mick laBriola

William Edward “Little Willie” John (November 15, 1937 – May 26, 1968) was an American R&B singer who performed in the 1950s and early 1960s. He is best known for his successes on the record charts, with songs such as “All Around the World” (1955), “Need Your Love So Bad” (1956), “Talk to Me, Talk to Me” (1958), “Leave My Kitten Alone” (1960), “Sleep” (1960), and his number-one R&B hit “Fever” (1956). An important figure in R&B music of the 1950s, he faded into obscurity in the 1960s and died while serving a prison sentence for manslaughter.

John was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996. In 2022, John was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.

Jerome Richardson (December 25, 1920 – June 23, 2000) was an American jazz musician and woodwind player. He is cited as playing one of the earliest jazz flute recordings with his work on the 1949 Quincy Jones arranged song “Kingfish”.

Richardson was the regular saxophonist in the Oscar Pettiford band that one night, being busy with studio recording work, saw him late for the gig at Cafe Bohemia where Cannonball Adderley and brother Nat Adderley were present in the audience. Cannonball had taken his part and was inadvertently discovered as a result.

Richardson was versed in a variety of instruments in the saxophone, clarinet, and flute families. Early in his career he even sang rock and roll blues vocals. He was an in demand studio musician for television and stage, as well as a session musician in groups outside of jazz. He played with Quincy Jones, Lionel Hampton, Billy Eckstine, Oscar Pettiford, Charles Mingus, Kenny Burrell, The Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra (of which he was a founding member), and later with Earl Hines‘ small band.

Stanley Dural Jr. (November 14, 1947 – September 24, 2016 Lafayette, LA), better known by his stage name Buckwheat Zydeco, was an American accordionist and zydeco musician. He was one of the few zydeco artists to achieve mainstream success. His music group was formally billed as Buckwheat Zydeco and Ils Sont Partis Band (“Ils Sont Partis” being French for “They have left,” or a race announcer’s “And they’re off!”), but they often performed as merely Buckwheat Zydeco.

The New York Times said: “Stanley ‘Buckwheat’ Dural leads one of the best bands in America. A down-home and high-powered celebration, meaty and muscular with a fine-tuned sense of dynamics…propulsive rhythms, incendiary performances.” USA Todaycalled him “a zydeco trailblazer.” Buckwheat Zydeco performed with famous musicians such as Eric Clapton (with whom he also recorded), U2 and the Boston Pops. The band performed at the closing ceremonies of the 1996 Summer Olympics to a worldwide audience of three billion people. Buckwheat performed for President Clintontwice, celebrating both of his inaugurations. The band appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman, CNN, The Today Show, MTV, NBC News, CBS Morning News, National Public Radio‘s Mountain Stage, and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

George Andrew Cables (born November 14, 1944 NY) is an American jazz pianist and composer.

Cables has played with Art Blakey, Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon, Art Pepper, Joe Henderson, and other well-established jazz musicians.

His own records include the 1980 Cables’ Vision with Freddie Hubbard among others.From 1983, Cables worked in the project Bebop & Beyond. He left later in the 1980s, but returned for guest appearances on two early 1990s albums, before rejoining in 1998.

Cables is a charter member of The Cookers band, founded in 2010, which includes leading jazz composers and players like Billy Harper, Eddie Henderson, David Weiss, Donald Harrison, Cecil McBee, Billy Hart and others.

Justine Washington (born October 13, 1940), usually credited as Baby Washington, but credited on some early records as Jeanette (Baby) Washington, is an American soul music vocalist, who had 16 Billboard R&B chart entries in 15 years, most of them during the 1960s. Her biggest hit, “That’s How Heartaches Are Made” in 1963, also entered the Top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Washington was born in Bamberg, South Carolina, United States, and raised in Harlem, New York. In 1956, she joined the vocal group the Hearts, and also recorded for J & S Records as a member of the Jaynetts (“I Wanted To Be Free”/”Where Are You Tonight”, J&S 1765/6). She first recorded solo, as Baby Washington, in 1957, on “Everyday” (J&S 1665).

Looking like an emerging space cocoon, the Crescent Nebula, visible in the center of the featured image, was created by the brightest star in its center. A leading progenitor hypothesis has the Crescent Nebula beginning to form about 250,000 years ago. At that time, the massive central star had evolved to become a Wolf-Rayet star (WR 136), shedding its outer envelope in a strong stellar wind, ejecting the equivalent of our Sun’s mass every 10,000 years. This wind impacted surrounding gas left over from a previous phase, compacting it into a series of complex shells, and lighting it up. The Crescent Nebula, also known as NGC 6888, lies about 4,700 light-years away in the constellation of Cygnus. Star WR 136 will probably undergo a supernova explosion sometime in the next million years.

Bill Gibson is an American drummer. Since 1979, he has been the drummer for Huey Lewis and the News. Since the band’s hiatus in 2020, he is currently a member of the Sons of Champlin.

