mick laBriola

Stars fill this infrared view, spanning 4 light-years across the center of the Lagoon Nebula. Visible light images show the glowing gas and obscuring dust clouds that dominate the scene. But this infrared image, constructed from Hubble Space Telescope data, peers closer to the heart of the active star-forming region revealing newborn stars scattered within, against a crowded field of background stars toward the center of our Milky Way galaxy. This tumultuous stellar nursery’s central regions are sculpted and energized by the massive, young Herschel 36, seen as the bright star near center in the field of view. Herschel 36 is actually a multiple system of massive stars. At over 30 times the mass of the Sun and less than 1 million years old, the most massive star in the system should live to a stellar old age of 5 million years. Compare that to the almost 5billion year old Sun which will evolve into a red giant in only another 5 billion years or so. The Lagoon Nebula, also known as M8, lies about 4,000 light-years away within the boundaries of the constellation Sagittarius.

Clarence Henry II (born March 19, 1937), known as Clarence “Frogman” Henry, is an American rhythm and blues singer and pianist, best known for his hits “Ain’t Got No Home” (1956) and “(I Don’t Know Why) But I Do” (1961).

Clarence Henry was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, in 1937, moving to the Algiers neighborhood in 1948. He started learning piano as a child, with Fats Domino and Professor Longhair being his main influences. When Henry played in talent shows, he dressed like Longhair and wore a wig with braids on both sides. He joined Bobby Mitchell & the Toppers in 1952, playing piano and trombone, before leaving when he graduated in 1955 to join saxophonist Eddie Smith’s band.

He used his trademark croak to improvise the song “Ain’t Got No Home” one night in 1955. Chess Records‘ A&R man Paul Gayten heard the song, and had Henry record it in Cosimo Matassa‘s studio in September 1956. Initially promoted by local DJ Poppa Stoppa, the song eventually rose to number 3 on the national R&B chart and number 20 on the US pop chart. The gimmick earned Henry his nickname of ‘Frogman’ and jump-started a career that endures to this day.

Yervant Harry Babasin, Jr. (19 March 1921 – 21 May 1988) was an American jazz bassist. His nickname was “The Bear”.

Leonard Joseph Tristano (March 19, 1919 – November 18, 1978 Chicago) was an American jazz pianist, composer, arranger, and teacher of jazz improvisation.

Tristano studied for bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music in Chicago before moving to New York City in 1946. He played with leading bebopmusicians and formed his own small bands, which soon displayed some of his early interests – contrapuntal interaction of instruments, harmonic flexibility, and rhythmic complexity. His quintet in 1949 recorded the first free group improvisations. Tristano’s innovations continued in 1951, with the first overdubbed, improvised jazz recordings, and two years later, when he recorded an atonal improvised solo piano piece that was based on the development of motifs rather than on harmonies. He developed further via polyrhythms and chromaticism into the 1960s, but was infrequently recorded.

Tristano started teaching music, especially improvisation, in the early 1940s, and by the mid-1950s was concentrating on teaching in preference to performing. He taught in a structured and disciplined manner, which was unusual in jazz education when he began. His educational role over three decades meant that he exerted an influence on jazz through his students, including saxophonists Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh.

Musicians and critics vary in their appraisal of Tristano as a musician. Some describe his playing as cold and suggest that his innovations had little impact; others state that he was a bridge between bebop and later, freer forms of jazz, and assert that he is less appreciated than he should be because commentators found him hard to categorize and because he chose not to commercialize.

James Joseph “Buster“ Bennett (March 19, 1914 – July 3, 1980) was an American blues saxophonist and blues shouter. His nickname was “Leap Frog”. At various times in his career, he played the soprano saxophone, the alto, and the tenor. He was known for his gutbucket style on the saxophone. He also played the piano and the string bass professionally. Bennett was born in Pensacola, Florida. By 1930 or so, he was working in Texas, but he spent most of his active career (1938 to 1954) in Chicago. He was employed as a session musician by Lester Melrose from 1938 to 1942; he played on recordings with Big Bill Broonzy, the Yas Yas Girl, Monkey Joe, and Washboard Sam. Concomitantly he played on sessions with Jimmie Gordonunder the direction of Sammy Price.

In 1944, the Buster Bennett Trio featured Arrington Thornton on piano and Duke Groner on bass. Other lineups led by Bennett included Wild Bill Davis, Israel Crosby, and Pee Wee Jackson.

