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M31, the great Andromeda Galaxy, is one of the most famous objects in the entire sky, and the nearest of all spiral galaxies. This object is first mentioned by the Persian astronomer Al Sufi in the 10th Century, but the world becomes aware of its existence only in 1764, when Charles Messier includes it in his catalogue. Messier has also made a drawing showing M31 and its companions M32 and M110.
On clear nights M31 can be seen with the naked eye as a hazy smudge, and binoculars show its elliptical shape that can be traced to its full extent of over two degrees. That is four times the width of the full Moon! The Andromeda Galaxy (IPA: /ænˈdrɒmɪdə/), also known as Messier 31, M31, or NGC 224 and originally the Andromeda Nebula (see below), is a barred spiral galaxy approximately 2.5 million light-years (770 kiloparsecs) from Earth and the nearest large galaxy to the Milky Way. The galaxy’s name stems from the area of Earth’s sky in which it appears, the constellation of Andromeda, which itself is named after the Ethiopian (or Phoenician) princess who was the wife of Perseus in Greek mythology.
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Biréli Lagrène (born 4 September 1966) is a French jazz guitarist who came to prominence in the 1980s for his Django Reinhardt–influenced style. He often performs in swing, jazz fusion, and post-bop styles.
Lagrène was born in Soufflenheim, Alsace, France, into a Romani family and community. His father and grandfather were guitarists, and he was raised in the gypsy guitar tradition. He started playing at age four or five and by seven was improvising jazz in a style similar to Django Reinhardt‘s, whom his father admired and wanted his sons to emulate. In 1980, while in his early teens, he recorded his first album, Routes to Django: Live at the Krokodil (Jazzpoint, 1981).
During the next few years, Lagrène toured with Al Di Meola, Paco de Lucía, and John McLaughlin, all of them guitarists, and played with Benny Carter, Benny Goodman, and Stéphane Grappellii. He joined Larry Coryell and Vic Juris in New York City for a tribute to Reinhardt in 1984 and went on tour with Coryell and Philip Catherine. He also performed with Jaco Pastorius, Stanley Clarke, the Gil Evans Orchestra, Christian Escoudé, and Charlie Haden. In 1989 he performed in a duo with Stanley Jordan.
more...Gene Victor Parsons (born September 4, 1944, in Morongo Valley, California) is an American drummer, banjo player, guitarist, singer-songwriter, and engineer, best known for his work with the Byrds from 1968 to 1972. Parsons has also released solo albums and played in bands including Nashville West, the Flying Burrito Brothers, and Parsons Green. Along with guitarist Clarence White, he is credited with inventing the B-Bender (also known as the StringBender)—a device which allows a guitarist to emulate the sound of a pedal steel guitar. The device is often referred to as the Parsons/White B-Bender, a trademarked name.
Gene Parsons was born on September 4, 1944, on his family’s farm in Morongo Valley in the Mojave Desert, California. His professional musical career began when he joined up with guitarist and Fiddle player Gib Guilbeau in the duo Guilbeau & Parsons. Later the duo was joined by Clarence White, former guitarist with the Kentucky Colonels, and bassist Wayne Moore to form the band Nashville West, named after a club where the band often performed.
more...Harold Bradley “Shot” Jackson (September 4, 1920 – January 24, 1991) was an American country guitarist best known for playing Dobro and pedal steel guitar. He also designed and manufactured guitars under the name Sho-Bud.
Jackson moved to Nashville in 1944 to play on the Grand Ole Opry, in Cousin Wilbur Westbrooks’ band. After a short stint in the Navy, Jackson joined the Bailes Brothers on KWKH‘s Louisiana Hayride program, playing steel guitar. After the Bailes Brothers left the Hayride, Jackson stayed behind, playing with artists like Webb Pierce, Jimmie Osborne, and Red Sovine.
From 1951–57, Jackson joined Johnnie Wright and Jack Anglin‘s Tennessee Mountain Boys, as their Dobro player. During this time, he also played on a number of Wright’s wife Kitty Wells‘s early Decca recordings.
more...Gerald Stanley Wilson (September 4, 1918 – September 8, 2014) was an American jazz trumpeter, big band bandleader, composer, arranger, and educator. Born in Mississippi, he was based in Los Angeles from the early 1940s. In addition to being a band leader, Wilson wrote arrangements for Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughan, Ray Charles, Julie London, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Benny Carter, Lionel Hampton, Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, and Nancy Wilson.
