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McKinley Morganfield (April 4, 1913 – April 30, 1983), known professionally as Muddy Waters, was an American blues singer-songwriter and musician who was an important figure in the post-war blues scene, and is often cited as the “father of modern Chicago blues“. His style of playing has been described as “raining down Delta beatitude“.

Muddy Waters grew up on Stovall Plantation near Clarksdale, Mississippi, and by age 17 was playing the guitar and the harmonica, emulating the local blues artists Son House and Robert Johnson. He was recorded in Mississippi by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress in 1941. In 1943, he moved to Chicago to become a full-time professional musician. In 1946, he recorded his first records for Columbia Records and then for Aristocrat Records, a newly formed label run by the brothers Leonard and Phil Chess.

In the early 1950s, Muddy Waters and his band—Little Walter Jacobs on harmonica, Jimmy Rogers on guitar, Elga Edmonds (also known as Elgin Evans) on drums and Otis Spann on piano—recorded several blues classics, some with the bassist and songwriter Willie Dixon. These songs included “Hoochie Coochie Man“, “I Just Want to Make Love to You” and “I’m Ready“. In 1958, he traveled to England, laying the foundations of the resurgence of interest in the blues there. His performance at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1960 was recorded and released as his first live album, At Newport 1960. Muddy Waters’ music has influenced various American music genres, including rock and roll and rock music.

Muddy Waters’s place and date of birth are not conclusively known. He stated that he was born in Rolling Fork, Mississippi, in 1915, but other evidence suggests that he was born in Jug’s Corner, in neighboring Issaquena County, in 1913.

Cecil Gant (April 4, 1913 – February 4, 1951) was an American blues singer, songwriter and pianist, whose recordings of both ballads and “fiery piano rockers” were successful in the mid- and late 1940s, and influenced the early development of rock and roll. His biggest hit was the 1944 ballad, “I Wonder“.

Gant was born in Columbia, Tennessee, but was raised in Cleveland, Ohio. He returned to Nashville, Tennessee and worked there as a musician, as well as touring with his own band, from the mid-1930s until he joined the army during World War II. In 1944, after performing at a War Bond rally in Los Angeles, California, he recorded his composition “I Wonder” for the tiny black-owned Bronze record label. When it started to become locally popular, he re-recorded it for the newly established white-owned independent Gilt-Edge record label. His recording of “I Wonder” was released under the name “Pvt. Cecil Gant”, as were later releases on the label.

Captured with the MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), this image of the distant spiral galaxy NGC 1097 shows a textbook example of a star-bursting nuclear ring. Located 45 million light-years away from Earth, in the constellation of Fornax, this ring lies at the very centre of its galaxy. It spans only 5,000 light years across, being dwarfed by the full size of its host galaxy, which extends some tens of thousands of light-years beyond its centre. The darker lanes seen in this MUSE image show dust, gas and debris from the galaxy (or possibly from a satellite galaxy), which are being funnelled into the supermassive black hole at its centre. This process heats up the surrounding matter forming an accretion disc around the black hole and launching huge amounts of energy into the surrounding area. Nearby dust is heated up and star formation accelerates in the area around the supermassive black hole, forming the star-bursting nuclear ring shown in pink and purple tones in the image. MUSE, which stands for Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer, is attached to Yepun, one of the four, 8.2-metre telescopes that make up the VLT at ESO’s Paranal Observatory. Its unique design has allowed researchers to map complex mechanisms within many galaxies and analyse the formation of stars and star clusters.

Rocco Scott LaFaro (April 3, 1936 – July 6, 1961) was an American jazz double bassist known for his work with the Bill Evans Trio. Despite his short career, he was ranked #16 on Bass Player magazine’s top 100 bass players of all time.

Born in Newark, New Jersey, the son of a big band musician, LaFaro was five when his family moved to Geneva, New York. He started playing piano in elementary school, bass clarinet in middle school, and tenor saxophone when he entered high school. He took up double bass at 18 before entering college because learning a string instrument was required of music education majors. After three months at Ithaca College, he concentrated on bass. He played in groups at the College Spa and Joe’s Restaurant on State Street in downtown Ithaca. LaFaro died in an automobile accident on July 6, 1961 in Flint, New York on U.S. Route 20 between Geneva and Canandaigua, four days after accompanying Stan Getz at the Newport Jazz Festival. According to Paul Motian, the death of LaFaro left Bill Evans “numb with grief”, “in a state of shock”, and “like a ghost”. Obsessively he played “I Loves You Porgy“, a song which had become synonymous with him and LaFaro. Evans stopped performing for several months.

