mick laBriola

J.J. Johnson (January 22, 1924 – February 4, 2001), born James Louis Johnson and also known as Jay Jay Johnson, was an American jazz trombonist, composer and arranger. Johnson was one of the earliest trombonists to embrace bebop.

After studying the piano beginning at age 9, Johnson decided to play trombone at the age of 14. In 1941, he began his professional career with Clarence Love, and then played with Snookum Russell in 1942. In Russell’s band, he met the trumpeter Fats Navarro, who influenced him to play in the style of the tenor saxophonist Lester Young. Johnson played in Benny Carter‘s orchestra between 1942 and 1945, and made his first recordings in 1943 under Carter’s leadership, recording his first solo (on “Love for Sale”) in October 1943. In 1944, he took part in the first Jazz at the Philharmonic concert, presented in Los Angeles and organized by Norman Granz. In 1945, he joined the big band of Count Basie, touring and recording with him until 1946.

While the trombone was featured prominently in dixieland and swing music, it fell out of favor among bebopmusicians, largely because instruments with valves and keys (trumpet, saxophone) were believed to be more suited to bebop’s often rapid tempos and demand for technical mastery. In 1946, bebop co-inventor Dizzy Gillespie encouraged the young trombonist’s development: “I’ve always known that the trombone could be played different, that somebody’d catch on one of these days. Man, you’re elected.”

Hammie Nixon (January 22, 1908 – August 17, 1984) was an American harmonica player.

Born Hammie Nickerson in Brownsville, Tennessee, he began his music career with jug bands in the 1920s. He is best known as a country blues harmonica player, but he also played the kazoo, guitar and jug. He played with the guitarist Sleepy John Estes for half a century, first recording with Estes in 1929 for Victor Records. He also recorded with Little Buddy Doyle, Lee Green, Clayton T. Driver, Charlie Pickett and Son Bonds.

During the 1920s Nixon helped to pioneer the use of the harmonica as a rhythm instrument in a band setting, rather than as a novelty solo instrument. After Estes died in 1979, Nixon played with the Beale Street Jug Band (also called the Memphis Jug Band). Nixon’s last recording, “Tappin’ That Thing” (Hmg Records), was recorded shortly before his death in 1984, in Jackson, Tennessee.

Blind Willie Johnson (January 25, 1897 – September 18, 1945) was an American gospel blues singer, guitarist and evangelist. His landmark recordings completed between 1927 and 1930—thirty songs in total—display a combination of powerful “chest voice” singing, slide guitar skills, and originality that has influenced generations of musicians. Even though Johnson’s records sold well, as a street performer and preacher, he had little wealth in his lifetime. His life was poorly documented, but over time, music historians such as Samuel Charters have uncovered more about Johnson and his five recording sessions.

A revival of interest in Johnson’s music began in the 1960s, following his inclusion on Harry Smith‘s Anthology of American Folk Music, and by the efforts of the blues guitarist Reverend Gary Davis. Along with Davis, he has since been considered the dominant player of “holy blues” music, which conveyed religious themes in a blues idiom and often with the genre’s style of guitar accompaniment.^[2]

Johnson’s work has become more accessible through compilation albums such as American Epic: The Best of Blind Willie Johnson and the Charters compilations. As a result, Johnson is credited as one of the most influential practitioners of the blues, and his slide guitar playing, particularly on his hymn “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground“, is highly acclaimed. Other recordings by Johnson include “Jesus Make Up My Dying Bed“, “It’s Nobody’s Fault but Mine“, and “John the Revelator“. Johnson was born on January 25, 1897, in Pendleton, Texas, a small town near Temple, Texas, to sharecropper Dock Johnson and Mary King.

Voices of Sepharad performing the second set for Tzipporah Johnsons album release concert. With Sarah Larrson and Voices of Sepharad. Saturday at 8pm at the Hook & Ladder in Minneapolis. https://www.facebook.com/TheHookMpls/

Richard Pierce Havens (January 21, 1941 – April 22, 2013) was an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. His music encompassed elements of folk, soul (both of which he frequently covered), and rhythm and blues. He had a rhythmic guitar style (often in open tunings). He was the opening act at Woodstock, sang many jingles for television commercials, and was also the voice of the GeoSafari toys.

