mick laBriola

Cecil Payne (December 14, 1922 – November 27, 2007) was an American jazz baritone saxophonist born in Brooklyn, New York. Payne also played the alto saxophone and flute. He played with other prominent jazz musicians, in particular Dizzy Gillespie and Randy Weston, in addition to his solo work as bandleader.

Payne received his first saxophone at the age of 13, asking his father for one after hearing “Honeysuckle Rose” performed by Count Basie with Lester Young soloing. Payne took lessons from a local alto sax player, Pete Brown. He studied at Boys High School, Bedford-Stuyvesant. Payne began his professional recording career with J. J. Johnson on the Savoy label in 1946. During that year he also began playing with Roy Eldridge, through whom he met Dizzy Gillespie. His earlier recordings would largely fall under the swing category, until Gillespie hired him. Payne stayed on board until 1949, heard performing solos on “Ow!” and “Stay On It”. In the early 1950s he found himself working with Tadd Dameron, and worked with Illinois Jacquet from 1952 to 1954. He then started freelance work in New York City and frequently performed during this period with Randy Weston, whom Payne worked with until 1960. Payne was still recording regularly for Delmark Records in the 1990s, when he was in his seventies, and indeed on into the new millennium.

Clark Virgil Terry Jr. (December 14, 1920 – February 21, 2015) was an American swing and bebop trumpeter, a pioneer of the flugelhorn in jazz, and a composer and educator.

He played with Charlie Barnet (1947), Count Basie (1948–51), Duke Ellington (1951–59), Quincy Jones (1960), and Oscar Peterson (1964-96). He was with The Tonight Show Band on the Tonight Show from 1962 to 1972. His career in jazz spanned more than 70 years, during which he became one of the most recorded jazz musicians, appearing on over 900 recordings. Terry also mentored Quincy Jones, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Wynton Marsalis, Pat Metheny, Dianne Reeves, and Terri Lyne Carrington.

Terry was born to Clark Virgil Terry Sr. and Mary Terry in St. Louis, Missouri, on December 14, 1920. He attended Vashon High School and began his professional career in the early 1940s, playing in local clubs. He served as a bandsman in the United States Navy during World War II. His first instrument was valve trombone.

ESO’s PESSTO survey has captured this view of Messier 74, a stunning spiral galaxy with well-defined whirling arms. However, the real subject of this image is the galaxy’s brilliant new addition from late July 2013: a Type II supernovanamed SN2013ej that is visible as the brightest star at the bottom left of the image.

Such supernovae occur when the core of a massive star collapses due to its own gravity at the end of its life. This collapse results in a massive explosion that ejects material far into space. The resulting detonation can be more brilliant than the entire galaxy that hosts it and can be visible to observers for weeks, or even months.

PESSTO (Public ESO Spectroscopic Survey for Transient Objects) is designed to study objects that appear briefly in the night sky, such as supernovae. It does this by utilising a number of instruments on the NTT (New Technology Telescope), located at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. This new picture of SN2013ej was obtained using the NTT during the course of this survey.

SN2013ej is the third supernova to have been observed in Messier 74 since the turn of the millennium, the other two being SN 2002ap and SN 2003gd. It was first reported on 25 July 2013 by the KAIT telescope team in California, and the first “precovery image” was taken by amateur astronomer Christina Feliciano, who used the public access SLOOH Space Camera to look at the region in the days and hours immediately before the explosion.

Messier 74, in the constellation of Pisces (The Fish), is one of the most difficult Messier objects for amateur astronomers to spot due to its low surface brightness, but SN2013ej should still be visible to careful amateur astronomers over the next few weeks as a faint and fading star.

Majida El Roumi Baradhy (Arabic: ماجدة الرومي برادعي‎; born 13 December 1956) is a Lebanese soprano singer. She is also a UN Goodwill Ambassador. In 1974, she participated in the talent show “Studio El Fan” on Télé Liban and performed songs for Layla Murad at the age of 16.

