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NGC 5907 also nicknamed the “Splinter Galaxy” is a spiral galaxy seen from the edge and located in the constellation of the Dragon at about 30 million light years from the Milky Way.
This galaxy has a huge but very faint trail of stars surrounding it. It is certainly the remains of a collision or an old merger of NGC 5907 with a dwarf galaxy.
More explanations here: https://www.cosmotography.com/images/small_ring_ngc5907.html
NGC 5905 and NGC 5908 (on the right) are much further away, about 150 million light-years…
July 2nd 1924 Silas McClatcher first started singing as a young teen with his identical twin brother, Paul (d. 2006), in Holly Spring, Mississippi. Silas moved to Chicago in 1965, to Milwaukee in 1975, and back to Chicago in 2011, always for better employment opportunities.
He continued to sing privately while hitting all of the clubs where the blues were hot, as he became known as ‘Slim’. One night Milwaukee’s Legendary Bluesman, ‘Stokes’, called Slim up to sing and it was from that point forward his singing became quick in demand, and he received his official blues name “Milwaukee Slim”.
Milwaukee Slim sat in regularly with Stokes and also with Gene and the Soul Gang as they toured all over WI. He has established a rich resume which includes opening shows in WI for Koko Taylor, John Lee Hooker, and Phillip Walker. Milwaukee Slim performed for the Green Bay Packers (2000), and has performed at many WI and IL Festivals over the years, including WI State Fair (1998 – 2004), Shermanfest, and The Chicago Blues Festival. He has been a member of the Midwest Blues All Stars, The House Rockin Blues Review and his own Milwaukee Slim Band. He has performed with the Hayes Family Blues Band, and recorded with Hubert Sumlin, Billy Flynn, Piano Willie, Jim Liban, Barrelhouse Chuck, Calvin Jones, Smokey Smothers, Kent “The Colonel” Knapp, Barefoot Jimmy, Richard Raven, Leroy Airmaster, The Legendary Blues Band, Little Charlie and the Nightcats. and Shoji Naito.
Milwaukee Slim is one of three featured artists that have just finished recording with Rockin’ Johnny (guitar), Steve Dougherty (drums), John Sefner (bass), Illinois Slim (rhythm guitar), and Mike Mettalia (harmonica) for an album to be released in 2017. You can find Milwaukee Slim performing anywhere between Milwaukee and Chicago as he remains a fan favorite!
more...Ahmad Jamal (born Frederick Russell Jones, July 2, 1930) is an American jazz pianist, composer, bandleader and educator. For six decades, he has been one of the most successful small-group leaders in jazz.
Jamal was born Frederick Russell Jones in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on July 2, 1930. He began playing piano at the age of three, when his uncle Lawrence challenged him to duplicate what he was doing on the piano. Jamal began formal piano training at the age of seven with Mary Cardwell Dawson, whom he describes as greatly influencing him. His Pittsburgh roots have remained an important part of his identity (“Pittsburgh meant everything to me and it still does,” he said in 2001) and it was there that he was immersed in the influence of jazz artists such as Earl Hines, Billy Strayhorn, Mary Lou Williams, and Erroll Garner. Jamal also studied with pianist James Miller and began playing piano professionally at the age of fourteen, at which point he was recognized as a “coming great” by the pianist Art Tatum. When asked about his practice habits by a critic from The New York Times, Jamal commented that, “I used to practice and practice with the door open, hoping someone would come by and discover me. I was never the practitioner in the sense of twelve hours a day, but I always thought about music. I think about music all the time.”
more...Imam Mohammad Ahmad Eissa (July 2, 1918 – June 6, 1995 ) was a famous Egyptian composer and singer. For most of his life, he formed a duo with the famous Egyptian colloquial poet Ahmed Fouad Negm. Together, they were known for their political songs in favor of the poor and the working classes.
Imam was born to a poor family in the Egyptian village of Abul Numrus in Giza. He lost his sight when he was a child. At the age of five he joined a recitation class, where he memorized the Qur’an. He later moved to Cairo to study where he led a dervish life. In Cairo, Imam met Sheikh Darwish el-Hareery, a prominent musical figure at that time, who taught him the basics of music and muwashshah singing. He then worked with the Egyptian composer Zakariyya Ahmad. At that time, he expressed interest in Egyptian folk songs especially those by Sayed Darwish and Abdou el-Hamouly. He also performed at weddings and birthdays.
more...Deneb is a first-magnitude star in the constellation of Cygnus, the swan. It is one of the vertices of the asterism known as the Summer Triangle and the “head” of the Northern Cross. It is the brightest star in Cygnus and the 19th brightest star in the night sky, with an average apparent magnitude of +1.25. This area lies in the plane of the Milky Way and is very rich in emission nebulae. Right down you can see NGC 7000/The North America Nebula, IC 5067/The Pelican Nebula, NGC 6989 an open cluster, 57 Cygni, IC 5068. Just a bit below left to Deneb is 55 Cygni and at the bottom left is IC 5076.
