mick laBriola

Harold Arlen (born Hyman Arluck; February 15, 1905 – April 23, 1986) was an American composer of popular music, who composed over 500 songs, a number of which have become known worldwide. In addition to composing the songs for the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz (lyrics by Yip Harburg), including “Over the Rainbow“, Arlen is a highly regarded contributor to the Great American Songbook. “Over the Rainbow” was voted the 20th century’s No. 1 song by the RIAA and the NEA.

Arlen was born in Buffalo, New York, the child of a Jewish cantor. His twin brother died the next day. He learned to play the piano as a youth, and formed a band as a young man. He achieved some local success as a pianist and singer before moving to New York City in his early twenties, where he worked as an accompanist in vaudeville and changed his name to Harold Arlen. Between 1926 and about 1934, Arlen appeared occasionally as a band vocalist on records by The Buffalodians, Red Nichols, Joe Venuti, Leo Reisman, and Eddie Duchin, usually singing his own compositions.

In 1929, Arlen composed his first well-known song: “Get Happy” (with lyrics by Ted Koehler). Throughout the early and mid-1930s, Arlen and Koehler wrote shows for the Cotton Club, a popular Harlem night club, as well as for Broadway musicals and Hollywood films. Arlen and Koehler’s partnership resulted in a number of hit songs, including the familiar standards “Let’s Fall in Love” and “Stormy Weather“. Arlen continued to perform as a pianist and vocalist with some success, most notably on records with Leo Reisman‘s society dance orchestra.

erl Saunders (February 14, 1934 – October 24, 2008) was an American multi-genre musician who played piano and keyboards, favoring the Hammond B-3 console organ.

Born in San Mateo, California, United States, Saunders attended Polytechnic High School in San Francisco. In his first band in high school was singer Johnny Mathis. He served in the U.S. Air Force from 1953 to 1957. He worked as musical director of the Billy Williams Revue and served in a similar capacity in Oscar Brown Jr.‘s off-Broadway show, Big Time Buck White.

He gained notice in the 1970s when he began collaborating with Jerry Garcia, with whom he had begun playing in 1971 at a small Fillmore Street nightclub called The Matrix. He sat in with the Grateful Dead, and co-founded the Saunders/Garcia Band which produced three albums, and which became the Legion of Mary, with the addition of Martin Fierro (sax) in 1974. It disbanded the following year, but he and Garcia continued to collaborate in the band Reconstruction during 1979, collaborating with Ed Neumeister (trombone), Gaylord Birch (drums) and John Kahn (bass).

He led his own band as Merl Saunders and Friends, playing live dates with Garcia, as well as Mike Bloomfield, David Grisman, Michael Hinton, Tom Fogerty, Vassar Clements, Kenneth Nash, John Kahn and Sheila E. He also collaborated with Grateful Dead percussionist Mickey Hart in the band High Noon.

Saunders took the lead in reintroducing Jerry Garcia to his guitar, after Garcia suffered a diabetic coma in the summer of 1986.

A spectacular trio of merging galaxies in the constellation Boötes takes centre stage in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. These three galaxies are set on a collision course and will eventually merge into a single larger galaxy, distorting one another’s spiral structure through mutual gravitational interaction in the process. An unrelated foreground galaxy appears to float serenely alongside the collision, and the smudged shapes of much more distant galaxies are visible in the background. This colliding trio — known to astronomers as SDSSCGB 10189 — is a relatively rare combination of three large star-forming galaxies lying within only 50 000 light-years of one another. While that might sound like a safe distance, for galaxies this makes them extremely close neighbours! Our own galactic neighbours are much further away; Andromeda, the nearest large galaxy to the Milky Way, is more than 2.5 million light-years away from Earth. This observation was designed to help astronomers understand the origin of the largest, most massive galaxies in the universe. These galactic behemoths are called Brightest Cluster Galaxies (BCGs) and — as the name suggests — are defined as the brightest galaxies in any given galaxy cluster. Astronomers suspect that BCGs form through the merger of large, gas-rich galaxies like the ones in this image. They turned to Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys to investigate this galactic trio in painstaking detail, hoping to shed light on the formation of the Universe’s most massive galaxies. [Image description: Three galaxies stand together just right of centre. They are close enough that they appear to be merging into one. Their shapes are distorted, with strands of gas and dust running between them. Each is emitting a lot of light. Further to the left is an unconnected, dimmer spiral galaxy. The background is dark, with a few smaller, dim and faint galaxies and a couple of stars.

Anthony “Rebop” Kwaku Baah (13 February 1944 – 12 January 1983) was a Ghanaian percussionist who worked with the 1970s rock groups Traffic and Can.

Baah was born on 13 February 1944, in Konongo, Gold Coast.

In 1969, Baah performed on Randy Weston‘s album African Rhythms. In the same year he worked with Nick Drake on the song “Three Hours”, posthumously released in 2004 on the compilation album Made to Love Magic. He then joined the English band Traffic in 1971, having met them in Sweden during a tour. He appeared on the albums Welcome to the Canteen, The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys, Shoot Out at the Fantasy Factory, On the Road, and When the Eagle Flies.

