mick laBriola

John Gilmore (September 28, 1931 – August 20, 1995) was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, and percussionist. He was known for his tenure with the avant-garde keyboardist/bandleader Sun Ra from the 1950s to the 1990s, and led The Sun Ra Arkestra from Sun Ra’s death in 1993 until his own death in 1995.

Gilmore was raised in Chicago and played clarinet from the age of 14. He took up the tenor saxophone while serving in the United States Air Force from 1948 through 1951.He then pursued a musical career, beginning as a tenor saxophonist on a national tour with the Harlem Globetrotters in an ensemble that included pianist Earl Hines in 1952.

In 1953 Gilmore met pianist and bandleader Sun Ra who had a profound impact on him as a musician. For the next four decades, he recorded and performed almost exclusively with Sun Ra; first as a trio, and then in the Sun Ra Arkestra. This was puzzling to some, who noted Gilmore’s talent, and thought he could be a major star like John Coltrane or Sonny Rollins. Despite being five years older than Gilmore, Coltrane was impressed with his playing, and took informal lessons from Gilmore in the late 1950s. Coltrane’s epochal, proto–free jazz “Chasin’ the Trane” was inspired partly by Gilmore’s sound. The Penguin Guide to Jazz suggests Gilmore remained an influence in Coltrane’s later period, particularly on Sun Ship.

Kenneth David Kirkland (September 28, 1955 – November 12, 1998) was an American pianist and keyboardist. Kirkland’s first professional work came with Polish fusion violinist Michal Urbaniak, touring throughout Europe with his group in 1977. Coincidentally, his next high-profile gig was with another Eastern European jazz émigré, Miroslav Vitous. Kirkland is featured on Vitous’ ECM recordings First Meeting and Miroslav Vitous Group.

In 1980, while Kirkland was on tour in Japan with Terumasa Hino, he met Wynton Marsalis, which began his long association with both Wynton and his older brother Branford. On Wynton’s self-titled debut album, Kirkland shared the piano duties with one of his musical influences, Herbie Hancock, but was the sole pianist on Marsalis’s subsequent releases Think of One, Hot House Flowers and Black Codes (From the Underground). Kirkland was found dead in his Queens apartment on Friday, November 13, 1998.

Koko Taylor (born Cora Ann Walton, September 28, 1928 – June 3, 2009) was an American singer whose style encompassed Chicago blues, electric blues, rhythm and blues and soul blues. Sometimes called “The Queen of the Blues”, she was known for her rough, powerful vocals. Over the course of her career, she was nominated for 11 Grammy Awards, winning 1985’s Best Traditional Blues Album for her appearance on Blues Explosion.

Born on a farm near Memphis, Tennessee, Taylor was the daughter of a sharecropper. She left Tennessee for Chicago in 1952 with her husband, Robert “Pops” Taylor, a truck driver. I the late 1950s, she began singing in blues clubs in Chicago. She was spotted by Willie Dixon in 1962, and this led to more opportunities for performing and her first recordings. In 1963 she had a single on USA Records, and in 1964 a cut on a Chicago blues collection on Spivey Records, called Chicago Blues. In 1964 Dixon brought Taylor to Checker Records, a subsidiary label of Chess Records, for which she recorded “Wang Dang Doodle“, a song written by Dixon and recorded by Howlin’ Wolffive years earlier. The record became a hit, reaching number four on the R&B chart and number 58 on the pop chart in 1966, and selling a million copies. She recorded several versions of the song over the years, including a live rendition at the 1967 American Folk Blues Festival, with the harmonica player Little Walter and the guitarist Hound Dog Taylor. Her subsequent recordings, both original songs and covers, did not achieve as much success on the charts.

Friday September 27th 2024 6pm. Accompaniment for service with Inbal Sharett-Singer, Jayson Rodovsky, Jeff Bailey, Pete Whitman and mick laBriola

Earring George Mayweather (September 27, 1927 – February 12, 1995) was an American electric blues and Chicago blues harmonica player, songwriter and singer. He recorded only one solo album, but he played the harmonica on recordings by J. B. Huttoand Eddie Taylor.

AllMusic commented that his album Whup It! Whup It! was “an admirable shot at recreating the ’50s Chicago harp sound”.

George Mayweather Jr. was born in Montgomery County, Alabama. He learned to play the harmonica after receiving the instrument as a Christmas present at the age of six. Inspired by the playing of Sonny Boy Williamson I, Mayweather mainly taught himself the rudiments of the instrument. Upon his relocation to Chicago, Illinois, in September 1949, he befriended Little Walter, who taught him techniques of harmonica playing. He lived in Chicago, next door to J. B. Hutto, and in 1951 he teamed up with Hutto and the percussionist Eddie “Porkchop” Hines to form the Hawks, a trio performing on weekends at the Maxwell Street market. With few opportunities for steady work, Mayweather alternately performed with Hutto and in Bo Diddley‘s backing ensemble. In 1952, when Little Walter left Muddy Waters‘s touring band, Mayweather was offered a job as his replacement, but he declined the potentially lucrative position. By 1954, Mayweather recorded with Hutto in sessions for Chance Records, which produced “Dim Lights”, “Things Are So Slow”,“Combination Boogie”, and “Pet Cream Man”. He later teamed up Eddie Taylor, and together they recorded a number of tracks, including “You’ll Always Have a Home” and “Don’t Knock at My Door”. Several of these were released as singles, but they were not commercial successes.

