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Ronald David Wood (born 1 June 1947) is an English rock musician, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, artist, author, and radio personality best known as a member of the Rolling Stones since 1975, as well as a member of Faces and the Jeff Beck Group.
Wood began his career in 1964, when he joined the Birds on guitar. He then joined the mod group the Creation, but remained with the group only for a short time and appeared on only a few of their singles. He joined the Jeff Beck Group in 1967 as a bass guitarist. Their two albums, Truth and Beck-Ola, are both highly praised.
The group split in 1969 and Wood departed along with lead vocalist Rod Stewart to join former Small Faces members Ronnie Lane, Ian McLagan, and Kenney Jones in a new group named Faces with Wood now primarily on guitar. The group found great success in the UK and mainland Europe, though achieved only cult status in the US. Wood sang and co-wrote the popular title track from their final LP, Ooh La La, released in 1973. He also worked extensively on Stewart’s first few solo albums.
As the group began to split he began several solo projects, eventually recording his first solo LP, I’ve Got My Own Album to Do, in 1974. The album featured bandmate McLagan as well as former BeatleGeorge Harrison and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, a longtime friend of Wood. After the departure of Mick Taylor from the Stones, Richards soon invited Wood to join them; he did so in 1975, initially on a temporary basis, but became an official member in 1976; however, he was not officially inducted as a financial partner until bassist Bill Wyman‘s departure in 1993.
Besides I’ve Got My Own Album to Do, Wood has recorded several other solo efforts. Now Look was released in 1975, and peaked at No. 118 on Billboard; he also collaborated with Ronnie Lane for the soundtrack album Mahoney’s Last Stand. Wood also released Gimme Some Neck in 1979, which hit No. 45 in the US; 1234 was released in 1981, peaking at No. 164. He released Slide on This in 1992, Not for Beginners came out in 2002. and I Feel Like Playing in 2010. As a member of the Rolling Stones, Wood was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989, and was inducted a second time, as a member of Faces, in April 2012.
more...Nelson Smock Riddle Jr. (June 1, 1921 – October 6, 1985) was an American arranger, composer, bandleader and orchestrator whose career stretched from the late 1940s to the mid-1980s. He worked with many world-famous vocalists at Capitol Records, including Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, Judy Garland, Dean Martin, Peggy Lee, Johnny Mathis, Rosemary Clooney and Keely Smith. He scored and arranged music for many films and television shows, earning an Academy Award and three Grammy Awards. He found commercial and critical success with a new generation in the 1980s, in a trio of Platinum albums with Linda Ronstadt.
Riddle was born in Oradell, New Jersey, United States, the only child of Marie Albertine Riddle and Nelson Smock Riddle, and later moved to nearby Ridgewood. Following his father’s interest in music, he began taking piano lessons at age eight and trombone lessons at age fourteen. He was encouraged to continue his musical pursuits at Ridgewood High School.
A formative experience was hearing Serge Koussevitsky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra playing Maurice Ravel‘s Boléro. Riddle said later: “… I’ve never forgotten it. It’s almost as if the orchestra leaped from the stage and smacked you in the face …
more...Lafayette Leake (June 1, 1919 – August 14, 1990) was an American blues and jazz pianist, organist, vocalist and composer who played for Chess Records as a session musician, and as a member of the Big Three Trio, during the formative years of Chicago blues. He played piano on many of Chuck Berry‘s recordings.
Leake was born in Winona, Missouri, United States, in 1919. Information about his early years is sparse, but in the early 1950s he joined the Big Three Trio (replacing Leonard Caston) and began his association with Chess Records, where he worked closely with bassist, producer, and songwriter Willie Dixon.
more...Herbie Lovelle (1 June 1924 – April 8, 2009) was an American drummer, who played jazz, R&B, rock, and folk. He was also a studio musician and an actor.
Lovelle’s uncle was the drummer Arthur Herbert. Lovelle began his career with the trumpeter, singer and band leader Hot Lips Page in the late 1940s, then played in the 1950s with the saxophonist Hal Singer, Johnny Moore‘s Three Blazers and the pianist Earl Hines. Through working for both Lucky Thompson and Jimmy Rushing of Count Basie’s Orchestra, he became house drummer at the Savoy Ballroom in New York City for much of the 1950s. He toured with the tenor saxophonist Arnett Cobband the pianist Teddy Wilson in 1954. In 1959 he contributed to the pianist Paul Curry’s album Paul Curry Presents the Friends of Fats, released on the Golden Crest label.
In the early years of television, he performed with the King Guion Orchestra on the Jerry Lester Show and the Ed Sullivan Show. In 1966, he was the lead drummer for the Sammy Davis, Jr. TV show.
