mick laBriola

This image shows a close-up portrait of the magnificent spiral galaxy NGC 4603, which lies over 100 million light-years away in the constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur). Bright bands of blue young stars make up the arms of this galaxy, which wind lazily outwards from the luminous core. The intricate red-brown filaments threading through the spiral arms are known as dust lanes, and consist of dense clouds of dust which obscure the diffuse starlight from the galaxy.   This galaxy is a familiar subject for Hubble. In the last years of the twentieth century, NGC 4063 was keenly and closely watched for signs of a peculiar class of stars known as Cepheid variables. These stars have a luminosity closely tied to the period with which they darken and brighten, allowing astronomers to accurately measure how far they are from Earth. Distance measurements from Cepheid variables are key to measuring the furthest distances in the Universe, and were one of the factors used by Georges Lemaître and Edwin Hubble to show that the Universe is expanding.

Joe Bonner (April 20, 1948 – November 20, 2014) was a hard bop and modal jazz pianist, influenced by McCoy Tyner and Art Tatum.

He was born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina and studied at Virginia State College, but indicated that he learned more about music from musicians he worked with. In the seventies he played with Roy Haynes, Freddie Hubbard, Woody Shaw and Billy Harper, among others.

He died of heart disease in Denver at the age of 66.

Ernesto Antonio “Tito” Puente, Jr. (April 20, 1923 – June 1, 2000) was an American musician, songwriter, record producer and bandleader. The son of Ernest and Felicia Puente, native Puerto Ricans living in New York City’s Spanish Harlem, Puente is often credited as “The Musical Pope”, “El Rey de los Timbales” (The King of the Timbales) and “The King of Latin Music”. He is best known for dance-oriented mambo and Latin jazz compositions that endured over a 50-year career. He and his music appear in many films such as The Mambo Kings and Fernando Trueba‘s Calle 54. He guest-starred on several television shows, including Sesame Street and The Simpsons two-part episode “Who Shot Mr. Burns?“. His most famous song is “Oye Como Va“.

Tito Puente was born on April 20, 1923, at Harlem Hospital Center in the New York borough of Manhattan. His family moved frequently, but he spent the majority of his childhood in the Spanish Harlem area of the city. Puente’s father was the foreman at a razorblade factory.

As a child, he was described as hyperactive, and after neighbors complained of hearing seven-year-old Puente beating on pots and window frames, his mother sent him to 25-cent piano lessons. He switched to percussion by the age of 10, drawing influence from jazz drummer Gene Krupa. He later created a song-and-dance duo with his sister Anna in the 1930s and intended to become a dancer, but an ankle tendon injury prevented him pursuing dance as a career. When the drummer in Machito‘s band was drafted to the army, Puente subsequently took his place.

Lionel Leo Hampton (April 20, 1908 – August 31, 2002) was an American jazz vibraphonist, pianist, percussionist, and bandleader. Hampton worked with jazz musicians from Teddy Wilson, Benny Goodman, and Buddy Rich, to Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, and Quincy Jones. In 1992, he was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, and he was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1996.

Lionel Hampton was born in 1908 in Louisville, Kentucky, and was raised by his mother. Shortly after he was born, he and his mother moved to her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama.  He spent his early childhood in Kenosha, Wisconsin, before he and his family moved to Chicago, Illinois, in 1916. As a youth, Hampton was a member of the Bud Billiken Club, an alternative to the Boy Scouts of America, which was off-limits because of racial segregation. During the 1920s, while still a teenager, Hampton took xylophone lessons from Jimmy Bertrand and began to play drums. Hampton was raised Roman Catholic, and started out playing fife and drum at the Holy Rosary Academy near Chicago.

Cully, Dick (Richard) was born on April 19th, 1949 in Manhattan, New York to his parents, Richard born 1917 and Jeanette born 1921 in New York. In 1955 they moved to Lyndhurst, New Jersey where he began his musical career at the age of 16 studying with James Rago, Julliard School of Music graduate in percussion, timpanist with the Louisville Symphony Orchestra since the early 1970â??s and Professor of Percussion at the University of Louisville. While still in high school, he formed a very popular quartet, (The Charades) with three school friends. The group performed countless club dates and casuals in the New York/New Jersey area. In 1967, he attended the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, studying with drummer Alan Dawson and continued his studies with former Tonight Show drummer Ed Shaughnessy. His early career included performing a variety of musical styles: pop, rock, funk, disco, jazz and country with numerous groups. In 1978 he relocated to Boca Raton, Florida. In 1982, he formed the DICK CULLY BIG BAND, a 15 piece, high energy, exciting unit performing a wide variety of arrangements for all age groups. It features the most popular arrangements from the Libraries of Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Harry James, Buddy Rich, Les Brown , Woody Herman and others as well as the compositions of contemporary artists. Since itâ??s inception, the DICK CULLY BIG BAND has received numerous rave reviews. Has appeared on WLRN-TV Miami, PBS station Channel 17 three times. Black Entertainment Television, Jazz Discovery, NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw and WPTV Channel 12, a local CBS affiliate in Palm Beach Florida. The band was also featured weekly on Adelphia Cable with its own 30 minute TV show titled, Strike Up the Band which was also the title of the bands very first album on Ocean Properties Records. It received air play locally in Florida on big band stations as well as the former New York AM radio station, WNEW, once considered to be the premier jazz and big band station in the country. In 1984, he became an artist/endorser for the world famous Slingerland Drum Company, Niles IL and was recognized as a à World Class Drummer by the Pro-Mark Corporation of Houston, Texas, the world’s largest manufacturer of drumsticks.

