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Michael Kevin Taylor (born 17 January 1949) is an English guitarist, best known as a former member of John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers (1967–1969) and the Rolling Stones (1969–1974). As a member of the Stones, he appeared on: Let It Bleed (1969), Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out! The Rolling Stones in Concert (1970), Sticky Fingers (1971), Exile on Main St. (1972), Goats Head Soup (1973) and It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll (1974).
Since leaving the Rolling Stones in December 1974, Taylor has worked with numerous other artists and released several solo albums. From November 2012 onwards he participated in the Stones’ 50th-Anniversary shows in London and Newark, and in the band’s 50 & Counting tour, which included North America, Glastonbury Festival and Hyde Park in 2013. He was ranked 37th in Rolling Stone magazine’s 2011 list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time.[1] Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash states that Taylor had the biggest influence on him.
more...Billy Harper (born January 17, 1943) is an American jazz saxophonist, “one of a generation of Coltrane-influenced tenor saxophonists” with a distinctively stern, hard-as-nails sound on his instrument.
He was born in Houston, Texas, United States. In 1965, Harper earned a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of North Texas.
Harper has played with some of jazz’s greatest drummers; he served with Art Blakey‘s Messengers for two years (1968–1970); he played very briefly with Elvin Jones (1970), he played with the Thad Jones/ Mel Lewis Orchestra in the 1970s, and was a member of Max Roach‘s quartet from 1971–1978. In 1979, Harper formed his own group, touring with it and documenting its music on the recording Billy Harper Quintet in Europe, and he was featured as a soloist on a 1983 recording, Such Great Friends, with virtuoso, visionary pianist and record producer Stanley Cowell. After a period of relative inactivity in the 1980s, Harper came back strong with another international tour, which ended with perhaps his most ambitious recording: the three-volume Live on Tour in the Far East (1991). In the new millennium, Harper’s recording activity has been subdued and sporadic, though more recently he appeared as a regular member of pianist-jazz historian Randy Weston‘s ensembles. In 2013, they recorded their first album as a duo, entitled The Roots of the Blues.
more...Cedar Anthony Walton Jr. (January 17, 1934 – August 19, 2013) was an American hard bop jazz pianist. He came to prominence as a member of drummer Art Blakey‘s band, The Jazz Messengers, before establishing a long career as a bandleader and composer. Several of his compositions have become jazz standards, including “Mosaic”, “Bolivia“, “Holy Land”, “Mode for Joe” and “Ugetsu/Fantasy in D”.
Walton was born and grew up in Dallas, Texas. His mother Ruth, an aspiring concert pianist, was his first teacher, and took him to jazz performances around Dallas. Walton cited Nat King Cole, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk and Art Tatum as his major influences on piano. He began emulating these artists’ recordings from an early age.
more...Sidney “Big Sid” Catlett (January 17, 1910 – March 25, 1951) was an American jazz drummer. Catlett was one of the most versatile drummers of his era, adapting with the changing music scene as bebop emerged.
Catlett was born in Evansville, Indiana, United States, and at an early age he was instructed in the rudiments of piano and drums, under the tutelage of a music teacher hired by his mother. When he and his family relocated to Chicago, Catlett received his first drum kit, and immersed himself in the diverse styles and techniques of Zutty Singleton, Warren “Baby” Dodds, and Jimmy Bertrand, among others.
more...A host of astronomical objects throng this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Background galaxies ranging from stately spirals to fuzzy ellipticals are strewn across the image, and bright foreground stars much closer to home are also present, surrounded by diffraction spikes. In the centre of the image, the vague shape of the small galaxy UGC 7983 appears as a hazy cloud of light. UGC 7983 is around 30 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo, and is a dwarf irregular galaxy — a type thought to be similar to the very earliest galaxies in the Universe. This image also conceals an astronomical interloper. A minor asteroid, only a handful of kilometres across, can be seen streaking across the upper left-hand side of this image. The trail of the asteroid is visible as four streaks of light separated by small gaps. These streaks of light represent the four separate exposures that were combined to create this image, the small gaps between each observation being necessary to change the filters inside Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. Capturing an asteroid was a fortunate side effect of a larger effort to observe every known galaxy close to the Milky Way. When this project was first proposed, roughly 75% of all the Milky Way’s near galactic neighbours had been imaged by Hubble. A group of astronomers proposed using the gaps between longer Hubble observations to capture images of the remaining 25%. The project was an elegantly efficient way to fill out some gaps not only in Hubble’s observing schedule, but also in our knowledge of nearby galaxies.
more...Helen Folasade Adu CBE (Yoruba: Fọláṣadé Adú [fɔ̄láʃādé ādú]; born 16 January 1959), known professionally as Sade Adu or simply Sade (/ʃɑːˈdeɪ/ shah-DAY), is a Nigerian-born British singer, known as the lead singer of her eponymous band. One of the most successful British female artists in history, she is often recognised as an influence on contemporary music. Her success in the music industry was recognised in the UK with an award of the Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2002, and was made Commander in the 2017 Birthday Honours.
