mick laBriola

Butch Thompson (born November 28, 1943 in Marine on St. Croix, Minnesota, died 14 August 2022 in Saint Paul, Minnesota) was an American jazz pianist and clarinetist best known for his ragtime and stride performances.He was tall with a distinctive mustache and magical fingers. Long fingers that ran down the Mississippi and connected to New Orleans.

Butch Thompson was a Minnesota musical giant, the original pianist on the radio show A Prairie Home Companion, a stride and ragtime piano expert who consulted on a Broadway musical, a pop musician who performed with orchestras from Cairo until Tokyo played.

“His knowledge of stride piano and ability to perform it was second to none,” said Steve Heckler, founder of the Twin Cities Jazz Festival, where Thompson played for many years.

“In a word, Butch was a musician,” said Crescent City trumpeter Clive Wilson, who performed regularly with Thompson at the New Orleans Jazz Festival. “It’s hard to imagine a world of New Orleans jazz without Butch.”

Thompson died Sunday at his home in St. Paul of complications from Alzheimer’s. He was 78.

“He wanted the end to come home and I was so happy that I could do that for him,” his wife, Mary Ellen Niedenfuer Thompson, said via email. “He knew he was home, he said he wanted to play the piano… through the fog of terminal dementia. I’m so glad he knew he was home with me and the dogs.”

“There was a handful of times we played an impromptu duet with the band, whereupon he turned to me and said, with a smile twitching from under his mustache in the manner of a compliment, ‘I’ve never heard anything like it! ‘” recalled Southside Aces leader Tony Balluff, who plays the clarinet, Thompson’s other instrument.

Though Thompson got his professional start on the clarinet as a teenager playing traditional jazz with the Hall Brothers, he rose to local prominence as the original resident pianist – and later music director – of Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion (PHC).

“His piano and clarinet playing were the real deal,” said Richard Dworsky, Twin Cities’ piano maestro, who succeeded Thompson at PHC and has been with him on PHC cruises and in the 2006 Robert Altman film A Prairie Home Companion played. “Sometimes flashy and virtuoso, and sometimes spare, slow and soulful.”

Colleagues described Thompson as a humble, gentle man.

“He was very generous – he always wanted to make audiences happy – and his self-mockery was very famous,” said Michele Jansen, former general manager at KBEM-FM (Jazz 88), where Thompson hosted the weekly show “Jazz Originals” 25 For years, until 2017. “He was funny, with such a dry sense of humor.”

Patty Peterson’s program preceded Thompson’s on Sunday nights. “It was amazing how much money he was making in pledges in an hour because of his popularity,” she said.

Richard Thompson Jr. grew up in Marine on St. Croix and began taking piano lessons at the age of 6. There were two defining moments in his childhood: he saw a film of Sugar Chile Robinson playing boogie-woogie with tiny hands in the village hall, and at his own Junior High Talent Show in 1956, he got a rousing reaction to his boogie-woogie -Piano arrangement of Bill Haley & the Comets “Rock Around the Clock”.

As a child, Thompson became a serious record collector of jazz, which his father promoted, as well as rock ‘n’ roll and R&B. His interest was further sparked by attending concerts by jazz star Louis Armstrong and classical piano master Arthur Rubinstein in Minneapolis.

At Stillwater High School, Thompson took up the clarinet, which he began playing in sixth grade. With some classmates he formed Shirt Thompson and His Sleeves to play at dances.

In 1961, while studying at the University of Minnesota, the clarinettist sat in on the Hall Brothers New Orleans Jazz Band of Minneapolis. A year later, he officially joined the group and was playing seedy bars on Hennepin Avenue, despite not being old enough to buy a drink. Then, two months after signing, Thompson made his first trip to Crescent City.

“When I came to New Orleans, I was just blown away by this music,” he explained in a 2020 interview.

After two years of service in the Army, Thompson returned to the U. Unable to pay all the bills at the Hall Brothers concerts, he slogged away as a newspaper reporter, then taught ragtime piano and jazz history at the West Bank School of Music. In 1974 he began his twelve-year tenure at PHC.

The classical world also beckoned for a prominent soloist at pop concerts, beginning in 1987 with Thompson’s performance of Scott Joplin’s Suite for Piano and Orchestra. The pianist/clarinetist has traveled the world and played everywhere from Tokyo to Cairo.

Thompson has released more than two dozen albums under his own name and appeared on numerous other records, including a Grammy-winning 1996 project by trumpeter Doc Cheatham.

A well-known jazz historian, Thompson was a consultant on the 1992 Broadway musical “Jelly’s Last Jam,” about Jelly Roll Morton’s piano jazz.

Survivors include his wife, sons Victor and Sam; stepdaughter Frannie Christensen; Brothers Peter and John, sister Barbara Raff and two grandchildren. A private funeral will be held in Marine on St. Croix with a public celebration of life to be planned later.

William John Evans (August 16, 1929 – September 15, 1980) was an American jazz pianist and composer who mostly worked as the leader of a trio. His use of impressionist harmony, interpretation of traditional jazz repertoire, block chords, and trademark rhythmically independent, “singing” melodic lines continues to influence jazz pianists today.

Born in Plainfield, New Jersey, United States, he was classically trained at Southeastern Louisiana University and the Mannes School of Music, in New York City, where he majored in composition and received the Artist Diploma. In 1955, he moved to New York City, where he worked with bandleader and theorist George Russell. In 1958, Evans joined Miles Davis‘s sextet, which in 1959, then immersed in modal jazz, recorded Kind of Blue, the best-selling jazz album ever.