James Harrell McGriff (April 3, 1936 – May 24, 2008) was an American hard bop and soul-jazz organist and organ trio bandleader.

Born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, United States, McGriff started playing piano at the age of five and by his teens had also learned to play vibes, alto sax, drums and upright bass. He played bass in his first group, a piano trio. When he joined the United States Army, McGriff served as a military policeman during the Korean War. He later became a police officer in Philadelphia for two years. Music kept drawing McGriff’s attention away from the police force. His childhood friend, organist Jimmy Smith, had begun earning a substantial reputation in jazz for his Blue Note albums (the two played together once in 1967) and McGriff became entranced by the organ sound while Richard “Groove” Holmes played at his sister’s wedding. Holmes went on to become McGriff’s teacher and friend and they recorded together on two occasions in 1973 for two Groove Merchant records.

Harold Vick (April 3, 1936 – November 13, 1987) was an American jazz saxophonist and flutist.

Harold Vick was born on April 3, 1936 in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. At the age of 13 he was given a clarinet by his uncle, Prince Robinson, a clarinet and tenor saxophone player who had been a member of McKinney’s Cotton Pickers. Three years later he took up the tenor saxophone, and soon began playing in R&B bands.He continued to perform, still largely with R&B bands, while studying psychology at Howard University.

Steppin’ Out!, Vick’s first album as leader, was recorded for Blue Note in 1963. After a 1965 performance at Carnegie Hall with Donald Byrd, Vick secured a contract for further albums as leader, and from 1966 to 1974 he had further recording sessions for the RCA, Muse, and Strata-East labels.

Gorgeous spiral galaxy NGC 3521 is a mere 35 million light-years away, toward the constellation Leo. Relatively bright in planet Earth’s sky, NGC 3521 is easily visible in small telescopes but often overlooked by amateur imagers in favor of other Leo spiral galaxies, like M66 and M65. It’s hard to overlook in this colorful cosmic portrait, though. Spanning some 50,000 light-years the galaxy sports characteristicpatchy, irregular spiral arms laced with dust, pink star forming regions, and clusters of young, blue stars. Remarkably, this deep image also finds NGC 3521 embedded in gigantic bubble-like shells. The shells are likely tidal debris, streams of stars torn from satellite galaxies that have undergone mergers with NGC 3521 in the distant past.

Larry Eugene Carlton (born March 2, 1948) is an American guitarist who built his career as a studio musician in the 1970s and ’80s for acts such as Steely Dan and Joni Mitchell. He has participated in thousands of recording sessions, recorded on hundreds of albums in many genres, for television and movies, and on more than 100 gold records. He has been a member of the jazz fusion group the Crusaders, the smooth jazz band Fourplay, and has maintained a long solo career.

Carlton was born in Torrance, California in 1948 and at the age of six began guitar lessons. His interest in jazz came from hearing guitarist Joe Passon the radio. From Pass he moved on to jazz guitarists Barney Kessel and Wes Montgomery and blues guitarist B.B. King. He went to junior college and Long Beach State College while playing professionally at clubs in Los Angeles.

Leon Russell (born Claude Russell Bridges; April 2, 1942 – November 13, 2016 Lawton, OK) was an American musician and songwriter who was involved with numerous bestselling pop music records during his 60-year career. His genres included pop, country, rock, folk, gospel, bluegrass, rhythm and blues, folk rock, blues rock, surf, standards, and Tulsa Sound.

His collaborations rank as some of the most successful in music history, and as a touring musician he performed with hundreds of notable artists. He recorded 33 albums and at least 430 songs. He wrote “Delta Lady” recorded by Joe Cocker, and organized and performed with Cocker’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour in 1970. His “A Song for You” which was named to the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2018, has been recorded by more than 200 artists, and his song “This Masquerade” by more than 75.

As a pianist, he played in his early years on albums by The Beach Boys, Dick Dale, and Jan and Dean. On his first album, Leon Russell, in 1970, the musicians included Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison. One of his biggest early fans, Elton John said that Russell was a “mentor” and an “inspiration”. They recorded their album The Union in 2010 earning them a Grammy nomination.