Judge Kenneth Peterson (December 13, 1964 – May 17, 2020), known professionally as Lucky Peterson, was an American musician who played contemporary blues, fusing soul, R&B, gospel and rock and roll. He played guitar and keyboards. Music journalist Tony Russell, in his book The Blues – From Robert Johnson to Robert Cray has said, “he may be the only blues musician to have had national television exposure in short pants.”

Peterson’s father, bluesman James Peterson, owned a nightclub in Buffalo called The Governor’s Inn. The club was a regular stop for fellow bluesmen such as Willie Dixon. Dixon saw a five-year-old Lucky Peterson performing at the club and, in Peterson’s words, “Took me under his wing.” Months later, Peterson performed on The Tonight Show, The Ed Sullivan Show and What’s My Line?. Millions of people watched Peterson sing “1-2-3-4”, a cover version of “Please, Please, Please” by James Brown. At the time, Peterson said “his father wrote it”. Around this time he recorded his first album, Our Future: 5 Year Old Lucky Peterson, for Today/Perception Records and appeared on the public television show, Soul!.

As a teen, Peterson studied at the Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing Arts, where he played the French horn with the school symphony. Soon, he was playing backup guitar and keyboards for Etta James, Bobby “Blue” Bland, and Little Milton.

Benjamin M. Tucker (December 13, 1930 – June 4, 2013) was an American jazz bassist who appeared on hundreds of recordings. Tucker played on albums by Art Pepper, Billy Taylor, Quincy Jones, Grant Green, Dexter Gordon, Hank Crawford, Junior Mance, and Herbie Mann.

He was born in Tennessee. As bass player in the Dave Bailey Quintet in 1961, he wrote the instrumental version of the song “Comin’ Home Baby!“, first issued on the album Two Feet in the Gutter. Bob Dorough later wrote a lyric to the song, and the vocal version became a Top 40 hit for jazzsinger Mel Tormé in 1962.

Tucker released the album Baby, You Should Know It (Ava, 1963) with Victor Feldman, Larry Bunker, Bobby Thomas, Ray Crawford, Tommy Tedesco, and Carlos “Patato” Valdes.

By 1972, Tucker owned two radio stations, WSOK-AM, which had over 400,000 listeners, and WLVH-FM. Both of these were located in his hometown of Savannah, Georgia.

He died in a traffic collision in Hutchinson Island, Georgia, on June 4, 2013

William Alexander “Sonny” Greer (December 13, c. 1895 – March 23, 1982) was an American jazz drummer and vocalist, best known for his work with Duke Ellington. Greer was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, and played with Elmer Snowden‘s band and the Howard Theatre‘s orchestra in Washington, D.C., before joining Duke Ellington, whom he met in 1919. He was Ellington’s first drummer, playing with his quintet, the Washingtonians, and moved with Ellington into the Cotton Club. As a result of his job as a designer with the Leedy Drum Company of Indiana, Greer was able to build up a huge drum kit worth over a then-considerable $3,000, including chimes, a gong, timpani, and vibes.^[1]

Greer was a heavy drinker, as well as a pool-hall hustler (when he needed to retrieve his drums from the pawnbroker), and in 1950, Ellington responded to his drinking and occasional unreliability by taking a second drummer, Butch Ballard, with them on a tour of Scandinavia. This enraged Greer, and the consequent argument led to their permanent estrangement.

Greer continued to play, mainly as a freelance drummer, working with musicians such as Johnny Hodges, Red Allen, J. C. Higginbotham, Tyree Glenn, and Brooks Kerr, as well as appearing in films, and briefly leading his own band. Greer featured in the iconic 1958 black-and-white photograph by Art Kane known as “A Great Day in Harlem“. He was part of a tribute to Ellington in 1974, which achieved great success throughout the United States. Greer died in 1982 and is interred in Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City.

Carlos García Montoya (13 December 1903 – 3 March 1993) in Madrid, Spain, was a prominent flamenco guitarist and a founder of the modern-day popular flamenco style of music.

He was the nephew of renowned flamenco guitarist Ramón Montoya. He first learned from his mother, “la Tula”, and then from a neighboring barber, Pepe el Barbero, i.e. Pepe the Barber. After one year Montoya had completed what Pepe was able to teach him. Carlos left to gain what he could from other flamenco guitarists of the time. At fourteen he was playing in the “cafes cantantes,” in the heyday of flamenco singing and dancing, for such artists as Antonio de Bilbao, Juan el Estampío, La Macarrona and La Camisona in Madrid, Spain.