In late 1959, Evans left the Miles Davis band and began his career as a leader, with bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian, a group now regarded as a seminal modern jazz trio. In 1961, two albums were recorded at an engagement at New York’s Village Vanguard jazz club, Sunday at the Village Vanguard and Waltz for Debby; a complete set of the Vanguard recordings on 3CDs was issued decades later. However, ten days after this booking ended, LaFaro died in a car accident. After months of seclusion, Evans reemerged with a new trio, featuring bassist Chuck Israels.

In 1963, Evans recorded Conversations with Myself, a solo album produced with overdubbing technology. In 1966, he met bassist Eddie Gómez, with whom he worked for the next 11 years. During the mid-1970s Bill Evans collaborated with the singer Tony Bennett on two critically acclaimed albums: The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album (1975) and Together Again (1977).

Many of Evans’s compositions, such as “Waltz for Debby“, have become standards, played and recorded by many artists. Evans received 31 Grammynominations and seven awards, and was inducted into the DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame.

Evans grew up in North Plainfield, New Jersey, the son of Harry and Mary Evans (née Soroka). His father was of Welsh descent and ran a golf course; his mother was of Ukrainian ancestry and descended from a family of coal miners. The marriage was stormy because of his father’s heavy drinking, gambling, and abuse. Bill had a brother, Harry (Harold), two years his senior, with whom he was very close.

Malcolm Earl “Mal” Waldron (August 16, 1925 – December 2, 2002) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger. He started playing professionally in New York in 1950, after graduating from college. In the following dozen years or so Waldron led his own bands and played for those led by Charles Mingus, Jackie McLean, John Coltrane, and Eric Dolphy, among others. During Waldron’s period as house pianist for Prestige Recordsin the late 1950s, he appeared on dozens of albums and composed for many of them, including writing his most famous song, “Soul Eyes“, for Coltrane. Waldron was often an accompanist for vocalists, and was Billie Holiday‘s regular accompanist from April 1957 until her death in July 1959.

A breakdown caused by a drug overdose in 1963 left Waldron unable to play or remember any music; he regained his skills gradually, while redeveloping his speed of thought. He left the U.S. permanently in the mid-1960s, settled in Europe, and continued touring internationally until his death.

In his 50-year career, Waldron recorded more than 100 albums under his own name and more than 70 for other band leaders. He also wrote for modern ballet, and composed the scores of several feature films. As a pianist, Waldron’s roots lay chiefly in the hard bop and post-bop genres of the New York club scene of the 1950s, but with time he gravitated more towards free jazz. He is known for his dissonant chord voicings and distinctive later playing style, which featured repetition of notes and motifs.

Mal Waldron was born in New York City on August 16, 1925, to West Indian immigrants. His father was a mechanical engineer who worked on the Long Island Rail Road. The family moved to Jamaica, Queens when Mal was four years old. Waldron’s parents discouraged his initial interest in jazz, but he was able to maintain it by listening to swing on the radio. Waldron had classical piano lessons from the age of around seven until he was about 16. He then became inspired to play jazz on tenor saxophone when he heard Coleman Hawkins‘ 1939 recording of “Body and Soul“, but bought an alto saxophone, unable to afford a tenor. He played alto for local bands that performed for “dances, bar mitzvahs, Spanish weddings”, frequently taking over the pianist’s role when other musicians took their solos.

The North America nebula on the sky can do what the North America continent on Earth cannot — form stars. Specifically, in analogy to the Earth-confined continent, the bright part that appears as Central America and Mexico is actually a hot bed of gas, dust, and newly formed stars known as the Cygnus Wall. The featured image shows the star forming wall lit and eroded by bright young stars, and partly hidden by the dark dust they have created. The part of the North America nebula (NGC 7000) shown spans about 15 light years and lies about 1,500 light years away toward the constellation of the Swan (Cygnus).

Buster Brown (August 15, 1911 – January 31, 1976) was an American blues and R&B singer best known for his hit, “Fannie Mae“.

Brown was born in Cordele, Georgia. In the 1930s and 1940s he played harmonica at local clubs and made a few non-commercial recordings. These included “War Song” and “I’m Gonna Make You Happy” (1943), which were recorded when he played at the folk festival at Fort Valley (GA) State Teachers College, for the Library of Congress’ Folk Music Archive.

Brown moved to New York in 1956, where he was discovered by Fire Records owner Bobby Robinson. In 1959, at almost fifty years of age, Brown recorded the rustic blues, “Fannie Mae“, which featured Brown’s harmonica playing and whoops, which went to # 38 in the US Top 40, and to #1 on the R&B chart in April 1960. His remake of Louis Jordan‘s “Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby” reached # 81 on the pop charts later in 1960, but did not make the R&B chart. “Sugar Babe” was his only other hit, in 1962, reaching # 19 on the R&B chart and # 99 on the pop chart.

In later years he recorded for Checker Records and for numerous small record labels. He also co-wrote the song “Doctor Brown” with J. T. Brown, which was later covered by Fleetwood Mac on their 1968 album, Mr. Wonderful.

He enjoyed further attention in 1973 when his song “Fannie Mae” was included in the film American Graffiti and its accompanying soundtrack album.

Performing the last in a series of performances of Second Chance by Zamya Theater working with the Homeless community. Sunday August 14th 2pm at the Downtown Minneapolis Street Art Festival. In front to the Walgreens on Nicollet between 6th & 7th. Music with Carlisle Evans Peck and mick laBriola.

The Pinwheel Galaxy (also known as Messier 101, M101 or NGC 5457) is a face-on spiral galaxy 21 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major. It was discovered by French astronomer Pierre Méchain in 1781. M101 is a large galaxy, with a diameter of 170,000 light-years and has a high population of H II regions, many of which are very large and bright. M101 is asymmetrical due to the tidal forces from interactions with its companion galaxies. These gravitational interactions compress interstellar hydrogen gas, which then triggers strong star formation activity in M101’s spiral arms that can be detected in ultraviolet images.