Deneb (/ˈdɛnɛb/) is a first-magnitude star in the constellation of Cygnus, the swan. Deneb is one of the vertices of the asterism known as the Summer Triangle and the “head” of the Northern Cross. It is the brightest star in Cygnus and the 19th brightest star in the night sky, with an average apparent magnitude of +1.25. A blue-white supergiant, Deneb rivals Rigel as the most luminous first-magnitude star. However, its distance, and hence luminosity, is poorly known; its luminosity is somewhere between 55,000 and 196,000 times that of the Sun. Its Bayer designation is α Cygni, which is Latinised to Alpha Cygni, abbreviated to Alpha Cyg or α Cyg.
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Leon “Ndugu” Chancler (/ɪnˈduːɡuː ˈtʃænslər/ in-DOO-goo CHANSS-lər; July 1, 1952 – February 3, 2018) was an American pop, funk and jazz drummer. He was also a composer, producer, and university professor.
Born in Shreveport, Louisiana, on July 1, 1952, Leon Ndugu Chancler was the last child of seven children from the union of Rosie Lee and Henry Nathaniel Chancler. In 1960 the family relocated to Los Angeles, California. Chancler began playing drums when he was thirteen years old. He would publicly reminisce about being asked to leave a classroom for continuously tapping on the desk, only to be later heard tapping on the poles in the hallway. His love for the drums took over while attending Gompers Junior High School and it became his lifelong ambition. He graduated from Locke High School having been heavily involved in playing there with Willie Bobo and the Harold Johnson Sextet. He graduated from California State University, Dominguez Hills with a degree in music education. By then he had already performed with the Gerald Wilson Big Band, Herbie Hancock, and recorded with Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard, and Bobby Hutcherson.
He recorded as a sideman in jazz, blues, and pop music, including instantly recognizable drums on “Billie Jean” by Michael Jackson. In 1982, he received a Grammy nomination for Best Rhythm & Blues song, for co-writing “Let It Whip” made famous by the Dazz Band. He worked with George Benson, Stanley Clarke, The Crusaders, George Duke, Herbie Hancock, John Lee Hooker, Michael Jackson, Hubert Laws, Thelonious Monk, Jean-Luc Ponty, Lionel Richie, Kenny Rogers, Patrice Rushen, Santana, Frank Sinatra, Donna Summer, The Temptations, Tina Turner, and Weather Report.
more...Rashied Ali, born Robert Patterson (July 1, 1933 – August 12, 2009) was an American free jazz and avant-garde drummer best known for playing with John Coltrane in the last years of Coltrane’s life.
Patterson was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His family was musical; his mother sang with Jimmie Lunceford. His brother, Muhammad Ali, is also a drummer, who played with Albert Ayler. Ali, his brother, and his father converted to Islam.
Starting off as a pianist he eventually took up the drums, via trumpet and trombone. He joined the United States Army and played with military bands during the Korean War. After his military service, he returned home and studied with Philly Joe Jones, then toured with Sonny Rollins.
more...James Henry Cotton (July 1, 1935 – March 16, 2017) was an American blues harmonica player, singer and songwriter, who performed and recorded with many of the great blues artists of his time and with his own band. He played drums early in his career but is famous for his harmonica playing.
Cotton began his professional career playing the blues harp in Howlin’ Wolf‘s band in the early 1950s. He made his first recordings in Memphis for Sun Records, under the direction of Sam Phillips. In 1955, he was recruited by Muddy Waters to come to Chicago and join his band. Cotton became Waters’s bandleader and stayed with the group until 1965. In 1965 he formed the Jimmy Cotton Blues Quartet, with Otis Spann on piano, to record between gigs with the Muddy Waters band. He eventually left to form his own full-time touring group. His first full album, on Verve Records, was produced by the guitarist Mike Bloomfield and the singer and songwriter Nick Gravenites, who later were members of the band Electric Flag.