In 1973 he performed in the all-star Eric Clapton’s Rainbow Concert. After Traffic disbanded in 1974, he played on Steve Winwood’s self-titled debut solo album, which was released in 1977. Also in 1977, he joined the German band Can along with former Traffic bassist Rosko Gee, playing with them until their breakup in 1979, appearing on the albums Saw Delight, Out of Reach and Can.

In 1982 Baah recorded an album with Zahara. Baah died of a cerebral hemorrhage during a performance in Stockholm, Sweden in January 1983, where he was on tour with Jimmy Cliff. His final album, Melodies in a Jungle Man’s Head, was released in its unfinished state.

Peter Brian Gabriel (born 13 February 1950) is an English musician, singer, songwriter, record producer, and activist. He rose to fame as the original lead singer of the progressive rock band Genesis. After leaving Genesis in 1975, he launched a successful solo career with “Solsbury Hill” as his first single. His fifth studio album, So (1986), is his best-selling release and is certified triple platinum in the UK and five times platinum in the US. The album’s most successful single, “Sledgehammer“, won a record nine MTV Awards at the 1987 MTV Video Music Awards and, according to a report in 2011, it was MTV‘s most played music video of all time.

Gabriel has been a champion of world music for much of his career. He co-founded the WOMAD festival in 1982. He has continued to focus on producing and promoting world music through his Real World Recordslabel. He has also pioneered digital distribution methods for music, co-founding OD2, one of the first online music download services. Gabriel has also been involved in numerous humanitarian efforts. In 1980, he released the anti-apartheid single “Biko“. He has participated in several human-rights benefit concerts, including Amnesty International‘s Human Rights Now! tour in 1988, and co-founded the Witness human rights organisation in 1992. Gabriel developed The Elders with Richard Branson, which was launched by Nelson Mandela in 2007.

Gabriel has won three Brit Awards—winning Best British Male in 1987, six Grammy Awards, thirteen MTV Video Music Awards, the first Pioneer Award at the BT Digital Music Awards, the Q magazine Lifetime Achievement, the Ivor Novello Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the Polar Music Prize. He was made a BMI Icon at the 57th annual BMI London Awards for his “influence on generations of music makers”. In recognition of his many years of human rights activism, he received the Man of Peace award from the Nobel Peace Prize laureates in 2006, and Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2008. AllMusic has described Gabriel as “one of rock’s most ambitious, innovative musicians, as well as one of its most political”. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Genesis in 2010, followed by his induction as a solo artist in 2014. In March 2015, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of South Australia in recognition of his achievements in music.

King Floyd (February 13, 1945 – March 6, 2006) was a New Orleans soul singer and songwriter, best known for his top 10 hit from 1970, “Groove Me“.

King Floyd III was born in New Orleans in 1945. His musical career started as a singer at the Sho-Bar on Bourbon Street. Following a stint in the army, Floyd went to California, where he joined up with record producer Harold Battiste. His debut album, A Man in Love, featuring songs co-written with Dr. John, failed to make an impact on the charts. Floyd returned to New Orleans in 1969 and worked for the Post Office.

James Brown made a discovery out of King Floyd, because of the screams, tells, grunts, and other panting noises that were similar to Brown’s vocal style. In 1970, Wardell Quezergue, an arranger of R&Bscores, persuaded Floyd to record “Groove Me” with Malaco Records in Jackson, Mississippi. Jean Knightrecorded her hit, “Mr. Big Stuff,” in the same sessions.

At first, “Groove Me” was a B-side to another Floyd song, “What Our Love Needs.” New Orleans radio DJsstarted playing “Groove Me” and the song became a local hit. Atlantic Records picked up national distribution of “Groove Me,” which topped the United States R&B chart and reached number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100. This disc sold over one million copies, and received a gold disc awarded by the R.I.A.A. in December 1970. Floyd quit his job at the post office to perform a U.S. tour. His follow-up single, “Baby Let Me Kiss You” climbed up to number 29 on the Billboard top 40 charts in 1971.

Wardell Gray (February 13, 1921 – May 25, 1955) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist who straddled the swing and bebop periods.

Gray was born in Oklahoma City, the youngest of four children. He spent his early childhood years in Oklahoma, before he and his family moved to Detroit in 1929.

In early 1935, Gray began attending Northeastern High School, then transferred to Cass Technical High School, noted for having Donald Byrd, Lucky Thompson and Al McKibbon as alumni. He left in 1936, before graduating. Advised by his brother-in-law Junior Warren, as a teenager he started on the clarinet, but after hearing Lester Young on record with Count Basie, he was inspired to switch to tenor saxophone.

Gray’s first musical job was in Isaac Goodwin‘s small band, a part-time outfit that played local dances. When auditioning for another job, he was heard by Dorothy Patton, a young pianist who was forming a band in the Fraternal Club in Flint, Michigan, and she hired him. After a very happy year there, he moved to Jimmy Raschel‘s band (Raschel had recorded a few sides earlier in the 1930s but did not do so again), then to the Benny Carew band in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It was at around this time that he met Jeanne Goings; together they had a daughter, Anita, who was born in January 1941. Gray was still working regularly despite his drug problems, and when Benny Carter was engaged in May 1955 to provide the band at the opening of the Moulin Rouge Hotel, he called on Gray. Gray attended rehearsals but was absent when the club opened on May 25. The next day he was found on a stretch of desert on the outskirts of Las Vegas dead with a broken neck.