mick laBriola

Michael “Dodo” Marmarosa (December 12, 1925 – September 17, 2002) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger.

Originating in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Marmarosa became a professional musician in his mid-teens, and toured with several major big bands, including those led by Tommy Dorsey, Gene Krupa, and Artie Shaw into the mid-1940s. He moved to Los Angeles in 1945, where he became increasingly interested and involved in the emerging bebop scene. During his time on the West Coast, he recorded in small groups with leading bebop and swing musicians, including Howard McGhee, Charlie Parker, and Lester Young, as well as leading his own bands.

Marmarosa returned to Pittsburgh due to health reasons in 1948. He began performing much less frequently, and had a presence only locally for around a decade. Friends and fellow musicians had commented from an early stage that Marmarosa was an unusual character. His mental stability was probably affected by being beaten into a coma when in his teens, by a short-lived marriage followed by permanent separation from his children, and by a traumatic period in the army. He made comeback recordings in the early 1960s, but soon retreated to Pittsburgh, where he played occasionally into the early 1970s. From then until his death three decades later, he lived with family and in veterans’ hospitals.

Marmarosa was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on December 12, 1925. He had “Italian working-class parents” – Joseph and Carmella. He was the middle of three children, between sisters Audrey and Doris, and grew up in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh.

Alfred McCoy Tyner (December 11, 1938 – March 6, 2020) was an American jazz pianist and composer known for his work with the John ColtraneQuartet and a long solo career. He was an NEA Jazz Master and a five-time Grammy winner. Not a player of electric keyboards and synthesizers, he was committed to acoustic instrumentation. Tyner, who was widely imitated, is one of the most recognizable and most influential pianists in jazz history.

Alfred McCoy Tyner was born on December 11, 1938, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the oldest of three children of Jarvis and Beatrice (Stevenson) Tyner. His younger brother Jarvis Tyner was the executive vice-chairman of the Communist Party USA. McCoy was encouraged to study piano by his mother. He began studying the piano at age 13 and within two years music had become the focal point in his life. He studied at West Philadelphia Music School and later at the Granoff School of Music. During his teens he led his own group, the Houserockers.

When he was 17, he converted to Islam through the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community and changed his name to Suleiman Saud. Tyner played professionally in Philadelphia becoming part of its modern jazz scene. His neighbors in the city included musicians Richie Powell and Bud Powell.He married Aisha Saud, ending in divorce.

Willie Mae Thornton (December 11, 1926 – July 25, 1984), better known as Big Mama Thornton, was an American rhythm-and-blues singer and songwriter. She was the first to record Leiber and Stoller’s “Hound Dog“, in 1952, which became her biggest hit, staying seven weeks at number one on the Billboard R&B chart in 1953 and selling almost two million copies. Thornton’s other recordings included the original version of “Ball and Chain“, which she wrote.

Her recording of Hound Dog, written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller in 1952, and later recorded by Elvis Presley, reached Number 1 on the Rhythm & Blues Records chart. According to Maureen Mahon, a music professor at New York University, “the song is seen as an important beginning of rock-and-roll, especially in its use of the guitar as the key instrument”.

Thornton’s birth certificate states that she was born in Ariton, Alabama, but in an interview with Chris Strachwitz, she claimed Montgomery, Alabama, as her birthplace, probably because Montgomery was better known than Ariton.

Gaston Ghrenassia (born 11 December 1938), known by his stage name Enrico Macias, is an Algerian-French singer, songwriter and musician of Algerian Jewish descent.

Dámaso Pérez Prado (December 11, 1916 – September 14, 1989) was a Cuban bandleader, pianist, composer and arranger who popularized the mambo in the 1950s. His big band adaptation of the danzón-mambo proved to be a worldwide success with hits such as “Mambo No. 5“, earning him the nickname “King of the Mambo”. In 1955, Prado and his orchestra topped the charts in the US and UK with a mambo cover of Louiguy‘s “Cherry Pink (and Apple Blossom White)“. He frequently made brief appearances in films, primarily of the rumberas genre, and his music was featured in films such as La Dolce Vita.

