Blog

Howard Roberts

October 2, 2022

Howard Mancel Roberts (October 2, 1929 – June 28, 1992) Phoenix, AZ was an American jazz guitarist, educator, and session musician.Roberts died of prostate cancer in Seattle, Washington, on June 28. 1992.

 

more...

World Music Adédèjì

October 2, 2022

more...

Daily Roots KC White

October 2, 2022

https://youtu.be/yztTqddmlfM

more...

Cosmos M42

October 1, 2022

Deep inside the Orion Nebula, an epic battle of stellar supremacy is being duked out. A baby star inside the famed stellar nursery is dictating how and where its unborn siblings can spark to life — if it allows them to live at all.

Using NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) — a huge 106-inch (2.7-meter) diameter telescope that is flown inside the fuselage of a modified Boeing 747SP jetliner — astronomers can get a crystal-clear view of the nebula and view the otherwise invisible stars in infrared wavelengths. If the same telescope was used on the ground, the water vapor in our atmosphere would absorb the infrared light. So, as SOFIA flies above 99 percent of our atmosphere, it’s almost as good as having that telescope in space, minus the launch costs.

more...

Ellen Mcllwaine

October 1, 2022

Ellen McIlwaine (October 1, 1945 – June 23, 2021) was an American-born singer-songwriter and musician best known for her career as a solo singer, songwriter and slide guitarist.

Born in Nashville, Tennessee, United States, McIlwaine was adopted by missionaries and raised in Kobe, Japan, giving her exposure to multiple languages and cultures. She attended the Canadian Academyschool in Kobe, graduating in 1963. Her first experience in music was playing on piano Ray Charles, Fats Domino and Professor Longhair songs that she heard on Japanese radio. On moving back to the United States she bought a guitar, beginning a stage career in Atlanta, Georgia in the mid-1960s.

In 1966, McIlwaine had a stint in New York City’s Greenwich Village where she opened every night at the Cafe Au Go Go, playing with Jimi Hendrix, and opening for Muddy Waters, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, and Big Joe Williams.She returned to Atlanta to form the band Fear Itself, a psychedelic blues rock band.

more...

Donny Hathaway

October 1, 2022

Donny Edward Hathaway (October 1, 1945 – January 13, 1979) was an American soul singer, keyboardist, songwriter, and arranger whom Rolling Stonedescribed as a “soul legend”. His most popular songs include “The Ghetto“, “This Christmas”, “Someday We’ll All Be Free“, and “Little Ghetto Boy”. Hathaway is also renowned for his renditions of “A Song for You“, “For All We Know”, and “I Love You More Than You’ll Ever Know”, along with “Where Is the Love” and “The Closer I Get to You“, two of many collaborations with Roberta Flack. He has been inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame and won one Grammy Award from four nominations. Hathaway was also posthumously honored with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019. Dutch director David Kleijwegt made a documentary called Mister Soul – A Story About Donny Hathaway, which premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam on January 28, 2020.

Hathaway, the son of Drusella Huntley, was born in Chicago, Illinois, and was raised by his grandmother, Martha Pitts, also known as Martha Crumwell, in the Carr Square housing project of St. Louis, Missouri. Hathaway began singing in the church choir with his grandmother, a professional gospel singer, at the age of three, and studying piano. He graduated from Vashon High School in 1963.

more...

Dave Holland

October 1, 2022

David “Dave” Holland (born 1 October 1946) is an English jazz double bassist, composer and bandleader who has been performing and recording for five decades. He has lived in the United States for over 40 years.

His extensive discography ranges from solo performances to pieces for big band. Holland runs his own independent record label, Dare2, which he launched in 2005.

Born in Wolverhampton, England, Holland taught himself how to play stringed instruments, beginning at four on the ukulele, then graduating to guitar and later bass guitar. He quit school at the age of 15 to pursue his profession in a pop band, but soon gravitated to jazz. After seeing an issue of Down Beat where Ray Brown had won the critics’ poll for best bass player, Holland went to a record store, and bought a couple of LPs featuring Brown backing pianist Oscar Peterson. He also bought two Leroy Vinnegar albums (Leroy Walks! and Leroy Walks Again) because the bassist was posed with his instrument on the cover. Within a week, Holland traded in his bass guitar for a double bass and began practicing with the records. In addition to Brown and Vinnegar, Holland was drawn to the bassists Charles Mingus and Jimmy Garrison.

more...

Albert Collins

October 1, 2022

Albert Gene Drewery, known as Albert Collins and the Ice Man (October 1, 1932 – November 24, 1993), was an American electric blues guitarist and singer with a distinctive guitar style. He was noted for his powerful playing and his use of altered tunings and a capo. His long association with the Fender Telecaster led to the title “The Master of the Telecaster”.