Robert Roland Chudnick (September 27, 1927 – May 27, 1994), known professionally as Red Rodney, was an American jazz trumpeter.

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he became a professional musician at 15, working in the mid-1940s for the big bands of Jerry Wald, Jimmy Dorsey, Georgie Auld, Elliot Lawrence, Benny Goodman, and Les Brown. He was inspired by hearing Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker to change his style to bebop, moving on to play with Claude Thornhill, Gene Krupa, and Woody Herman. He was Jewish.

He accepted an invitation from Charlie Parker to join his quintet. and was a member of the band from 1949 to 1951. Being the only white member of the group, when playing in the southern United States he was billed as “Albino Red” as a ruse to avoid prejudice against mixed race musical combos. During this time he recorded extensively.

During the 1950s, he worked as a bandleader in Philadelphia and recorded with Ira Sullivan. He became addicted to heroin and started a pattern of dropping in and out of jazz.

During 1969, Rodney played in Las Vegas with fellow Woody Herman colleague, trombonist Bill Harris, as part of the Flamingo casino house band led by Russ Black. Similar work continued through 1972.

In the early 1970s he was bankrupted by medical costs following a stroke. He returned to jazz. In 1975 he was incarcerated in Lexington, Kentucky for drug offenses. While jailed he gave music lessons to guitarist Wayne Kramer of the MC5.

We know that it’s a four count. Sometimes we can count it in 8’s, but *really* it’s in 4’s. So, it starts on 1 and ends on 3 for the strong ending. I hear it as starting on 2 ending on 4 with a silent one.

1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4-

1-2-3-4-1-2-3

But what *is* a compás of Tangos? Is it one count of 4, two counts of 4, two counts of 8???? I remember being at a workshop with Concha Jareño and she asked the musicians what they thought. All had different answers!!! However, I will say this, I think of one compás as two counts of 4, but a whole measure as 4 counts of 4. Listen to the music enough and you’ll hear it, plus a bunch of variables!!

When danced in tablao, generally, a Tangos dance will be danced one dancer at a time and have the simple format of letra, escobilla, estribillo for each one.

So, an entire Tangos set with multiple dancers might like look like this:

• Falseta (guitar solo)
• Entrada (ay, ay, ay)
• Singer sings a few letras
• Dancer goes out and does llamada and dances a letra, maybe a falseta and maybe short escobilla
• Dancer leaves with estribillo (ending chorus)
• Next dancer, etc
• Perhaps the guitarist plays a falseta in between
• Last dancer calls other dancer to join for the final, which is usually a subida that ends in a llamada on stage.

What I’ve described is what is typical in an American tablao so there are variations- more falsetas, no escobillas, etc.

Gary Bartz (born September 26, 1940, in Baltimore) is an American jazz saxophonist.He has won two Grammy Awards. Bartz was first exposed to jazz as the son of the owners of a jazz nightclub in Baltimore. In 1958 he left Baltimore to study at the Juilliard School. In the early 1960s, he performed with Eric Dolphy and McCoy Tyner in Charles Mingus‘ Jazz Workshop. He worked as a sideman with Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln before joining Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. In 1968, he was a member of McCoy Tyner‘s band, Expansions.

In mid-1970, he joined Miles Davis‘ band,performing live at the Isle Of Wight festival in August; and at a series of December dates at The Cellar Door club in Washington, D.C. Portions of these shows were initially released on the 1971 Live-Evil album, with the entire six performance/four night run eventually released in full on the 2005 Cellar Door Sessions box set. He later formed the band Ntu Troop, which combined jazz, funk, and soul.

George Gershwin (born Jacob Gershwine; September 26, 1898 – July 11, 1937) was an American composer and pianist whose compositions spanned popular, jazz and classical genres. Among his best-known works are the orchestral compositions Rhapsody in Blue (1924) and An American in Paris (1928), the songs “Swanee” (1919) and “Fascinating Rhythm” (1924), the jazz standards “Embraceable You” (1928) and “I Got Rhythm” (1930), and the opera Porgy and Bess (1935), which included the hit “Summertime“.

Gershwin studied piano under Charles Hambitzer and composition with Rubin Goldmark, Henry Cowell, and Joseph Brody. He began his career as a song plugger but soon started composing Broadway theater works with his brother Ira Gershwin and with Buddy DeSylva. He moved to Paris, intending to study with Nadia Boulanger, but she refused him, afraid that rigorous classical study would ruin his jazz-influenced style; Maurice Ravel voiced similar objections when Gershwin inquired about studying with him. He subsequently composed An American in Paris, returned to New York City and wrote Porgy and Bess with Ira and DuBose Heyward. Initially a commercial failure, it came to be considered one of the most important American operas of the 20th century and an American cultural classic.

Gershwin moved to Hollywood and composed numerous film scores. He died in 1937, only 38 years old, of a brain tumor. His compositions have been adapted for use in film and television, with many becoming jazz standards.