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The Tarantula Nebula (also known as 30 Doradus) is an H II region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), from the Solar System‘s perspective forming its south-east corner. The brilliant stars in the Tarantula Nebula are unleashing a torrent of ultraviolet light and stellar winds that are etching away at the hydrogen gas cloud in which the stars were born.
The Tarantula Nebula was observed by Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille during an expedition to the Cape of Good Hope between 1751 and 1753. He catalogued it as the second of the “Nebulae of the First Class”, “Nebulosities not accompanied by any star visible in the telescope of two feet”. It was described as a diffuse nebula 20′ across.
more...Andrew Charles Cyrille (born November 10, 1939) is an American avant-garde jazz drummer. Throughout his career, he has performed both as a leader and a sideman in the bands of Walt Dickerson and Cecil Taylor, among others. AllMusic biographer Chris Kelsey wrote: “Few free-jazz drummers play with a tenth of Cyrille’s grace and authority. His energy is unflagging, his power absolute, tempered only by an ever-present sense of propriety.”
Cyrille was born in Brooklyn, New York, United States, into a Haitian family. He began studying science at St. John’s University, but was already playing jazz in the evenings and switched his studies to the Juilliard School. His first drum teachers were fellow Brooklyn-based drummers Willie Jones and Lenny McBrowne; through them, Cyrille met Max Roach. Nonetheless, Cyrille became a disciple of Philly Joe Jones.
His first professional engagement was as an accompanist of singer Nellie Lutcher, and he had an early recording session with Coleman Hawkins.Trumpeter Ted Curson introduced him to pianist Cecil Taylor when Cyrille was 18.
more...Hubert Laws (born November 10, 1939) is an American flutist and saxophonist with a career spanning over 40 years in jazz, classical, and other music genres. Considering the artistry of the late Eric Dolphy and the popularity of the late Herbie Mann, Laws is notably in the company of the most recognized and respected jazz flutists in the history of jazz and also the most imitated. Laws is one of the few classical artists who has also mastered jazz, pop, and rhythm-and-blues genres, moving effortlessly from one repertory to another.
Hubert Laws, Jr. was born November 10, 1939, in the Studewood section of Houston, Texas, the second of eight children to Hubert Laws, Sr. and Miola Luverta Donahue. Many of his siblings also entered the music industry, including saxophonist Ronnie and vocalists Eloise, Debra, and Johnnie Laws. He began playing flute in high school after volunteering to substitute for the school orchestra’s regular flutist. He became adept at jazz improvisation by playing in the Houston-area jazz group the Swingsters, which eventually evolved into the Modern Jazz Sextet, the Night Hawks, and The Crusaders. At age 15, he was a member of the early Jazz Crusaders while in Texas (1954–60), and also played classical music during those years.
more...Paul Bley, CM (November 10, 1932 – January 3, 2016) was a jazz pianist known for his contributions to the free jazz movement of the 1960s as well as his innovations and influence on trio playing and his early live performance on the Moog and Arp audio synthesizers. His music has been described by Ben Ratliff of the New York Times as “deeply original and aesthetically aggressive”. Bley’s prolific output includes influential recordings from the 1950s through to his solo piano recordings of the 2000s.
Bley was born in Montreal, Quebec, on November 10, 1932. His adoptive parents were Betty Marcovitch, an immigrant from Romania, and Joseph Bley, owner of an embroidery factory, who named him Hyman Bley. As a teenager he changed his name to “Paul,” thinking that girls would find it more attractive. However, in 1993 a relative from the New York branch of the Bley family walked into the Sweet Basil Jazz Club in New York City and informed Bley that his father was actually his biological parent. At age five Bley began studying the violin, but at age seven, after his mother divorced his father, he decided to switch to the piano. By eleven he had received a junior diploma from the McGill Conservatory in Montreal. At thirteen he formed a band which played at summer resorts in Ste. Agathe, Quebec. As a teenager he played with touring American bands, including Al Cowan’s Tramp Band. In 1949, when Bley was starting his senior year of high school, Oscar Peterson asked Bley to fulfill his contract at the Alberta Lounge in Montreal. The next year Bley left Montreal for New York City and Juilliard. Bley lived in the United States for his entire adult life, but never renounced his Canadian citizenship.
more...Russell Charles Means (November 10, 1939 – October 22, 2012) was an Oglala Lakota activist for the rights of Native Americans, libertarian political activist, actor, musician, and writer. He became a prominent member of the American Indian Movement (AIM) after joining the organization in 1968 and helped organize notable events that attracted national and international media coverage.