Born in Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, Havens was the oldest of nine children.He was of Native American (Blackfoot) descent on his father’s side and of the British West Indies on his mother’s. His grandfather was Blackfoot of the Montana/South Dakota area.

Havens’s grandfather and great-uncle joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, moved to New York City thereafter, and settled on the Shinnecock Reservation on Long Island. Havens’s grandfather married, then moved to Brooklyn.

As a youth, Havens began organizing his neighborhood friends into a street corner doo-wop group. At age 16, he was performing with the McCrea Gospel Singers.

At age 20, Havens left his hometown Brooklyn, seeking artistic stimulation in Greenwich Village in Manhattan. “I saw the Village as a place to escape to, in order to express yourself,” he recalled. “I had first gone there during the beatnik days of the 1950s to perform poetry, then I drew portraits for two years and stayed up all night listening to folk music in the clubs. It took a while before I thought of picking up a guitar.

Fird Eaglin Jr. (January 21, 1936 or 1937 – February 18, 2009), known as Snooks Eaglin, was an American guitarist and singer based in New Orleans. In his early years he was sometimes credited under other names, including Blind Snooks Eaglin, “Lil” Snook, Ford Eaglin, Blind Guitar Ferd.

His vocal style was reminiscent of that of Ray Charles; in the 1950s, when he was in his late teens, he sometimes billed himself as “Little Ray Charles”. He played a wide range of styles of music within the same concert, album, or even song: blues, rock and roll, jazz, country, and Latin. In his early years, he also played acoustic blues.

His ability to play a wide range of songs and make them his own earned him the nickname “The Human Jukebox.” Eaglin claimed in interviews that his musical repertoire included some 2,500 songs.

At live shows, he usually did not prepare set lists and was unpredictable, even to his bandmates. He played songs that came to him on stage, and he also took requests from the audience.

Eaglin lost his sight not long after his first birthday, having been stricken with glaucoma, and spent several years in the hospital with other ailments. Around the age of five he received a guitar from his father and taught himself to play by listening to and playing along with the radio. A mischievous youngster, he was given the nickname “Snooks” after a radio character named Baby Snooks.

Robert “Juice” Wilson (January 21, 1904 – May 22, 1993) was an American jazz violinist.

Wilson grew up an orphan and was raised by his uncle from age three in Chicago. He began playing drums in the Chicago Militia Boys Band, then switched to violin at age eight. By the age of twelve he was already playing with Jimmy Wade, and at 14 he performed with Freddie Keppard. He worked on steamboats on the Great Lakes and did extended residencies with Jimmy Harrison in Ohio. Early in the 1920s he worked in Erie, Pennsylvania with Hersal Brassfield, then moved to Buffalo, New York to play with Eugene Primus as well as the Buffalo Junior Symphony Orchestra.

In 1928, Wilson moved to New York City and played with Lloyd Scott at the Savoy Ballroom. At the end of the decade he toured Europe with Noble Sissle, and decided to remain there. He worked first in the Netherlands with Ed Swayzee, Leon Abbey, the Utica Jubilee Singers, the Louis Douglass Revue, Little Mike McKendrick’s International Band, and Tom Chase. He made trips to Spain and North Africa before settling in Malta, where he became a local star. He worked there through much of the 1940s and 1950s as a multi-instrumentalist, and made further tours around the Mediterranean before coming back to the United States in the 1960s. He died peacefully in 1993.

The two dominant galaxies near center are far far away, 12 million light-years distant toward the northern constellation of the Great Bear. On the right, with grand spiral arms and bright yellow core is spiral galaxy M81. Also known as Bode’s galaxy, M81 spans some 100,000 light-years. On the left is cigar-shaped irregular galaxy M82. The pair have been locked in gravitational combat for a billion years. Gravity from each galaxy has profoundly affected the other during a series of cosmic close encounters. Their last go-round lasted about 100 million years and likely raised density waves rippling around M81, resulting in the richness of M81‘s spiral arms. M82 was left with violent star forming regions and colliding gas clouds so energetic that the galaxy glows in X-rays. In the next few billion years, their continuing gravitational encounters will result in a merger, and a single galaxy will remain. This extragalactic scenario also includes other members of the interacting M81 galaxy group with NGC 3077 below and right of the large spiral, and NGC 2976 at upper right in the frame. Captured under dark night skies in the Austrian Alps, the foreground of the wide-field image is filled with integrated flux nebulae. Those faint, dusty interstellar clouds reflect starlight above the plane of our own Milky Way galaxy.

