mick laBriola

Cedar Anthony Walton, Jr. (January 17, 1934 – August 19, 2013) was an American hard bop jazz pianist. He came to prominence as a member of drummer Art Blakey‘s band, The Jazz Messengers, before establishing a long career as a bandleader and composer. Several of his compositions have become jazz standards, including “Mosaic”, “Bolivia”, “Holy Land”, “Mode for Joe” and “Ugetsu/Fantasy in D”.

Walton was born and grew up in Dallas, Texas. His mother Ruth, an aspiring concert pianist, was his first teacher, and took him to jazz performances around Dallas. Walton cited Nat King Cole, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk and Art Tatum as his major influences on piano. He began emulating these artists’ recordings from an early age.

After briefly attending Dillard University in New Orleans, he entered the University of Denver as a composition major, but was encouraged to switch to a music-education program with the goal of a career in the local public school system. This later proved extremely useful, as he learned to play and arrange for various instruments, a talent he honed with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers.

Sidney “Big Sid” Catlett (January 17, 1910 – March 25, 1951) was an American jazz drummer. Catlett was one of the most versatile drummers of his era, adapting with the changing music scene as bebop emerged.

Catlett was born in Evansville, Indiana, United States, and at an early age he was instructed in the rudiments of piano and drums, under the tutelage of a music teacher hired by his mother. When he and his family relocated to Chicago, Catlett received his first drum kit, and immersed himself in the diverse styles and techniques of Zutty Singleton, Warren “Baby” Dodds, and Jimmy Bertrand, among others.

In 1928, Catlett began playing with violinist and clarinet player Darnell Howard, before joining pianist Sammy Stewart’s Orchestra in New York City, and making appearances at the Savoy Ballroom.

Aldo Romano (born 16 January 1941) is an Italian jazz drummer. He also founded a rock group in 1971.

He was born in Belluno, Italy. Romano moved to France as a child and by the 1950s he was playing guitar and drums professionally in Paris, but he first gained attention when he started working with Don Cherry in 1963. He recorded with Steve Lacy, and would go on to tour with Dexter Gordonamong others. In the 1970s, he moved into rock-influenced forms of jazz fusion and, in 1978, made his first album as a leader. In the 1980s, he returned to his earlier style for several albums. Although he has lived most of his life in France, he has retained an affection for Italy and has set up a quartet of Italian jazz musicians. Romano also played a role in starting the career of French-born Italian-French pianist, Michel Petrucciani. In 2004 he won the Jazzpar Prize.

Henry Bertholf “Spike” Robinson (January 16, 1930 – October 29, 2001) was a jazz tenor saxophonist. He began playing at age twelve, recording on several labels, including Discovery, Hep and Concord. However, he sought an engineering degree and followed that profession for nearly 30 years. In 1981 he returned to recording music.

Robinson was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin on January 16, 1930. Beginning on alto saxophone in his early years, Robinson soon discovered that it was hard to make a living playing the kind of music he wanted to play.

Thelma Carpenter (January 15, 1922 – May 14, 1997) was an American jazz singer and actress, best known as “Miss One”, the Good Witch of the North in the movie The Wiz. She was born in Brooklyn, New York, the only child of Fred and Mary Carpenter, and attended Girls’ Commercial High School, where Susan Hayward was a few years ahead.

As a child performer, Carpenter had her own radio show on WNYC in New York and won an amateur night at the Apollo Theatre in 1938, where she would be honored and perform nearly 60 years later on the 1993 all-star NBC-TV special Apollo Theater Hall of Fame, hosted by Bill Cosby. She played such clubs as Kelly’s Stables and the Famous Door on legendary 52nd Street, where she was discovered by John Hammond.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AVCZHZw8e8

Earl Zebedee Hooker (January 15, 1930 – April 21, 1970) was a Chicago blues guitarist known for his slide guitar playing. Considered a “musician’s musician”, he performed with blues artists such as Sonny Boy Williamson II, Junior Wells, and John Lee Hooker and fronted his own bands. An early player of the electric guitar, Hooker was influenced by the modern urban styles of T-Bone Walker and Robert Nighthawk. He recorded several singles and albums as a bandleader and with other well-known artists. His “Blue Guitar”, a slide guitar instrumental single, was popular in the Chicago area and was later overdubbed with vocals by Muddy Waters as “You Shook Me“.

In the late 1960s, Hooker began performing on the college and concert circuit and had several recording contracts. Just as his career was on an upswing, he died in 1970, at age 40, after a lifelong struggle with tuberculosis. His guitar playing has been acknowledged by many of his peers, including B.B. King, who commented, “to me he is the best of modern guitarists. Period. With the slide he was the best. It was nobody else like him, he was just one of a kind”.

Hooker was born in rural Quitman County, Mississippi, outside of Clarksdale. In 1930, his parents moved the family to Chicago, during the Great Migration of blacks out of the rural South in the early 20th century.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwJspTv1oNs

Eugene Bertram Krupa (January 15, 1909 – October 16, 1973) was an American jazz drummer, bandleader and composer known for his energetic style and showmanship. His drum solo on Benny Goodman‘s 1937 recording of “Sing, Sing, Sing” elevated the role of the drummer from an accompanying line to an important solo voice in the band.

In collaboration with the Slingerland drum and Zildjian cymbal manufacturers, he was a major force in defining the standard band drummer’s kit. Krupa is considered “the founding father of the modern drumset” by Modern Drummer magazine.

The youngest of Anna (née Oslowski) and Bartłomiej Krupa’s nine children, Gene Krupa was born in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Bartłomiej was an immigrant from Poland born in the village of Łęki Górne, Podkarpackie in Southeastern Poland. Anna was born in Shamokin, Pennsylvania, and was also of Polish descent. His parents were Roman Catholics who groomed him for the priesthood. He spent his grammar school days at parochial schools. He attended the James H. Bowen High School on Chicago’s southeast side. After graduation he attended Saint Joseph’s College for a year but decided the priesthood was not his vocation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lapj4VEPGo0

Roosevelt Holts was born in 1905 near the town of Tylertown in the state of Mississippi . In the 1930s, Roosevelt Holts played a little amateur guitar; his meeting with Tommy Johnsonwill change his life. Tommy Johnson is then married to Rosa Yongblood, cousin of Holts. Johnson and Holts get to know each other and Johnson teaches Holts the blues. When Johnson and his wife left Tylertown around 1937 to live in Jackson , the state capital, Roosevelt Holts followed them. He and Tommy are going to perform together in the city and those around it. After a year, Roosevelt returns to his hometown where he regularly performs. He learned the bottleneck technique from CP Martinand plays in the cities of the Delta  ; at that time, he was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment. Released, he moved to Bogalusa , Louisiana , where he found employment at a paper mill. A work accident made him handicapped and prevented him from carrying any heavy load . He then worked as a farmer and hardly played until he was discovered by researcher David Evans who recorded him for the first time in 1968. A few records and a few tours in the United States followed in the 1970s. Age makes him leave the studios and he dies onFebruary 27, 1994in the city of Franklinton .

Performing at Mount Zion Temple Friday January 14th 2022 630pm