Wilson was born in Shelby, Mississippi, and at the age of 16 moved to Detroit, Michigan, where he graduated from Cass Technical High School (one of his classmates was saxophonist Wardell Gray). He joined the Jimmie Lunceford orchestra in 1939, replacing its trumpeter and arranger, Sy Oliver. While with Lunceford, Wilson contributed songs to the band, including “Hi Spook” and “Yard-dog Mazurka”, the first influenced by Ellington’s recording of “Caravan” and the latter an influence on Stan Kenton‘s “Intermission Riff”.
more...Anderson Meade Lewis (September 4, 1905 – June 7, 1964), known as Meade Lux Lewis, was an American pianist and composer, remembered for his playing in the boogie-woogie style. His best-known work, “Honky Tonk Train Blues”, has been recorded by many artists.
Lewis was born in Chicago, though some sources state Louisville, Kentucky, on September 4, 1905 (September 3 and 13 have also been cited as his date of birth in sources). In his youth he was influenced by the pianist Jimmy Yancey. His father, a guitarist who made two recordings of his own, introduced Meade to music and arranged for him to have violin lessons. He gave up the violin at age 16, shortly after his father’s death, and switched to the piano. The nickname “Lux” was given to him by his boyhood friends. He would imitate a couple of characters from a popular comic strip in Chicago, Alphonse and Gaston, and stroke an imaginary beard as part of the routine. His friends started calling him the Duke of Luxembourgbecause of this, and the name stuck for the rest of his life. He became friends with Albert Ammons during childhood, a friendship that would last throughout their lives. They went to the same school together briefly, and they practiced and learned the piano together on the Ammons family piano.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSMO0J9BLm0
more...These cosmic clouds have blossomed 1,300 light-years away, in the fertile starfields of the constellation Cepheus. Called the Iris Nebula, NGC 7023 is not the only nebula to evoke the imagery of flowers. Still, this deep telescopic image shows off the Iris Nebula’s range of colors and symmetries, embedded in surrounding fields of interstellar dust. Within the Iris itself, dusty nebular material surrounds a hot, young star. The dominant color of the brighter reflection nebula is blue, characteristic of dust grains reflecting starlight. Central filaments of the reflection nebula glow with a faint reddish photoluminesence as some dust grains effectively convert the star’s invisible ultraviolet radiation to visible red light. Infrared observations indicate that this nebula contains complex carbon molecules known as PAHs. The dusty blue petals of the Iris Nebula span about six light-years.
more...Freddie King (September 3, 1934 – December 28, 1976) was an American blues guitarist, singer and songwriter. He is considered one of the “Three Kings of the Blues Guitar” (along with Albert King and B.B. King, none of whom are blood related). Mostly known for his soulful and powerful voice and distinctive guitar playing, King had a major influence on electric blues music and on many later blues guitarists.
Born in Gilmer, Texas, King became acquainted with the guitar at the age of six. He started learning the guitar from his mother and his uncle. King moved to Chicago when he was a teenager; there he formed his first band the Every Hour Blues Boys with guitarist Jimmie Lee Robinson and drummer Frank “Sonny” Scott. As he was repeatedly being rejected by Chess Records, he got signed to Federal Records, and got his break with single “Have You Ever Loved a Woman” and instrumental “Hide Away“, which reached number five on the Billboard magazine’s rhythm and blues chart in 1961. It later became a blues standard. King based his guitar style on Texas blues and Chicago blues influences. The album Freddy King Sings showcased his singing talents and included the record chart hits “You’ve Got to Love Her with a Feeling” and “I’m Tore Down”. He later became involved with more rhythm and blues and rock oriented producers and was one of the first bluesmen to have a multiracial backing band at live performances.