Collins was born in Leona, Texas, on October 1, 1932. He was introduced to the guitar at an early age by his cousin Lightnin’ Hopkins, also a Leona resident, who played at family gatherings. The Collins family relocated to Marquez, Texas, in 1938 and to Houston in 1941, where he attended Jack Yates High School. Collins took piano lessons when he was young, but when his piano tutor was unavailable his cousin Willow Young would lend Albert his guitar and taught him the altered tuning that he used throughout his career. Collins tuned his guitar to an open F-minor chord (FCFA♭CF), with a capo at the 5th, 6th or 7th fret. At the age of sixteen, he decided to concentrate on learning the guitar after hearing “Boogie Chillen’” by John Lee Hooker. After a three-month battle with cancer, Collins died at his home in Las Vegas, Nevada, on November 24, 1993. He was 61 years old.

more...

STOP PUTIN World Music Folknery

October 1, 2022

more...

Daily Roots Bob Marley

October 1, 2022

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxnGHYsRM1U

more...

Cosmos 30 Doradus

September 30, 2022

Stellar nursery 30 Doradus gets its nickname of the Tarantula Nebula from its long, dusty filaments. Located in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy, it’s the largest and brightest star-forming region near our own galaxy, plus home to the hottest, most massive stars known. The center of this image, taken by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera instrument (NIRCam), has been hollowed out by the radiation from young, massive stars (seen in sparkling pale blue). Only the densest surrounding areas of the nebula resist erosion, forming the pillars that appear to point back towards the cluster of stars in the center. The pillars are home to still-forming stars, which will eventually leave their dusty cocoons and help shape the nebula.

more...

Patrice Rushen

September 30, 2022

Patrice Louise Rushen (born September 30, 1954) is an American jazz pianist and R&B singer. She is also a composer, record producer, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and music director.

Her 1982 single “Forget Me Nots” received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance. The instrumental “Number One” from her album Straight from the Heart earned an additional Grammy nomination for best instrumental. Her 12th album Signature also received a Grammy nominationfor best instrumental in 1998.

Rushen also serves as an ambassador for artistry in education at the Berklee College of Music and the chair of the popular music program at the USC Thornton School of Music.

more...

Frankie Lymon

September 30, 2022

Franklin Joseph Lymon (September 30, 1942 – February 27, 1968 Harlem, NY) was an American rock and roll/rhythm and blues singer and songwriter, best known as the boy soprano lead singer of the New York City-based early rock and roll doo-wop group The Teenagers. The group was composed of five boys, all in their early to mid-teens. The original lineup of the Teenagers, an integrated group, included three African-American members, Frankie Lymon, Jimmy Merchant, and Sherman Garnes; and two Puerto Rican members, Joe Negroni and Herman Santiago. The Teenagers’ first single, 1956’s “Why Do Fools Fall in Love“, was also their biggest hit. After Lymon went solo in mid-1957, both his career and that of the Teenagers fell into decline. He was found dead at the age of 25 on the floor of his grandmother’s bathroom from a heroin overdose. He was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993 as a member of the Teenagers. His life was dramatized in the 1998 film Why Do Fools Fall in Love. On February 27, 1968, Lymon was found dead of a heroin overdose at the age of 25 on the floor of his grandmother’s bathroom with a syringe by his side.

 

more...

Oscar Pettiford

September 30, 2022

Oscar Pettiford (September 30, 1922 – September 8, 1960) was an American jazz double bassist, cellist and composer. He was one of the earliest musicians to work in the bebop idiom.

Pettiford was born in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, United States. His mother was Choctaw, and his father Harry “Doc” Pettiford was half Cherokee and half African American.

He grew up playing in the family band in which he sang and danced before switching to piano at the age of 12, then to double bass when he was 14.[1] He is quoted as saying he did not like the way people were playing the bass, so he developed his own way of playing it. Despite being admired by the likes of Milt Hinton at the age of 14, he gave up in 1941 as he did not believe he could make a living. Five months later, he once again met Hinton, who persuaded him to return to music.

In 1942, he joined the Charlie Barnet band and in 1943 gained wider public attention after recording with Coleman Hawkins on his “The Man I Love“. Pettiford also recorded with Earl Hines and Ben Webster around this time. After he moved to New York, he was one of the musicians (together with Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Kenny Clarke) who in the early 1940s jammed at Minton’s Playhouse, where the music style developed that later was called bebop. He and Dizzy Gillespieled a bop group in 1943. In 1945, Pettiford went with Hawkins to California, where he appeared in The Crimson Canary, a mystery movie known for its jazz soundtrack, which also featured Josh White. He then worked with Duke Ellington from 1945 to 1948 and for Woody Herman in 1949, before working mainly as a leader in the 1950s. He died in 1960 in Copenhagen shortly before his 38th birthday, from a virus closely related to polio.

more...

