mick laBriola

Saunders Terrell (October 24, 1911 – March 11, 1986 Greensboro, GA), known as Sonny Terry, was an American Piedmont blues and folk musician, who was known for his energetic blues harmonica style, which frequently included vocal whoops and hollers and occasionally imitations of trains and fox hunts. Terry was born in Greensboro, Georgia. His father, a farmer, taught him to play basic blues harp as a youth. He sustained injuries to his eyes and went blind by the time he was 16, which prevented him from doing farm work, and was forced to play music in order to earn a living. Terry played “Campdown Races” to the plow horses which improved the efficiency of farming in the area. He began playing blues in Shelby, North Carolina. After his father died, he began playing with Piedmont blues–style guitarist Blind Boy Fuller. When Fuller died in 1941, Terry established a long-standing musical relationship with Brownie McGhee, and they recorded numerous songs together. The duo became well known among white audiences during the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s,  including for collaborations with Styve Homnick, Woody Guthrie and Moses Asch, producing classic recordings for Folkways Records (now Smithsonian/Folkways)

Gary Robert McFarland (October 23, 1933 – November 3, 1971 LA, CA)

was an American composer, arranger, vibraphonist and vocalist. He recorded for the jazz imprints Verveand Impulse! Records during the 1960s. Down Beat magazine said he made “one of the more significant contributors to orchestral jazz”. A 2015 review of a McFarland DVD documentary called him “one of the busiest New York jazz arrangers of the 1960s”. The review further stated that McFarland’s “ascendance coincided with the rise of bossa nova, and McFarland was adept at translating the mercurial song form into orchestrations. He wrote some beautiful orchestral settings for great soloists, yet wasn’t immune to commercial forces.”

Ernest James Watts (born October 23, 1945 Norfolk, WV) is an American jazz and rhythm and blues saxophonist who plays soprano, alto, and tenor saxophone. He has worked with Charlie Haden‘s Quartet West and toured with the Rolling Stones. On Frank Zappa‘s album The Grand Wazoo he played the “Mystery Horn”, a straight-necked C melody saxophone. He played the notable saxophone riff on “The One You Love” by Glenn Frey. https:/

Frank Hewitt (October 23, 1935 – September 5, 2002 Queens, NY) was an American hard bop jazz pianist. Born in Queens, New York, Hewitt lived most of his life in Harlem. His mother was a church pianist, and he initially studied classical and gospel music, but switched to jazz after hearing a Charlie Parker record. He took the bop pianists Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell and Elmo Hope as his role models. In the 1950s and 1960s, he worked with Howard McGhee, Cecil Payne, John Coltrane, Dinah Washington and Billie Holiday, among others; in 1961, he also participated in the Living Theater‘s production of Jack Gelber‘s The Connection. He became a regular figure in the circle of the pianist Barry Harris. In the 1990s, Hewitt became a central figure at New York’s Smalls Jazz Club.

William “Sonny” Criss (23 October 1927 – 19 November 1977 Memphis, TN) was an American jazz musician. An alto saxophonist of prominence during the bebop era of jazz, he was one of many players influenced by Charlie Parker.

Leslie West (born Leslie Abel Weinstein; October 22, 1945 – December 23, 2020 NY, NY) was an American rock guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter. He was best known as a founding member and co-lead vocalist of the hard rock band Mountain.

Manos Loïzos (Greek: Μάνος Λοΐζος; 1937–1982) was one of the most important Greek musiccomposers of the 20th century.

Franz Liszt  (22 October 1811 – 31 July 1886) was a Hungarian composer, pianist and teacher of the Romantic period. A prolific composer, Liszt was one of the most prominent representatives of the New German School(German: Neudeutsche Schule). He left behind an extensive and diverse body of work that influenced his forward-looking contemporaries and anticipated 20th-century ideas and trends. Among Liszt’s musical contributions were the symphonic poem, developing thematic transformation as part of his experiments in musical form, and radical innovations in harmony.

Elvin Richard Bishop (born October 21, 1942) is an American blues and rock music singer, guitarist, bandleader, and songwriter. An original member of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of that group in 2015 and the Blues Hall of Fame in his own right in 2016.

Bishop feels that the limitations of his voice have helped his songwriting.

Bishop was born in Glendale, California, the son of Mylda (Kleege) and Elvin Bishop, Sr. He grew up on a farm near Elliott, Iowa. His family moved to Tulsa when he was 10. There he attended Will Rogers High School, winning a full scholarship to the University of Chicago as a National Merit Scholar. He moved to Chicago in 1960 to attend the university, where he majored in physics.

Steven Lee Cropper (born October 21, 1941), sometimes known as “The Colonel“, is an American guitarist, songwriter and record producer. He is the guitarist of the Stax Records house band, Booker T. & the M.G.’s, which backed artists such as Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Carla Thomas, Rufus Thomas and Johnnie Taylor. He also acted as the producer of many of these records. He was later a member of the Blues Brothers band. Rolling Stone magazine ranked him 36th on its list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time, while he has won two Grammy Awards from his seven nominations.

Born on a farm near Willow Springs, Missouri, Cropper lived in the nearby towns of Dora and West Plains before moving with his family to Memphis at age nine. In Memphis, where he was exposed to black church music, which, he said, “blew me away”. Cropper acquired his first guitar via mail order at age 14.

He loved the Five Royals and he admired guitarists including Tal Farlow, Chuck Berry, Jimmy Reed, Chet Atkins, Lowman Pauling of the Five Royales and Billy Butlerof the Bill Doggett band.