Means was active in international issues of indigenous peoples, including working with groups in Central and South America and with the United Nations for recognition of their rights. He was active in politics at his native Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and at the state and national level.
Beginning an acting career in 1992, he appeared on numerous television series and in several films, including The Last of the Mohicans and Pocahontas and released his own music CD. Means published his autobiography Where White Men Fear to Tread in 1995.
more...Bobby Rush (born Emmett Ellis Jr. in Homer, Louisiana on November 10, 1933) is an American blues musician, composer, and singer. His style incorporates elements of blues, rap, and funk.
Rush has won twelve Blues Music Awards and in 2017, at the age of 83, he won his first Grammy Award for the album Porcupine Meat. He is inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame, Mississippi Musicians Hall of Fame, and Rhythm & Blues Music Hall of Fame.
more...California Nebula SHO and RGB stars. An emission nebula located in the constellation Perseus. It was named so because its shape roughly resembles that of the state of California. About 70 light years long, NGC 1499 is located about 1,500 light years from Earth, making it one of the closest HII regions in the solar system.
more...Patrick Gleeson (born November 9, 1934) is an American musician, synthesizer pioneer, composer, and producer.
Gleeson moved to San Francisco in the 1960s to teach in the English Department at San Francisco State. Gleeson began experimenting with electronic music in the mid-’60s at the San Francisco Tape Music Center using a Buchla synth and other devices. He resigned his teaching position to become a full-time musician. In 1968, “upon hearing Wendy Carlos‘ Switched-On Bach“, he bought a Moog synthesizer and opened the Different Fur recording studio in San Francisco.
He worked with Herbie Hancock in the early 1970s on two albums (Crossings and Sextant) and subsequent tours, pioneering synthesizers as a live instrument. Hancock initially hired Gleeson as a synthesizer technician and instructor, but ended up asking him to become a full-time band member, expanding the ensemble from six to seven musicians. Hancock has credited Gleeson with introducing him to synthesizers and teaching him technique. Sextant and Headhunters were both recorded in part at Different Fur studios. Gleeson has subsequently worked with many other Jazz musicians, including Lenny White, Freddie Hubbard, Charles Earland, Eddie Henderson and Joe Henderson.
more...Mary Allin Travers (November 9, 1936 – September 16, 2009 Louisville, KY) was an American singer-songwriter and member of the folk music group Peter, Paul and Mary, along with Peter Yarrow and Paul Stookey. Peter, Paul and Mary was one of the most successful folk music groups of the 1960s.Travers, unlike most folk musicians of the early 1960s who were a part of the burgeoning music scene, grew up in New York City‘s Greenwich Village. A contralto, Travers released five solo albums in addition to her work with Peter, Paul and Mary.
more...Jesse Davis (born September 11, 1965 or 11-9-65) is an American jazz saxophonist. Davis began as a student in Ellis Marsalis‘s New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. After graduating, Davis embarked on a productive jazz career, recording eight albums on the Concord Jazz label, alongside collaborations with such artists as Jack McDuff and Illinois Jacquet. Davis has studied music at Northeastern Illinois University, and in 1989 he received a “Most Outstanding Musician award” from Down Beat magazine.
more...This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features the spiral galaxy Mrk 1337, which is roughly 120 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Virgo. Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 snapped Mrk 1337 at a wide range of ultraviolet, visible and infrared wavelengths, producing this richly detailed image. Mrk 1337 is a weakly barred spiral galaxy, which as the name suggests means that the spiral arms radiate from a central bar of gas and stars. Bars occur in roughly half of spiral galaxies, including our own galaxy the Milky Way. These observations are part of a campaign to improve our knowledge of how fast the universe is expanding. They were proposed by Adam Riess, who was awarded a Nobel Laureate in physics 2011 for his contributions to the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe, alongside Saul Perlmutter and Brian Schmidt. Links Video of Cosmological Curiosity
more...Bonnie Lynn Raitt (/reɪt/; born November 8, 1949 Burbank, CA) is an American blues singer, guitarist, songwriter, and activist.
During the 1970s, Raitt released a series of roots-influenced albums that incorporated elements of blues, rock, folk and country. She was also a frequent session player and collaborator with other artists, including Warren Zevon, Little Feat, Jackson Browne, The Pointer Sisters, John Prine and Leon Russell. In 1989, after several years of critical acclaim but little commercial success, she had a major hit with the album Nick of Time. The following two albums, Luck of the Draw (1991) and Longing in Their Hearts (1994), were multimillion sellers, generating several hit singles, including “Something to Talk About“, “Love Sneakin’ Up On You“, and the ballad “I Can’t Make You Love Me” (with Bruce Hornsby on piano).