George Bernard Worrell, Jr. (April 19, 1944 – June 24, 2016) was an American keyboardist and record producer best known as a founding member of Parliament-Funkadelic and for his work with Talking Heads. He is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, inducted in 1997 with fifteen other members of Parliament-Funkadelic. Worrell was described by Jon Pareles of The New York Times as “the kind of sideman who is as influential as some bandleaders.”

Worrell was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, and grew up in Plainfield, New Jersey, where his family moved when he was eight. A musical prodigy, he began formal piano lessons by age three and wrote a concerto at age eight. He went on to study at the Juilliard School and received a degree from the New England Conservatory of Music in 1967. As a college student, Worrell played with a group called Chubby & The Turnpikes; this ensemble eventually evolved into Tavares.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRDzjBAR3ww

Alexis Andrew Nicholas Koerner (19 April 1928 – 1 January 1984), known professionally as Alexis Korner, was a British blues musician and radio broadcaster, who has sometimes been referred to as “a founding father of British blues“. A major influence on the sound of the British music scene in the 1960s, Korner was instrumental in the formation of several notable British bands including The Rolling Stones and Free.

Alexis Andrew Nicholas Koerner was born on 19 April 1928 in Paris, France, to an Austrian Jewish father and a mother of Greek, Turkish and Austrian descent. He spent his childhood in France, Switzerland and North Africa and arrived in London in 1940 at the start of World War II. One memory of his youth was listening to a record by black pianist Jimmy Yancey during a German air raid. Korner said, “From then on all I wanted to do was play the blues.

Thomas Benford (April 19, 1905 – March 24, 1994) was an American jazz drummer. Tommy Benford was born in Charleston, West Virginia. He and his older brother, tuba player Bill Benford, were both orphans who studied music at the Jenkins Orphanage in Charleston, South Carolina. He went on tour with the school band, traveling with them to England in 1914.

In 1920, he was working with the Green River Minstrel Show. Benford recorded with Jelly Roll Morton^[5] in 1928 and 1930. He also played with Duke Ellington, Fats Waller and Eddie South. From 1932 till 1941 Benford lived in Europe, where in 1937 he participated in one of the most memorable recording sessions ever in Paris, with Coleman Hawkins, Benny Carter, Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli.

Benford died on March 24, 1994, at Mount Vernon Hospital in Mount Vernon, New York.

Leo Parker (April 18, 1925 – February 11, 1962) was an American jazz musician who played baritone saxophone.

Born in Washington, D.C.^{[citation needed]}, Parker studied alto saxophone in high school, and played this instrument on a recording with Coleman Hawkins in 1944. He switched to baritone saxophone later that year when he joined Billy Eckstine‘s bebop band, playing there until 1946. In 1945 he was a member of the so-called “Unholy Four” of saxophonists, with Dexter Gordon, Sonny Stitt and Gene Ammons. He played on 52nd Street in New York with Dizzy Gillespie in 1946 and Illinois Jacquet in 1947-48, and later recorded with Fats Navarro, J.J. Johnson, Teddy Edwards, Wardell Gray and Charles Thompson. He and Thompson had a hit with their Apollo Records release, “Mad Lad”.

In the 1950s, Parker had problems with drug abuse, which interfered with his recording career. He made two comeback records for Blue Note in 1961, but the following year he died of a heart attack in New York CIty. He was 36.

Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown (April 18, 1924 – September 10, 2005) was an American musician from Louisiana and Texas known for his work as a blues musician, as well as other styles of music. He spent his career fighting purism by synthesizing old blues, country, jazz, Cajun music and R&Bstyles. His work also encompasses rock and roll, rock music, folk music, electric blues, and Texas blues.

He was an acclaimed multi-instrumentalist, who played an array of musical instruments, including the guitar, fiddle, mandolin, viola, harmonica and drums. He won a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album in 1983 for his album, Alright Again!. He is regarded as one of the most influential exponents of blues fiddle and has had enormous influence in American fiddle circles.

Brown’s biggest musical influences were Louis Jordan, T-Bone Walker, and Count Basie. His highly original guitar style influenced many blues and rock guitarists, including Guitar Slim, Albert Collins, and Johnny “Guitar” Watson. Brown was born in Vinton, Louisiana, and raised near Orange, Texas. His father was a railroad worker and local musician who taught him several musical instruments, including fiddle by age 5; as well as piano and guitar. He had at least one brother.

Eurreal Wilford “Little Brother” Montgomery (April 18, 1906 – September 6, 1985) was an American jazz, boogie-woogie and blues pianist and singer. Largely self-taught, Montgomery was an important blues pianist with an original style. He was also versatile, working in jazz bands, including larger ensembles that used written arrangements. He did not read music but learned band routines by ear.

Montgomery was born in Kentwood, Louisiana, United States, a sawmill town near the Mississippi border, across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans, where he spent much of his childhood. Both his parents were of African-American and Creek Indian ancestry. As a child he looked like his father, Harper Montgomery, and was called Little Brother Harper. The name evolved into Little Brother Montgomery, and the nickname stuck. He started playing piano at the age of four, and by age 11 he left home for four years and played at barrelhouses in Louisiana. His main musical influence was Jelly Roll Morton, who used to visit the Montgomery household.

Early in his career he performed at African-American lumber and turpentine camps in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi. He then played with the bands of Clarence Desdunes and Buddy Petit. He lived in Chicago from 1928 to 1931, regularly playing at rent parties, and Chicago was where he made his first recordings. From 1931 through 1938 he led a jazz ensemble, the Southland Troubadours, in Jackson, Mississippi.