Sunup). He has toured and/or recorded worldwide with Carlos Santana, Paul Anka, REO Speedwagon and Saga. He has also worked with T.V./ Film composers Henry Mancini, Domenic Troiano, Jimmy Dale (Pianist/arranger Boss Brass), David Foster, Mexican jazz/fusion group Sacbe, and recorded jingles for Nike, Molson and Avia.

Charles McPherson (born July 24, 1939) is an American jazz alto saxophonist born in Joplin, Missouri, United States, and raised in Detroit, Michigan, who worked intermittently with Charles Mingus from 1960 to 1974, and as a performer leading his own groups.

McPherson also was commissioned to help record ensemble renditions of pieces from Charlie Parker, on the 1988 soundtrack for the film Bird.

Billy Taylor (July 24, 1921 – December 28, 2010) was an American jazz pianist, composer, broadcaster and educator. He was the Robert L. Jones Distinguished Professor of Music at East Carolina University in Greenville, and from 1994 was the artistic director for jazz at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

A jazz activist, Taylor sat on the Honorary Founders Board of The Jazz Foundation of America, an organisation he founded in 1989, with Ann Ruckert, Herb Storfer and Phoebe Jacobs, to save the homes and the lives of America’s elderly jazz and blues musicians, later including musicians who survived Hurricane Katrina.

Taylor was a jazz educator, who lectured in colleges, served on panels and travelled worldwide as a jazz ambassador. Critic Leonard Feather once said, “It is almost indisputable that Dr. Billy Taylor is the world’s foremost spokesman for jazz.”

Taylor was born in Greenville, North Carolina, United States, but moved to Washington, D.C., when he was five years old. He grew up in a musical family and learned to play different instruments as a child, including guitar, drums and saxophone. He was most successful at the piano, and had classical piano lessons with Henry Grant, who had educated Duke Ellington a generation earlier. Taylor made his first professional appearance playing keyboard at the age of 13 and was paid one dollar.

William James Edwards Lee III (July 23, 1928 – May 24, 2023) was a jazz bassist and composer, known for his collaborations with Bob Dylan and Aretha Franklin, his compositions for jazz percussionist Max Roach, and his session work as a “first-call” musician and band leader to many of the twentieth-century’s most significant musical artists, including Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Harry Belafonte, Peter, Paul and Mary, Simon and Garfunkel, Judy Collins, Arlo Guthrie, Billy Strayhorn, Woody Guthrie, and Pete Seeger, among many others.

Lee recorded three critically acclaimed albums at the Black independent label Strata-East Records: The Descendants of Mike and Phoebe: A Spirit Speaks, a collaboration with his two musical sisters; The Brass Company: Colors and the third, a collaboration of seven basses, called The New York Bass Violin Choir,which JazzdaGama described as “a true Holy Grail for all musicians” and Lee considered one of his “narrative folk, jazz operas,” with “One Mile East,” inspired by memories of the former slave quarters near his childhood home.