mick laBriola

Floyd Westerman, also known as Kanghi Duta (“Red Crow” in Dakota) (August 17, 1936 – December 13, 2007), was a Dakota Sioux musician, political activist, and actor. After establishing a career as a country music singer, later in his life he became an actor, usually depicting Native American elders in American films and television. He is also credited as Floyd Red Crow Westerman. As a political activist, he spoke and marched for Native American causes.

He was born Floyd Westerman on the Lake Traverse Indian Reservation, home of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, a federally recognized tribe that is one of the sub-tribes of the Eastern Dakota section of the Great Sioux Nation, located in the U.S. state of South Dakota. His Indigenous name Kanghi Duta means “Red Crow” in the Dakota language (which is one of the three related Siouan languages of the Great Plains).

At the age of 10, Westerman was sent to the Wahpeton Boarding School, where he first met Dennis Banks (who as an adult became a leader of the American Indian Movement). There Westerman and the other children were forced to cut their traditionally long hair and forbidden to speak their native languages. This experience would profoundly impact Westerman’s development and entire life. As an adult, he reclaimed his heritage and became an outspoken advocate for Indigenous cultural preservation.

Westerman graduated from Northern State University with a B.A. degree in secondary education. He served two years in the US Marines, before beginning his career as a country singer.

Rabih Abou-Khalil (Arabic: ربيع أبو خليل‎, born August 17, 1957) is an oud player and composer born in Lebanon, who combines elements of Arabic music with jazz, classical music, and other styles. He grew up in Beirut and moved to Munich, Germany, during the Lebanese Civil War in 1978.

Abou-Khalil studied the oud at the Beirut conservatory with oudist Georges Farah. After moving to Germany, he studied classical flute at the Academy of Music in Munich under Walther Theurer.

In his compositions and live concerts, he combines elements of Arabic music with jazz, rock, or classical music, and has earned praise as “a world musician years before the phrase became a label”. — According to a review of his concert in The Guardian of 2002, Abou-Khalil “makes the hot, staccato Middle Eastern flavour and the seamless grooves of jazz mingle, as if they were always meant to.”

In a review of his 2007 album Songs For Sad Women, the BBC wrote “the characteristic blend of jazz-inflected Arabic melody with subtle rhythms combines into a hypnotic whole, as ever with Abou-Khalil’s fluent oud playing in a central role.”

Along with Tunisian oud virtuosos Anouar Brahem and Dhafer Youssef, he has helped establish the oud as an important instrument of Ethno jazz and world fusion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_rZIktJy8s

Columbus Calvin “Duke” Pearson Jr. (August 17, 1932 – August 4, 1980) was an American jazz pianist and composer. Allmusic describes him as having a “big part in shaping the Blue Note label’s hard bop direction in the 1960s as a record producer.”

Pearson was born Columbus Calvin Pearson Jr. in Atlanta, Georgia, to Columbus Calvin and Emily Pearson. The moniker “Duke” was given to him by his uncle, who was a great admirer of Duke Ellington. Before he was six, his mother started giving him piano lessons. He studied the instrument until he was twelve, when he took an interest in brass instruments: mellophone, baritone horn and ultimately trumpet. He was so fond of the trumpet that through high school and college he neglected the piano. He attended Clark College while also playing trumpet in groups in the Atlanta area. While in the U.S. Army, during his 1953–54 draft, he continued to play trumpet and met, among others, the pianist Wynton Kelly. Pearson himself confessed in a 1959 interview that he was “so spoiled by Kelly’s good piano” that he decided to switch to piano again. Also, it seems that dental problems forced him to give up brass instruments.

Jack Sperling (August 17, 1922 – February 26, 2004) was an American jazz drummer who performed as a sideman in big bands and as a studio musician for pop and jazz acts, movies, and television.

In 1941 he played with trumpeter Bunny Berigan. After World War II, he and Henry Mancini joined the Glenn Miller band when it was led by Tex Beneke. Sperling drew attention with his performance on the song St. Louis Blues (1948). He then joined Les Brown and His Band of Renown, which played regularly for the Bob Hope radio program. Sperling and other members of Brown’s band joined Dave Pell‘s octet in 1953. He recorded with octet on Plays Irving Berlin (1953) and on The Original Reunion of the Glenn Miller Orchestra (1954). From 1954–57, he was a member of Bob Crosby‘s Bobcats. During the rest of his career, her worked in bands led by Charlie Barnet, Page Cavanaugh, Pete Fountain, and Benny Goodman.

This was an unusual sky. It wasn’t unusual because of the central band the Milky Way Galaxy, visible along the image left. Most dark skies show part of the Milky Way. It wasn’t unusual because of the bright meteor visible on the upper right. Many images taken during last week’s Perseid Meteor Shower show meteors, although this Perseid was particularly bright. This sky wasn’t unusual because of the red sprites, visible on the lower right. Although this type of lightning has only been noted in the past few decades, images of sprites are becoming more common. This sky wasn’t unusual because of the nova, visible just above the image center.Novas bright enough to be seen with the unaided eye occur every few years, with pictured Nova RS Ophiuchus discovered about a week ago. What was most unusual, though, was to capture all these things together, in a single night, on a single sky. The unusual sky occurred above Zacatecas, Mexico.

Eddie Kirkland (August 16, 1923 – February 27, 2011) was an American electric blues guitarist, harmonicist, singer, and songwriter.

