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Harold “Doc” West (August 12, 1915, Wolford, North Dakota, United States – May 4, 1951, Cleveland, Ohio, United States) was an American jazz drummer.
West learned to play piano and cello as a child before switching to drums. In the 1930s he played in Chicago with Tiny Parham, Erskine Tate, and Roy Eldridge(1937–38). Late in the 1930s he filled in for Chick Webb when Webb was unable to lead his own orchestra. Early in the 1940s he played with Hot Lips Page, and played on the early bebop scene at Minton’s Playhouse in New York City with Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Tiny Grimes, and Don Byas. He played with Oscar Pettiford in 1944 and stood in for Jo Jones occasionally in Count Basie‘s orchestra.
West appears on recordings from Slam Stewart, Leo Watson, Wardell Gray, Billie Holiday, Erroll Garner, Big Joe Turner, and Jay McShann. He died in 1951 while on tour with Roy Eldridge.
He was married to Florence West (deceased); they had one daughter Alita West-Kelly born December 6, 1949 (deceased 2011).
more...Percy Mayfield (August 12, 1920 – August 11, 1984) was an American Rhythm and blues singer with a smooth vocal style. He also was a songwriter, known for the songs “Please Send Me Someone to Love” and “Hit the Road Jack“, the latter being a song first recorded by Ray Charles.
Mayfield was born in Minden, Louisiana, the seat of Webster Parish, in the northwestern part of the state. As a youth, he had a talent for poetry, which led him to songwriting and singing. He began his performing career in Texas and then moved to Los Angeles in 1942, but without success as a singer until 1947, when a small record label, Swing Time Records, signed him to record his song “Two Years of Torture,” with a band that included the saxophonist Maxwell Davis, the guitarist Chuck Norris, and the pianist Willard McDaniel. The record sold steadily over the next few years, prompting Art Rupe to sign Mayfield to his label, Specialty Records, in 1950.
more...Rumba – it’s sung by French Gypsies, which is where the Gypsy Kings come in, there’s a whole Rumba Catalana scene, and there are tons of groups I’d probably know more about if I had grown up in Spain. Weirdly, Rumba is one of the hardest Palos to define in flamenco. Or maybe it’s the easiest. Either way, Rumba encompasses all sorts of stuff in flamenco, and in a way it’s the basket into which we throw everything that is otherwise impossible to categorize. It’s also the closest thing flamenco has to pop music. The easy answer is that Rumba is another Palo in flamenco, it’s in 4/4 time, and it generally has an accent on the 2+ (or you can think of it as being a 4/4 meter that’s subdivided into 3+3+2). And that’s it! It can be fast, slow or in between, it can be in any key you can think of and the lyrics can be about anything. It’s generally recognized as one of the Cantes de Ida y Vuelta, which are the songs the sailors brought back from the New World when they went off to discover and colonize the Americas.
more...Messier 94 (also known as NGC 4736) is a spiral galaxy in the mid-northern constellation Canes Venatici. It was discovered by Pierre Méchainin 1781, and catalogued by Charles Messier two days later. Although some references describe M94 as a barred spiral galaxy, the “bar” structure appears to be more oval-shaped. The galaxy has two ring structures.
M94 is classified as having a low ionization nuclear emission region (LINER) nucleus. LINERs in general are characterized by optical spectra that reveal that ionized gas is present but the gas is only weakly ionized (i.e. the atoms are missing relatively few electrons).
more...Jesse Alexandria Stacy (August 11, 1904 – January 1, 1995) was an American jazz pianist who gained prominence during the swing era. He is perhaps best known for his years with the Benny Goodman band during the late 1930s, particularly his performance at Goodman’s Carnegie Hall concert in 1938.
Stacy was born in Bird’s Point, Missouri, United States, a small town across the Mississippi River from Cairo, Illinois. His first piano teacher was Mabel Irene Bailey, who played piano for silent movies. In 1918 Stacy moved to Cape Girardeau, Missouri. He received his only formal music training with Clyde Brandt, a professor of piano and violin at Southeast Missouri State Teachers College (Southeast Missouri State University)[3] while sweeping at Clark’s Music Store.
more...August 11 1929 Kalighat, Calcutta; January 19 1992 Kolkata West Bengal
Manabendra Mukhopadhyay was an Indian singer and music composer in Bengali films. Coming to limelight in the early 1950s Manabendra was an innovative and stylish singer who had a strong foundation in Indian classical music. With his distinctive voice, Manabendra was an instant hit with the audience. demonstrating great talent also as a composer, using the lyrics and melody of a song with good effect. At that time Bengali modern song world had the presence of some outstanding performers like Dhananjay Bhattacharya, Manna Dey, Satinath Mukherjee, Akhilbandhu Ghosh, Hemanta Mukhopadhyay to name a few.
