mick laBriola

Ronald Shannon Jackson (January 12, 1940 – October 19, 2013) was an American jazz drummer from Fort Worth, Texas. A pioneer of avant-garde jazz, free funk, and jazz fusion, he appeared on over 50 albums as a bandleader, sideman, arranger, and producer. Jackson and bassist Sirone are the only musicians to have performed and recorded with the three prime shapers of free jazz: pianist Cecil Taylor, and saxophonists Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler.

Musician, Player and Listener magazine writers David Breskin and Rafi Zabor called him “the most stately free-jazz drummer in the history of the idiom, a regal and thundering presence.”^[3] Gary Giddins wrote “Jackson is an astounding drummer, as everyone agrees…he has emerged as a kind of all-purpose new-music connoisseur who brings a profound and unshakably individual approach to every playing situation.”

In 1979, he founded his own group, the Decoding Society, playing what has been dubbed free funk: a blend of funk rhythm and free jazz improvisation.

John William “Long John” Baldry (12 January 1941 – 21 July 2005) was an English musician and actor. In the 1960s, he was one of the first British vocalists to sing the blues in clubs and shared the stage with many British musicians including the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. Before achieving stardom, Rod Stewart and Elton John were members of bands led by Baldry. He enjoyed pop success in 1967 when “Let the Heartaches Begin” reached No. 1 in the UK, and in Australia where his duet with Kathi McDonald “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” reached No. 2 in 1980.

Baldry lived in Canada from the late 1970s until his death, in which he continued to make records there. In the mid 1980’s, he took up voiceover work. Two of his best-known voice roles were as Dr. Ivo Robotnik in Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, and as KOMPLEX in Bucky O’Hare and the Toad Wars.

José Arcadio Limón (January 12, 1908 – December 2, 1972) was a dancer and choreographer from Mexico and who developed what is now known as ‘Limón technique’. In the 1940s, he founded the

José Limón Dance Company (now the Limón Dance Company), and in 1968 he created the José Limón Foundation to carry on his work.

In his choreography, Limón spoke to the complexities of human life as experienced through the body. His dances feature large, visceral gestures — reaching, bending, pulling, grasping — to communicate emotion. Inspired in part by his teacher Doris Humphrey‘s and Charles Weidman‘s theories about the importance of body weight and dynamics, his own Limón technique emphasizes the rhythms of falling and recovering balance and the importance of good breathing to maintaining flow in a dance. He also utilized the dance vocabulary developed by both Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman, which aimed at demonstrating emotion through dance in a way that was much less strict and stylized than ballet as well as used movements of the body that felt most natural and went along with gravity.

Limón’s most well-known work is The Moor’s Pavane (1949), based on Shakespeare’s Othello, which won a major award. Other works were inspired by subjects as diverse as the McCarthy hearings (The Traitor) and the life of La Malinche, who served as interpreter for Hernán Cortés. Limón generally sets his dances to music, choosing composers ranging from Ludwig van Beethoven and Frederic Chopin to Arnold Schoenberg and Heitor Villa-Lobos.

Fred McDowell (January 12, 1904 – July 3, 1972), known by his stage name Mississippi Fred McDowell, was an American singer-songwriter and guitarist of hill country blues music.

McDowell was born in Rossville, Tennessee. His parents were farmers, who both died while Fred was in his youth. He took up the guitar at the age of 14 and was soon playing for tips at dances around Rossville. Seeking a change from plowing fields, he moved to Memphis in 1926, where he worked in the Buck-Eye feed mill, which processed cotton into oil and other products. In 1928, he moved to Mississippi to pick cotton.He finally settled in Como, Mississippi, around 1940, where he worked as a full-time farmer for many years while continuing to play music on weekends at dances and picnics.

George M. Duke (January 12, 1946 – August 5, 2013 San Rafael, Ca) was an American keyboardist, composer, singer-songwriter and record producer. He worked with numerous artists as arranger, music director, writer and co-writer, record producer and as a professor of music. He first made a name for himself with the album The Jean-Luc Ponty Experience with the George Duke Trio. He was known primarily for 32 solo albums, of which A Brazilian Love Affair from 1979 was his most popular, as well as for his collaborations with other musicians, particularly Frank Zappa.

James Columbus “Jay” McShann (January 12, 1916 – December 7, 2006 Muskogee,OK) was an American jazz pianist, vocalist, composer, and bandleader. He led bands in Kansas City, Missouri, that included Charlie Parker, Bernard Anderson, Walter Brown, and Ben Webster.

McShann moved to Kansas City, Missouri, in 1936, and set up his own big band which variously featured Charlie Parker (1937–42), Al Hibbler, Ben Webster, Paul Quinichette, Bernard Anderson, Gene Ramey, Jimmy Coe, Gus Johnson (1938–43), Harold “Doc” West, Earl Coleman, Walter Brown, and Jimmy Witherspoon, among others. His first recordings were all with Charlie Parker, the first as the Jay McShann Orchestra on August 9, 1940.

The band played both swing and blues numbers, but played blues on most of its records; its most popular recording was “Confessin’ the Blues” with Walter Brown on vocals. The group disbanded when McShann was drafted into the Army in 1944. After his return two years later, he found that small groups were now taking the place of big-bands in the jazz scene.

Slim Harpo (born Isiah Moore or James Isaac Moore; February 11, 1924 – January 31, 1970 Lobdell, LA) was an American blues musician, a leading exponent of the swamp bluesstyle, and “one of the most commercially successful blues artists of his day”. He played guitar and was a master of the blues harmonica, known in blues circles as a “harp”. His most successful and influential recordings included “I’m a King Bee” (1957), “Rainin’ in My Heart” (1961), and “Baby Scratch My Back” (1966), which reached number one on Billboard‘s R&B chart and number 16 on its broader Hot 100 singles chart.

Aynsley Thomas Dunbar (born 10 January 1946) is an English drummer. He has worked with John Mayall, Frank Zappa, Jeff Beck, Journey, Jefferson Starship, Nils Lofgren, Eric Burdon, Shuggie Otis, Ian Hunter, Lou Reed, David Bowie, Mick Ronson, Whitesnake, Pat Travers, Sammy Hagar, Michael Schenker, UFO, Michael Chapman, Jake E. Lee, Leslie West, Kathi McDonald, Keith Emerson, Mike Onesko, Herbie Mannand Flo & Eddie. Dunbar was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Journey in 2017.