In the 1920s and 1930s he performed extensively in Europe, North America, and Asia with the likes of La Teresina. The outbreak of World War II brought him to the United States where he began his most successful days as a musician, bringing his fiery style to concert halls and universities. He also accompanied orchestras. During this period he made a few recordings for several major and independent labels including RCA Victor, Everest and Folkways, performing traditional flamenco music such as Farruca., Malaga and Hokie.

Bassam Saba, a renowned Lebanese ud and ney player, and composer of Arabic music, died in Beirut on December 4, 2020 of COVID-19 complications. Bassam Saba (* 1959 – December 4, 2020 ) was a Lebanese composer , conductor and multi-instrumentalist . In addition to Arabic instruments such as the nay , the oud , the saz and the buzuq , he also played classical flute and violin. Saba studied nay, oud and violin at the Lebanese National Conservatory in Beirut . From 1976 he studied classical western music and flute at the Conservatoire Municipal des Gobelins in Paris. From 1979 to 1985 he obtained his master’s degree in flute and music education at the Moscow Gnessin Institute .

Marie Dionne Warwick (/ˈdiːɒn/ DEE-on; née Warrick; born December 12, 1940) is an American singer, actress, television host, and former Goodwill Ambassador for the Food and Agriculture Organization.

The smokey black silhouette in this new image is part of a large, sparse cloud of partially ionised hydrogen — an HII region — known as Gum 15. In wide-field images this nebula appears as a striking reddish purple clump dotted with stars and slashed by opaque, weaving dust lanes. This image homes in on one of these dust lanes, showing the central region of the nebula.

These dark chunks of sky have seemingly few stars because lanes of dusty material are obscuring the bright, glowing regions of gas beyond. The occasional stars that do show up in these patches are actually between us and Gum 15, but create the illusion that we are peering through a window out onto the more distant sky.

Gum 15 is shaped by the aggressive winds flowing from the stars within and around it. The cloud is located near to several large associations of stars including the star cluster ESO 313-13. The brightest member of this cluster, named HD 74804, is thought to have ionised Gum 15’s hydrogen cloud. This ionised hydrogen content is the cause of the red hue permeating the frame.

This image was taken as part of the ESO Cosmic Gems programme using the FORS instrument on the Very Large Telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. This project has actually produced multiple images of this target — back in July 2014, ESO released a stunning wide-field image of Gum 15 with the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory that showed the nebula’s sculpted clouds, murky dust, and brightly shining stars in extraordinary detail. The portion of Gum 15 shown in the new and more detailed VLT image can be seen within the wider frame towards the top left quarter of the 2.2-metre image.

Anthony Tillmon Williams (December 12, 1945 – February 23, 1997) was an American jazz drummer.

Williams first gained fame in the band of trumpeter Miles Davis and pioneered jazz fusion. He was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1986. Williams was born in Chicago and grew up in Boston. He was of African, Portuguese, and Chinese descent. He studied with drummer Alan Dawsonat an early age, and began playing professionally at the age of 13 with saxophonist Sam Rivers. Saxophonist Jackie McLean hired Williams when he was 16.

At 17 Williams gained attention by joining Miles Davis in what was later dubbed Davis’s Second Great Quintet. Williams was a vital element of the group, called by Davis in his autobiography “the center that the group’s sound revolved around.” His playing helped redefine the role of the jazz rhythm section through the use of polyrhythms and metric modulation. Meanwhile, he recorded his first two albums as leader for Blue Note label, Life Time (1964) and Spring (1965). He also recorded as a sideman for the label including, in 1964, Out to Lunch! with Eric Dolphy and Point of Departurewith Andrew Hill.

In 1969, he formed a trio, the Tony Williams Lifetime, with John McLaughlin on guitar and Larry Young on organ. Lifetime was a pioneering band of the fusion movement.

