mick laBriola

Francisco de Jesús Rivera Figueras (born 4 June 1948), known as Paquito D’Rivera, is a Cuban-American alto saxophonist, clarinetist and composer. He was a member of the Cuban songo band Irakere and, since the 1980s, he has established himself as a bandleader in the United States. His smooth saxophone tone and his frequent combination of Latin jazz and classical music have become his trademarks.

Francisco de Jesús Rivera Figueras was born on 4 June 1948 in Havana, Cuba. His father played classicalsaxophone, entertained his son with Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman records, and he sold musical instruments. He took D’Rivera to clubs like the Tropicana (frequented by his musician friends and customers) and to concert bands and orchestras.

At age five, D’Rivera began saxophone lessons by his father. In 1960, he attended the Havana Conservatory of Music, where he learned saxophone and clarinet and met Chucho Valdés. In 1965, he was a featured soloist with the Cuban National Symphony Orchestra. He and Valdés founded Orchestra Cubana de Música Moderna and then in 1973 the group Irakere, which fused jazz, rock, classical, and Cuban music.

Oliver Edward Nelson (June 4, 1932 – October 28, 1975) was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, arranger, composer, and bandleader. His 1961 Impulse! album The Blues and the Abstract Truth (1961) is regarded as one of the most significant recordings of its era. The centerpiece of the album is the definitive version of Nelson’s composition, “Stolen Moments“. Other important recordings from the 1960s are the albums More Blues and the Abstract Truth (1964) and Sound Pieces (1966), both also on Impulse!.

Oliver Nelson was born into a musical family in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. His brother was a saxophonist who played with Cootie Williams in the 1940s, and his sister sang and played piano. Nelson began learning to play the piano when he was six and started on the saxophone at the age of 11. Beginning in 1947, he played in “territory” bands in and around Saint Louis, before joining the Louis Jordan band, where he stayed from 1950 to 1951, playing alto saxophone and arranging charts for Jordan’s band. Nelson died of a heart attack on October 28, 1975, at the age of 43. It is widely believed that Nelson’s commitment to his work resulted in lengthy periods of stress which contributed to his premature death.

American jazz drummer, born June 4, 1926 in New York; died March 7, 1982 in Los Angeles.
Thomas has recorded with Charlie Parker (1946), Howard McGhee and Benny Carter (1947), Dexter Gordon (1947, 1952, 1955), Stan Kenton (1949), Wardell Gray (1950), Hampton Hawes (1955-1956), and Sonny Criss (1956-57).

Eddie “Chank” Willis (June 3, 1936 – August 20, 2018) was an American soul musician. Willis played electric guitar and occasional electric sitar for Motown‘s in-house studio band, The Funk Brothers, during the 1960s and early 1970s.

Born in Grenada, Mississippi, Willis was known for his signature style of muted guitar riffs which added a distinctive tone or “color” to the beat, often timed with the snare, of the hundreds of hit songs recorded at Hitsville U.S.A. for Motown artists. Among the recordings Willis performed on are “Please Mr. Postman” by The Marvelettes, “The Way You Do the Things You Do” by The Temptations, “You Keep Me Hanging On” by The Supremes, and “I Was Made to Love Her” by Stevie Wonder.

Influences for Willis included Chet Atkins, Wes Montgomery, and Albert King. He played a Gibson Firebirdguitar on most of his early 1960s work, later moving on to use a Gibson ES-335. On recordings such as The Supremes’ “No Matter What Sign You Are”, Willis performed on a Coral sitar. He accepted an offer from Phil Collins to perform on his album of Motown and 1960s soul classics, Going Back. Willis died on August 20, 2018 in Gore Springs, Mississippi from complications of polio at the age of 82.

Al Harewood (June 3, 1923 – March 13, 2014) was an American jazz drummer and teacher, born in Brooklyn. As a musician Harewood worked with many jazz musicians including the J.J. Johnson/Kai Winding group, the Art Farmer/Gigi Grice band, David Amram, Betty Carter, and the Curtis Fuller–Benny Golson Sextet. He played on many jazz recordings under the leadership of Lou Donaldson, Horace Parlan, Ike Quebec, Dexter Gordon and Grant Greenand had a long association with saxophonist Stanley Turrentine from 1959 onwards.

He died in March 2014 at the age of 90.

Jimmy Rogers (June 3, 1924 – December 19, 1997) was an American Chicago blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player, best known for his work as a member of Muddy Waters‘s band in the early 1950s. He also had a solo career and recorded several popular blues songs, including “That’s All Right” (now a blues standard), “Chicago Bound”, “Walking by Myself” (his sole R&B chart appearance), and “Rock This House”.He withdrew from the music industry at the end of the 1950s, but returned to recording and touring in the 1970s.