Russell produced and played in recording sessions for Bob Dylan, Frank Sinatra, Ike & Tina Turner, The Rolling Stones, and many other artists. He wrote and recorded the hits “Tight Rope” and “Lady Blue“. He performed at The Concert for Bangladesh in 1971, along with Harrison, Dylan, and Clapton for which he earned a Grammy Award.

His recordings earned six gold records. He received two Grammy Awards from seven nominations. In 2011, he was inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Marvin Gaye (born Marvin Pentz Gay Jr.; April 2, 1939 – April 1, 1984 Washington DC) was an American singer, songwriter, and record producer. He helped to shape the sound of Motown in the 1960s, first as an in-house session player and later as a solo artist with a string of hits, earning him the nicknames “Prince of Motown” and “Prince of Soul”.

Gaye’s Motown hits include “Ain’t That Peculiar“, “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)“, and “I Heard It Through the Grapevine“. Gaye also recorded duets with Mary Wells, Kim Weston, Tammi Terrell, and Diana Ross. During the 1970s, Gaye recorded the albums What’s Going On and Let’s Get It On and became one of the first artists in Motown to break away from the reins of a production company. His later recordings influenced several contemporary R&B subgenres, such as quiet storm and neo soul. He was a tax exile in Europe in the early 1980s; he released “Sexual Healing” the 1982 hit which won his first two Grammy Awards on the album Midnight Love. Gaye’s last televised appearances were at the 1983 NBA All-Star Game, where he sang “The Star-Spangled Banner“; Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever; and Soul Train.

On April 1, 1984, the day before his 45th birthday, Gaye was shot dead by his father, Marvin Gay Sr. at their house in West Adams, Los Angeles, after an argument. Many institutions have posthumously bestowed Gaye with awards and other honors including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and inductions into the Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame, the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Gaye intervened in a fight between his parents on the afternoon of April 1, 1984, in the family house in the West Adams district of Los Angeles, and he became involved in a physical altercation with his father, Marvin Gay Sr. who shot Gaye twice, once in the chest, piercing his heart, and then into Gaye’s shoulder. The shooting took place in Gaye’s bedroom at 12:38 p.m. The first shot proved fatal. Gaye was pronounced dead at 1:01 p.m. after his body arrived at California Hospital Medical Center, one day short of his 45th birthday.

Booker Little Jr. (April 2, 1938 – October 5, 1961) was an American jazz trumpeter and composer. He appeared on many recordings in his short career, both as a sideman and as a leader. Little performed with Max Roach, John Coltrane, and Eric Dolphy and was strongly influenced by Sonny Rollins and Clifford Brown. He died at age 23.

Booker Little Jr. was born in Memphis, Tennessee to Booker, a Pullman porter who was a trombonist, and his wife Ophelia Little, who was a church organist. He also was the brother of Helena, Vivian, and Vera Little (Vera later sung with the London Opera Company). From a musically inclined family, Little naturally gravitated towards music. Like his father, he attempted to learn the trombone but instead choose clarinet at the age of 12. At 14, he finally settled on trumpet as his band director urged him play trumpet. In 1952, Little attended Manassas High School where he would begin his development on trumpet and later on graduate. Being in a city like Memphis, Little was able to grow his talent with other young musicians during that time such as Phineas Newborn Jr., George Coleman, Frank Strozier, and his cousin Louis Smith. After graduating, he moved to Chicago, Illinoisto continue his studies at the Chicago Conservatory in 1954. At the conservatory, he continued studying trumpet but also incorporated studies in composition, theory, and orchestration with a minor in piano. He would later on graduate with a bachelors degree in trumpet. As a sophomore, Little met Sonny Rollins. For about nine months, they both stayed at the YMCA where Rollins would influence Little greatly by encouraging him to find his own sound versus mimicking other musicians.

