mick laBriola

Leo Parker (April 18, 1925 – February 11, 1962) was an American jazz musician, who primarily played baritone saxophone.

Born in Washington, D.C., United States, Parker studied alto saxophone in high school, and played this instrument on a recording with Coleman Hawkinsin 1944. He switched to baritone saxophone later that year when he joined Billy Eckstine‘s bebop band, playing there until 1946. In 1945 he was a member of the so-called “Unholy Four” of saxophonists, with Dexter Gordon, Sonny Stitt and Gene Ammons. He played on 52nd Street in New York with Dizzy Gillespie in 1946 and Illinois Jacquet in 1947-48, and later recorded with Fats Navarro, J.J. Johnson, Teddy Edwards, Wardell Gray and Charles Thompson. He and Thompson had a hit with their Apollo Records release, “Mad Lad”.

In the 1950s, Parker had problems with drug abuse, which interfered with his recording career. He made two comeback records for Blue Note in 1961, but the following year he died of a heart attack in New York City. He was 36.

Eurreal Wilford “Little Brother” Montgomery (April 18, 1906 – September 6, 1985) was an American jazz, boogie-woogie and blues pianist and singer.

Largely self-taught, Montgomery was an important blues pianist with an original style. He was also versatile, working in jazz bands, including larger ensembles that used written arrangements. He did not read music but learned band routines by ear.

Montgomery was born in Kentwood, Louisiana, United States, a sawmill town near the Mississippi border, across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans, where he spent much of his childhood. Both his parents were of African-American and Creek Indian ancestry. As a child he looked like his father, Harper Montgomery, and was called Little Brother Harper. The name evolved into Little Brother Montgomery, and the nickname stuck. He started playing piano at the age of four, and by age 11 he left home for four years and played at barrelhouses in Louisiana. His main musical influence was Jelly Roll Morton, who used to visit the Montgomery household.

Jan Hammer ([ˈjan ˈɦamɛr]) (born 17 April 1948) is a Czech-American musician, composer, and record producer. He first gained his most visible audience while playing keyboards with the Mahavishnu Orchestra during the early 1970s, as well as his film scores for television and film including “Miami Vice Theme” and “Crockett’s Theme“, from the 1980s television program Miami Vice. He has continued to work as both a musical performer and producer.

Hammer has collaborated with some of the era’s most influential jazz and rock musicians such as John McLaughlin, Jeff Beck, Billy Cobham, Al Di Meola, Mick Jagger, Carlos Santana, Stanley Clarke, Tommy Bolin, Neal Schon, Steve Lukather, and Elvin Jones. He has composed and produced at least 14 original motion picture soundtracks, the music for 90 episodes of Miami Vice and 20 episodes of the television series Chancer.

His compositions have won him several Grammy Awards.

Charles Anthony “Buster” Williams (born April 17, 1942) is an American jazz bassist. Williams is known for his membership in pianist Herbie Hancock‘s early 1970s group, working with guitarist Larry Coryell from the 1980s to present, working in the Thelonious Monk repertory band Sphereand as the accompanist of choice for many singers, including Nancy Wilson.

Williams’ father, Charles Anthony Williams, Sr., was a musician who played bass, drums, and piano, and had band rehearsals in the family home in Camden, New Jersey, exposing Williams to jazz at an early age. Williams was particularly inspired to focus on bass after hearing his father’s record of Star Dust, performed by Oscar Pettiford, and started playing in his early teens. He had his first professional gig while he was still a junior high school student, filling in for Charles, Sr., who had double booked himself one evening. Williams later spent his days practicing with Sam Dockery, who was playing in Jimmy Heath‘s band in Philadelphia on a regular double bill with Sam Reed. Charles, Sr. hosted a jam session at a club called Rip’s and gave Williams the opportunity to put his own group together for a Monday night show in 1959, and in an effort to work his way into Heath’s band, Williams hired Sam Reed. The plan worked, as two days later Reed contacted Williams about playing in his band that coming Saturday, which demonstrated Williams’ talent to Heath, who in turn hired Williams the following week.

Johnny St. Cyr (April 17, 1890 – June 17, 1966) was an American jazz banjoist and guitarist.

St. Cyr was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. He played for several leading New Orleans bands before moving to Chicago in 1923. He is best remembered as a member of Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven bands. He also played with Jelly Roll Morton‘s Red Hot Peppers. He composed the standard “Oriental Strut”, known for its adventurous chord sequence.