He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by ZZ Top in 2012 and into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1982. His instrumental “Hide Away” was included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s list of “500 Songs that Shaped Rock“. He was ranked 25th in the Rolling Stone magazine’s 2003 edition of “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time” and 15th in the 2011 edition. Nearly constant touring took its toll on King—he was on the road almost 300 days out of the year. In 1976 he began suffering from stomach ulcers. His health quickly deteriorated, and he died on December 28 of complications from this illness and acute pancreatitis, at the age of 42.
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Granville William “Mickey” Roker (September 3, 1932 – May 22, 2017) was an American jazz drummer.
Roker was born into extreme poverty in Miami to Granville (Sr.) and Willie Mae Roker. After his mother died (his father never lived with them), when he was only ten, he was taken by his grandmother to live in Philadelphia with his uncle Walter, who gave him his first drum kit and communicated his love of jazz to his nephew. He also introduced the young Roker to the jazz scene in Philadelphia, where drummer Philly Joe Jones became Roker’s idol.
In the early 1950s, he began to gain recognition as a sensitive yet hard-driving big-band drummer. He was especially favored by Dizzy Gillespie, who remarked of him that “once he sets a groove, whatever it is, you can go to Paris and come back and it’s right there. You never have to worry about it.” Roker was soon in demand for his supportive skills in both big-band and small-group settings.
While in Philadelphia he played with Jimmy Oliver, Jimmy Heath, Jimmy Divine, King James and Sam Reed before moving to New York in 1959, where his first gigs were with Gigi Gryce, Ray Bryant, Joe Williams, Junior Mance, Nancy Wilson and the Duke Pearson big band. In 1965 Mickey joined Art Farmer and Benny Golson’s revamped group, the “New York Jazz Sextet”. In 1992, he replaced Connie Kay in the Modern Jazz Quartet.
more...Ernie Henry (September 3, 1926 – December 29, 1957) was an American jazz saxophonist.
Henry played in the late 1940s with Tadd Dameron (1947), Fats Navarro, Charlie Ventura, Max Roach, and Dizzy Gillespie (1948–49). From 1950 to 1952, he played in the band of Illinois Jacquet. After a few years in the shadows, he returned to play with Thelonious Monk (1956), Charles Mingus, Kenny Dorham, Kenny Drew, Wynton Kelly, Wilbur Ware, Art Taylor, Philly Joe Jones and Gillespie again (1956–57). He recorded three albums as a leader for the Riverside label shortly before his death at the end of 1957. He died of a heroin overdose, aged 31.
more...Memphis Slim (born John Len Chatman, September 3, 1915 – February 24, 1988) was an American blues pianist, singer, and composer. He led a series of bands that, reflecting the popular appeal of jump blues, included saxophones, bass, drums, and piano. A song he first cut in 1947, “Every Day I Have the Blues“, has become a blues standard, recorded by many other artists. He made over 500 recordings. He was posthumously inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1989.
Memphis Slim was born John Len Chatman, in Memphis, Tennessee. For his first recordings, for Okeh Records in 1940, he used the name of his father, Peter Chatman (who sang, played piano and guitar, and operated juke joints); it is commonly believed that he did so to honor his father. He started performing under the name “Memphis Slim” later that year but continued to publish songs under the name Peter Chatman.
He spent most of the 1930s performing in honky-tonks, dance halls, and gambling joints in West Memphis, Arkansas, and southeast Missouri. He settled in Chicago in 1939 and began teaming with the guitarist and singer Big Bill Broonzy in clubs soon afterwards. In 1940 and 1941, he recorded two songs for Bluebird Records.
more...As its name suggests, alegrías (joys) is one of the most festive styles of flamenco. It has its origin in the province of Cádiz, being one of the oldest genres, and many consider it as the most important style. It belongs to the cantiñas family, traditional songs from the province of Cádiz.
Alegrías is one of the oldest flamenco dance in this art and has influenced many other styles. Perhaps the most characteristic feature is its rhythm, which it shares with the soleá, although the most significant and which makes this style recognizable, especially for the least understood, is the “tirititrán, trán, trán” with which cante begins. The alegrías is a flamenco style that is nourished by other styles such as the panaderos, the coplas romanceadas, the seguiriyas, the rosas (other types of cantiñas), the old fandangos from Cádiz and the jaleos. Although the fundamental basis of the alegrías are the jotas, specifically Navarran-Aragonese, a genre that came to Cádiz during the French occupation.
more...Two Harbors still gutting cabin and measuring up chimney for Lange stove. Transmission acting up so had to head home early. Apparently Greenwood Fire 39% contained! Yeah!
