mick laBriola

Lonnie Smith (July 3, 1942 – September 28, 2021), styled Dr. Lonnie Smith, was an American jazz Hammond B3 organist who was a member of the George Benson quartet in the 1960s. He recorded albums with saxophonist Lou Donaldson for Blue Note before being signed as a solo act. He owned the label Pilgrimage, and was named the year’s best organist by the Jazz Journalists Association nine times.

Smith was born in Lackawanna, New York, on July 3, 1942. He was raised by his mother and stepfather,and the family had a vocal group and radio program. He stated that his mother was a major influence on him musically, as she introduced him to gospel, classical, and jazz music.

Smith was part of several vocal ensembles in the 1950s, including the Teen Kings which included Grover Washington Jr., on sax and his brother Daryl on drums. Art Kubera, the owner of a local music store, gave Smith his first organ, a Hammond B3.

Smith’s affinity for R&B mixed with his own personal style as he became active in the local music scene. He moved to New York City in 1965, where he met George Benson, the guitarist for Jack McDuff‘s band. Benson and Smith connected on a personal level, and the two formed the George Benson Quartet, featuring Lonnie Smith, in 1966.

Rhoda Scott (born July 3, 1938) is an American soul jazz organist and singer. She is nicknamed “The Barefoot Lady”.

Scott was born and raised in the Dorothy neighborhood of Weymouth Township, New Jersey, the first child to a Black travelling minister father and a white mother. She has six siblings. At 20 years old, Scott begain to play the organ in an R&B group. She soon founded her own groups, gigging around metro New York, eventually opening for Count Basie in Newark, where he invited her to play his Harlem club. In 1963, she recorded her first album, Live! at the Key Club (Tru-Sound/Prestige TSLP-15014). She also met Eddie Barclay, who paid $75 to acquire one of her songs, Hey Hey Hey that became a big hit.

Herbert Harper (2 July 1920 — 21 January 2012) was an American jazz trombonist of the West Coast jazz school.

Born in Salina, Kansas, he played swing music with Benny Goodman and Charlie Spivak in the 1940s and 1950s. Working on the West Coast jazz scene, he performed with such musicians as Stan Kenton, Bill Perkins and Maynard Ferguson, among others.

In June 1949, he was a member of the band backing Billie Holiday on her Just Jazz radio broadcast for AFRS in Los Angeles. Other band members were Neal Hefti (trumpet), Herbie Steward (clarinet, tenor saxophone), Jimmy Rowles (piano), Robert “Iggy” Shevak (bass) and Roy “Blinky” Garner (drums).

In 1954, he recorded several sessions as a member of Steve White‘s Hollywood-based quartet.

Angelo Chambers, 2 July 1924, Denton, Texas, USA, d. 7 June 1993, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA. While living in Dallas, Chambers worked for a while as a waiter at a blues club where he also acted as emcee and developed an engaging stage presence. Later, he appeared regularly at blues clubs in many Midwestern cities. His day job was a bus driver but whenever the opportunity arose he would be on stage, singing, occasionally playing drums, and introducing other acts with considerable panache. Although he lived in several other cities, he eventually settled in St. Paul, Minnesota. There, he led his own band, the Blue Birds, and also worked with a band led by Harmonica Tom Schafer. In 1991 he recorded the single, ‘Mean And Evil Woman’, which became a local hit, as did the b-side, ‘Cleo’. These tracks appeared on his sole album, which was completed not long before his death. A cassette was prepared for a launch, which Milwaukee Slim was able to attend even though he was failing in health. The album itself was released two years later and included ‘Standing On The Outside Crying’, ‘Sweet Little Angel’, ‘You Got Me Thinkin’’, ‘I’m A Legend’, ‘Double Trouble Blues’, ‘Mean And Evil Woman’, and ‘Mean Old World’, as well as his hit singles.

Ahmad Jamal (born Frederick Russell Jones; July 2, 1930 – April 16, 2023) was an American jazz pianist, composer, bandleader, and educator. For six decades, he was one of the most successful small-group leaders in jazz. He was a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Jazz Master and won a Lifetime Achievement Grammy for his contributions to music history.

Jamal was born Frederick Russell Jones in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on July 2, 1930. He began playing piano at the age of three, when his uncle Lawrence challenged him to duplicate what he was doing on the piano. Jamal began formal piano training at the age of seven with Mary Cardwell Dawson, whom he described as having greatly influenced him. His Pittsburgh roots remained an important part of his identity (“Pittsburgh meant everything to me and it still does,” he said in 2001) and it was there that he was immersed in the influence of jazz artists such as Earl Hines, Billy Strayhorn, Mary Lou Williams, and Erroll Garner. Jamal also studied with pianist James Miller and began playing piano professionally at the age of fourteen, at which point he was recognized as a “coming great” by the pianist Art Tatum. When asked about his practice habits by a critic from The New York Times, Jamal commented that, “I used to practice and practice with the door open, hoping someone would come by and discover me. I was never the practitioner in the sense of twelve hours a day, but I always thought about music. I think about music all the time.

Sameer Gupta (born July 1, 1976) is a Brooklyn-based jazz percussionist, tabla player, and composer. He is a co-founder of Brooklyn Raga Massive, the jazz ensemble The Supplicants and drummer for the Marc Cary Focus Trio. He has also worked with vidyA, Kosmic Renaissance, Grachan Moncur III, Victor Goines, Vincent Gardner, Sekou Sundiata, Sonny Simmons, Marcus Shelby, Calvin Keys, Richard Howell, Dayna Stephens, and Julian Lage.

The Jazz Observer called his playing kinetic, bass-heavy, and tender.

Rashied Ali, born Robert Patterson (July 1, 1933 – August 12, 2009) was an American free jazz and avant-garde drummer who was best known for performing with John Coltrane in the last years of Coltrane’s life.

Patterson was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His family was musical; his mother sang with Jimmie Lunceford. His brother, Muhammad Ali, is also a drummer, who played with Albert Ayler. Ali, his brother, and his father converted to Islam.

Starting off as a pianist, he eventually took up the drums, via trumpet and trombone. He joined the United States Army and played with military bands during the Korean War. After his military service, he returned home and studied with Philly Joe Jones, then toured with Sonny Rollins.

James Henry Cotton (July 1, 1935 – March 16, 2017) was an American blues harmonica player, singer and songwriter, who performed and recorded with many fellow blues artists and with his own band. He also played drums early in his career.

Cotton began his professional career playing the blues harp in Howlin’ Wolf‘s band in the early 1950s. He made his first recordings in Memphis for Sun Records, under the direction of Sam Phillips. In 1955, he was recruited by Muddy Waters to come to Chicago and join his band. Cotton became Muddy’s bandleader and stayed with the group until 1965. In 1965, he formed the Jimmy Cotton Blues Quartet, with Otis Spann on piano, to record between gigs with the Muddy Waters band. He eventually left to form his own full-time touring group. His first full album, on Verve Records, was produced by the guitarist Mike Bloomfield and the singer and songwriter Nick Gravenites, who later were members of the band Electric Flag.

In the 1970s, Cotton played harmonica on Muddy Waters’ Grammy Award–winning 1977 album Hard Again, produced by Johnny Winter.

Cotton was born in Tunica, Mississippi. He became interested in music when he first heard Sonny Boy Williamson II on the radio. He left home with his uncle and moved to West Helena, Arkansas, finding Williamson there. For many years Cotton claimed that he told Williamson that he was an orphan and that Williamson took him in and raised him, a story he admitted in recent years is not true. However, Williamson did mentor Cotton during his early years.