In the 1970s, Cotton played harmonica on Muddy Waters’ Grammy Award–winning 1977 album Hard Again, produced by Johnny Winter.
Cotton was born in Tunica, Mississippi. He became interested in music when he first heard Sonny Boy Williamson II on the radio. He left home with his uncle and moved to West Helena, Arkansas, finding Williamson there. For many years Cotton claimed that he told Williamson that he was an orphan and that Williamson took him in and raised him, a story he admitted in recent years is not true. However, Williamson did mentor Cotton during his early years. Williamson left the South to live with his estranged wife in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, leaving his band in Cotton’s hands. Cotton was quoted as saying, “He just gave it to me. But I couldn’t hold it together ’cause I was too young and crazy in those days an’ everybody in the band was grown men, so much older than me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAqTrbuxCRI
more...William James Dixon (July 1, 1915 – January 29, 1992) was an American blues musician, vocalist, songwriter, arranger and record producer. He was proficient in playing both the upright bass and the guitar, and sang with a distinctive voice, but he is perhaps best known as one of the most prolific songwriters of his time. Next to Muddy Waters, Dixon is recognized as the most influential person in shaping the post–World War II sound of the Chicago blues.
Dixon’s songs have been recorded by countless musicians in many genres as well as by various ensembles in which he participated. A short list of his most famous compositions includes “Hoochie Coochie Man“, “I Just Want to Make Love to You“, “Little Red Rooster“, “My Babe“, “Spoonful“, and “You Can’t Judge a Book by the Cover“. These songs were written during the peak years of Chess Records, from 1950 to 1965, and were performed by Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter, and Bo Diddley; they influenced a generation of musicians worldwide.
Dixon was an important link between the blues and rock and roll, working with Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley in the late 1950s. In the 1960s, his songs were adapted by numerous rock artists. He received a Grammy Award and was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Dixon was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, on July 1, 1915. He was one of fourteen children. His mother, Daisy, often rhymed things she said, a habit her son imitated. At the age of seven, young Dixon became an admirer of a band that featured pianist Little Brother Montgomery. He sang his first song at Springfield Baptist Church at the age of four. Dixon was first introduced to blues when he served time on prison farms in Mississippi as a young teenager. Later in his teens, he learned to sing harmony from a local carpenter, Theo Phelps, who led a gospel quintet, the Union Jubilee Singers, in which Dixon sang bass; the group regularly performed on the Vicksburg radio station WQBC. He began adapting his poems into songs and even sold some to local music groups.
more...Martinetes are a flamenco palo belonging to the group of the tonás or cantes a palo seco. As the rest of the songs in this group, it is sung with no accompaniment. In some dance shows for the stage, though, it is accompanied by percussion played with the compás of siguiriya. The percussion instruments chosen for this are frequently a hammer and anvil, to evocate the origins of this palo, attributed to Gypsy smiths. It is not probable, though, that they were real work songs: they demand too much effort and faculties to be sung while carrying out a heavy task like that of a smith. They were more probably sung in family gatherings.
Although martinetes are often classified under the toná group on the grounds that they share its a cappella nature, the melody types differ strongly from the rest of tonás, so it is now generally considered to be a different palo. A characteristic that differentiates them from the tonás, normally in major mode, is their modulating character, constantly going from major to phrygian mode.
The stanza of the martinete is the cuarteta romanceada: four eight-syllable lines, rhyming in assonance abcb. The subject matters often contain allusions to persecution, prison, and the environment of the forges.
Carceleras are usually considered a subclassification of martinetes, with prison as the subject matter of their lyrics. The debla, a rather rare style, is considered by some flamenco fans as a type of martinete, while other consider it as a palo on its own.
more...Imaged on June 20 2022, comet C/2017 K2 (PanSTARRS) shares this wide telescopic field of view with open star cluster IC 4665 and bright star Beta Ophiuchi, near a starry edge of the Milky Way. On its maiden voyage to the inner Solar System from the dim and distant Oort cloud, this comet PanSTARRS was initially spotted over five years ago, in May 2017. Then it was the most distant active inbound comet ever found, discovered when it was some 2.4 billion kilometers from the Sun. That put it between the orbital distances of Uranus and Saturn. Hubble Space Telescope observations indicated the comet had a large nucleus less than 18 kilometers in diameter. Now visible in small telescopes C/2017 K2 will make its closest approach to planet Earth on July 14 and closest approach to the Sun this December. Its extended coma and developing tail are seen here at a distance of some 290 million kilometers, a mere 16 light-minutes away.