It is considered that during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s the Bengali modern songs reached their peak of excellence and that period is usually called the “Golden age of Bengali Adhunik Songs”. At that time Bengal had a unique mix of singers which inspired composers and lyricists to create innumerable treasure of creative music. Each singer had his own inimitable style and compositions were made to match their individual ability. Bengali non-film modern songs were in fact was as popular, if not more, than film songs which also reached a level of popularity in the 1950s and 1960s.
more...Performing today Wednesday August 10th 2022 7pm Zamya Theater presents Second Chance a theater piece working with the Homeless Community. Target Field Station Amphitheater located underneath the light rail tracks at 5th Ave N & 5th St N next to Target Field. A very unusual and new outdoor theater space. Music with Carlisle Evans Peck and mick laBriola.
more...Stars can create huge and intricate dust sculptures from the dense and dark molecular clouds from which they are born. The tools the stars use to carve their detailed works are high energy light and fast stellar winds. The heat they generate evaporates the dark molecular dust as well as causing ambient hydrogen gas to disperse and glow red. Pictured here, a new open cluster of stars designated IC 1590 is nearing completion around the intricate interstellar dust structures in the emission nebula NGC 281, dubbed the Pac-man Nebula because of its overall shape. The dust cloud on the upper left is classified as a Bok Globule as it may gravitationally collapse and form a star — or stars. The Pacman Nebula lies about 10,000 light years away toward the constellation of Cassiopeia.
more...Ian Scott Anderson MBE (born 10 August 1947) is a Scottish musician, singer and songwriter best known for his work as the lead vocalist, flautist, acoustic guitarist and leader of the British rock band Jethro Tull. He is a multi-instrumentalist who, in addition to flute and acoustic guitar, plays keyboards, electric guitar, bass guitar, bouzouki, balalaika, saxophone, harmonica and a variety of whistles. His solo work began with the 1983 album Walk into Light; since then he has released another five works, including the sequel to the Jethro Tull album Thick as a Brick (1972) in 2012, titled Thick as a Brick 2. Ian Anderson was born in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland, the youngest of three brothers. His father, James Anderson, ran the RSA Boiler Fluid Company in East Port, Dunfermline. Anderson’s family moved to Edinburgh when he was three. He was influenced by his father’s big band and jazz records and the emergence of rock music, but was disenchanted with the “showbiz” style of early American rock and roll stars like Elvis Presley.
more...Charles H. Israels (born August 10, 1936) is an American jazz composer, arranger, and bassist who is best known for his work with the Bill Evans Trio. He has also worked with Billie Holiday, Benny Goodman, Coleman Hawkins, Stan Getz, Herbie Hancock, J. J. Johnson, John Coltrane, and Judy Collins.
Born in New York City, Chuck Israels was raised in a musical family which moved to Cleveland, Ohio, when he was 10. His stepfather Mordecai Bauman was a singer who performed extensively with composer Hanns Eisler. He, along with Israels’ mother, Irma Commanday, created a home environment in which music was a part of normal daily activity. Paul Robeson, Pete Seeger, and The Weavers were visitors to the Bauman home. In 1948, the appearance of Louis Armstrong‘s All Stars in a concert series produced by his parents gave him his first opportunity to meet and hear jazz musicians.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssNMxlDfLho
more...Gertrude E. “Trudy” Pitts (August 10, 1932 – December 19, 2010) was an American soul jazz keyboardist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was known primarily for playing the Hammond B3 organ.
Trained as a musician and a music educator, Pitts studied at the Philadelphia Musical Academy, Temple University and Juilliard, as well as other institutions. Early work experience included a position as an assistant to the pianist in the Tony Award-winning musical Raisin.
more...Arnett Cleophus Cobb (August 10, 1918 – March 24, 1989) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist, sometimes known as the “Wild Man of the Tenor Sax” because of his uninhibited stomping style. Cobb wrote the words and music for the jazz standard “Smooth Sailing” (1951), which Ella Fitzgerald recorded for Deccaon her album Lullabies of Birdland.
Born in Houston, Texas, he was taught to play piano by his grandmother, and he went on to study violin before taking up tenor saxophone in the high school band. At the age of 15 he joined Louisiana bandleader Frank Davis’s band, doing shows in Houston and throughout Louisiana during the summer. Cobb continued his musical career with the local bands of trumpeter Chester Boone, from 1934 to 1936, and Milt Larkin, from 1936 to 1942 (which included a period on the West Coastwith Floyd Ray). Among his bandmates in the Larkin band were Illinois Jacquet, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, Tom Archia, Cedric Haywood, and Wild Bill Davis.Having turned down an offer from Count Basie in 1939, Cobb replaced Jacquet in Lionel Hampton‘s band in 1942, staying with Hampton until 1947. Cobb’s featured solo on Hampton’s theme song “Flying Home No. 2” generated much excitement, his blasting style earning him the label “Wild Man of the Tenor Sax”.
more...Pandit Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande (10 August 1860 – 19 September 1936) was an Indian musicologist who wrote the first modern treatise on Hindustani classical music, an art which had been propagated for centuries mostly through oral traditions. During those earlier times, the art had undergone several changes, rendering the raga grammar documented in scant old outdated texts.
Ragas used to be classified into Raga (male), Ragini (female), and Putra (children). Bhatkhande reclassified them into the currently used thaat system. He noted that several ragas did not conform to their description in ancient Sanskrit texts. He explained the ragas in an easy-to-understand language and composed several bandishes which explained the grammar of the ragas.
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