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Find the Big Dipper and follow the handle away from the dipper’s bowl until you get to the last bright star. Then, just slide your telescope a little south and west and you’ll come upon this stunning pair of interacting galaxies, the 51st entry in Charles Messier’s famous catalog. Perhaps the original spiral nebula, the large galaxy with well defined spiral structure is also cataloged as NGC 5194. Its spiral arms and dust lanesclearly sweep in front of its companion galaxy (top), NGC 5195. The pair are about 31 million light-years distant and officially lie within the angular boundaries of the small constellation Canes Venatici. Though M51 looks faint and fuzzy to the eye, deep images like this one reveal its striking colors and galactic tidal debris.
more...Clifford Laconia Jordan (September 2, 1931 – March 27, 1993) was an American jazz tenor saxophone player. While in Chicago, he performed with Max Roach, Sonny Stitt, and some rhythm and blues groups. He moved to New York City in 1957, after which he recorded three albums for Blue Note. He recorded with Horace Silver, J.J. Johnson, and Kenny Dorham, among others. He was part of the Charles Mingus Sextet, with Eric Dolphy, during its 1964 European tour.
Jordan toured Africa with Randy Weston, and performed in Paris while living in Belgium. In later years, he led his own groups, performed with Cedar Walton‘s quartet Eastern Rebellion, and led a big band.
Jordan was married to Shirley Jordan, a designer and former owner of Clothing Manufacturing Corporation in New York. He later married Sandy Jordan (née Williams), a graphic artist and Honorary Founders Board member of the Jazz Foundation of America.
more...Horace Ward Martin Tavares Silver (September 2, 1928 – June 18, 2014) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger, particularly in the hard bop style that he helped pioneer in the 1950s.
After playing tenor saxophone and piano at school in Connecticut, Silver got his break on piano when his trio was recruited by Stan Getz in 1950. Silver soon moved to New York City, where he developed a reputation as a composer and for his bluesy playing. Frequent sideman recordings in the mid-1950s helped further, but it was his work with the Jazz Messengers, co-led by Art Blakey, that brought both his writing and playing most attention. Their Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers album contained Silver’s first hit, “The Preacher“. After leaving Blakey in 1956, Silver formed his own quintet, with what became the standard small group line-up of tenor saxophone, trumpet, piano, bass, and drums. Their public performances and frequent recordings for Blue Note Records increased Silver’s popularity, even through changes of personnel. His most successful album was Song for My Father, made with two iterations of the quintet in 1963 and 1964.
Several changes occurred in the early 1970s: Silver disbanded his group to spend more time with his wife and to concentrate on composing; he included lyrics in his recordings; and his interest in spiritualism developed. The last two of these were often combined, resulting in commercially unsuccessful releases such as The United States of Mind series. Silver left Blue Note after 28 years, founded his own record label, and scaled back his touring in the 1980s, relying in part on royalties from his compositions for income. In 1993, he returned to major record labels, releasing five albums before gradually withdrawing from public view because of health problems.
As a player, Silver transitioned from bebop to hard bop by stressing melody rather than complex harmony, and combined clean and often humorous right-hand lines with darker notes and chords in a near-perpetual left-hand rumble. His compositions similarly emphasized catchy melodies, but often also contained dissonant harmonies. Many of his varied repertoire of songs, including “Doodlin’“, “Peace“, and “Sister Sadie“, became jazz standardsthat are still widely played. His considerable legacy encompasses his influence on other pianists and composers, and the development of young jazz talents who appeared in his bands over the course of four decades.
Silver was born on September 2, 1928, in Norwalk, Connecticut. His mother, Gertrude, was from Connecticut; his father, John Tavares Silver, was born on the island of Maio, Cape Verde, and emigrated to the United States as a young man. She was a maid and sang in a church choir; he worked for a tire company. Horace had a much older half-brother, Eugene Fletcher, from his mother’s first marriage, and was the third child for his parents, after John, who lived to 6 months, and Maria, who was stillborn.
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