mick laBriola

John Wesley Funchess (April 16, 1931 – February 1, 1994) known professionally as John (or Johnny) Littlejohn, was an American electric blues slide guitarist. He was active on the Chicago blues circuit from the 1950s to the 1980s.

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 Hinesand 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.

Herbert Jay Solomon (April 16, 1930 – July 1, 2003 NY), known by his stage nameHerbie 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 “Hi-Jack“, 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 Underground or Push Push, because the “rhythm section locked all in one perception.”

Henry Mancini (born Enrico Nicola Mancini; April 16, 1924 – June 14, 1994) was an American composer, conductor, arranger, pianist and flutist. Often cited as one of the greatest composers in the history of film, he won four Academy Awards, a Golden Globe, and twenty Grammy Awards, plus a posthumous Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995.

His works include the theme and soundtrack for the Peter Gunn television series as well as the music for The Pink Panther film series (“The Pink Panther Theme“) and “Moon River” from Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The Music from Peter Gunn won the inaugural Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Mancini enjoyed a long collaboration in composing film scores for the film director Blake Edwards. Mancini also scored a No. 1 hit single during the rock era on the Hot 100: his arrangement and recording of the “Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet” spent two weeks at the top, starting with the week ending June 28, 1969.

Frank Otis Frost (April 15, 1936 or 1938 – October 12, 1999) was one of the foremost American Delta blues harmonica players of his generation.

Most sources state that Frost was born in 1936 in Auvergne, Jackson County, Arkansas, though researchers Bob Eagle and Eric LeBlanc state Patterson, Woodruff County, in 1938. Frost began his musical career at a young age by playing the piano for his family church. At the age of 15, Frost left for St. Louis, where he became a guitarist. At the age of 18, Frost began touring with drummer Sam Carr and Carr’s father, Robert Nighthawk. Soon after touring, he toured again with Sonny Boy Williamson II for several years, who helped teach him how to play the harmonica.

Jeff Golub (April 15, 1955 – January 1, 2015) was an American jazz guitarist who had a solo career and who led the band Avenue Blue. He worked as a sideman for a number of rock and pop musicians. He was arguably best known for his work with Rod Stewart.

Richard Davis (April 15, 1930 – September 6, 2023 Chicago) was 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.”

Annapurna Devi (17 April 1927 – 13 October 2018) was an Indian surbahar player of Hindustani classical music. She was given the name ‘Annapurna’ by Maharaja Brijnath Singh of the former Maihar Estate, and it was by this name that she was popularly known. She was the daughter and disciple of Allauddin Khan, and the sister of Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. Pandit Ravi Shankar was her first husband, with whom she had a son, Shubhendra Shankar, who was an artist and a sitarist.

She was an extremely private person and was never interested in being a professional musician like the rest of her family. However, she was active throughout her life as a teacher to many other prominent musicians like Nikhil Banerjee, Hariprasad Chaurasia, Nityanand Haldipur, Sudhir Phadke and Sandhya Phadke. She was the only known female maestro of the surbahar in the 20th century.

Irving Herbert Pomeroy III (April 15, 1930 – August 11, 2007) was an American jazztrumpeter, teacher, and the founder of the MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble. 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. During the latter part of the 1950s he was the leader of a sixteen-piece band which included Mariano, Bill Berry, Jaki Byard, Joe Gordon, and Boots Mussulli. For two years after that, he led another band, which included Alan Dawson, Hal Galper, Michael Gibbs, Dusko Goykovich, and Sam Rivers. He worked in pit orchestras for Broadway shows passing through Boston. Beginning in 1963 he led bands at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He led a band until 1993, two years before retiring from Berklee.