mick laBriola

Melvin Rhyne (October 12, 1936 – March 5, 2013), was a jazz organist best known for his work with Wes Montgomery.

Melvin Rhyne was born in Indianapolis in 1936 and started playing the piano shortly after. At 19 years old, Rhyne started playing piano with then-unknown tenor saxophonist Rahsaan Roland Kirk but quickly switched over to the instrument that would make him famous: the Hammond B3 organ. Rhyne’s piano skills translated to the organ fluently and before long he was backing famous blues players like B.B. King and T-Bone Walker. In 1959 he was asked to join fellow Indianapolis musician Wes Montgomery‘s newly formed trio.

Rhyne then moved to Wisconsin and largely kept to himself for the next two decades. In 1991, however, he played on Herb Ellis‘s album Roll Call, Brian Lynch‘s At the Main Event, and his own album, The Legend. He continued to be prolific in the years to come, releasing eight more solo albums on the Criss Cross Jazz label. Rhyne also recorded with The Mark Ladley Trio for the 1992 release, Strictly Business and the 1994 release, Evidence.^[7] Both landed in the Jazz Charts at CMJ New Music Report and The Gavin Report. The group also appeared on a Jazziz Magazine sampler disc during that time. Altenburgh Records posthumously released, Final Call in 2013 by the same group.

In 2008 Rhyne teamed up with fellow Indianapolis jazz musician Rob Dixon to form the Dixon-Rhyne Project, a boundary-pushing jazz quartet that also includes Chicago guitarist Fareed Haque and drummer Kenny Phelps. The quartet released the album Reinvention in 2008 on Indianapolis jazz label Owl Studios. Rhyne’s later career trio included guitarist Peter Bernstein and drummer Kenny Washington in the same organ, guitar, drum formation of the original Wes Montgomery Trio.

He died in his hometown of Indianapolis of lung cancer at the age of 76.

Lester Bowie (October 11, 1941 – November 8, 1999) was an American jazz trumpet player and composer. He was a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and co-founded the Art Ensemble of Chicago.

Born in the historic village of Bartonsville in Frederick County, Maryland, United States, Bowie grew up in St Louis, Missouri. At the age of five he started studying the trumpet with his father, a professional musician. He played with blues musicians such as Little Milton and Albert King, and rhythm and blues stars such as Solomon Burke, Joe Tex, and Rufus Thomas. In 1965, he became Fontella Bass‘s musical director and husband. He was a co-founder of Black Artists Group (BAG) in St Louis.

In 1966, he moved to Chicago, where he worked as a studio musician, and met Muhal Richard Abrams and Roscoe Mitchell and became a member of the AACM. In 1968, he founded the Art Ensemble of Chicago with Mitchell, Joseph Jarman, and Malachi Favors. He remained a member of this group for the rest of his life, and was also a member of Jack DeJohnette‘s New Directions quartet. He lived and worked in Jamaica and Nigeria, and played and recorded with Fela Kuti. Bowie’s onstage appearance, in a white lab coat, with his goatee waxed into two points, was an important part of the Art Ensemble’s stage show.

Arthur Blakey (October 11, 1919 – October 16, 1990) was an American jazz drummer and bandleader. He was also known as Abdullah Ibn Buhainaafter he converted to Islam for a short time in the late 1940s.

Blakey made a name for himself in the 1940s in the big bands of Fletcher Henderson and Billy Eckstine. He then worked with bebop musicians Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie. In the mid-1950s, Horace Silver and Blakey formed the Jazz Messengers, a group that the drummer was associated with for the next 35 years. The group was formed as a collective of contemporaries, but over the years the band became known as an incubator for young talent, including Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Lee Morgan, Benny Golson, Kenny Dorham, Hank Mobley, Donald Byrd, Jackie McLean, Johnny Griffin, Curtis Fuller, Chuck Mangione, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Cedar Walton, Woody Shaw, Terence Blanchard, and Wynton Marsalis. The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz calls the Jazz Messengers “the archetypal hard bop group of the late 50s”.