Pérez Prado began his career as pianist and arranger for the Sonora Matancera, an internationally successful dance music ensemble from his hometown of Matanzas. He later established his own group and made several recordings in Havana in 1946, including “Trompetiana”, a self-penned mambo and one of the first examples arranged for big band. He then moved to Mexico where the developed this particular genre in multiple forms, including bolero-mambo (with María Luisa Landín), guaracha-mambo (with Benny Moré) and two forms of instrumental mambo he created: mambo batiri and mambo kaen. The success of his 1949 recordings landed him a contract with RCA Victor in the US, which led to a prolific career in the 1950s. His number 1 hit “Cherry Pink” was followed by other charting singles, such as a cover of “Guaglione” and his own “Patricia“, both released in 1958. In the 1960s, Pérez Prado’s popularity waned with the advent of other Latin dance rhythms such as pachanga and, later, boogaloo. Despite several innovative albums and a new form of mambo he called “dengue”, Pérez Prado moved back to Mexico in the 1970s, where he became a naturalized citizen in 1980. He died there in 1989. His son, Pérez Jr., continues to direct the Pérez Prado Orchestra in Mexico City to this day.

Carlos Gardel (born Charles Romuald Gardès; 11 December 1890 – 24 June 1935) was a French-born Argentine singer, songwriter, composer and actor, and the most prominent figure in the history of tango. He was one of the most influential interpreters of world popular music in the first half of the 20th century. Gardel is the most famous popular tango singer of all time and is recognized throughout the world. He was notable for his baritone voice and the dramatic phrasing of his lyrics. Together with lyricist and long-time collaborator Alfredo Le Pera, Gardel wrote several classic tangos.

Gardel died in an airplane crash at the height of his career, becoming an archetypal tragic hero mourned throughout Latin America. For many, Gardel embodies the soul of the tango style. He is commonly referred to as “Carlitos”, “El Zorzal” (“The Song thrush“), “The King of Tango”, “El Mago” (The Wizard), “El Morocho del Abasto” (The Brunette boy from Abasto), and ironically “El Mudo” (The Mute).

In 1967, a controversial theory was published by Uruguayan writer Erasmo Silva Cabrera, asserting that Gardel was born in Tacuarembó, Uruguay. Other authors expanded upon this theory, and a museum to Gardel was established in Tacuarembó. But Gardel’s friends and family all knew him as a French immigrant from Toulouse. Scholarly researchers analyzed the contradictory evidence, especially French birth and baptismal records, and confirmed his birthplace as Toulouse.

Melbourne Robert Cranshaw (December 3, 1932 – November 2, 2016) was an American jazz bassist. His career spanned the heyday of Blue Note Records to his recent involvement with the Musicians Union. He is perhaps best known for his long association with Sonny Rollins. Cranshaw performed in Rollins’s working band on and off for over five decades, starting with a live appearance at the 1959 Playboy jazz festival in Chicago and on record with the 1962 album The Bridge.

Cranshaw died at the age of 83 on November 2, 2016, in Manhattan, New York, from Stage IV cancer.

Pops Mohamed (born Ismail Mohamed-Jan) December 10th 1949 is a South African multi-instrumentalist, jazz musician and producer.

Born in Benoni, Gauteng Pops Mohamed’s career in music was the logical outcome of an early exposure at Dorkay House to the likes of Abdullah Ibrahim and Kippie Moeketsi. His father was a Muslim of Portuguese and Indian heritage and his mother was of Xhosa people and Khoisan heritage. He grew up in the Indian community of Johannesburg. He started his first band The Valiants, at 14. Known by fans as the Minister of Music, he plays a wide variety of instruments: African mouth bow, bird whistle, berimbau, didgeridoo, guitar, keyboard, kora, and the thumb piano. He is also known for his wide range of musical styles which include kwela, pop, and soul. He produced Finding One’s Self, the late Moses Taiwa Molelekwa‘s award-winning album.

Pops has also performed regularly with and sits on the board of the Johannesburg Youth Orchestra Company.

Eddie Jones (December 10, 1926 – February 7, 1959), better known as Guitar Slim, was a New Orleans blues guitarist in the 1940s and 1950s, best known for the million-selling song “The Things That I Used to Do“, produced by Johnny Vincent for Specialty Records. It is listed in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll. Slim had a major impact on rock and roll and experimented with distorted overtones on the electric guitar a full decade before Jimi Hendrix.