During the 1950s, he performed and led a group named Johnny St. Cyr and His Hot Five and recorded with Paul Barbarin and George Lewis. From 1961 until his death in 1966, St. Cyr was the bandleader of the Young Men from New Orleans, who performed at Disneyland. He died in Los Angeles, California, and is buried in Evergreen Cemetery, in Los Angeles.

Herbert Jay Solomon (April 16, 1930 – July 1, 2003), known professionally by his stage name Herbie Mann, was an American jazz flute player and important early practitioner of world music. Early in his career, he also played tenor saxophone and clarinet (including bass clarinet), but Mann was among the first jazz musicians to specialize on the flute. His most popular single was “Hijack“, which was a Billboard No. 1 dance hit for three weeks in 1975.

Mann emphasized the groove approach in his music. Mann felt that from his repertoire, the “epitome of a groove record” was Memphis Undergroundor Push Push, because the “rhythm section locked all in one perception.”

Herbie Mann was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Jewish parents, Harry C. Solomon (May 30, 1902 – May 31, 1980), who was of Russian descent, and Ruth Rose Solomon (née Brecher) (July 4, 1905 – November 11, 2004), of Romanian descent who was born in Bukovina, Austria-Hungary but immigrated to the United States with her family at the age of 6. Both of his parents were dancers and singers, as well as dance instructors later in life. He attended Lincoln High School in Brighton Beach. His first professional performance was playing the Catskills resorts at age 15. In the 1950s Mann was primarily a bop flutist, playing in combos with artists such as Phil Woods, occasionally playing bass clarinet, tenor saxophone and solo flute.

Bennie Green (April 16, 1923 – March 23, 1977) was an American jazz trombonist. Born in Chicago, Illinois, United States, Green worked in the orchestras of Earl Hines and Charlie Ventura, and recorded as bandleader through the 1950s and 1960s. According to critic Scott Yanow of AllMusic, Green’s style straddled swing music and soul, making him one of the few trombonists of the 1950s and ’60s uninfluenced by the pioneering sound of J.J. Johnson.

Green relocated to Las Vegas, where he played in hotel bands for the last decade of his career, though he made occasional appearances at jazz festivals. He died on March 23, 1977.

Alton Purnell (April 16, 1911 – January 14, 1987) was an American jazz pianist. He was a longtime performer in Dixieland jazz. Purnell was born in New Orleans on April 16, 1911. His brother, Theodore, became a reed player. Purnell sang before playing piano professionally, beginning to do so locally in New Orleans in 1928. He played in the 1930s with Isaiah Morgan, Alphonse Picou, Big Eye Louis Nelson, Sidney Desvigne, and Cousin Joe, and with Bunk Johnson in the middle of the 1940s. Purnell joined George Lewis‘s band after Johnson’s broke up in 1946, and remained there well into the 1950s, including for international tours.

Irving Herbert Pomeroy III (April 15, 1930 – August 11, 2007) was an American jazz trumpeter, teacher, and the founder of the MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble.

After high school, he studied music from 1950 to 1952 at the Schillinger House in Boston.

Remaining in Boston, he played with Charlie Parker for one week in 1953, then briefly with Charlie Mariano, before going on tour with Lionel Hampton and Stan Kenton. Back in Boston, he played with Serge Chaloff and was hired to teach at Schillinger after it had been renamed the Berklee School of Music.

Richard Davis (born April 15, 1930) is an American jazz bassist. Among his best-known contributions to the albums of others are Eric Dolphy‘s Out to Lunch!, Andrew Hill‘s Point of Departure, and Van Morrison‘s Astral Weeks, of which critic Greil Marcus wrote (in The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll), “Richard Davis provided the greatest bass ever heard on a rock album.”

Born in Chicago, Illinois, United States, Davis began his musical career with his brothers, singing bass in his family’s vocal trio. He studied double bass in high school with his music theory teacher and band director, Walter Dyett. He was a member of Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestras (then known as the Youth Orchestra of Greater Chicago) and played in the orchestra’s first performance at Chicago’s Orchestra Hall on November 14, 1947. After high school, he studied double bass with Rudolf Fahsbender of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra while attending VanderCook College of Music.

After college, Davis performed in dance bands. The connections he made led him to pianist Don Shirley. In 1954, he and Shirley moved to New York City and performed together until 1956, when Davis began playing with the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra. In 1957, he became part of Sarah Vaughan‘s rhythm section, touring and recording with her until 1960.