Jeff “Tain” Watts (born January 20, 1960) is a jazz drummer who has performed with Wynton Marsalis, Branford Marsalis, Betty Carter, Michael Brecker, Alice Coltrane, Ravi Coltrane, and others.

Watts got the nickname “Tain” from Kenny Kirkland when they were on tour in Florida and drove past a Chieftain gas station. He was given a Guggenheim fellowship in music composition in 2017. Watts attended Berklee College of Music, where he met collaborator Branford Marsalis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfV91l_t1J8

Wilbur James “Jimmy” Cobb (January 20, 1929 – May 24, 2020) was an American jazz drummer. He was part of Miles Davis‘s First Great Sextet. At the time of his death, he had been the band’s last surviving member for nearly thirty years. He was awarded an NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship in 2009.

Cobb was born in Washington, D.C. on January 20, 1929. Before he began his music career, he listened to jazz albums and stayed awake into the late hours of the night in order to listen to Symphony Sidbroadcasting from New York City. Raised Catholic, he was also exposed to Church music.

Cobb started his touring career in 1950 with the saxophonist Earl Bostic. He subsequently performed with vocalist Dinah Washington, pianist Wynton Kelly, saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, bassist Keter Betts, Frank Wess, Leo Parker, and Charlie Rouse. His website also recounts his gigs with Billie Holiday, Pearl Bailey, and Dizzy Gillespie that took place before 1957.

A favorite dance among professional artists, Soleá por bulerías consists of a series of letras that include breaks of one or more compáses within the letra. Dancers will include “remates” – fast finishes or moments/spurts of footwork, for example, after the 1st line of a letra, which is standard practice, and even at the end of a compás while the singer is still singing. This creates a lively structure, though the dance and music also retains a majestic quality.

There is no standard music for the escobilla in this dance, though it’s parent form. the Soleares has easily recognizable music for its escobilla. Dancers usually request rhythm music in the tone and key of Soléa por bulerías for extended footwork sequences. The dance follows the same structure as the Soleares.

Guitar falsetas are often included as both an introduction to the song/dance, and throughout the dance as a vehicle for the dancer. Singers admire this song, and if they perform solo versions with the guitarist only, they usually sing anywhere from 2 to 20 letras in a performance. The Soléa por bulerías and Soleares por medio are often performed together.

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For our purposes, there are four features that distinguish the soleá por bulerías:

• The compás starts on 12, and is identical to that of the Alegrías;

• The pace is that of a slow to mid-tempo bulerías;

• The letras follow the form of soleares letras, though the repeats at the end of phrases can vary and are often extended;

• Often, although by no means always, there is a descending bass line in the guitar of D-C-Bb-A on beats 7-10, echoing similar lines found in soleares.

David Crosby was one of music’s most fascinating figures.

The singer-songwriter, who died this week at 81, was, to some, known as much for his belligerent attitude and struggles with addiction as his music.

But he was a genius artist whose work is among the most instrumental in the development of folk-rock.

“I know people tend to focus on how volatile our relationship has been at times, but what has always mattered to David and me more than anything was the pure joy of the music we created together, the sound we discovered with one another, and the deep friendship we shared over all these many long years,” his band mate Graham Nash wrote in tribute.

Crosby added an experimental yet refined edge to the folk and pop music that was dominant through the 1960s and 70s.

He made music alone, but his most celebrated work came as part of his time in acts like Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and The Byrds.

Prodigiously talented and fearlessly creative, Crosby pushed musical boundaries in a way that many critics and peers couldn’t understand at the time, but that now position him as a key architect of a range of genres from soft rock to psych rock.

“David was fearless in life and in music,” Nash said.

“He leaves behind a tremendous void as far as sheer personality and talent in this world. He spoke his mind, his heart, and his passion through his beautiful music and leaves an incredible legacy. These are the things that matter most.”

The following five tracks merely scratch the surface of his incredible career.