mick laBriola

Robert William Cray (born August 1, 1953) is an American blues guitarist and singer. He has led his own band and won five Grammy Awards.

Robert Cray was born on August 1, 1953, in Columbus, Georgia, while his father was stationed at Fort Benning. Cray’s musical beginnings go back to when he was a student at Denbigh High School in Newport News, Virginia. While there, he played in his first band, The One-Way Street. His family eventually settled in the Tacoma, Washington, area. There, he attended Lakes High School in Lakewood, Washington.

By the age of 20, Cray had seen his heroes Albert Collins, Freddie King and Muddy Waters in concert and decided to form his own band; they began playing college towns on the West Coast. In the late 1970s he lived in Eugene, Oregon, where he formed the Robert Cray Band and collaborated with Curtis Salgado in the Cray-Hawks. In the 1978 film National Lampoon’s Animal House, Cray was the uncredited bassist in the house party band Otis Day and the Knights.

Paddy Moloney (Irish: Pádraig Ó Maoldomhnaigh; 1 August 1938 – 12 October 2021) was an Irish musician, composer, and record producer. He co-founded and led the Irish musical group the Chieftains, playing on all of their 44 albums. He was particularly associated with the revival of the uilleann pipes.

Moloney was born in the Donnycarney area of Dublin on 1 August 1938, the son of housewife Catherine (née Conroy) and Irish Glass Bottle Company accountant John Moloney. His mother bought him a tin whistle when he was six and he started to learn the uilleann pipes at the age of eight.

Irish Multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter, record producer, scholar and folklorist Mick Moloney died on July 27, 2022, in New York City.

Mick Moloney devoted most of his life to the preservation and dissemination of Irish folk music in the United States. He produced numerous Celtic music albums and served as the artistic director for various performing arts tours, including the influential Green Fields of America, an ensemble of Irish and Irish-American musicians, singers, and dancers that toured (and still tours) the United States and abroad.

Michael Moloney (15 November 1944 – 27 July 2022) was an Irish musician and scholar.

Moloney served as the artistic director for several major arts tours, including the Green Fields of America, an ensemble of Irish musicians, singers, and dancers which toured across the U.S. on several occasions. He produced and performed on over 70 albums and acted as advisor for scores of festivals and concerts all over America.

In 1992, Moloney received a Ph.D. in Folklore and Folklife from the University of Pennsylvania. For his work in public folklore, he received a 1999 National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Moloney was the author of Far From the Shamrock Shore: The Story of Irish American History Through Song released by Crown Publications in February 2002 with an accompanying CD on Shanachie Records. He hosted three nationally syndicated series of folk music on American Public Television; was a consultant, performer, and interviewee on the Irish Television special Bringing It All Back Home; a participant, consultant, and music arranger of the PBS documentary film Out of Ireland; and a performer on the PBS special The Irish in America: Long Journey Home.

Stanley Jordan (born July 31, 1959) Chicago.  is an American jazz guitarist noted for his playing technique, which involves tapping his fingers on the fretboard of the guitar with both hands.

Kenneth Earl Burrell (born July 31, 1931) Detroit, MI is an American jazz guitarist known for his work on numerous top jazz labels: Prestige, Blue Note, Verve, CTI, Muse, and Concord. His collaborations with Jimmy Smithwere notable, and produced the 1965 Billboard Top Twenty hit Verve album Organ Grinder Swing.^[1] He has cited jazz guitarists Charlie Christian, Oscar Moore, and Django Reinhardt as influences, along with blues guitarists T-Bone Walker and Muddy Waters.

Henry Jones Jr. (July 31, 1918 – May 16, 2010) Vicksburg, MS was an American jazz pianist, bandleader, arranger, and composer. Critics and musicians described Jones as eloquent, lyrical, and impeccable. In 1989, The National Endowment for the Artshonored him with the NEA Jazz Masters Award. He was also honored in 2003 with the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) Jazz Living Legend Award. In 2008, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. On April 13, 2009, the University of Hartford presented Jones with an honorary Doctorate of Music for his musical accomplishments.

