mick laBriola

Alexandra Elene MacLean Denny (6 January 1947 – 21 April 1978) was an English singer-songwriter who was lead singer of the British folk rockband Fairport Convention. She has been described as “the pre-eminent British folk rock singer”.

After briefly working with the Strawbs, Denny joined Fairport Convention in 1968, remaining with them until 1969. She formed the short-lived band Fotheringay in 1970, before focusing on a solo career. Between 1971 and 1977, Denny released four solo albums: The North Star Grassman and the Ravens, Sandy, Like an Old Fashioned Waltz and Rendezvous. She also duetted with Robert Plant on “The Battle of Evermore” for Led Zeppelin‘s album Led Zeppelin IV in 1971. Denny died in 1978 at the age of 31 due to injuries and health issues related to alcohol abuse.

Music publications Uncut and Mojo have described Denny as Britain’s finest female singer-songwriter. Her composition “Who Knows Where the Time Goes?” has been recorded by Judy Collins, Eva Cassidy, Nina Simone, 10,000 Maniacs and Cat Power. Her recorded work has been the subject of numerous reissues, along with a wealth of previously unreleased material which has appeared over the more than 40 years since her death, including most notably a 19-CD box set released in November 2010.

On discovering Lucas’ departure, Denny went to stay at the home of her friend Miranda Ward. During this time, Denny apparently set up an appointment to speak with a doctor about her headaches, and also intended to get advice about her alcohol addiction. At some point after 8 am on 17 April, Denny fell into a coma. Ward was out of the house at the time, and had asked her friend Jon Cole (of the band The Movies) to check in on Denny. Cole entered the home at 3 pm, and found Denny unconscious at the foot of the staircase which led to the second floor of the house. She was rushed by ambulance to Queen Mary’s Hospital in nearby Roehampton.

On 19 April, she was transferred to Atkinson Morley Hospital in Wimbledon. After receiving news that Denny was in a coma, Lucas returned from Australia. Upon his arrival at the hospital, doctors informed him that Denny was effectively brain-dead and her condition would not improve. He granted their recommendation to turn off life-supportmachines; however, just ten minutes before this was to take place, at 7:50 pm on 21 April 1978, Sandy Denny died, without regaining consciousness. Her death was ruled to be the result of a traumatic mid-brain haemorrhage and blunt force trauma to her head. She was 31 years old.

Paolo Conte (Italian pronunciation: [ˈpaːolo ˈkonte]; born 6 January 1937) is an Italian singer, pianist, songwriter and lawyer known for his distinctly grainy, resonant voice. His compositions fuse Italian and Mediterranean sounds with jazz, boogie and elements of the French chanson and Latin-American rhythms.

Paolo Conte was born in Asti, Piedmont. His parents were avid jazz fans and Conte and his younger brother Giorgio spent their formative years listening to a lot of early jazz and blues recordings. After obtaining a law degree at the University of Parma, Conte started working as an assistant solicitor with his father, simultaneously pursuing his musical studies. He learned to play the trombone, the vibraphone and the piano, and formed a jazz band with his brother on guitar. Conte’s skill for composing music and original arrangements was noted by music producer Lilli Greco, who paired Conte with lyricist Vito Pallavicini. They wrote songs for Adriano Celentano (“Azzurro“, 1968), Caterina Caselli (“Insieme a te non ci sto più”, 1968), Fausto Leali (“Deborah”, 1968) and Enzo Jannacci (“Messico e nuvole”, 1970). In 1974 Conte recorded his first album, Paolo Conte. The following year, he released another eponymous album. Following a series of well-received shows at Club Tenco in Sanremo in 1976 and the commercial success of his third album, ‘Un gelato al limon’, Conte concentrated almost exclusively on his solo career.

Ebo Taylor (born 1936) is a Ghanaian guitarist, composer, bandleader, record producer and arranger focusing on highlife and afrobeat music.

Ebo Taylor has been a pivotal figure on the Ghanaian music scene for over six decades. In the late 1950s he was active in the influential highlifebands the Stargazers and the Broadway Dance Band. In 1962, Taylor took his group, the Black Star Highlife Band, to London. In London, Taylor collaborated with Nigerian afrobeat star Fela Kuti as well as other African musicians in Britain at the time.

Returning to Ghana, Taylor worked as a producer, crafting recordings for Pat Thomas, C. K. Mann, and others, as well as exploring solo projects, combining traditional Ghanaian material with afrobeat, jazz, and funk rhythms to create his own recognizable sound in the 1970s. He was the inhouse guitar player, arranger, and producer for Essiebons, founded by Dick Essilfie-Bondzie.^[4]

Taylor’s work became popular internationally with hip-hop producers in the 21st century. In 1992, Ghetto Concept included his afrobeats in their music. In 2008, Ebo Taylor met the Berlin-based musicians of the Afrobeat Academy band, including saxophonist Ben Abarbanel-Wolff, which led to the release of the album Love and Death with Strut Records (his first internationally distributed album). In 2010, Usher used a sample from Taylor’s song “Heaven” for “She Don’t Know” with Ludacris.

Paul Wertico (born January 5, 1953 in Chicago, Illinois) is an American drummer. He gained recognition as a member of the Pat Metheny Group from 1983 until 2001, leaving the group to spend more time with his family and to pursue other musical interests.