David Kenneth Ritz Van Ronk (June 30, 1936 – February 10, 2002) was an American folk singer. An important figure in the American folk music revival and New York City’s Greenwich Village scene in the 1960s, he was nicknamed the “Mayor of MacDougal Street“.
Van Ronk’s work ranged from old English ballads to blues, gospel, rock, New Orleans jazz, and swing. He was also known for performing instrumental ragtime guitar music, especially his transcription of “St. Louis Tickle” and Scott Joplin‘s “Maple Leaf Rag“. Van Ronk was a widely admired avuncular figure in “the Village”, presiding over the coffeehouse folk culture and acting as a friend to many up-and-coming artists by inspiring, assisting, and promoting them. Folk performers he befriended include Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, Patrick Sky, Phil Ochs, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, and Joni Mitchell. Dylan recorded Van Ronk’s arrangement of the traditional song “House of the Rising Sun” on his first album, which the Animals turned into a chart-topping rock single in 1964, helping inaugurate the folk-rock movement.
Van Ronk received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) in December 1997.
On February 12th, 2002, Dave Van Ronk died in a New York hospital of cardiopulmonary failure while undergoing postoperative treatment for colon cancer.
Van Ronk was born in Brooklyn to a family that was “mostly Irish, despite the Dutch name”.[5] He moved from Brooklyn to Queens around 1945 and began attending Holy Child Jesus Catholic School, whose students were mainly of Irish descent. He had been performing in a barbershop quartetsince 1949, but left before finishing high school, and spent time in the Merchant Marine.
more...Stanley Clarke (born June 30, 1951) is an American bassist, film composer and founding member of Return to Forever, one of the first jazz fusion bands. Clarke gave the bass guitar a prominence it lacked in jazz-related music. He is the first jazz-fusion bassist to headline tours, sell out shows worldwide and have recordings reach gold status.
Clarke is a 5-time Grammy winner, with 15 nominations, 3 as a solo artist, 1 with the Stanley Clarke Band, and 1 with Return to Forever. Clarke was selected to become a 2022 recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Fellowship.
A Stanley Clarke electric bass is permanently on display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.
Clarke was born on June 30, 1951 in Philadelphia. His mother sang opera around the house, belonged to a church choir, and encouraged him to study music. He started on accordion, then tried violin. But he felt awkward holding such a small instrument in his big hands when he was twelve years old and over six feet tall. No one wanted the acoustic bass in the corner, so he picked it up. He took lessons on double bass at the Settlement Music School in Philadelphia, beginning with five years of classical music. He picked up bass guitar in his teens so that he could perform at parties and imitate the rock and pop bands that girls liked.
more...Andrew Hill (June 30, 1931 – April 20, 2007) was an American jazz pianist and composer.
Jazz critic John Fordham described Hill as a “uniquely gifted composer, pianist and educator” although “his status remained largely inside knowledge in the jazz world for most of his career.”
Hill recorded for Blue Note Records for nearly a decade, producing a dozen albums.
Andrew Hill was born in Chicago, Illinois (not in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, nor was he born in 1937, as was reported by many earlier jazz reference books), to William and Hattie Hill. He had a brother, Robert, who was a singer and classical violin player. Hill took up the piano at the age of thirteen, and was encouraged by Earl Hines. As a child, he attended the University of Chicago Experimental School. He was referred by jazz composer Bill Russoto Paul Hindemith, with whom he studied informally until 1952.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X70KWixbo5Y&t=16s
more...Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (June 30, 1917 – May 9, 2010) was an American dancer, actress, singer, and civil rights activist. Horne’s career spanned over seventy years, appearing in film, television, and theatre. Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood.
Horne advocated for human rights and took part in the March on Washington in August 1963. Later she returned to her roots as a nightclub performer and continued to work on television while releasing well-received record albums. She announced her retirement in March 1980, but the next year starred in a one-woman show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, which ran for more than 300 performances on Broadway. She then toured the country in the show, earning numerous awards and accolades. Horne continued recording and performing sporadically into the 1990s, retreating from the public eye in 2000.
Lena Horne was born in Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Both sides of her family were African American though with a mixture of African, Native American, and European ancestry. She belonged to the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated black people. She was reportedly descended from the John C. Calhoun family; his nephew, Dr Andrew Bonaparte Calhoun, “owned the slaves whose descendants include… Horne”.
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