Raitt has received 10 Grammy Awards. She is listed as number 50 in Rolling Stone‘s list of the “100 Greatest Singers of All Time” and number 89 on the magazine’s list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time”. Australian country music artist Graeme Connors has said, “Bonnie Raitt does something with a lyric no one else can do; she bends it and twists it right into your heart.”
more...Minnie Julia Riperton Rudolph (November 8, 1947 – July 12, 1979) was an American singer-songwriter best known for her 1975 single “Lovin’ You” and her four octave D3 to F#7 coloratura soprano range. She is also widely known for her use of the whistle register and has been referred to by the media as the “queen of the whistle register.”
Born in 1947, Riperton grew up in Chicago‘s Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side. As a child, she studied music, drama and dance at Chicago’s Lincoln Center. In her teen years, she sang lead vocals for the Chicago-based girl group the Gems. Her early affiliation with the Chicago-based Chess Records afforded her the opportunity to sing backing vocals for various established artists such as Etta James, Fontella Bass, Ramsey Lewis, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters. While at Chess, Riperton also sang lead for the experimental rock/soul group Rotary Connection, from 1967 to 1971.
On April 5, 1975, Riperton reached the apex of her career with her No. 1 single “Lovin’ You”. The single was the last release from her 1974 gold album titled Perfect Angel. In January 1976, Riperton was diagnosed with breast cancer, and in April, she underwent a radical mastectomy. By the time of diagnosis, the cancer had metastasized and she was given about six months to live. Despite the grim prognosis, she continued recording and touring. She was one of the first celebrities to go public with a breast cancer diagnosis, but she did not disclose that she was terminally ill. In 1977, she became a spokesperson for the American Cancer Society. In 1978, she received the American Cancer Society’s Courage Award, which was presented to her at the White House by President Jimmy Carter. Riperton died of breast cancer on July 12, 1979, at the age of 31.
more...November 8th 1925
New Orleans native son Warren Battiste, is another one of those unsung heroes in the annals of jazz who deserve more recognition for their contributing efforts to the cause of American music.
Warren Battiste was born in New Orleans in 1925 and was taught to play the guitar by his father who was a banjo player at Preservation Hall. Warren then completed 4 years of instructions at Gruenwald Music School in New Orleans, where he became proficient not only on guitar, but also bass, banjo and piano.
He was the first guitarist to play with Fats Domino on a regular basis, and went on to play with Illinois Jacquet in New York. This has given him a very broad knowledge from classic blues to R&B and jazz, which is displayed in his playing.
In New Orleans Warren has performed at numerous jazz clubs on Bourbon Street, Preservation Hall, Snug Harbor, the Matador and many others. Warren also appeared in the film “Shy People” starring Jill Clayburgh and Barbara Hershey. He has taught music at Wequachie High School, Essex County College and the Newark Art Center in Newark, New Jersey. Warren has performed with fellow guitarist George Benson,organist Jimmy McGriff, and accompanied classic vocal groups as The Platters and The Inkspots to name a few.
In 2000 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award in Jazz from the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. In 2001 he released his debut CD “Street Jazz” to rave reviews and solid sales.He was back in the studio in 2004 for a second CD entitled “Just Friends.”
more...Kenny Cox (November 8, 1940 – December 19, 2008) was a jazz pianist performing in the post bop, hard bop and bebop mediums. Cox was pianist for singer Etta Jones during the 1960s and was also a member of a quintet led by trombonist George Bohannon. By the end of the late 1960s he had formed his own Kenny Cox and the Contemporary Jazz Quintet, which recorded two albums for Blue Note Records before the end of the decade. Cox has appeared as a contributor on various albums, and has also performed live with such musicians as Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Eddie Harris, Jackie McLean, Roy Haynes, Ben Webster, Wes Montgomery, Kenny Dorham, Philly Joe Jones, Kenny Burrell, Donald Byrd, Roy Brooks, Charles McPherson, and Curtis Fuller. During the 1980s he formed the Detroit-based Guerilla Jam Band, a group which performed with Regina Carter, James Carter, Tani Tabbal, and Craig Taborn. Cox was responsible for the short-lived Strata Records.
He died in his Detroit home of lung cancer at the age of 68.
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