Tangos Gitanos is one of a variety of musical styles found in the Spanish-speaking world called “tango.” Like the Tango Argentino, Tangos Gitanos roots lie in the way African and Caribbean music blended with Spanish music in 18th and 19th century Latin America. Similar to it’s South American cousin, Tango Gitano consists of a simple, easily varied harmonic and melodic structure over a four-count rhythm. Unlike other four-count patterns, the first beat is weak while the other three beats are strong. As Tangos became a part of flamenco in the 19th century, certain aspects of older flamenco forms were folded into it, including 12-count soleares letras re-shaped to fit the four count rhythmic pattern. Tangos of Granada shows traces of Moorish Zambras, while the Tango de Cádiz, Tanguillos, is a compound rhythm of triplets and duplets. As one might expect with such a maleable form, there is a wide range of Tangos associated with different artists and regions in Andalucía.

UFO sighting early this morning just west of the Twin Cities. mick was in Wright County picking up a Mesa Boogie when aliens contacted him telepathically and asked him to tell people of Earth that Trump is a escaped alien renegade and will soon be recaptured and returned to his planet COVID.

This object was featured in a previous Hubble photo release, but now new processing techniques have been applied, bringing out fine details of the nebula’s delicate threads and filaments of ionised gas. To create this colourful image, observations taken by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 instrument through 5 different filters were used. The new post-processing methods have further enhanced details of emissions from doubly ionised oxygen (seen here in blues), ionised hydrogen and ionised nitrogen (seen here in reds). The Veil Nebula lies around 2100 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Cygnus (The Swan), making it a relatively close neighbour in astronomical terms. Only a small portion of the nebula was captured in this image. The Veil Nebula is the visible portion of the nearby Cygnus Loop, a supernova remnant formed roughly 10 000 years ago by the death of a massive star. The Veil Nebula’s progenitor star — which was 20 times the mass of the Sun — lived fast and died young, ending its life in a cataclysmic release of energy. Despite this stellar violence, the shockwaves and debris from the supernova sculpted the Veil Nebula’s delicate tracery of ionised gas — creating a scene of surprising astronomical beauty.

James Chambers OM (born 1 April 1948), known professionally as Jimmy Cliff, is a Jamaican ska, rocksteady, reggae and soul musician, multi-instrumentalist, singer, and actor. He is the only living musician to hold the Order of Merit, the highest honour that can be granted by the Jamaican government for achievements in the arts and sciences.

Cliff is best known among mainstream audiences for songs such as “Wonderful World, Beautiful People”, “Many Rivers to Cross“, “You Can Get It If You Really Want“, “The Harder They Come“, “Reggae Night“, and “Hakuna Matata“, and his covers of Cat Stevens‘s “Wild World” and Johnny Nash‘s “I Can See Clearly Now” from the film Cool Runnings. He starred in the film The Harder They Come, which helped popularize reggae across the world, and Club Paradise. Cliff was one of five performers inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010.

Jimmy Cliff was born James Chambers on 1 April 1948 in Saint James, Colony of Jamaica. He began writing songs while still at primary school in St. James, listening to a neighbour’s sound system. When Chambers was 14, his father took him to Kingston, where he would take up the stage name Jimmy Cliff.

Gilbert Scott-Heron (April 1, 1949 – May 27, 2011 Chicago) was an American soul and jazz poet, musician, and author, known primarily for his work as a spoken-word performer in the 1970s and 1980s. His collaborative efforts with musician Brian Jackson featured a musical fusion of jazz, blues, and soul, as well as lyrical content concerning social and political issues of the time, delivered in both rapping and melismatic vocal styles by Scott-Heron. His own term for himself was “bluesologist”, which he defined as “a scientist who is concerned with the origin of the blues.” He is considered by many to be the first rapper ever.

His music, most notably on the albums Pieces of a Man and Winter in America in the early 1970s, influenced and foreshadowed later African-American music genres such as hip hop and neo soul. His recording work received much critical acclaim, especially for “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised“. AllMusic‘s John Bush called him “one of the most important progenitors of rap music,” stating that “his aggressive, no-nonsense street poetry inspired a legion of intelligent rappers while his engaging songwriting skills placed him square in the R&B charts later in his career.”

Scott-Heron remained active until his death, and in 2010 released his first new album in 16 years, entitled I’m New Here. A memoir he had been working on for years up to the time of his death, The Last Holiday, was published posthumously in January 2012. Scott-Heron received a posthumous Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012. He also is included in the exhibits at the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) that officially opened on September 24, 2016, on the National Mall, and in an NMAAHC publication, Dream a World Anew.