mick laBriola

Claude Hudson “Butch” Trucks (May 11, 1947 – January 24, 2017) was an American drummer. He was best known as a founding member of The Allman Brothers Band, for which he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. Trucks was born and raised in Jacksonville, Florida. He played in various groups before forming the 31st of February while at Florida State University in the mid-1960s. He joined the Allman Brothers Band in 1969. Their 1971 live release, At Fillmore East, represented an artistic and commercial breakthrough. The group became one of the most popular bands of the era on the strength of their live performances and several successful albums. Though the band broke up and re-formed various times, Trucks remained a constant in their 45-year career. Trucks died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on January 24, 2017. Claude Hudson Trucks was born on May 11, 1947, in Jacksonville, Florida. His father was an optician. He first discovered his talent at drumming when prompted by a band director at Ribault Junior High: “The band director gave three of us sticks and said, ‘Play me something,'” he recalled. He then attended Jean Ribault High School, where he was made first chair as a freshman.

Carla Bley (born Lovella May Borg; May 11, 1936) is an American jazz composer, pianist, organist and bandleader. An important figure in the free jazz movement of the 1960s, she is perhaps best known for her jazz opera Escalator over the Hill (released as a triple LP set), as well as a book of compositions that have been performed by many other artists, including Gary Burton, Jimmy Giuffre, George Russell, Art Farmer, John Scofield and her ex-husband Paul Bley.

Bley was born in Oakland, California, United States, to Emil Borg (1899–1990), a piano teacher and church choirmaster, who encouraged her to sing and to learn to play the piano, and Arline Anderson (1907–1944), who died when Bley was eight years old. After giving up the church to immerse herself in roller skating at the age of fourteen, she moved to New York at seventeen and became a cigarette girl at Birdland, where she met jazz pianist Paul Bley. She toured with him under the name Karen Borg, before she changed her name in 1957 to Carla Borg and married Paul Bley the same year adopting the Bley name. He encouraged her to start composing. The couple divorced in 1967, but she kept his surname professionally.

Carlos Eduardo Lyra Barbosa (born 11 May 1933) is a Brazilian singer and composer of numerous bossa nova and Música popular brasileira classics. He and Antonio Carlos Jobim, were the first two music composers, together with lyricists Vinicius de Moraes and Ronaldo Boscoli, to be recorded by João Gilbertoon his first LP entitled Chega de Saudade (1959), which was called the first generation of Bossa Nova.

Frederick Roach (May 11, 1931 – October 3, 1980) was an American soul jazz Hammond B3 organist born in The Bronx, New York, United States. Roach’s first commercial recordings were with saxophonist Ike Quebec for Blue Note Records in the fall of 1961. These sessions produced Quebec’s albums Heavy Soul and It Might as Well Be Spring. In March of 1962, Roach recorded as a backing musician for the Thunderbird album by Willis Jackson. From 1962-64, Roach recorded 5 albums as a leader for Blue Note, and also recorded with Donald Byrd on the album I’m Tryin’ to Get Home. Roach’s original writing, steady basslines, and highly musical fleet-fingered right hand set him apart From 1966-67 he recorded three more albums as a leader for Prestige Records, which are in a more commercial vein than his Blue Note dates. Roach’s Prestige albums were his last commercial recordings.

Dean Rudland, in the liner notes to a CD reissue of Roach’s Prestige albums Soul Book and Mocha Motion, wrote that Roach moved to Paris in the 1970s and worked as an arranger for Oliver Lake’s big band. Roach can be heard reciting one of his own poems on a 1974 album by jazz bassist Bob Reid titled Africa Is Calling Me: A Modern Day Black Opera (Kwela Records, 30K010), which was recorded in Paris and featured Oliver Lake.

Roach reportedly later moved to California to work in the film industry. He suffered a heart attack and died in 1980.

Seán Keane, one of the finest Irish folk music fiddlers, passed away on May 7, 2023. He was best known as the fiddler for the influential Irish and Celtic music band, The Chieftains.

Keane grew up in Drimnagh, a suburb of Dublin. He was born into a family with a rich musical heritage. His parents, both accomplished fiddle players, were revered members of the traditional music communities in County Longford and County Clare. Their home was a frequent destination for a multitude of traveling traditional players from all across Ireland, who performed in the bustling streets of Dublin. The Keane household became a veritable landmark in Dublin’s traditional music scene in the 1950s and 1960s, and it was here that Seán and his brother James, an accordion player, honed their craft.

Their summer trips to Longford and Clare further fueled their passion for traditional music and introduced them to an array of styles and techniques. These experiences were instrumental in shaping Seán’s musical direction and creative expression.