Rogers was born Jay or James Arthur Lane in Ruleville, Mississippi, on June 3, 1924. He was raised in Atlanta and Memphis. He adopted his stepfather’s surname. He learned to play the harmonica with his childhood friend Snooky Pryor, and as a teenager he took up the guitar. He played professionally in East St. Louis, Illinois, with Robert Lockwood, Jr., among others. Rogers moved to Chicago in the mid-1940s. By 1946, he had recorded as a harmonica player and singer for the Harlem record label, run by J. Mayo Williams. Rogers’s name did not appear on the record, which was mislabeled as the work of Memphis Slimand His Houserockers.

Charles Robert Watts (2 June 1941 – 24 August 2021) was an English musician who achieved international fame as the drummer of the Rolling Stones from 1963 until his death in 2021.

Originally trained as a graphic artist, Watts developed an interest in jazz at a young age and joined the band Blues Incorporated. He also started playing drums in London’s rhythm and blues clubs, where he met future bandmates Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Brian Jones. In January 1963, he left Blues Incorporated and joined the Rolling Stones as drummer, while doubling as designer of their record sleeves and tour stages. Watts’ first public appearance as a permanent member was in February 1963; he remained with the group for 58 years until his death, at which time he, Jagger and Richards were the only members of the band to have performed on every one of their studio albums.

Nicknamed “The Wembley Whammer” by Jagger, Watts cited jazz as a major influence on his drumming style. Aside from his career with the Rolling Stones, Watts toured with his own group, the Charlie Watts Quintet, and appeared in London at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club with the Charlie Watts Tentet.

In 1989, Watts was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2004, he was inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame with the Rolling Stones. He is often regarded as one of the greatest drummers of all time.

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Pierre Favre (born 2 June 1937) is a Swiss jazz drummer and percussionist born in Le Locle, Switzerland.

1964 Pierre Favre joins Paiste: At the 1964 Paiste drummer meeting in Frankfurt, Pierre met the Paiste brothers who invited him to visit their factory in Nottwil. Since Pierre has always been interested in cymbals, he was most enthusiastic about accepting their invitation. The Paiste brothers were so impressed with his keen interest and attentive attitude, they offered him a position on their staff to take care of the most important task: cymbal development, quality control and to establish an education/drummer service dept. Pierre left Paiste as a full time employee in 1970 and was replaced by Fredy Studer.

He recorded the album Singing Drums (ECM, 1984) with Paul Motian and Nana Vasconcelos. He also appears on the John Surman album, Such Winters of Memory (1983). He has recorded with several well-known musicians, including Tamia, Michel Godard, Mal Waldron, Paul Giger, Jiří Stivín, Michel Portal, Samuel Blaser, the ARTE Quartett, and Barre Phillips.

Valaida Snow (June 2, 1904 – May 30, 1956) was an American jazz musician and entertainer who performed internationally. She was also known as “Little Louis” and “Queen of the Trumpet,” a nickname given to her by W. C. Handy.

Snow was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Her mother, Etta, was a Howard University-educated music teacher and her father, John, was a minister who was the leader of the Pickaninny Troubadours, a group mainly consisting of child performers. Raised on the road in a show-business family, where starting from the age of five, she began performing with her father’s group. By the time she was 15, she learned to play cello, bass, banjo, violin, mandolin, harp, accordion, clarinet, trumpet, and saxophone. She also sang and danced.

Rumba is a flamenco-adjacent state of mind, but also a part of flamenco. It’s the pop music of the Spanish Gypsies. It’s 4/4 time. It’s very common for ‘legit’ flamenco guitarists and singers to have a rumba on their records.

The rumba originated in Cuba and is a popular Latin American dance floor style, which has sexy and suggestive hip and body movements.

In their original Cuban form they had difficult and complicated rhythms, but by the time they reached Europe, a more simple style had developed. In the 1950s it was adopted by the gypsies, becoming the rumba gitana, which retained all the sensuality and charm of the gypsies. Later, in the 1970s Paco de Lucía and Cameron de la Isla transformed this style, which created an opening for hoards of flamenco fusion groups, such as the Gypsy Kings, who based there fusion on the rumba.

The first flamenco artist to record the rumba was La Niña de los Peines, and one of the best performers of the rumbawas the singer / guitarist Manzanita, although today it is the jerezano singer Capullo de Jerez who excels with his extremely exciting styles of rumbas.