Gibson was born in Sacramento to Edward and Phyllis Gibson. Gibson started playing the drums at age twelve. His father, Ed, was an architect, and played drums after finishing work for the day. He was influenced by Art Blakey and Buddy Rich. In 1967, his father took him to the Monterey Jazz Festival. He eventually acquired his first drum kit at fourteen, and as a teenager saw The Beatles twice, and The Dave Clark Five.

Bill joined Huey Lewis and the News as drummer in 1979. The News’ sound draws upon early pop, R&B, doo-wop, blue-eyed soul and new wave. They had many top ten hits in the 1980s, including “Do You Believe in Love“, “Heart and Soul“, “I Want a New Drug“, “The Heart of Rock & Roll“, “If This Is It“, “Hip to Be Square“, “I Know What I Like“, “Doing It All for My Baby” and “Perfect World“.

John Paul Hammond (born November 13, 1942) is an American singer and musician.

He is the son of record producer John H. Hammond, and is sometimes referred to as John Hammond Jr. in order to distinguish the two.

Hammond is a son of record producer and talent scout John H. Hammond and his first wife, Jemison McBride, an actress. He is a descendant of Cornelius Vanderbilt, the patriarch of the prominent Vanderbilt family, through his paternal grandmother Emily Vanderbilt Sloane Hammond. He has a brother, Jason, and a stepsister, (Esme) Rosita Sarnoff, the daughter of his father’s second wife, Esme O’Brien Sarnoff. Hammond’s middle name, Paul, is in honor of a friend of his father, the actor Paul Robeson. The younger Hammond was raised by his mother and saw his father only a few times a year while growing up.

He began playing guitar in high school, partially inspired by the album Jimmy Reed at Carnegie Hall. He attended Antioch College for one year but dropped out to pursue a music career. By the mid-1960s he was touring nationally and living in Greenwich Village. He befriended and recorded with many electric blues musicians in New York, including Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Levon Helm‘s New Hawks (later known as the Band), Mike Bloomfield, Dr. John, and Duane Allman.

Pascal-Emmanuel Sinamoyi Tabu (13 November 1940 – 30 November 2013),better known as Tabu Ley Rochereau, was a leading African rumba singer-songwriter from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He was the leader of Orchestre Afrisa International, as well as one of Africa’s most influential vocalists and prolific songwriters. Along with guitarist Dr Nico Kasanda, Tabu Ley pioneered soukous (African rumba) and internationalised his music by fusing elements of Congolese folk music with Cuban, Caribbean and Latin American rumba. He has been described as “the Congolese personality who, along with Mobutu, marked Africa’s 20th century history.” He was dubbed “the African Elvis” by the Los Angeles Times. After the fall of the Mobutu regime, Tabu Ley also pursued a political career. His musical career ran parallel to the other great Congolese rhumba bandleader and rival Franco Luambo Makiadi who ran the band TPOK Jazz throughout the 1960s, 1970s and ’80s.

During his career, Tabu Ley composed up to 3,000 songs and produced 250 albums. In 2023, Rolling Stone ranked him at number 178 on its list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time.

Idris Muhammad (Arabic: إدريس محمد; born Leo Morris; November 13, 1939 – July 29, 2014) was an American jazz drummer and bandleader. He had an extensive career performing jazz, funk, R&B, and soul music and recorded with musicians such as Ahmad Jamal, Lou Donaldson, Pharoah Sanders, Bob James, and Tete Montoliu.

At the age of 14, Muhammad began his professional career by performing with The Hawketts on their iconic recording “Mardi Gras Mambo”. Two years later, in 1956, he played drums on Fats Domino’s recording of “Blueberry Hill“.

After being introduced by Joe Jones, Muhammad began touring with Sam Cooke. Later he played with Jerry Butler and Curtis Mayfield in Chicago, working largely in R’n’B, before moving to New York City in the mid-1960s. In New York, Muhammad became embedded in the jazz scene playing with Kenny Dorham, Horace Silver, Lou Donaldson and Betty Carter. He also played in the Apollo Theatre’s house band. In 1967, he accepted a job in the orchestra for the initial off-Broadway production of Hair and stayed with the production when it moved to Broadway.

Hampton Barnett Hawes Jr. (November 13, 1928 – May 22, 1977 LA, CA) was an American jazz pianist. He was the author of the memoir Raise Up Off Me, which won the Deems-Taylor Award for music writing in 1975. Hawes was self-taught; by his teens he was playing with the leading jazz musicians on the West Coast, including Dexter Gordon, Wardell Gray, Art Pepper, Shorty Rogers, and Teddy Edwards. His second professional job, at 18, was playing for eight months with the Howard McGhee Quintet at the Hi De Ho Club, in a group that included Charlie Parker. By late 1947, Hawes’ reputation was leading to studio recording work. Early studio dates included work for George L. “Happy” Johnson, Teddy Edwards, Sonny Criss, and Shorty Rogers. From 1948 to 1952, he was recorded live on several occasions at Los Angeles-area jazz clubs including The Haig, The Lighthouse, and The Surf Club. By December 1952, he had recorded eight songs under his own name for Prestige Records with a quartet featuring Larry Bunker on vibraphone. Hampton Hawes died unexpectedly of a brain hemorrhage in 1977, at the age of 48.