In 1945, Bennett signed a three-year recording contract with Columbia Records; he was marketed as a Louis Jordan sound-alike. In early 1946, while under contract to Columbia, Bennett appeared, under the name of his trumpet player, Charles Gray, on a recording for the short-lived Chicago label Rhumboogie. He also made an unannounced appearance on a Red Saunderssession for Sultan Records in 1946 and on a “tenor battle” session with Tom Archia for Aristocrat Records in 1947.

Siguiriyas (Spanish pronunciation: [seɣiˈɾiʝas]; also seguiriyas, siguerillas, siguirillas, seguidilla gitana, etc.) are a form of flamenco music in the cante jondo category. This deep, expressive style is among the most important in flamenco. Siguiriyas are normally played in the key of A Phrygian with each measure (the compás) consisting of 12 counts with emphasis on the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 8th and 11th beats as shown here:

[1] 2 [3] 4 [5] 6 7 [8] 9 10 [11] 12

This rhythm can be contrasted with the rhythmic pattern of the soleares, which also has 12 beats, but the accents fall differently. Taking the unusual accenting into account, it can technically be seen as a measure of 3/4 (counted in eighth notes) starting on “2”, then a measure of 6/8 followed by the “1 and” of the 3/4. Every note is evenly spaced apart. For example:

[2] and [3] and [1] 2 3 [4] 5 6 [1] and

However, this presents difficulties in counting and is counted more simply in 5 beats, with three “short” and two “long” beats:

[1] and [2] and [3] and uh [4] and uh [5] and

Clouds of stardust drift through this deep skyscape, across the Perseus molecular cloud some 850 light-years away. Dusty nebulae reflecting light from embedded young stars stand out in the nearly 2 degree wide telescopic field of view. With a characteristic bluish color reflection nebula NGC 1333 is at center, vdB 13 at top right, with rare yellowish reflection nebula vdB 12 near the top of the frame. Stars are forming in the molecular cloud, though most are obscured at visible wavelengths by the pervasive dust. Still, hints of contrasting red emission from Herbig-Haro objects, the jets and shocked glowing gas emanating from recently formed stars, are evident in NGC 1333. The chaotic environment may be similar to one in which our own Sun formed over 4.5 billion years ago. At the estimated distance of the Perseus molecular cloud, this cosmic scene would span about 40 light-years.

Andy Narell (born March 18, 1954) is an American jazz steel pannist.

Narell took up the steelpan at a young age in Queens, New York. His father, who was a social worker, had started a program of steelpan playing for at-risk youth at the Jewish philanthropic Education Alliance in Lower East Side Manhattan using two sets of pans made by Rupert Sterling, a native of Antigua. Beginning in 1962, Andy, his brother Jeff, and three others boys played on a third set of Sterling-made pans in the basement of the Narell house in the Whitestone neighborhood of Queens, calling themselves the Steel Bandits. The band was a novelty steelpan act that played concerts and appeared on television shows, including I’ve Got a Secret in 1963.

The band played Carnegie Hall and at the National Music Festival of Trinidad. Murray Narell invited Ellie Mannette in 1964 to expand steelpan activities in New York City and convinced him to come in 1967. Mannette taught the Narell boys more technique, and they played on improved pans tuned by Mannette.

Narell studied music at the University of California, Berkeley and played piano with the University of California Jazz Ensembles under the direction of David W. Tucker. He graduated in 1973.

He started the record label Hip Pocket and released his first solo album, Hidden Treasures, in 1979. With an interest in Caribbean music, Latin jazz, and rhythm and blues, he joined the Caribbean Jazz Project in 1995 with Dave Samuels and Paquito D’Rivera.

He has performed with Montreux, Sakésho, Calypsociation, and Béla Fleck and the Flecktones. He composed and arranged music for Trinidad‘s national steelband competition, Panorama. Narell performed in South Africa in 1999 in front of a crowd of 80,000 people.

William Richard Frisell (born March 18, 1951) is an American guitarist, composer and arranger. One of the leading guitarists in jazz since the late 1980s, Frisell came to prominence as a stalwart for ECM Records. He went on to work in a variety of contexts, notably as a member of the New York City Downtown Scene where he formed a long partnership with John Zorn. He was also a longtime member of Paul Motian‘s groups from the early 1980s until Motian’s death in 2011. Since 2000, Frisell’s eclectic output as a bandleader has emphasized folk, country music, and Americana.

Frisell was born in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, but spent most of his youth in the Denver, Colorado, area. He studied clarinet with Richard Joiner of the Denver Symphony Orchestra as a youth, but by his teens was more interested in guitar. He graduated from Denver East High School, and went to the University of Northern Colorado to study music. There he studied with guitarist Johnny Smith, though Frisell later reported the class effectively became private lessons from Smith because “it was too much for everyone else–they didn’t want to be learning scales and inversions.”

His original guitar teacher in the Denver-Aurora metropolitan area was Dale Bruning, with whom Frisell released the 2000 duo album Reunion. After graduating from Northern Colorado, Frisell went to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he studied with Jon Damian and Jim Hall.

Wilson Pickett (March 18, 1941 – January 19, 2006) was an American singer and songwriter. A major figure in the development of American soul music, Pickett recorded over 50 songs which made the US R&B charts, many of which crossed over to the Billboard Hot 100. Among his best-known hits are “In the Midnight Hour” (which he co-wrote), “Land of 1,000 Dances“, “Mustang Sally“, and “Funky Broadway“. Pickett was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991, in recognition of his impact on songwriting and recording. Pickett was born March 18, 1941 in Prattville, Alabama, and sang in Baptist church choirs. He was the fourth of 11 children and called his mother “the baddest woman in my book,” telling historian Gerri Hirshey: “I get scared of her now. She used to hit me with anything, skillets, stove wood … [one time I ran away and] cried for a week. Stayed in the woods, me and my little dog.” Pickett eventually left to live with his father in Detroit in 1955. Pickett died on January 19, 2006, two months short of his 65th birthday. He had been suffering from health problems for the last year of his life and had spent considerable time in the hospital. He died at a hospital near his home in Reston, Virginia after suffering a heart attack.

Lester J. Kinsey Jr., (March 18, 1927 – April 3, 2001) known as Big Daddy Kinsey, was an American Chicago blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player. He was born near Pleasant Grove, Mississippi. He grew up playing gospel music; his father was a pastor in the Church of God in Christ and disapproved of blues music. However, Kinsey started playing guitar at parties in Mississippi, before moving in 1944 to Gary, Indiana, where he worked in a steel mill. He married and served in the military before returning to work in Gary and raising a family.

In the late 1950s, he started a family band, Big Daddy Kinsey and His Fabulous Sons, with his children, but it dissolved in the early 1970s, and Lester Kinsey began playing harmonica with a local band, the Soul Brothers. His second son, guitarist Donald Kinsey, played in Albert King‘s band in the 1970s, and later joined Bob Marley and the Wailers, but in 1984 rejoined his father and brothers Ralph and Kenneth to form The Kinsey Report. The band featured Lester “Big Daddy” Kinsey as slide guitarist and harmonica player. They signed for the Rooster Blues label, and in 1985 with Alligator Records, becoming “one of the hottest attractions in contemporary blues”. In the early 1990s Kinsey recorded the album I Am the Blues, featuring such musicians as Buddy Guy, James Cotton, and Pinetop Perkins.

The California Nebula (NGC 1499) is an emission nebula located in the constellation Perseus. It is so named because it appears to resemble the outline of the US State of California on long exposure photographs. It is almost 2.5° long on the sky and, because of its very low surface brightness, it is extremely difficult to observe visually. It can be observed with a Hα filter (isolates the Hα line at 656 nm) or Hβ filter (isolates the Hβ line at 486 nm) in a rich-field telescope under dark skies. It lies at a distance of about 1,000 light years from Earth.

John Benson Sebastian (born March 17, 1944) is an American singer/songwriter, guitarist, harmonicist, and autoharpist. He is best known as a founder of The Lovin’ Spoonful, as well as his impromptu appearance at the Woodstock festival in 1969 and a US No. 1 hit in 1976, “Welcome Back.” The Lovin’ Spoonful was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. olk-rock and pop with elements of blues, country, and jug band music, became part of the American response to the British Invasion, and was noted for such hits as “Do You Believe in Magic“, “Summer in the City“, “Daydream“, “Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?“, “You Didn’t Have to Be So Nice“, “Darling Be Home Soon“, “Jug Band Music”, “Rain on the Roof”, “Nashville Cats”, and “Six O’Clock”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rts7Qdew3HE