mick laBriola

Roy Sinclair Campbell Jr. (September 29, 1952 – January 9, 2014) was an American trumpeter frequently linked to free jazz, although he also performed rhythm and blues and funk during his career.

Born in Los Angeles, California, in 1952, Campbell was raised in New York City. At the age of fifteen, he began learning to play trumpet and soon studied at the Jazz Mobile program along with Kenny Dorham, Lee Morgan and Joe Newman. Throughout the 1960s, still unacquainted with the avant-garde movement, Campbell performed in the big bands of the Manhattan Community College. From the 1970s onwards, he performed primarily within the context of free jazz, spending some of this period studying with Yusef Lateef.

Jean-Luc Ponty (born 29 September 1942) is a French jazz violinist and composer.

Ponty was born into a family of classical musicians in Avranches, France. His father taught violin, his mother taught piano. At sixteen, he was admitted to the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, graduating two years later with the institution’s highest honor, Premier Prix (first prize). He was hired by the Concerts Lamoureux in which he played for three years.

While still a member of the orchestra in Paris, Ponty picked up a side job playing clarinet (which his father had taught him) for a college jazz band, that regularly performed at local parties. It proved life-changing. A growing interest in Miles Davis and John Coltrane compelled him to take up tenor saxophone. One night after an orchestra concert, and still wearing his tuxedo, Ponty found himself at a local club with only his violin. Within four years, he was widely accepted as the leading figure in “jazz fiddle”.

At that time, Ponty was leading a dual musical life: rehearsing and performing with the orchestra while also playing jazz at clubs throughout Paris. The demands of this schedule eventually brought him to a crossroads. Critic Joachim Berendt wrote that “Since Ponty, the jazz violin has been a different instrument”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHawR70IplI

Jerry Lee Lewis (born September 29, 1935) is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. Nicknamed the Killer, he has been described as “rock n’ roll‘s first great wild man and one of the most influential pianists of the 20th century.” A pioneer of rock and roll and rockabilly music, Lewis made his first recordings in 1956 at Sun Records in Memphis. “Crazy Arms” sold 300,000 copies in the South, but it was his 1957 hit “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” that shot Lewis to fame worldwide. He followed this with the major hits “Great Balls of Fire“, “Breathless“, and “High School Confidential“. However, his rock and roll career faltered in the wake of his marriage to Myra Gale Brown, his 13-year-old cousin.

His popularity quickly eroded following the scandal and with few exceptions such as a cover of Ray Charles‘s “What’d I Say“, he did not have much chart success in the early 1960s. His live performances at this time were increasingly wild and energetic. His 1964 live album Live at the Star Club, Hamburg is regarded by music journalists and fans as one of the wildest and greatest live rock albums ever. In 1968, Lewis made a transition into country music and had hits with songs such as “Another Place, Another Time“. This reignited his career, and throughout the late 1960s and 1970s he regularly topped the country-western charts; throughout his seven-decade career, Lewis has had 30 songs reach the Top 10 on the Billboard Country and Western Chart. His No. 1 country hits included “To Make Love Sweeter for You“, “There Must Be More to Love Than This“, “Would You Take Another Chance on Me” and “Me and Bobby McGee“.

Kenneth David Kirkland (September 28, 1955 – November 12, 1998) was an American pianist/keyboardist.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, United States, Kirkland was six when he first sat down at a piano keyboard. After years of Catholic schooling, Kirkland enrolled at the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied classical piano performance, classical theory and composition. 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 their long association.^[1] On Marsalis’s self-titled debut album, Kirkland shared the piano duties with one of his musical influences, Herbie Hancock,^[5] but was the sole pianist on Marsalis’s subsequent releases Think of One, Hothouse Flowers and Black Codes. After his association with Wynton Marsalis, Kirkland joined Branford Marsalis’s band. He is also on Marsalis’s funk band album Buckshot Lefonque. When Branford Marsalis assumed the high-visibility role of bandleader for NBC TV’s The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Kirkland became the band’s pianist.

On November 7, 1998, Kirkland attended Marsalis’s wedding in New Rochelle, New York. Kirkland was found dead in his Queens apartment on Friday, November 13, 1998.

The official doctor’s report listed his death as due to congestive heart failure

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LyS_1NbUGg

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.

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 Forcefrom 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 band 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.

Koko Taylor (born Cora Anna 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.

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. In 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’ Wolf five years earlier. The record became a hit, reaching number four on the R&B chart and number 58 on the pop chart in 1966,^[7] 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.

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.

Earl Rudolph “Bud” Powell (September 27, 1924 – July 31, 1966) was an American jazz pianist and composer. Along with Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, and Dizzy Gillespie, Powell was a leading figure in the development of modern jazz. His virtuosity led many to call him the Charlie Parker of the piano. Powell was also a composer, and many jazz critics credit his works and his playing as having “greatly extended the range of jazz harmony”.

Powell’s father was a stride pianist. Powell started classical piano lessons at the age of five. His teacher, hired by his father, was a West Indian man named Rawlins. At 10 years of age, Powell showed interest in the swing music that could be heard all over the neighborhood. He first appeared in public at a rent party, where he mimicked Fats Waller‘s playing style. The first jazz composition that he mastered was James P. Johnson‘s “Carolina Shout”. Powell’s older brother, William, played trumpet and violin, and by the age of 15 Powell was playing in William’s band. Powell heard Art Tatum on the radio and tried to match his technique. Powell’s younger brother, Richie Powell, was also a noted bebop pianist.