Blakey was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame (in 1981). Posthumously, he was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1991 and the Grammy Hall of Fame (in 1998 and 2001). He was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005.

Blakey was born on October 11, 1919, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, probably to a single mother who died shortly after his birth; her name is often cited as Marie Roddicker, or Roddericker, although Blakey’s own 1937 marriage license shows her maiden name to have been Jackson. His biological father was Bertram Thomas Blakey, originally of Ozark, Alabama, whose family migrated northward to Pittsburgh sometime between 1900 and 1910. Blakey’s uncle, Rubi Blakey, was a popular Pittsburgh singer, choral leader, and teacher who attended Fisk University.

This Picture of the Week showcases the impressive NGC 3627 galaxy, also known as Messier 66, located approximately 31 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Leo. The image was taken with the Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. But why does it have these unusual colours? This image is a combination of observations conducted in different wavelengths of light. But rather than seeing the stars in this galaxy, as in more classical images, what this image displays is gas ionised by newly-born stars, with hydrogen, oxygen and sulphur shown in red, blue and orange respectively.  The image was taken as part of the Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) project, which is using telescopes operating across all wavelengths to make high-resolution observations of nearby galaxies. The goal of the project is to better understand what triggers, boosts or holds back the formation of new stars in different environments.

October 10th 1948. Founder of the New Orleans white boy band the Radiators. The Radiators were formed in January 1978 after a jam session in keyboardist Ed Volker’s garage. At the time, Volker, Camile Baudoin and Frank Bua, Jr. were in a band called The Rhapsodizers, while Dave Malone and Reggie Scanlan were in a band called Road Apple. Scanlan had also, not long before, been a member of Professor Longhair’s touring band. The five musicians felt an immediate rapport. Scanlan later said, “we jammed for five hours straight, then all quit our old bands the next day. On April 6, 2019, Reggie Scanlan recalled how the band came to be “The Radiators.” After joining up and playing many shows together, without a formal band name, it was determined that a name was necessary. Scanlan suggested the name.

Cyril Garrett Neville (born October 10, 1948) is an American percussionist and vocalist who first came to prominence as a member of his brother Art Neville‘s funky New Orleans-based band, The Meters. He joined Art in the Neville Brothers band upon the dissolution of the Meters.

He has appeared on recordings by Bob Dylan, Robbie Robertson, Edie Brickell, Willie Nelson, Dr. John and The New Orleans Social Club among others.

Neville is interviewed on screen and appears in performance footage with The Neville Brothers in the 2005 documentary film Make It Funky!, which presents a history of New Orleans music and its influence on rhythm and blues, rock and roll, funk and jazz. In the film, the band performs “Fire on the Bayou” with guests Ivan and Ian Neville. Neville was also featured in the 2006 documentary film New Orleans Music in Exile.

In 2005, Neville joined up with Tab Benoit for the Voice of the Wetlands Allstars to bring awareness to Louisiana’s rapid loss of wetlands along the Gulf Coast. The band also features Waylon Thibodeaux, Johnny Sansone, Anders Osborne, Monk Boudreaux, George Porter, Jr., Johnny Vidacovich, and Dr. John. The band has become a main feature at the annual New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.

After Hurricane Katrina he moved to Austin, Texas, but as of 2012 lives in Slidell, Louisiana.^{[citation needed]} Soul Rebels Brass Band featured Neville as a special guest on their Rounder Records debut record, Unlock Your Mind, released on January 31, 2012. The Soul Rebels’ name was conceived by Neville at the New Orleans venue Tipitina’s, where the band was opening.

In 2010, Neville joined popular New Orleans funk band Galactic. He put aside his solo career to tour internationally with the band.

In 2012, Cyril Neville joined forces with Devon Allman (son of Gregg Allman of The Allman Brothers Band), award-winning blues-rock guitarist Mike Zito, bassist Charlie Wooton, and Grammy-winning drummer Yonrico Scott to form Royal Southern Brotherhood, a blues-rock supergroup.

