mick laBriola

François Luambo Luanzo Makiadi (6 July 1938 – 12 October 1989) was a Congolese musician. He was a major figure in 20th-century Congolese music, and African music in general, principally as the leader for over 30 years of TPOK Jazz, the most popular and significant African band of its time. He is referred to as Franco Luambo or simply Franco. Known for his mastery of African Rumba, he was nicknamed by fans and critics “Sorcerer of the Guitar” and the “Grand Maître of Zairean Music”, as well as Franco de Mi Amor by female fans. His most known hit, “Mario“, sold more than 200,000 copies and got certified gold.

Born July 6, 1938 in his mother’s hometown of Sona-Bata  in what was then the Belgian Congo, he grew up in the capital city, Léopoldville (now Kinshasa). When his father, a railroad worker, died in 1949, he ended his formal education at age 10 or 11 and helped his mother by playing a homemade guitar, harmonica and other instruments to attract customers to her market stall in Léopoldville’s Ngiri-Ngiri neighborhood. He also honed his guitar-playing by working with Paul “Dewayon” Ebengo, a slightly older friend who had a real guitar.

In 1950, Franco (then age 12), Dewayon (age 16), and others formed a group called Watam, which played together for three years, playing weddings and funerals and with the help of a mentor of Franco’s, the established musician Albert Luampasi, recording a few songs on the Ngoma record label.

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

Louie Bellson (born Luigi Paulino Alfredo Francesco Antonio Balassoni on July 6, 1924 – February 14, 2009), known by the stage name Louie Bellson (his own preferred spelling, although he is often seen in sources as Louis Bellson), was an American jazz drummer. He was a composer, arranger, bandleader, and jazz educator, and is credited with pioneering the use of two bass drums.

Bellson performed in most of the major capitals around the world. Bellson and his wife, actress and singer Pearl Bailey (married from 1952 until Bailey’s death in 1990), had the second highest number of appearances at the White House (only Bob Hope had more).

Bellson was a vice president at Remo, a drum company. He was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1985.

Bellson was born in Rock Falls, Illinois in 1924, where his father owned a music store. He started playing drums at three years of age. While still a young child, Bellson’s father moved the family and music store to Moline, Illinois. At 15, he pioneered using two bass drums at the same time, a technique he invented in his high school art class. At age 17, he triumphed over 40,000 drummers to win the Slingerland National Gene Krupa contest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDJJDpY1AMw

Vincent Ector July 5th 1965 hails from the musical city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he attended the University of Pennsylvania. Trained in Music beginning at age nine through GAMP, a music magnet school in Philadelphia that also enabled him to study at Temple University while still a junior high school student. He then began studying privately with drummers such as, Mickey Roker, Ralph Peterson Jr., and Armand Santarelli, as well as performing for six years as a percussionist with the United States Army Band.

As a performer, he has worked with jazz luminaries that include: NEA Jazz Masters, Freddie Hubbard, Randy Weston, James Moody, Slide Hampton and Jimmy Heath as well as Gloria Lynne, Charles Earland, Bobby Watson, Lou Donaldson, Grover Washington Jr., Dr Lonnie Smith, Ron Carter, Claudio Roditi, John Lee, Ralph Peterson Jr., Melvin Sparks, and Shirley Scott.

Most recently, Vincent produced his third CD as a leader entitled “Organatomy”, which features Grammy nominated Brazilian jazz great Claudio Roditi on one of his original compositions. His second CD as a leader entitled “Renewal of the Spirit” features Bobby Watson on Saxophones and four of Vincent’s original compositions. He is featured performing on drum set, djembe and sangba African drums. His first CD, “Rhythm Master” features the great Eddie Henderson on trumpet. Vincent also produced a tribute recording for the late Charles Earland on the High Note record label. This recording features Joey DeFrancesco, Pat Martino and Eric Alexander. Vincent can also be heard on recordings by: Gloria Lynne, Ben E. King, Jimmy Bruno, Onaje Allan Gumbs and Charles Earland, as well as appearing as a musician on ABC television’s “One Life to Live” daytime soap opera, which features Vincent’s recorded drum performance. He performs regularly in New York City with several ensembles such as, The Grammy Award winning Charles Mingus Orchestra & Big Band, The Orrin Evans Quartet and Captain Black Big Band and his own band in venues such as; Smoke, The Iridium, Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, Smalls and The Jazz Standard among others.

Arthur Murray Blythe (May 7, 1940 – March 27, 2017) was an American jazz alto saxophonist and composer. He was described by critic Chris Kelsey as displaying “one of the most easily recognizable alto sax sounds in jazz, big and round, with a fast, wide vibrato and an aggressive, precise manner of phrasing” and furthermore as straddling the avant garde and traditionalist jazz, often with bands featuring unusual instrumentation.

Born in Los Angeles, Blythe lived in San Diego, returning to Los Angeles when he was 19 years old. He took up the alto saxophone at the age of nine, playing R&B until his mid-teens when he discovered jazz. In the mid-1960s, Blythe was part of the Underground Musicians and Artists Association (UGMAA), founded by Horace Tapscott, on whose 1969 The Giant Is Awakened he made his recording debut.

Overton Amos Lemons (July 5, 1913 – October 7, 1966), known as Smiley Lewis, was an American New Orleans rhythm and blues singer and guitarist. The music journalist Tony Russell wrote that “Lewis was the unluckiest man in New Orleans. He hit on a formula for slow-rocking, small-band numbers like ‘The Bells Are Ringing’ and ‘I Hear You Knocking‘ only to have Fats Domino come up behind him with similar music with a more ingratiating delivery. Lewis was practically drowned in Domino’s backwash.”