Sade was born in Ibadan, Nigeria, and brought up partly in Essex, England, from the age of four. She studied at Saint Martin’s School of Art in London and gained modest recognition as a fashion designer and part-time model, prior to joining the band Pride in the early 1980s. After gaining attention as a performer, she formed the band Sade, and secured a recording contract with Epic Records in 1983. A year later the band released the album Diamond Life, which became one of the best-selling albums of the era, and the best-selling debut by a British female vocalist. In July 1985, Sade was among the performers at the Live Aid charity concert at Wembley Stadium, and the following year she appeared in the film Absolute Beginners. Following the band’s third and fourth albums, Stronger Than Pride (1988) and Love Deluxe (1992), they went on hiatus after the birth of Sade’s child.
After a spell of eight years without an album, the band reunited in 1999, and released Lovers Rock in 2000. The album departed from the jazz-inspired inflections of their previous work, featuring mellower sounds and pop compositions. The band then underwent another hiatus, not producing music for another ten years until the release of Soldier of Love. Following that album’s release, the band entered a third period of extended hiatus, and have only released two songs (“Flower of the Universe” for the soundtrack of Disney‘s A Wrinkle in Time, and “The Big Unknown” as part of the soundtrack for Steve McQueen‘s film Widows) since.
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Roy Howard Lanham (January 16, 1923 – February 14, 1992) was an American guitarist. Best known for his work with the Western-style vocal band Sons of the Pioneers between 1961 and 1986, he had a long career that spanned from the prewar years to his death. His main style was early country and Western swing, although he could also play jazz remarkably well. His name never quite achieved widespread notoriety; but within the music industry and his peers, he was considered on a par with the likes of Merle Travis and Chet Atkins.
Roy Lanham was born in Corbin, KY. He learned to play the guitar at an early age, and by his teenage years he was playing rhythm guitar for different bands’ radio performances. In 1939, country singer and humorist Archie Campbell auditioned Lanham for inclusion in his group, and was so impressed by the youngster’s playing that Lanham left with Campbell’s group on the very next day. After moving to Knoxville, TN, he worked with the band The Stringdusters, which included two eclectic musicians also well versed in jazz—Homer Haynes and Jethro Burns (who would later become the musical humor duo Homer and Jethro). The two introduced Lanham to jazz, and he soon became influenced by the guitar-playing of the likes of Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt.
more...Barbara Lynn (born Barbara Lynn Ozen, later Barbara Lynn Cumby, January 16, 1942) is an American rhythm and blues and electric blues guitarist, singer and songwriter. She is best known for her R&B chart-topping hit, “You’ll Lose a Good Thing” (1962). In 2018, Lynn received a National Heritage Fellowship.
She was born in Beaumont, Texas, and attended Hebert High School. She was raised Catholic and sang in the choir at her local parish. She also played piano as a child, but switched to guitar, which she plays left-handed. Inspired by blues artists Guitar Slim and Jimmy Reed, and pop acts Elvis Presley and Brenda Lee, and winning several local talent shows, she created an all-female band, Bobbie Lynn and Her Idols.
She began performing in local clubs in Texas. Singer Joe Barry saw her and introduced Lynn to producer Huey P. Meaux, who ran SugarHill Recording Studios and several record labels in New Orleans. Her first single, “You’ll Lose A Good Thing”, written by her, was recorded at Cosimo Matassa‘s J&M studio with session musicians including Mac Rebennack (Dr. John). Released by Jamie Records, it was a number 1 US Billboard R&B chart hit and Top 10 Billboard Hot 100 hit in 1962. The song was later recorded by Aretha Franklin and became a country hit record for Freddy Fender.
more...This is the mess that is left when a star explodes. The Crab Nebula, the result of a supernovaseen in 1054 AD, is filled with mysterious filaments. The filaments are not only tremendously complex, but appear to have less mass than expelled in the original supernova and a higher speed than expected from a free explosion. The featured image, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, is presented in three colors chosen for scientific interest. The Crab Nebula spans about 10 light-years. In the nebula‘s very center lies a pulsar: aneutron star as massive as the Sun but with only the size of a small town. The Crab Pulsar rotates about 30 times each second.
more...Earl Zebedee Hooker (January 15, 1930 – April 21, 1970) was a Chicago blues guitarist known for his slide guitar playing. Considered a “musician’s musician”, he performed with blues artists such as Sonny Boy Williamson II, Junior Wells, and John Lee Hooker and fronted his own bands. An early player of the electric guitar, Hooker was influenced by the modern urban styles of T-Bone Walker and Robert Nighthawk. He recorded several singles and albums as a bandleader and with other well-known artists. His “Blue Guitar”, a slide guitar instrumental single, was popular in the Chicago area and was later overdubbed with vocals by Muddy Waters as “You Shook Me“.