John Edward Prine (October 10, 1946 – April 7, 2020) was an American singer-songwriter of country-folk music. He was active as a composer, recording artist, live performer, and occasional actor from the early 1970s until his death. He was known for an often humorous style of original music that has elements of protest and social commentary.

Born and raised in Maywood, Illinois, Prine learned to play the guitar at age 14. He attended classes at Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music. After serving in West Germany with the U.S. Army, he returned to Chicago in the late 1960s, where he worked as a mailman, writing and singing songs first as a hobby and then as a club performer.

A member of Chicago’s folk revival, Prine credited his fellow songwriter Steve Goodman with hounding singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson to come listen to him, leading to his “discovering” him, resulting in Prine’s eponymous debut album with Atlantic Records in 1971. Film critic Roger Ebert was also among his early supporters. The acclaim Prine earned from his first LP led to three more albums for Atlantic. He then signed with Asylum Records, where he recorded three more albums. In 1981, he co-founded Oh Boy Records, an independent label where he released most of his subsequent albums.

Widely cited as one of the most influential songwriters of his generation, Prine was known for humorous lyrics about love, life, and current events, as well as serious songs with social commentary and songs that recollect sometimes melancholy tales from his life. According to Nobel laureate songwriter Bob Dylan, “Prine’s stuff is pure Proustian existentialism. Midwestern mindtrips to the nth degree. And he writes beautiful songs. . . . All that stuff about ‘Sam Stone‘, the soldier junkie daddy, and ‘Donald and Lydia’, where people make love from ten miles away. Nobody but Prine could write like that.” In 2020, Prine received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.Prine was the son of William Mason Prine, a tool-and-die maker, and Verna Valentine (Hamm), a homemaker, both originally from Muhlenberg County, Kentucky. He was born and raised in the Chicago suburb of Maywood. In summers, they would go back to visit family near Paradise, Kentucky. Prine started playing guitar at age 14, taught by his brother, David. He attended classes at Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music, and graduated from Proviso East High School in Maywood, Illinois. He was a U.S. Postal Service mailman for five years and was drafted into the United States Army during the Vietnam War era, serving as a vehicle mechanic in West Germany before beginning his musical career in Chicago.

Thelonious Sphere Monk  October 10, 1917 – February 17, 1982) was an American jazz pianist and composer. He had a unique improvisationalstyle and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including “‘Round Midnight“, “Blue Monk“, “Straight, No Chaser“, “Ruby, My Dear“, “In Walked Bud“, and “Well, You Needn’t“. Monk is the second-most-recorded jazz composer after Duke Ellington.^[4]

Monk’s compositions and improvisations feature dissonances and angular melodic twists and are consistent with his unorthodox approach to the piano, which combined a highly percussive attack with abrupt, dramatic use of switched key releases, silences, and hesitations.

Monk’s distinct look included suits, hats, and sunglasses. He also had an idiosyncratic habit during performances: while other musicians continued playing, Monk would stop, stand up, and dance for a few moments before returning to the piano.

Monk is one of five jazz musicians to have been featured on the cover of Time (the others being Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington and Wynton Marsalis).

Thelonious Sphere Monk was born two years after his sister Marion on October 10, 1917, in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and was the son of Thelonious and Barbara Monk. His poorly written birth certificate misspelled his first name as “Thelious” or “Thelius”. It also did not list his middle name, taken from his maternal grandfather, Sphere Batts. His brother, Thomas, was born in January 1920. In 1922, the family moved to the Phipps Houses, 243 West 63rd Street, in Manhattan, New York City; the neighborhood was known as San Juan Hill because of the many African-American veterans of the Spanish–American Warwho lived there (urban renewal displaced the long-time residents of the community, who saw their neighborhood replaced by the Amsterdam Housing Projects and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, though the Phipps Houses remained). Monk started playing the piano at the age of six, taking lessons from a neighbor, Alberta Simmons, who taught him stride playing in the style of Fats Waller, James P. Johnson and Eubie Blake. Monk’s mother also taught him to play some hymns, and he would sometimes accompany her singing at church. He attended Stuyvesant High School, a public school for gifted students, but did not graduate.