Lemons was born in DeQuincy, Louisiana, a rural hamlet near Lake Charles, to Jeffrey and Lillie Mae Lemons. He was the second of three sons. His mother died while he was a child, and later he named a song and several automobiles after her. In his mid-teens, he hopped a slow-moving freight train with some friends, who jumped off when the train began to speed up. Lewis alone remained on the train, getting off when it reached its stop in New Orleans. He found boarding with a Caucasian family in the Irish Channel neighborhood and eventually adopted their surname, Lewis.

Inayat Khan Rehmat Khan (Urdu: عنایت خان رحمت خان ) (5 July 1882 – 5 February 1927) was an Indian professor of musicology, singer, exponent of the saraswati vina, poet, philosopher, and pioneer of the transmission of Sufism to the West.^[2] At the urging of his students, and on the basis of his ancestral Sufi tradition and four-fold training and authorization at the hands of Sayyid Abu Hashim Madani (d. 1907) of Hyderabad, he established an order of Sufism (the Sufi Order) in London in 1914. By the time of his death in 1927, centers had been established throughout Europe and North America, and multiple volumes of his teachings had been published.

Inayat Khan was born in Baroda to a noble Mughal family. His paternal ancestors, comprising yüzkhans (Mughal lords) and bakshys (shamans), were Turkmen from the Chagatai Khanate who settled in Sialkot, Punjab during the reign of Amir Timur. Inayat Khan’s maternal grandfather, Sangitratna Maulabakhsh Sho’le Khan, was a pioneering Hindustani classical musician and educator known as “the Beethoven of India.” His maternal grandmother, Qasim Bibi, was from the royal house of Tipu Sultan of Mysore.

William Harrison Withers Jr. (July 4, 1938 – March 30, 2020) was an American singer-songwriter and musician. He had several hits over a career spanning 18 years, including “Ain’t No Sunshine” (1971), “Grandma’s Hands” (1971), “Use Me” (1972), “Lean on Me” (1972), “Lovely Day” (1977) and “Just the Two of Us” (1981). Withers won three Grammy Awards and was nominated for six more. His life was the subject of the 2009 documentary film Still Bill. Withers was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2005 and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015. Two of his songs were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

Withers, the youngest of six children, was born in the small coal-mining town of Slab Fork, West Virginia, on July 4, 1938. He was the son of Mattie (née Galloway), a maid, and William Withers, a miner. He was born with a stutter and later said he had a hard time fitting in. His parents divorced when he was three, and he was raised by his mother’s family in nearby Beckley, West Virginia. He was 13 years old when his father died. Withers enlisted in the United States Navy at the age of 17, and served for nine years, during which time he became interested in singing and writing songs.

Fred Wesley (born July 4, 1943) is an American trombonist who worked with James Brown in the 1960s and 1970s and Parliament-Funkadelic in the second half of the 1970s.

Wesley was born the son of a high school teacher and big band leader in Columbus, Georgia, and raised in Mobile, Alabama. As a child he took piano and later trumpet lessons. He played baritone horn and trombone in school, and at around age 12 his father brought a trombone home, whereupon he switched (eventually permanently) to trombone.

During the 1960s and 1970s, he was a pivotal member of James Brown‘s bands, playing on many hit recordings including “Say it Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud,” “Mother Popcorn” and co-writing tunes such as “Hot Pants.” His slippery riffs and pungent, precise solos, complementing those of saxophonist Maceo Parker, gave Brown’s R&B, soul, and funk tunes their instrumental punch. In the 1970s he also served as band leader and musical director of Brown’s band the J.B.’s and did much of the composing and arranging for the group. His name was credited on ‘Fred Wesley & the J.B.’s’ recording of “Doing It to Death,” which sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc by the R.I.A.A. in July 1973. He left Brown’s band in 1975 and spent several years playing with George Clinton‘s various Parliament-Funkadelic projects, even recording a couple of albums as the leader of a spin-off group, The Horny Horns.

Michael T. Mainieri Jr. (born July 4, 1938) is an American vibraphonist, known for his work with the jazz fusion group Steps Ahead. He is married to the singer-songwriter and harpist Dee Carstensen.

Mainieri was born in The Bronx, New York, United States. Mainieri was a pioneer in introducing an electronic vibraphone, known as a synth-vibe, and has recorded with such musicians as Buddy Rich, Wes Montgomery and Jeremy Steig. He performed for a live album by Laura Nyro and was featured on several tracks from the Dire Straits album, Love Over Gold (1982), as well as on “Ride Across the River” on the album Brothers in Arms(1985). He performed on the albums Heads by Bob James, Heart to Heart by David Sanborn, and Tiger in the Rain by Michael Franks.

He has also released numerous albums and videos as a leader for a variety of labels, most notably his 1980 album for Warner Bros. titled Wanderlust, which featured Michael Brecker and other members of Steps Ahead. He produced three albums for Carly Simon. Mainieri married singer-songwriter/harpist Dee Carstensen in 1993.

Lonnie Smith (July 3, 1942 – September 28, 2021), styled Dr. Lonnie Smith, was an American jazz Hammond B3 organist who was a member of the George Benson quartet in the 1960s. He recorded albums with saxophonist Lou Donaldson for Blue Note before being signed as a solo act. He owned the label Pilgrimage, and was named the year’s best organist by the Jazz Journalists Association nine times.

Smith was born in Lackawanna, New York, on July 3, 1942. He was raised by his mother and stepfather, and the family had a vocal group and radio program. He stated that his mother was a major influence on him musically, as she introduced him to gospel, classical, and jazz music.