Lovelle began playing more R&B in the 1950s and worked as a studio musician, often with Sam Taylor. He played on albums by Bob Dylan (The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan), Pearls Before Swine, Eric Andersen, David Blue, John Denver, Tom Rush, B. B. King, John Martyn (Stormbringer!), the Strangeloves, the McCoys, and the Monkees. He continued working as a studio musician well into the 1980s.
In 1976, he produced the first album by Stuff, which went platinum in Japan. He also played drums in the 1976 revival of Guys and Dolls.
From the 1980s on, he acted in film and television, including on Law & Order (1995–2004). His film credits include Bella (2006), Mitchellville (2004) (Sundance), The Rhythm of the Saints (2003), Don’t Explain (2002), The Curse of the Jade Scorpion(2001), Down to Earth (2001), Girlfight (2000), Maximum Risk (1996), Getting Away with Murder (1996), White Lies (1996), Bleeding Hearts (1994), The Paper (1994), Running on Empty (1988), Death Wish III (1985), A Man Called Adam (1966).
His TV credits include Into the Fire (2005), How Do You Spell Belief? (2005), Kingpin Rising (2005), Third Watch (2 episodes, 2005), and Law & Order TV (1995–2004).
more...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1OBCW08mmY
more...The Whirlpool Galaxy, also known as Messier 51a, M51a, and NGC 5194, is an interacting grand-design spiral galaxy with a Seyfert 2 active galactic nucleus. It lies in the constellation Canes Venatici, and was the first galaxy to be classified as a spiral galaxy. Its distance is 31 million light-years away from Earth.
The galaxy and its companion, NGC 5195, are easily observed by amateur astronomers, and the two galaxies may be seen with binoculars. The Whirlpool Galaxy has been extensively observed by professional astronomers, who study it to understand galaxy structure (particularly structure associated with the spiral arms) and galaxy interactions.
more...John Henry “Bonzo” Bonham (31 May 1948 – 25 September 1980) was an English musician, best known as the drummer for the English rock band Led Zeppelin. Esteemed for his speed, power, fast single-footed kick drumming, distinctive sound, and feel for the groove, he is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential rock drummers in history.
Bonham was born in 1948 in Redditch, Worcestershire, and took up drums at the age of five, receiving a snare drum at the age of 10 and a full drum set at the age of 15. He played with multiple local bands both at school and following school, eventually playing in two different bands with Robert Plant. Following the demise of the Yardbirds in 1968, Bonham joined Plant, guitarist Jimmy Page and bassist John Paul Jones to form Led Zeppelin. With the band, Bonham mostly showcased a hard-hitting hard rock style, but also handled funk and Latin-influenced grooves in later releases. Like Keith Moon of the Who, Bonham’s drum set grew in size following the band’s 1969 concert tours, including congas or timpani and a gong. His drum solo “Moby Dick” was featured on the group’s second album and was a staple of their concerts, often lasting over 20 minutes. Outside of Led Zeppelin, Bonham played drums for other artists, including the Family Dogg, Screaming Lord Sutch, Lulu, Jimmy Stevens and Wings. Bonham played with Led Zeppelin until his death at the age of 32, in September 1980 following a day of heavy drinking. The surviving members disbanded the group out of respect for Bonham after his death.
A mostly self-taught drummer, Bonham was influenced by Max Roach, Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich. He was close with Vanilla Fudge drummer Carmine Appice, who introduced him to Ludwig drums. While he was primarily known for his hard-rock style during his lifetime, his reputation as a drummer has grown beyond that genre following his death: he is now seen as one of the greatest drummers of all time. He has influenced numerous drummers, including Dave Grohl, Neil Peart, Chad Smith and Dave Lombardo. He was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 as a member of Led Zeppelin. In 2016, Rolling Stone named him the greatest drummer of all time.
On 24 September 1980, Bonham was picked up by Led Zeppelin assistant Rex King to attend rehearsals at Bray Studios for a tour of North America, to begin 17 October in Montreal, Canada; it was the band’s first tour since 1977. During the journey, Bonham asked to stop for breakfast, where he drank four quadruple vodka screwdrivers (16 shots between 400 and 560 ml). He then continued to drink heavily after arriving at rehearsals. The band stopped rehearsing late in the evening and then went to Page’s house, the Old Mill House in Clewer, Windsor. After midnight on 25 September, Bonham fell asleep; someone took him to bed and placed him on his side. Led Zeppelin tour manager Benji LeFevre and bassist John Paul Jones found him unresponsive the next afternoon. Bonham was later pronounced dead at 32 years old.
more...Louis Hayes (born May 31, 1937) is an American jazz drummer and band leader. He was with McCoy Tyner‘s trio for more than three years. Since 1989 he has led his own band, and together with Vincent Herring formed the Cannonball Legacy Band.