Buddy Rich

September 30, 2022

BernardBuddyRich (September 30, 1917 – April 2, 1987) was an American jazz drummer, songwriter, conductor, and bandleader. He is considered one of the most influential drummers of all time.

Rich was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, United States. He discovered his affinity for jazz music at a young age and began drumming at the age of two. He began playing jazz in 1937, working with acts such as Bunny Berigan, Artie Shaw, Tommy Dorsey, Count Basie, and Harry James. From 1942 to 1944, Rich served in the U.S. Marines. From 1945 to 1948, he led the Buddy Rich Orchestra. In 1966, he recorded a big-band style arrangement of songs from West Side Story. He found lasting success in 1966[citation needed] with the formation of the Buddy Rich Big Band, also billed as the Buddy Rich Band and The Big Band Machine.

Rich was known for his virtuoso technique, power, and speed. He was an advocate of the traditional grip, though he occasionally used matched grip when playing the toms. Despite his commercial success and musical talent, Rich never learned how to read sheet music, preferring to listen to drum parts and play them from memory.

more...

Flamenco Fridays Paco De Lucia y Manolo Sanlucar

September 30, 2022

“Bulería” is the most characteristic flamenco style of Jerez de la Frontera. It is generally composed of three or four eight-syllable verses. This is one of the most complex dancing and guitar styles: bustling, happy and cheerful. It is characterised by a fast rhythm and a redoubled beat. It is more suitable than other flamenco styles to be sung accompanied by flamenco clapping, “jaleo” and other shouts and expresive voices. “Bulerías” constitute an usually dance to finish all flamencos parties (composing a semicircle, people dance in the middle of it a part of the song). “Loco Mateo” was the first performer of this style, finishing his “soleares or soleás” with “bulerías”. Hence “bulería” results from “solea”. It was originated in the late 19th century. In “Sinfonía Virtual” magazine Guillermo Castro documented that the term “bulería” was used for the first time in the 17th century, but it didn’t acquire its flamenco meaning until the early 20th century. It was earlier believed that the first appearance of this style came up with the painting of José García Ramos “Baile por bulerías” (1884), preserved in the Museum of Fine Arts of Seville. Currently, it’s widely known that this paiting had other titles previously such as “Tango“, “Bailarina” or “El Baile”. It was not until second half of the XX century that it adopted the name “Baile por Bulerías”. The most flamenco “bulerías” are in Phrygian mode (with the I chord mutation that becomes Major perfect, often combining melodic and harmonic turns on the I and VI).

 

more...

Daily Roots Leroy Smart

September 30, 2022

more...

Rhythm Roots Workshop Tasks Unlimited 9-29-22

September 29, 2022

Teaching a Rhythm Roots Workshop at Tasks Unlimited (https://tasksunlimited.org) St Louis Park location working with the Mental Health community. Celebrating world drumming and world cultures. Sept 1st thru Oct 13th on Thursdays 930-11am

more...

Cosmos IC 5070

September 29, 2022

The Pelican Nebula (also known as IC 5070 and IC 5067) is an H II region associated with the North America Nebula in the constellation Cygnus. The gaseous contortions of this emission nebula bear a resemblance to a pelican, giving rise to its name. The Pelican Nebula is located nearby first magnitude star Deneb, and is divided from its more prominent neighbour, the North America Nebula, by a foreground molecular cloud filled with dark dust. Both are part of the larger H II region of Westerhout 40.

The Pelican is much studied because it has a particularly active mix of star formation and evolving gas clouds. The light from young energetic stars is slowly transforming cold gas to hot and causing an ionization front gradually to advance outward. Particularly dense filaments of cold gas are seen to still remain, and among these are found two jets emitted from the Herbig–Haro object 555. Millions of years from now this nebula might no longer be known as the Pelican, as the balance and placement of stars and gas will leave something that appears completely different.

more...

Roy Campbell

September 29, 2022

Roy Sinclair Campbell Jr. (September 29, 1952 – January 9, 2014) was an American trumpeter frequently linked to free jazz, although he also performed rhythm and blues and funk during his career.

Born in Los Angeles, California, in 1952, Campbell was raised in New York City. At the age of fifteen, he began learning to play trumpet and soon studied at the Jazz Mobile program along with Kenny Dorham, Lee Morgan and Joe Newman. Throughout the 1960s, still unacquainted with the avant-garde movement, Campbell performed in the big bands of the Manhattan Community College. From the 1970s onwards, he performed primarily within the context of free jazz, spending some of this period studying with Yusef Lateef. Campbell composed the film music for the documentary Survival in New York (1989) by Rosa von Praunheim

more...

More Posts