In 1968, Seán Keane made his foray into the world of professional music by joining the acclaimed Irish traditional music band, The Chieftains. With his virtuosic fiddle playing and his deep-seated passion for traditional music, he quickly became an integral member of the group. Seán’s contributions to The Chieftains’ discography, which spans several decades, are nothing short of remarkable.

For ten years the stargazer dreamed of taking a picture like this. The dreamer knew that the White Desert National Park in Egypt‘s Western Desert is a picturesque place hosting numerous chalk formationssculpted into surreal structures by a sandy wind. The dreamer knew that the sky above could be impressively dark on a clear moonless night, showing highlights such as the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy in impressive color and detail. So the dreamer invited an even more experienced astrophotographer to spend three weeks together in the desert and plan the composite images that needed to be taken and processed to create the dream image. Over three days in mid-March, the base images were taken, all with the same camera and from the same location. The impressive result is featured here, with the dreamer — proudly wearing a traditional Bedouin galabyia — pictured in the foreground.

David Thomas Mason (born 10 May 1946) is an English singer-songwriter and guitarist from Worcester, who first found fame with the rock band Traffic. Over the course of his career, Mason has played and recorded with many notable pop and rock musicians, including Paul McCartney, George Harrison, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Michael Jackson, David Crosby, Graham Nash, Steve Winwood, Fleetwood Mac, Delaney & Bonnie, Leon Russell, and Cass Elliot. One of Mason’s best known songs is “Feelin’ Alright“, recorded by Traffic in 1968 and later by many other performers, including Joe Cocker, whose version of the song was a hit in 1969. For Traffic, he also wrote “Hole in My Shoe“, a psychedelic pop song that became a hit in its own right. “We Just Disagree“, Mason’s 1977 solo U.S. hit, written by Jim Krueger, has become a staple of U.S. classic hits and adult contemporary radio playlists. In 2004, Mason was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a founding member of Traffic. Within the same year, Mason started a new electric guitar company with business partner and industrial designer Ravi Sawhney 

Márkos Vamvakáris (Greek: Μάρκος Βαμβακάρης; 10 May 1905 – 8 February 1972), was a rebetikomusician. He is universally referred to by rebetiko writers and fans simply by his first name, Márkos. The great significance of Vamvakaris for the rebetiko is also reflected by his nickname: the “patriarch of the rebetiko”.

Jimmy Ponder (May 10, 1946 – September 16, 2013) was an American jazz guitarist.

When Ponder’s brother entered the military, he left his guitar, and Ponder picked it up. In his early teens he received lessons from the guitarist in a band for which he sang doo-wop. He was drawn to the jazz guitar he heard on the radio. While playing in a rhythm and blues band, he occasionally inserted a jazz solo. He considered hearing guitarist Thornel Schwartz an important part of his life, when Schwartz was playing with organist Jimmy McGriff. He was impressed by Pat Martino when he saw Martino in the Jack McDuff band. He also cited as influences George Benson, Kenny Burrell, and Rene Thomas, though none surpassed the impact of seeing Wes Montgomery.

He learned the guitar solo from “Daily Double” (Quaker Town), the first 45 rpm single released by Charles Earland. When Earland performed in Pittsburgh, he invited Ponder to sit-in with the band and liked what he heard. Earland promised Ponder he could become a member of the band after he finished high school. Six months after graduating, he was hired by Earland.

This new Hubble image shows NGC 1566, a beautiful galaxy located approximately 40 million light-years away in the constellation of Dorado (The Dolphinfish). NGC 1566 is an intermediate spiral galaxy, meaning that while it does not have a well defined bar-shaped region of stars at its centre — like barred spirals — it is not quite an unbarred spiral either (heic9902o). The small but extremely bright nucleus of NGC 1566 is clearly visible in this image, a telltale sign of its membership of the Seyfert class of galaxies. The centres of such galaxies are very active and luminous, emitting strong bursts of radiation and potentially harbouring supermassive black holes that are many millions of times the mass of the Sun. NGC 1566 is not just any Seyfert galaxy; it is the second brightest Seyfert galaxy known. It is also the brightest and most dominant member of the Dorado Group, a loose concentration of galaxies that together comprise one of the richest galaxy groups of the southern hemisphere. This image highlights the beauty and awe-inspiring nature of this unique galaxy group, with NGC 1566 glittering and glowing, its bright nucleus framed by swirling and symmetrical lavender arms. This image was taken by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) in the near-infrared part of the spectrum. A version of the image was entered into the Hubble’s Hidden Treasures image processing competition by Flickr user Det58.