mick laBriola

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.

Victor Lewis (29 July 1919 – 9 February 2009) was a British jazz guitarist and bandleader. He also enjoyed success as an artists’ agent and manager.

He was born in London, England. Lewis began playing the guitar at the age of three, and dabbled with cornet and trombone. One of his early bands included George Shearing, then a teenager, among its members. Lewis first toured the United States in 1938, where he did recording sessions with a band that had Bobby Hackett, Eddie Condon, and Pee Wee Russell among its members. He served in the Royal Air Force from 1941 to 1944; during this time he recorded with Buddy Featherstonhaugh. He worked with Stephane Grappelli during 1944-45 and with Ted Heath soon after. While he was in the RAF, he met Jack Parnell and together they formed the “Vic Lewis/Jack Parnell Jazzmen”.

Joe Beck (July 29, 1945 – July 22, 2008) was an American jazz guitarist who was active for over 30 years.

Born in Philadelphia, Beck moved to Manhattan in his teens, playing six nights a week in a trio setting, which gave him an opportunity to meet various people working in the thriving New York music scene. By the time he was 18, Stan Getz hired him to record jingles, and in 1967 he recorded with Miles Davis. By 1968, at age 22, he was a member of the Gil Evans Orchestra. Beck died in Woodbury, Connecticut, of complications from lung cancer. His album Get Me Joe Beck was posthumously released in 2014.

The structure of the Alegrias can change depending on whether you’re playing as a solo guitarist, accompanying a singer, or accompanying a dancer.

For the most part it’s a series of compás and falsetas. However, within this basic structure there’s some other material that act as a cue for dancers. Specifically, the llamada, silencio, and escobilla.

Letras

When accompanying a singer, the alegrias has between one and four letras, or sung verses. Each of these letras may have three or four 8-syllable lines.

The subject matter of the songs are often about sailors. This makes sense because Cadíz is a coastal city.

Note that guitarists will sometimes perform a letras section even without a singer.

Llamadas

Llamadas are dramatic, single compás sections that you’ll encounter in several flamenco forms. When accompanying a dancer, the main role of the alegrais llamada is to indicate a transition between sections. For instance, you might play a llamada to introduce or conclude a flaseta.

These are typically loud and intense phrases so that the dancer has a clear cue of what’s coming next.

Although most people associate the Alegrias with dancing, this is also one of the popualr forms to accompany a singer.

Escobilla

The Alegría includes two sections for the dancer, one of which is the escobilla. The escobilla is a section when the dancer shows off their fancy footwork. This two compás phrase includes a virtuosic guitar solo and gradual increase in rhythm.

Silencio

A second section that accompanies the dancer is the silencio. The silencio is a slow and dramatic section that’s usually played in the parallel minor key. For instance, if you were originally in the key A major, then the silencio would be played in the key A minor.

Because this section is more of a guitar solo, guitarists can take some liberty with the rhythm. Therefore, this section can be played either with a strict compás rhythm, or more freely with rubato. The silencio usually lasts for six compáses cycles.

Delfeayo Marsalis; born July 28, 1965) is an American jazz trombonist, record producer and educator. Marsalis was born in New Orleans, the son of Dolores (née Ferdinand) and Ellis Louis Marsalis, Jr., a pianist and music professor. He is also the grandson of Ellis Marsalis, Sr., and the brother of Wynton Marsalis (trumpeter), Branford Marsalis (saxophonist), and Jason Marsalis (drummer). Delfeayo also has two brothers who are not musicians: Ellis Marsalis III (b. 1964) is a poet, photographer and computer networking specialist based in Baltimore, and Mboya Kenyatta (b. 1970) is autistic and was the primary inspiration for Delfeayo’s founding of the New Orleans-based Uptown Music Theatre. Formed in 2000, UMT has trained over 300 youth and staged eight original musicals, all of which are based upon the mission of “community unity”.

Michael Bernard Bloomfield (July 28, 1943 – February 15, 1981) was an American guitarist and composer, born in Chicago, Illinois, who became one of the first popular music superstars of the 1960s to earn his reputation almost entirely on his instrumental prowess, as he rarely sang before 1969. Respected for his guitar playing, Bloomfield knew and played with many of Chicago’s blues musicians before achieving his own fame and was instrumental in popularizing blues music in the mid-1960s. In 1965, he played on Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited, including the single “Like a Rolling Stone“, and performed with Dylan at that year’s Newport Folk Festival.

Bloomfield was ranked No. 22 on Rolling Stone‘s list of “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time” in 2003 and No. 42 by the same magazine in 2011.^[3]He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2012 and, as a member of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015.

Bloomfield was born into a wealthy Jewish Chicago family. Bloomfield’s father, Harold Bloomfield, was born in Chicago in 1914. Harold’s father, Samuel Bloomfield, started Bloomfield Industries in the early 1930s. After Samuel passed away, Harold and his brother, Daniel, took over the company. Bloomfield’s mother, Dorothy Klein, was born in Chicago in 1918 and married Harold in 1940. She came from an artistic, musical family, working as an actress and a model before marrying Harold. Bloomfield died in San Francisco on February 15, 1981. He was found seated behind the wheel of his car, with all four doors locked. According to police, an empty Valium bottle was found on the car seat, but no suicide note was found. The medical examiner who performed the autopsy ruled the death accidental overdose, due to cocaine and methamphetamine poisoning.

David “Junior” Kimbrough (July 28, 1930 – January 17, 1998) was an American blues musician. His best-known works are “Keep Your Hands off Her” and “All Night Long”.

Kimbrough was born in Hudsonville, Mississippi, and lived in the north Mississippi hill country near Holly Springs. His father, a barber, played the guitar, and Junior picked his guitar as a child. He was apparently influenced by the guitarists Lightnin’ Hopkins, Mississippi Fred McDowell and Eli Green.

Ray Ellis (July 28, 1923 – October 27, 2008) was an American record producer, arranger, conductor, and saxophonist. He was responsible for the orchestration in Billie Holiday‘s Lady in Satin (1958).

Raymond Spencer Ellis was born in Philadelphia. He arranged many hit records in the 1950s and 1960s. Included are classics such as “A Certain Smile” and “Wild is the Wind” by Johnny Mathis, “Broken Hearted Melody” by Sarah Vaughan, and “Standing on the Corner” by the Four Lads. In 1970, he produced Emmylou Harris‘ debut LP Gliding Bird.

Ellis’ work encompassed all areas of music, from records to film, commercials, and television. In the early 1960s, Ellis had a contract to produce his own easy listening record albums with RCA Victor, MGM, and Columbia, the most popular probably being Ellis in Wonderland. His television credits include theme music for NBC News At Sunrise with Connie Chung and the background and incidental music for the first season of the original Spider-Man cartoons.

Jean Toussaint (born July 27, 1960) is an American jazz tenor and soprano saxophonist. Toussaint was born in Aruba, Dutch Antilles, and was raised in Saint Thomas and New York City. He learned to play calypso as a child and attended Berklee College of Music in the late 1970s, studying under Bill Pierce (saxophonist). In 1979 he formed a group with Wallace Roney and from 1982 to 1986 was a member of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers alongside Terence Blanchard, Donald Harrison, Mulgrew Miller and Lonnie Plaxico. With Blakey he recorded three studio albums, including New York Scene, which won a Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance.