mick laBriola

Stephen Paul Motian (March 25, 1931 – November 22, 2011) was an American jazz drummer, percussionist, and composer. Motian played an important role in freeing jazz drummers from strict time-keeping duties.

He first came to prominence in the late 1950s in the piano trio of Bill Evans, and later was a regular in pianist Keith Jarrett‘s band for about a decade (c. 1967–1976). Motian began his career as a bandleader in the early 1970s. Perhaps his two most notable groups were a longstanding trio of guitarist Bill Frisell and saxophonist Joe Lovano, and the Electric Bebop Band where he worked mostly with younger musicians on interpretations of bebopstandards with the 1993 album Paul Motian and the Electric Bebop Band.

Motian was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and raised in Providence, Rhode Island. He is of Armenian descent. After playing guitar in his childhood, Motian began playing the drums at age 12, eventually touring New England in a swing band. During the Korean War he joined the Navy.

Motian became a professional musician in 1954, and briefly played with pianist Thelonious Monk. He became well known as the drummer in pianist Bill Evans‘s trio (1959–64), initially alongside bassist Scott LaFaro and later with Chuck Israels.

Subsequently, he played with pianists Paul Bley (1963–64) and Keith Jarrett (1967–76). Other musicians with whom Motian performed and/or recorded in the early period of his career included Lennie Tristano, Warne Marsh, Lee Konitz, Joe Castro, Arlo Guthrie (Motian performed briefly with Guthrie in 1968–69, including at Woodstock), Carla Bley, Charlie Haden, and Don Cherry. Motian subsequently worked with musicians such as Marilyn Crispell, Bill Frisell, Leni Stern, Joe Lovano, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Alan Pasqua, Bill McHenry, Stéphan Oliva, Frank Kimbrough, Eric Watsonand many more.

Cecil Percival Taylor (March 25, 1929 – April 5, 2018) was an American pianist and poet.

Taylor was classically trained and was one of the pioneers of free jazz. His music is characterized by an energetic, physical approach, resulting in complex improvisation often involving tone clusters and intricate polyrhythms. His technique has been compared to percussion. Referring to the number of keys on a standard piano, Val Wilmer used the phrase “eighty-eight tuned drums” to describe Taylor’s style. He has been referred to as being “like Art Tatum with contemporary-classical leanings”.

Taylor was raised in the Corona, Queens neighborhood of New York City. As an only child to a middle-class family, Taylor’s mother encouraged him to play music at an early age. He began playing piano at age six and went on to study at the New York College of Music and New England Conservatory in Boston. At the New England Conservatory, Taylor majored in composition and arranging. During his time there, he also became familiar with contemporary European art music. Bela Bartók and Karlheinz Stockhausen notably influenced his music.

“Sweet Emma” Barrett (March 25, 1897, New Orleans, Louisiana – January 28, 1983) was an American, self-taught jazz pianist and singer who worked with the Original Tuxedo Orchestra between 1923 and 1936, first under Papa Celestin, then William Ridgely. She also worked with Armand Piron, John Robichaux, Sidney Desvigne, and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Born March 25, 1897 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her father was Capt. William B. Barrett, whom she said fought for the North in the Civil War. At the age of 7 she began to play the piano. In the early 1920s, Barrett joined Oscar Celestin‘s Original Tuxedo Jazz Orchestra. In 1928, when the Celestin’s band split, she intermittently played music with Bebe Ridgeley’s Tuxedo Jazz Orchestra for the next 10 years.

In 1947, she accepted a steady job at Happy Landing, a local club in Pecaniere, Louisiana, but it was her recording debut in 1961, with her own album in the Riverside Records New Orleans: The Living Legends series, that brought her recognition. Although most of the songs on the album were instrumentals, others featured vocals by Barrett that the liner notes described as her first recordings as a vocalist.

NGC 604 is an H II region inside the Triangulum Galaxy. It was discovered by William Herschel on September 11, 1784. It is among the largest H II regions in the Local Group of galaxies; at the galaxy’s estimated distance of 2.7 million light-years, its longest diameter is roughly 1,520 light years (~460 parsecs) (14.38031 exameters), over 40 times the size of the visible portion of the Orion Nebula.

Paul Brownlee McCandless Jr. (born March 24, 1947) is an American multi-instrumentalist and founding member of the American jazz group Oregon. He is one of the few jazz oboists. He also plays bass clarinet, English horn, flute and soprano saxophone.

Paul Brownlee McCandless Jr. was born into a musical family. His father (who was also an oboe and English horn player) taught him clarinet, his mother piano, and he attended the Manhattan School of Music. In 1971 he auditioned with the New York Philharmonic playing English horn and was a finalist. McCandless has released a series of records of his own compositions with bands he led, including All the Mornings Bring (Elektra/Asylum, 1979), Navigator (Landslide, 1981), Heresay (Windham Hill, 1988), Premonition (Windham Hill, 1992). With Oregon, he has recorded over twenty albums, as well as several albums with Paul Winter.

In 1996, McCandless won a Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental with Béla Fleck and the Flecktones. He also won Grammys in 2007 and 2011 with the Paul Winter Consort for Best New Age Album and in 1993 for Al Jarreau‘s album Heaven and Earth. His performance on Oregon’s album 1000 Kilometers was nominated for a Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Solo in 2009. He won the Down Beat Critics’ Poll for Best Established Combo, the Deutscher Schallplatten Preis for his album Ectopia, and the Arbeitskreis Jazz im Bundesverband der Phonographishen Wirtschaft Gold Record Award.

Lee Oskar (born 24 March 1948) is a Danish harmonica player, notable for his contributions to the sound of the rock-funk fusion group War, which was formed by Howard E. Scott and Harold Brown, his solo work, and as a harmonica manufacturer. He continues to play with 3 other original War band members, Harold Brown, Howard Scott and B.B. Dickerson, under the name LowRider Band.

Born in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1948, Oskar was six years old when a family friend gave him his first harmonica. “I came from an area where every kid on the block had a harmonica”, he remembers. He grew up listening to Danish radio, enjoying all types of music and cites Ray Charles as the biggest influence from that period. When he was 17, Oskar decided that the United States was where a harmonica player should make his career. So he moved to New York at the age of 18 with little more than a harmonica in his pocket. With no money, Oskar played harmonica in the streets of New York. Eventually arriving in Los Angeles, via Toronto and San Francisco, Oskar soon met and joined forces with Eric Burdon who had recently disbanded The Animals and was searching for new collaborators. Together, the harmonica-playing Dane (born Lee Oskar Levitin) and the British blues-rock singer made the rounds of the L.A. clubs, eventually hooking up with the soon-to-be members of War. Burdon agreed to the novel idea of pairing up Oskar’s harmonica with Charles Miller‘s saxophone to form a horn section. This team-up set War apart from the start, giving Oskar room to display the full spectrum of his improvisational prowess. Oskar’s harmonica magic was always a vital element in War’s music and performances. Oskar continued with War for 24 years non-stop. At the end of 1992, during the time of dispute over the WAR trademark, Oskar took a few years to continue his solo career and to focus on his Lee Oskar Harmonica manufacturing.

Boogie Bill Webb (March 24, 1924 – August 22, 1990) was an American Louisiana blues and rhythm-and-blues guitarist, singer and songwriter. His music combined Mississippi country blues with New Orleans R&B. His best-known recordings are “Bad Dog” and “Drinkin’ and Stinkin'”. Despite a lengthy (albeit intermittent) career, Webb released only one album.

Webb was born in Jackson, Mississippi. His got his first guitar at the age of eight, made from a cigar box and strung with screen wire. His greatest influence was Tommy Johnson. With a real guitar obtained when he was a teenager, he won a talent show in 1947. He subsequently appeared briefly in the musical film The Jackson Jive. He moved to New Orleans in 1952. In New Orleans Webb became friends with Fats Domino and was thus introduced to Dave Bartholomew and obtained a recording contract with Imperial Records, for which Domino and Bartholomew recorded. In 1953 Webb released his debut single, “Bad Dog,” a noncommercial slice of country boogie-woogie. Frustrated by lack of recognition, Webb relocated to Chicago, where he worked in factories. There he met and played with Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Jimmy Reed, and Chuck Berry.

This week’s Hubble/ESA Picture of the Week features NGC 7678 — a galaxy located approximately 164 million light-years away in the constellation of Pegasus (The Winged Horse). With a diameter of around 115 000 light-years, this bright spiral galaxy is a similar size to our own galaxy (the Milky Way), and was discovered in 1784 by the German-British astronomer William Herschel. The Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies is a catalogue which was produced in 1966 by the American astronomer Halton Arp. NGC 7678 is among the 338 galaxies presented in this catalogue, which organises peculiar galaxies according to their unusual features. Catalogued here as Arp 28, this galaxy is listed together with six others in the group “spiral galaxies with one heavy arm”.

Yvette Marie Stevens (born March 23, 1953 Chicago), better known by her stage name Chaka Khan, is an American musician, singer and songwriter. Her career has spanned nearly five decades, beginning in the 1970s as the lead vocalist of the funk band Rufus. Known as the “Queen of Funk”, Khan was the first R&B artist to have a crossover hit featuring a rapper, with “I Feel for You” in 1984. Khan has won ten Grammy Awards and has sold an estimated 70 million records worldwide.

With Rufus, she achieved four gold singles, four gold albums, and two platinum albums. In the course of her solo career, Khan achieved three goldsingles, three gold albums, and one platinum album with I Feel for You. She has collaborated with Ry Cooder, Robert Palmer, Ray Charles, Quincy Jones, Guru, Chicago, De la Soul, Mary J. Blige, among others. In December 2016, Billboard magazine ranked her as the 65th most successful dance artist of all time. She was ranked at No. 17 in VH1‘s original list of the 100 Greatest Women of Rock & Roll. She has been nominated for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame three times as a solo artist and four times as a member of Rufus featuring Chaka Khan; the first time in 2012 as a member of Rufus.

Woodville bluesman Robert Cage was born in New Orleans on March 23, 1937, but his family, which has roots in southwestern Mississippi, soon moved to Natchez, where he spent his first six years. They then moved to the Percy Creek community, about ten miles west of Woodville near Lake Mary, where he lived for several decades. He recalls that the first time he heard blues was via records on the “autophone” at his mother Carrie’s juke joint, which was located next to their home. [“Autophone” was the brand name of an early coin-operated machine, though was used generically to refer to jukeboxes]. He recalls that there were other jukes in the area, including Nancy Green’s near Port Adams.

Cage particularly enjoyed the recordings of John Lee Hooker, and was also influenced by local performers who played at the juke, including guitarist Lee Baker and fiddler Nolan Cage, a relative. His most important influence, though, was the guitarist/vocalist Scott Dunbar [1904-1994], who worked as a fishing guide on Lake Mary and often performed solo at the juke. In the mid-‘50s folklorist Frederic Ramsey recorded Dunbar as well as several of his family members, and Folkways Records later issued the recordings; a photograph of Dunbar appears on the first edition of Ramsey’s 1960 book Been Here and Gone. Dunbar. Folklorist Bill Ferris later recorded Dunbar, and a 1970 LP of Dunbar’s music on the Ahura Mazda label, From Lake Mary, was later reissued on CD on Fat Possum. Cage passed away on July 23, 2012.

Iverson Minter (March 23, 1932 – February 25, 2012), known as Louisiana Red, was an American blues guitarist, harmonica player, and singer, who recorded more than 50 albums. He was best known for his song “Sweet Blood Call”.

Born in Bessemer, Alabama, Minter lost his parents early in life; his mother died of pneumonia shortly after his birth, and his father was lynched by the Ku Klux Klan in 1937. He was brought up by a series of relatives in various towns and cities. Red recorded for Chess in 1949, before joining the Army. He was trained as a parachutist with the 82nd Airborne and was sent to Korea in 1951. The 82nd Airborne was not deployed as a complete unit in Korea, but soldiers from this unit were dispatched as Rangers in the 2nd, 3rd and 7th Infantry Divisions. Minter said he was assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division.

Granville Henry “Sticks” McGhee (March 23, 1918 – August 15, 1961) was an American jump blues guitarist, singer and songwriter, best known for his blues song “Drinkin’ Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee”, which he wrote with J. Mayo Williams

McGhee was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee. He received his nickname when he was a child. He used a stick to push a wagon carrying his older brother Brownie McGhee, who had contracted polio. Granville began playing the guitar when he was thirteen years old. After his freshman year he dropped out of high school and worked with his father at the Eastman Kodak subsidiary, Tennessee Eastman Company in Kingsport. In 1940, Granville quit his job and moved to Portsmouth, Virginia, and then to New York City. He entered the military in 1942 and served in the U.S. Army during World War II. After being discharged in 1946, he settled in New York.

What’s up in the sky from Auriga to Orion? Many of the famous stars and nebulas in this region were captured on 34 separate images, taking over 430 hours of exposure, and digitally combined to reveal the featured image. Starting on the far upper left, toward the constellation of Auriga (the Chariot driver), is the picturesque Flaming Star Nebula (IC 405). Continuing down along the bright arc of our Milky Way Galaxy, from left to right crossing the constellations of the Twins and the Bull, notable appearing nebulas include the Tadpole, Simeis 147, Monkey Head, Jellyfish, Cone and Rosette nebulas. In the upper right quadrant of the image, toward the constellation of Orion (the hunter), you can see Sh2-264, the half-circle of Barnard’s Loop, and the Horsehead and Orion nebulas. Famous stars in and around Orion include, from left to right, orange Betelgeuse(just right of the image center), blue Bellatrix (just above it), the Orion belt stars of Mintaka, Alnilam, and Alnitak, while bright Rigel appears on the far upper right. This stretch of sky won’t be remaining up in the night very long — it will be setting continually earlier in the evening as mid-year approaches.

William Keith Relf (22 March 1943 – 12 May 1976) was an English musician, best known as the lead vocalist and harmonica player for the Yardbirds.

Relf started playing in bands around the summer of 1956 as a singer, guitarist, and harmonica player. His blues harp and vocals were as key to the Yardbirds’ sound and success as were the group’s three superstar lead guitarists Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page.

Relf co-wrote many of the original Yardbirds songs (“Shapes of Things“, “I Ain’t Done Wrong”, “Over Under Sideways Down“, “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago“), later showing a leaning towards acoustic/folk music as the sixties unfolded (“Only the Black Rose”). He also sang an early version of “Dazed and Confused” in live Yardbirds concerts, after hearing musician Jake Holmes perform the song, which was later recorded by the band’s successor group Led Zeppelin. Relf died in the basement of his home in 1976 at age 33 from electrocution while playing an electric guitar. Relf had several health problems throughout his life, including emphysema and asthma. He may have been taking the medications commonly used to treat those diseases at the time, and these may have contributed to his inability to survive the electric shock.