Louis Sedell Hayes was born in Detroit, Michigan, United States, to a father, an automaker, who played drums and piano. His mother waited tables and played the piano. She was the sister of John Nelson, the father of the musician Prince. Hayes got his first drum set at age 10. The key influence in his early development was his cousin Clarence Stamps, an accomplished drummer who grounded his technical fundamentals and gave him lessons that stuck for life. He refers to the early influence of hearing jazz, especially big bands on the radio. His main influence was Philly Joe Jones and he was mentored by Jo Jones. His three main associations were with Horace Silver‘s Quintet (1956–59), the Cannonball Adderley Quintet (1959–65), and the Oscar Peterson Trio (1965–67). Hayes often joined Sam Jones, both with Adderley and Peterson, and in freelance settings.
When he was a teenager, he led a band in Detroit clubs before he was 16. He worked with Yusef Lateef and Curtis Fuller from 1955 to 1956. He moved to New York in August 1956, to replace Art Taylor in the Horace Silver Quintet and, in 1959, joined the Cannonball Adderley Quintet, with which he remained until mid-1965, when he succeeded Ed Thigpen in the Oscar Peterson Trio. He left Peterson in 1967, and formed a series of groups, which he led alone or with others; among his sidemen were Freddie Hubbard, Joe Henderson, Kenny Barron, and James Spaulding. He returned to Peterson in 1971.
more...Albert “Tootie” Heath (born May 31, 1935) is an American jazz hard bop drummer, the brother of tenor saxophonist Jimmy Heath and the double-bassist Percy Heath.
Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, he first recorded in 1957 with John Coltrane. From 1958 to 1974, he worked with, among others, J. J. Johnson, Wes Montgomery, Art Farmer and Benny Golson‘s Jazztet, Cedar Walton, Bobby Timmons, Kenny Drew, Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon, Johnny Griffin, Herbie Hancock, Friedrich Gulda, Nina Simone, and Yusef Lateef. In 1975, he, Jimmy and Percy formed the Heath Brothers. He remained with the group until 1978, then left to freelance. He has recorded extensively throughout his career.
Among his many workshop and classroom teaching assignments, Heath is a regular instructor at the Stanford Jazz Workshop.
Tootie Heath is now the producer and leader of The Whole Drum Truth, a jazz drum ensemble featuring Ben Riley, Ed Thigpen, Jackie Williams, Billy Hart, Charlie Persip, Leroy Williams and Louis Hayes.
more...Jimmy Shirley (1913-1989) was an American jazz and R&B guitarist who recorded from the 1940s to the 1970s. He was an early exponent of the electric guitar and was one of the first to use the Vibrolavibrato arm in recordings, such as “Jimmy’s Blues” (1945).
While growing up in Cleveland, he was taught guitar by his father. In 1937 he moved to New York City and spent four years with the Clarence Profit Trio. In 1940 he recorded with Wingy Carpenter. He worked with Ella Fitzgerald from 1942–1943 and with Phil Moore and Herman Chittison. During the 1940s, he recorded with Clyde Bernhardt, Sid Catlett, Sidney De Paris, Edmond Hall, John Hardee, Coleman Hawkins, Art Hodes, Billie Holiday, James P. Johnson, Pete Johnson, Billy Kyle, and Ram Ramirez.
more...Please lets demand Gun Control once and for all.
At least eight mass shootings took place across the U.S. over the weekend following Tuesday’s mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Another three occurred between Wednesday and Friday. According to the Gun Violence Archive, an independent organization that collects data from over 7,500 sources, eight people have been killed and another 45 injured in the five days following the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. A mass shooting, defined by the Gun Violence Archive, is an incident in which four or more individuals are shot and either injured or killed, excluding the gunman.
more...Honoring my dad Mike Labriola for his courage of fighting Nazism in his homeland of Italy as a very young man.
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Easily identified by the spectacular band of absorbing dust partially obscuring its bright nucleus, M64, or the Black Eye galaxy, is characterized by its bizarre internal motion. The gas in the outer regions of this remarkable galaxy is rotating in the opposite direction from the gas and stars in its inner regions. This strange behavior can be attributed to a merger between M64 and a satellite galaxy over a billion years ago.
New stars are forming in the region where the oppositely rotating gases collide, are compressed, and then contract. Particularly noticeable in this stunning Hubble image of the galaxy’s core are hot, blue stars that have just formed, along with pink clouds of glowing hydrogen gas that fluoresce when exposed to ultraviolet light from newly formed stars.