In the late 1960s, Hooker began performing on the college and concert circuit and had several recording contracts. Just as his career was on an upswing, he died in 1970, at age 40, after a lifelong struggle with tuberculosis. His guitar playing has been acknowledged by many of his peers, including B.B. King, who commented, “to me he is the best of modern guitarists. Period. With the slide he was the best. It was nobody else like him, he was just one of a kind”.
Hooker was born in rural Quitman County, Mississippi, outside of Clarksdale. In 1930, his parents moved the family to Chicago, during the Great Migration of blacks out of the rural South in the early 20th century. Hooker died on April 21, 1970, at age 40, of complications due to tuberculosis. He is interred in Restvale Cemetery, in the Chicago suburb of Alsip.
more...Ida Lewis “Queen Ida” Guillory (born January 15, 1929) is a Louisiana Creole accordionist. She was the first female accordion player to lead a zydeco band. Queen Ida’s music is an eclectic mix of R&B, Caribbean, and Cajun, though the presence of her accordion always keeps it traditional.
Born Ida Lee Lewis to a musical family of rice farmers in Lake Charles, Louisiana, United States, her family were Louisiana Creole people and her first language is French. Her family moved to Beaumont, Texas, when she was ten and eight years later moved to San Francisco, California.Although her mother was an accordion player, women were not encouraged to play in public, and Queen Ida learned mostly from her brother Al Lewis, later known as Al Rapone. After marrying Raymond Guillory she raised their three children and worked as a bus driver but occasionally sat in with her brother’s Zydeco band, also cooking Louisiana cuisine for the band members. She was dubbed “Queen Ida” after being chosen queen of a Mardi Gras celebration. A year after her first appearance on stage Queen Ida and the Bon Temps Band signed with the record label GNP/Crescendo,and her first record Play the Zydeco demonstrated her style combining Zydeco with a Tex Mex sound.
more...Eugene Bertram Krupa (January 15, 1909 – October 16, 1973), known as Gene Krupa, was an American jazz drummer, bandleader and composer who performed with energy and showmanship.His drum solo on Benny Goodman‘s 1937 recording of “Sing, Sing, Sing” elevated the role of the drummer from an accompanist to an important solo voice in the band.
In collaboration with the Slingerland drum and Zildjian cymbal manufacturers, he was a major force in defining the standard band drummer’s kit. Krupa is considered “the founding father of the modern drumset” by Modern Drummer magazine.
The youngest of Anna (née Oslowski) and Bartłomiej Krupa’s nine children, Gene Krupa was born in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Bartłomiej was an immigrant from Poland born in the village of Łęki Górne, southeastern Poland. Anna was born in Shamokin, Pennsylvania, and was also of Polishdescent. His parents were Roman Catholics who groomed him for the priesthood. He spent his grammar school days at parochial schools. He attended the James H. Bowen High School on Chicago’s southeast side. After graduation he attended Saint Joseph’s College for a year but decided the priesthood was not his vocation. In 1973, Krupa died in Yonkers at the age 64 from heart failure, though he also had leukemia and emphysema. He is buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Calumet City, Illinois.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lY8sTKlsCk
more...The large, red nebula (NGC 2014) and its smaller blue neighbor (NGC 2020) are part of a vast star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.
The sparkling centerpiece of NGC 2014 is a grouping of bright, hefty stars, each 10 to 20 times more massive than our Sun. The stars’ ultraviolet radiation heats the surrounding dense gas. The massive stars also unleash fierce winds of charged particles that blast away lower-density gas, forming the bubble-like structures seen on the right.
The blue areas in NGC 2014 reveal the glow of oxygen, heated to nearly 20,000 degrees Fahrenheit by the blast of ultraviolet light. The cooler, red gas indicates the presence of hydrogen and nitrogen.
By contrast, the seemingly isolated blue nebula at lower left (NGC 2020) has been shaped by a solitary mammoth star. This young, massive star, called a Wolf-Rayet, has ejected its outer layers of gas, exposing its searing-hot core, making it roughly 200,000 times brighter than our Sun.
Star-forming regions generally last tens of millions of years. Star birth in this region appears to have just started, with a robust episode of newly formed stars, about 5 million years ago.
The star-birth process is the same throughout the universe. Though most stars have lower masses, it is the rare massive stars, through their strong winds and energetic radiation, that shape these stellar nurseries.
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