Jones was born in Greenwood, Mississippi. His mother died when he was five, and he was raised by his grandmother. In his teen years he worked in cotton fields and spent his free time at juke joints, where he started sitting in as a singer or dancer; he was good enough as a dancer that he was nicknamed “Limber Leg”. His career having faded, Jones became an alcoholic. He died of pneumonia in New York City, at the age of 32. He is buried in a small cemetery in Thibodaux, Louisiana, where his manager, Hosea Hill, resided.

Ray Willis Nance (December 10, 1913, in Chicago – January 28, 1976, in New York City) was an American jazz trumpeter, violinist and singer. He is best remembered for his long association with Duke Ellington and his orchestra.

Nance was the leader of his own band in Chicago from 1932 to 1937. Then, he worked with Earl Hines from 1937 to 1939; and from 1939 to 1940 he worked with Horace Henderson.

Ellington hired Nance to replace trumpeter Cootie Williams, who had joined Benny Goodman, in 1940. Nance’s first recorded performance with Ellington was at the Fargo, North Dakota ballroom dance. Shortly after joining the band, Nance was given the trumpet solo on the earliest recorded version of “Take the “A” Train“, which became the Ellington theme. Nance’s “A Train” solo is one of the most copied and admired trumpet solos in jazz history. Indeed, when Cootie Williams returned to the band more than twenty years later, he would play Nance’s solo on “A Train” almost exactly as the original.

If we look for the origin of bulerías, we have to look at another flamenco style: the soleá. The flamenco bulería derives from the soleá, a style that takes the structure of a compass, although with some variation due to a faster rhythm.

Flemish art historians point out that it was in the 19th century that singers such as El Loco Mateo and El Gloriadecided to print an entity of their own to the bulerías and, in this way, to separate it from the soleá. An example of the link that exists between one and another stick are current cantes such as the “soleá por bulerías” or the “bulería por soleá”.

As we have anticipated, bulerías has its roots in Jerez de la Frontera, but the evolution and popularity of this flamenco styke also has the contribution of artists from other Andalusian corners, such as La Niña de los Peines or Manuel Vallejo, as well as the influences of other flamenco songs.

These influences and the work of various flamenco artists have led to different styles of bulerías such as the Bulerías de Jerez, the Cádiz, the Lebrija, the Utrera and the Triana, styles that, as can be seen in their name, bear the seal of the where this stick has evolved.

Although at first the flamenco bulería was a song for the dance, little by little this flamenco style was making its mark as an essential song in the interpretations of the cantaores or the musical recordings, thanks to artists such as Camarón de la Isla or Paco de Lucía, who made bulería a reference point for flamenco.

Robbie Shakespeare, one half of the powerhouse rhythm duo of Sly and Robbie, has died.

A close associate confirmed his passing to The Gleaner a short while ago.

Shakespeare had reportedly been ailing for some time and had undergone surgery related to his kidneys. He was living overseas and was in hospital in Florida.

In July last year, he placed at Number 17 on ‘The 50 Greatest Bassists of All Time list’, compiled by the prestigious Rolling Stone magazine.

When The Gleaner reached out to the Grammy award-winning bassist at the time, he said he was humbled by the recognition,

“Bwoy, I appreciate the fact that others looking in can see what we are doing for the music. This makes me feel like a baby.” The A-lister, whose fingers have lovingly stroked the chords on many hit songs for artistes, including Gwen Guthrie, Grace Jones, Dennis Brown, Gregory Isaacs, Bob Dylan and Peter Tosh, spoke passionately of the value of hard work while subtly throwing shade at the ‘entitlement’ culture.

“No matter how much people hail Sly and Robbie as the legends, and despite two Grammy wins and 11 nominations, we never ever feel like anything we get in life, we must get it. There have been a lot of sleepless nights and ‘eatless’ nights, too. Nuff time we go to bed hungry, so we remember these things and take stock. There are so many other great bassists out there who they could have chosen, and yet they chose me, and I am grateful,” Robbie Shakespeare told The Gleaner.