M64 was discovered by the English astronomer Edward Pigott. It is located 17 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Coma Berenices and is best observed in May. With an apparent magnitude of 9.8, the Black Eye galaxy can be spotted with a moderately sized telescope.
more...“King” Ernest Baker (May 30, 1939 – March 5, 2000) was an American blues and soul singer. He recorded “I Feel Alright” and “That’s When I Woke Up.” Baker was born in Natchez, Mississippi, and died in a car crash in 2000, just after finishing recording an album.
Coming from a large family, he was the 3rd born of 11 children. Ernest was born in Natchez, Mississippi on May 5, 1939. His great-grandfather was an Italian violinist from Milan who lived to be 109. According to Baker, all of his Southern State children (referred to as half-Mulatto in those times) were violinists and guitar players. His grandfather was part of a Baker Band Revue, which played around and in Louisiana and Mississippi. His father was a guitarist who would play at the Honky-tonk places in the south. He recalled sitting on his fathers knee at around seven years old and listening to his father signing and playing his slide guitar. He would also hold out a cup for the listeners to put money in to. Blues singer Bobby Bland is a cousin of King Ernest.
more...Ellsworth McGranahan “Shake” Keane (30 May 1927 – 11 November 1997) was a Vincentian jazz musician and poet. He is best known today for his role as a jazz trumpeter, principally his work as a member of the ground-breaking Joe Harriott Quintet (1959–65).
Born on the Caribbean island of St Vincent into “a humble family that loved books and music”, Keane attended Kingstown Methodist School and St Vincent Grammar School. He was taught to play the trumpet by his father, Charles (who died when Keane was 13), and gave his first public recital at the age of six. When he was 14 years old, Keane led a musical band made up of his brothers. In the 1940s, with his mother Dorcas working to raise six children, the teenager joined one of the island’s leading bands, Ted Lawrence and His Silvertone Orchestra. During his early adulthood in St Vincent, his principal interest was literature, rather than the music for which he would become better known. He had been dubbed “Shakespeare” by his school friends, on account of this love of prose and poetry. This nickname was subsequently shortened to “Shake”, which name he came to use throughout his adult life. He published two books of poetry, L’Oubili (1950) and Ixion (1952), while still in St Vincent.
more...Armando Peraza (May 30, 1924 – April 14, 2014) was a Latin jazz percussionist and a member of the rock band Santana. Peraza played congas, bongos, and timbales.Born in Lawton Batista, Havana, Cuba in 1924 (although the birth year is uncertain), he was orphaned by age 7 and lived on the streets. When he was twelve, he supported himself by selling vegetables, coaching boxing, playing semi-pro baseball, and becoming a loan shark. His music career began at seventeen when he heard at a baseball game that bandleader Alberto Ruiz was looking for a conga player. Ruiz’s brother was on the same baseball team as Peraza. Despite the absence of experience in music, he practiced and won the audition.
He left Cuba for Mexico in 1948 to tend to his sick friend, conga drummer Mongo Santamaría. They arrived in New York City in 1949. After playing in Machito‘s big band, Peraza was invited by Charlie Parkerto participate in a recording session that included Buddy Rich. He recorded with Slim Gaillard in New York in November 1949 in a session that produced “Bongo City”. He toured the U.S. with Gaillard’s band until they reached San Francisco, where Gaillard owned the nightclub Bop City. After a period in Mexico, where he recorded with Perez Prado and did some soundtracks for the Mexican movie industry, he returned to the U.S. and settled in San Francisco. While on the West Coast, he worked with Dizzy Gillespie, toured extensively with Charles Mingus and Dexter Gordon, and played in California for Mexican farm workers with Puerto Rican actor and musician Tony Martinez (who played “Pepino” on the TV show The Real McCoys). Armando also led an Afro-Cuban dance review at the Cable Car Village club in San Francisco, attracting a clientele from Hollywood that included Errol Flynn, Marlon Brando, and Rita Hayworth.
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Clora Larea Bryant (May 30, 1927 – August 25, 2019) was an American jazz trumpeter. She was the only female trumpeter to perform with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker and was a member of the International Sweethearts of Rhythm.
Bryant was born in Denison, Texas to Charles and Eulila Bryant, the youngest of three children. Her father was a day laborer and her mother was a homemaker who died when Clora was only 3 years old.[1]When Bryant was a young child, she learned to play piano with her brother Mel.[3] As a child, Bryant was a member of the choir in a Baptist church. When her brother Fred joined the military, he left his trumpet, which she learned how to play. In high school she played trumpet in the marching band. Bryant turned down scholarships from Oberlin Conservatory and Bennett College to attend Prairie View College in Houston starting in 1943, where she was a member of the Prairie View Co-eds jazz band.The band toured in Texas and performed at the Apollo Theater in New York City in 1944. Her father got a job in Los Angeles, and she transferred to UCLA in 1945.[2] Bryant heard bebop for the first time on Central Avenue.
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