David William Sanborn (born July 30, 1945) is an American alto saxophonist. Though Sanborn has worked in many genres, his solo recordings typically blend jazz with instrumental pop and R&B. He released his first solo album Taking Off in 1975, but has been playing the saxophone since before he was in high school.

One of the most commercially successful American saxophonists to earn prominence since the 1980s, Sanborn is described by critic Scott Yanno was “the most influential saxophonist on pop, R&B, and crossover players of the past 20 years.” He is often identified with radio-friendly smooth jazz, but he has expressed a disinclination for the genre and his association with it.

Sanborn was born in Tampa, Florida, and grew up in Kirkwood, Missouri. He suffered from polio for eight years in his youth. He began playing saxophone on a physician’s advice to strengthen his weakened chest muscles and improve his breathing, instead of studying piano. Alto saxophonist Hank Crawford, at the time a member of Ray Charles‘s band, was an early and lasting influence on Sanborn.

James Chambers OM (born 30 July 1944), known professionally as Jimmy Cliff, is a Jamaican ska, rocksteady, reggae and soul musician, multi-instrumentalist, singer, and actor. He is the only living reggae musician to hold the Order of Merit, the highest honour that can be granted by the Jamaican government for achievements in the arts and sciences.

Cliff is best known among mainstream audiences for songs such as “Many Rivers to Cross“, “You Can Get It If You Really Want“, “The Harder They Come“, “Reggae Night“, and “Hakuna Matata“, and his covers of Cat Stevens‘s “Wild World” and Johnny Nash‘s “I Can See Clearly Now” from the film Cool Runnings. He starred in the film The Harder They Come, which helped popularize reggae around the world, and Club Paradise. Cliff was one of five performers inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010.

Jimmy Cliff was born James Chambers on 30 July 1944 in Saint James, Colony of Jamaica. He began writing songs while still at primary school in St. James, listening to a neighbour’s sound system. When Chambers was 14, his father took him to Kingston, where he would take up the stage name Jimmy Cliff.

George “Buddy” Guy (born July 30, 1936) is an American blues guitarist and singer. He is an exponent of Chicago blues who has influenced generations of guitarists including Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Keith Richards, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jeff Beck, Gary Clark Jr. and John Mayer. In the 1960s, Guy played with Muddy Waters as a session guitarist at Chess Records and began a musical partnership with blues harpvirtuoso Junior Wells.

Guy won eight Grammy Awards and Lifetime Achievement Award, National Medal of Arts, and Kennedy Center Honors. Guy was ranked 23rd in Rolling Stone magazine’s “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time“. His song “Stone Crazy” was ranked 78th in the Rolling Stone list of the “100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time”. Clapton once described him as “the best guitar player alive”. In 1999, Guy wrote the book Damn Right I’ve Got the Blues, with Donald Wilcock. His autobiography, When I Left Home: My Story, was published in 2012.

Guy was born and raised in Lettsworth, Louisiana. His parents were sharecroppers and as a child, Guy would pick cotton for $2.50 per 100 pounds. He began learning to play the guitar using a two-string diddley bow he made. Later he was given a Harmony acoustic guitar which, decades later in Guy’s lengthy career, was donated to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

July 29th 1937 Ellyn Kay Rucker, 84, of Denver, Colorado, passed away on Sunday, May 22, 2022 in Lakewood, Colorado.

Ellyn was born in Des Moines, Iowa to Glen and Vera Cornelison on August 29, 1937. She went to Lincoln High School in Des Moines, Iowa , and graduated in 1956. She went on to study classical piano at Drake University. In 1979 she became a jazz musician full time and was a critically acclaimed vocalist in a very challenging field. She released several albums for Capri records. In 1993 she played on the nationally syndicated NPR radio show “Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz.” She was a longtime performer throughout her home base in Colorado as well as playing on tour in Holland, Ireland, Germany (where she had her own fan club), China and the United States.  She had many outstanding accomplishments in her career and is very well known and beloved in the Denver music community. Had she chosen to move to a larger city it’s highly probable she would’ve achieved much greater fame. Her breathy seductive voice was incredibly compelling as well as her prodigious keyboard skills.