mick laBriola

Ramzan Paskayev (Chechen: Рамзан Паскаев) (born March 16, 1947, in Taraz, Kazakhstan) is a Chechen accordionist and folk musician. He is regarded by many as the contemporary successor to late Chechen accordionist Umar Dimayev.

Fred Neil (March 16, 1936 – July 7, 2001 Cleveland) was an American folk singer-songwriter active in the 1960s and early 1970s. He is mainly known through other people’s recordings of his material – particularly “Everybody’s Talkin’“, which became a hit for Harry Nilsson after it was used in the film Midnight Cowboy in 1969. Though highly regarded by contemporary folk singers, he was reluctant to tour and spent much of the last 30 years of his life assisting with the preservation of dolphins.

Thomas Lee Flanagan (March 16, 1930 – November 16, 2001) was an American jazzpianist and composer. He grew up in Detroit, initially influenced by such pianists as Art Tatum, Teddy Wilson, and Nat King Cole, and then by bebop musicians. Within months of moving to New York in 1956, he had recorded with Miles Davis and on Sonny Rollins‘ album Saxophone Colossus. Recordings under various leaders, including Giant Stepsof John Coltrane, continued well into 1962, when he became vocalist Ella Fitzgerald‘s full-time accompanist. He worked with Fitzgerald for three years until 1965, and then in 1968 returned to be her pianist and musical director, this time for a decade.

After leaving Fitzgerald in 1978, Flanagan attracted praise for the elegance of his playing, which was principally in trio settings when under his own leadership. In his 45-year recording career, he recorded more than three dozen albums under his own name and more than 200 as a sideman. By the time of his death, he was one of the most widely admired jazz pianists and had influenced both his contemporaries and later generations of players.

Ralph Anthony MacDonald (March 15, 1944 – December 18, 2011) was an American percussionist, steelpan virtuoso, songwriter, musical arranger, and record producer.

His compositions include “Where Is the Love“, a Grammy Award winner for the duet of Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway; “Just the Two of Us“, recorded by Bill Withers and Grover Washington Jr.; and “Mister Magic” recorded by Grover Washington Jr.

Philip Chapman Lesh (March 15, 1940 – October 25, 2024 Berkeley, CA) was an American musician and a founding member of the Grateful Dead, with whom he developed a unique style of playing improvised six-string bass guitar. He was their bassist throughout their 30-year career.

After the group disbanded in 1995, Lesh continued the tradition of Grateful Dead family music with a side project, Phil Lesh and Friends, which paid homage to the Dead’s music by playing their repertoire, as well as songs by members of his own group. Lesh operated a music venue called Terrapin Crossroads. From 2009 to 2014, he performed in Furthur alongside former Grateful Dead bandmate Bob Weir. He scaled back touring in 2014 but continued to perform concerts.

Ryland Peter Cooder (born March 15, 1947) is an American musician, songwriter, film score composer, record producer, and writer. He is a multi-instrumentalist but is best known for his slide guitar work, his interest in traditional music, and his collaborations with traditional musicians from many countries.

Cooder’s solo work draws upon many genres. He has played with John Lee Hooker, Captain Beefheart, Taj Mahal, Gordon Lightfoot, Ali Farka Touré, Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones, Van Morrison, Neil Young, Randy Newman, Linda Ronstadt, Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, David Lindley, the Chieftains, Warren Zevon, Manuel Galbán, the Doobie Brothers, Little Feat, and Carla Olson and the Textones (on record and film). He formed the band Little Village, and produced the album Buena Vista Social Club (1997), which became a worldwide hit; Wim Wenders directed the documentary film of the same name(1999), which was nominated for an Academy Award in 2000.

Cooder was ranked at No. 8 on Rolling Stone magazine’s 2003 list of “The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time”, while a 2010 list by Gibson Guitar Corporation placed him at No. 32. In 2011, he published a collection of short stories called Los Angeles Stories.

Charles Lloyd (born March 15, 1938) is an American jazz musician and composer. He primarily plays tenor saxophone and flute and occasionally other reed instruments, including alto saxophone and the Hungarian tárogató. Lloyd’s primary band since 2007 has been a quartet including pianist Jason Moran, acoustic bassist Reuben Rogers, and drummer Eric Harland.

Samuel John “Lightnin’” Hopkins (March 15, 1912 – January 30, 1982) was an American country blues singer, songwriter, guitarist and occasional pianist from Centerville, Texas. In 2010, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him No. 71 on its list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time.

The musicologist Robert “Mack” McCormick opined that Hopkins is “the embodiment of the jazz-and-poetry spirit, representing its ancient form in the single creator whose words and music are one act”. He influenced Townes Van Zandt, Hank Williams, Jr., and a generation of blues musicians such as Stevie Ray Vaughan, whose Grammy-nominated song “Rude Mood” was directly inspired by the Texan’s song “Hopkins’ Sky Hop”. In his own lifetime, Hopkins was one of the initial inductees in 1980 to the Blues Hall of Fame.