After Pat Metheny heard the Simon and Bard Group with Wertico and bassist Steve Rodby, he invited both to join his band. During his time with Metheny, Wertico played on ten albums and four videos, appeared on television, and toured around the world. He won seven Grammy Awards (for “Best Jazz Fusion Performance,” “Best Contemporary Jazz Performance,” and “Best Rock Instrumental Performance”), magazine polls, and received several gold records.

He formed the Paul Wertico Trio with John Moulder and Eric Hochberg and collaborated with Larry Coryell, Kurt Elling, and Jeff Berlin. From 2000 to 2007, he was a member of SBB, the platinum-record-winning Polish progressive rock band. Wertico was a member of the Larry Coryell Power Trio until Coryell’s death in 2017.

Cees See (January 5, 1934, Amsterdam – December 9, 1985, The Hague) was a Dutch jazz drummer.

See worked in the 1950s with Freddy Logan and Jack Sels, and in the early 1960s with Rolf Kühn, Pim Jacobs, and Herman Schoonderwalt. He also played with an ensemble formed for Sender Freies Berlin, whose members included Herb Geller and Jerry van Rooyen. In the second half of the 1960s he played with Teddy Wilson, Klaus Doldinger, Volker Kriegel, Dusko Goykovich, Nathan Davis, and Jan Hammer. He was a member of the New Jazz Trio with Manfred Schoof and Peter Trunk in 1970-1972, and in the early 1970s also continued to work with Kriegel and Goykovich, as well as with Wolfgang Daunerand Chris Hinze.

Elizabeth “Libba” Cotten (née Nevills) (January 5, 1893 – June 29, 1987) was an American blues and folk musician, singer, and songwriter. A self-taught left-handed guitarist, Cotten developed her own original style. She played a guitar strung for a right-handed player, but played it upside down, as she was left-handed. This position meant that she would play the bass lines with her fingers and the melody with her thumb. Her signature alternating bass style has become known as “Cotten picking”.

Cotten was born in 1893 to a musical family near Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in an area that would later be incorporated as Carrboro. Her parents were George Nevill (also spelled Nevills) and Louisa (or Louise) Price Nevill. Elizabeth was the youngest of five children. She named herself on her first day of school, when the teacher asked her name, because at home she was only called “Li’l Sis.”By the age of 8, she was playing songs. At age 9, she was forced to quit school and began work as a domestic. At the age of 12, she had a live-in job at Chapel Hill. She earned a dollar a month, that her mother saved up to buy her first guitar. The guitar, a Sears and Roebuck brand instrument, cost $3.75 (equivalent to $108 in 2020). Although self-taught, she became proficient at playing the instrument, and her repertoire included a large number of rags and dance tunes.

Pablo Rodríguez Lozada (January 4, 1923 – February 28, 1973), better known as Tito Rodríguez, was a Puerto Rican singer and bandleader. He started his career singing under the tutelage of his brother, Johnny Rodríguez. In the 1940s, both moved to New York, where Tito worked as a percussionist in several popular rhumba ensembles, before directing his own group to great success during the 1950s. His most prolific years coincided with the peak of the mambo and cha-cha-cha dance craze. He also recorded boleros, sones, guarachas and pachangas.

Rodríguez is known by many fans as “El Inolvidable” (The Unforgettable One), a moniker based on his most popular song, a bolero written by Cuban composer Julio Gutiérrez.

Rodríguez was born in Barrio Obrero, Santurce, Puerto Rico, to José Rodríguez Fuentes from San Sebastián, Puerto Rico, and Severina Lozada from Holguín, Cuba. During his childhood he aspired to be a jockey and tried out racing horses at Hipódromo Las Casas in Villa Palmera, Santurce. His older brother, Johnny Rodríguez was a popular singer and composer, who inspired the younger Rodríguez to become a musician. In 1936, 13-year-old Rodríguez joined the group of Ladislao (El Maestro Ladí) Martínez, Conjunto de Industrias Nativas, as a singer. When he was 16 years old, he participated in a recording with the renowned Cuarteto Mayarí. In 1940, Rodríguez moved to New York City shortly after his parents, José and Severina, died. He went to live with his brother Johnny, who had been living there since 1935.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzZ8372vWUk

Frank Wellington Wess (January 4, 1922 – October 30, 2013) was an American jazz saxophonist and flutist. In addition to his extensive solo work, Wess is remembered for his time in Count Basie‘s band from the early 1950s into the 1960s. Critic Scott Yanow described him as one of the premier proteges of Lester Young, and a leading jazz flutist of his era—using the latter instrument to bring new colors to Basie’s music.

Wess was born in Kansas City, Missouri, United States, the son of a principal father and a schoolteacher mother. He began with classical music training and played in Oklahoma in high school. He later switched to jazz on moving to Washington, D.C. and by nineteen was working with big bands. His career was interrupted by World War II although he did play with a military band in the period. After leaving the military, he joined Billy Eckstine‘s orchestra. He returned to Washington D.C. a few years afterwards and received a degree in flute at the city’s Modern School of Music. He played tenor sax with Count Basie from 1953 to 1964, doubling on flute. Wess was considered one of the best jazz flutists of his time. From 1959 to 1964, he won the Down Beat magazine critics’ poll for flute. He was a member of Clark Terry‘s big band from 1967 into the 1970s and played in the New York Jazz Quartet (with Roland Hanna). He also did a variety of work for TV. In 1968 he contributed to the album The Jazz Composer’s Orchestra. He played tenor and alto sax, doubling on flute throughout his career.