Kirkland, known as the “Gypsy of the Blues” for his rigorous touring schedules, played and toured with John Lee Hooker from 1949 to 1962. After his period of working in tandem with Hooker he pursued a successful solo career, recording for RPM Records, Fortune Records, Volt Records, and King Records, sometimes under the stage name Eddie Kirk. Kirkland continued to tour, write and record albums until his death in February 2011. His last performance, the night before his death, was at Dunedin Brewery, Florida.

Kirkland was born in Kingston, Jamaica to a mother, aged 11 (Kirkland was raised believing his mother was his sister and when was in his early twenties when the truth was revealed to him by his mother), and first heard the blues from “field hollers”, and raised in Dothan, Alabama until 1935, when he stowed away in the Sugar Girls Medicine Show tent truck and left town. Blind Blake was the one who influenced him the most in those early days. He was placed on the chorus line with “Diamond Tooth Mary” McLean. When the show closed a year later, he was in Dunkirk, Indiana where he briefly returned to school.

Carl Perkins (August 16, 1928 – March 17, 1958) was an American jazz pianist.

Perkins was born in Indianapolis but worked mainly in Los Angeles. He is best remembered for his performances with the Curtis Counce Quintet, which also featured Harold Land, Jack Sheldonand drummer Frank Butler. He also performed with Tiny Bradshaw, Big Jay McNeely in 1948-49, and played dates with Miles Davis in 1950. Following a short stint in the Army (January 1951 to November 1952), he worked intermittently with the Oscar Moore Trio (1953-1955) and the Clifford Brown–Max Roach group in 1954. He recorded with Frank Morgan in 1955, and with his own group in 1956.^[3] Perkins composed the standard “Grooveyard”.

His playing was influenced by his polio-affected left arm, which he held parallel to the keyboard. He used his elbow to play deep bass notes. He was thus known as “the crab”.

He died of a drug overdose at age 29, in Los Angeles, California. He recorded one album, Introducing Carl Perkins, and a short series of singles under his own name. Authors Paul Tanner, Maurice Gerow, and David Megill cite Perkins as one of the best “funky”, or hard bop, piano players, but his early death prevented him from leaving a legacy.

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

Nesbert “Stix” Hooper (born August 15, 1938) is an American drummer and founding member of The Crusaders.

Hooper developed an interest in music, drums, and percussion at an early age. Starting in middle school with band director George Magruder, he began devoting much of his time to the study of music. While he was a student at Phillis Wheatley High School, he formed the band the Swingsters, then the Modern Jazz Sextet. At Texas Southern University, he received coaching from members of the Houston Symphony Orchestra and other local professional musicians. After moving to the west coast, he studied music at California State University, Los Angeles and with private instructors and mentors. During the 1950s the Jazz Crusaders were formed.

He has worked with Arthur Fiedler, George Shearing, B.B. King, Grant Green, Grover Washington Jr., Quincy Jones, Marvin Gaye, Nancy Wilson, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of London, and the Rolling Stones. He was National Vice Chairman of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and president of its Los Angeles chapter.

Edward Gale Stevens Jr. (August 15, 1941 – July 10, 2020), known professionally as Eddie Gale, was an American trumpeter known for his work in free jazz, especially with the Sun RaArkestra.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Gale studied trumpet with Kenny Dorham. He recorded with Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Larry Young, and Elvin Jones, and performed with John Coltrane, Jackie McLean, Booker Ervin, and Illinois Jacquet. In the early 1960s he was introduced to Sun Ra by drummer Scoby Stroman. He spent many hours exposed to Sun Ra’s philosophy about music and life. Eddie explains, “Playing with Sun Ra is a great experience–from the known to the unknown. You play ideas on your instrument that you never imagine. His music provoked me to explore the use of trills, for instance, and the placement of whole tones and then a space chord–ideas you do not find in the exercise books.”

During the 1960s and 1970s, he toured and recorded extensively with Sun Ra, who influenced him greatly until Ra’s death in 1993. After a yearlong stint as artist in residence at Stanford University, Gale moved to San Jose, California in 1972.

Joseph Armand Castro (August 15, 1927 – December 13, 2009) was an American bebop jazz pianist, based primarily on the West Coast of the United States.

Castro was born in Miami, Arizona on August 15, 1927 to John L. Castro and Lucy Sanchez. Castro went to school in Pittsburg, California in the San Francisco Bay area, north of Oakland, where he began playing professionally at the age of 15. His enrollment at San Jose State University was interrupted twice—first by a stint in the army from 1946 to 1947 and then when he formed his first jazz trio working on both the West Coast and in Hawaii. In 1956 Castro moved to New York City, where his trio successfully appeared in the city’s top jazz clubs—Basin Street, The Embers, The Hickory House and Birdland. He was critically lauded by the likes of Leonard Feather who described his style as “assertively swinging,” and Dave Brubeck, who had known Castro since the early 1950s, as “an extremely talented individual, a fine musician, an excellent pianist and a tasteful performer.” In 1958, he moved to Los Angeles to be associated almost exclusively with Teddy Edwards, Billy Higgins and Leroy Vinnegar. “The group has been very important to me,” Castro says. “I had been working so long with piano trios, I had to learn how to play less and say more. Actually I have more freedom in this group without having to carry the load.” Castro recorded and performed extensively with The Teddy Edwards Quartet while also making two of his own recordings as a leader for Atlantic Records.