Grover Washington Jr. (December 12, 1943 – December 17, 1999) was an American jazz-funk / soul-jazz saxophonist. Along with George Benson, John Klemmer, David Sanborn, Bob James, Chuck Mangione, Dave Grusin, Herb Alpert, and Spyro Gyra, he is considered by many to be one of the founders of the smooth jazz genre. He wrote some of his material and later became an arranger and producer.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Washington made some of the genre’s most memorable hits, including “Mister Magic”, “Reed Seed”, “Black Frost”, “Winelight”, “Inner City Blues” and “The Best is Yet to Come”. In addition, he performed very frequently with other artists, including Bill Withers on “Just the Two of Us“, Patti LaBelle on “The Best Is Yet to Come” and Phyllis Hyman on “A Sacred Kind of Love”. He is also remembered for his take on the Dave Brubeck classic “Take Five“, and for his 1996 version of “Soulful Strut“.

Washington had a preference for black nickel-plated saxophones made by Julius Keilwerth. These included an SX90R alto and SX90R tenor. He also played Selmer Mark VI alto in the early years. His main soprano was a black nickel-plated H. Couf Superba II (also built by Keilwerth for Herbert Couf) and a Keilwerth SX90 in the last years of his life.

Washington was born in Buffalo, New York, United States, on December 12, 1943. His mother was a church chorister, and his father was a collector of old jazz gramophone records and a saxophonist as well, so music was everywhere in the home. He grew up listening to the great jazzmen and big band leaders like Benny Goodman, Fletcher Henderson, and others like them. At the age of 8, Grover Sr. gave Jr. a saxophone. He practiced and would sneak into clubs to see famous Buffalo blues musicians. His younger brother, drummer Daryl Washington, would soon follow in his footsteps, he also had another younger brother named Michael Washington, who was an accomplished Gospel Music organist who mastered the Hammond B3 organ.

Forrest Richard Betts (born December 12, 1943), known as Dickey Betts, is an American guitarist, singer, songwriter, and composer best known as a founding member of The Allman Brothers Band.

Early in his career he partnered with Duane Allman, introducing melodic twin guitar harmony and counterpoint which “rewrote the rules for how two rock guitarists can work together, completely scrapping the traditional rhythm/lead roles to stand toe to toe”. Following Allman’s death in 1971, Betts assumed sole lead guitar duties during the peak of the group’s commercial success in the mid-1970s.

Betts was the writer and singer on the Allmans’ only hit single, “Ramblin’ Man“. He also gained renown for composing instrumentals, with one appearing on most of the group’s albums, the most notable of these being “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” and “Jessica” (the latter widely known as the theme to Top Gear).

He was inducted with the band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 and also won a best rock performance Grammy Award with the band for “Jessica” in 1996. Betts was ranked No. 58 on Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time list in 2003, and #61 on the list published in 2011. Betts departed the Allman Brothers Band in 2000 under acrimonious circumstances and continued with a solo career that had begun in the 1970s.

Emmanuel N’Djoké “Manu” Dibango (12 December 1933 – 24 March 2020) was a Cameroonian musician and songwriter who played saxophoneand vibraphone. He developed a musical style fusing jazz, funk, and traditional Cameroonian music. His father was a member of the Yabassi ethnic group, while his mother was a Duala. He was best known for his 1972 single “Soul Makossa“. He died from COVID-19 on 24 March 2020.

Emmanuel “Manu” Dibango was born in Douala, Cameroon in 1933. His father, Michel Manfred N’Djoké Dibango, was a civil servant. Son of a farmer, he met his wife travelling by pirogue to her residence, Douala. Emmanuel’s mother was a fashion designer, running her own small business. Both her ethnic group, the Douala, and his, the Yabassi, viewed this union of different ethnic groups with some disdain. Dibango had only a stepbrother from his father’s previous marriage, who was four years older than him. In Cameroon, one’s ethnicity is dictated by one’s father, though Dibango wrote in his autobiography, Three Kilos of Coffee, that he had “never been able to identify completely with either of [his] parents”.

Dibango’s uncle was the leader of his extended family. Upon his death, Dibango’s father refused to take over, as he never fully initiated his son into the Yabassi’s customs. Throughout his childhood, Dibango slowly forgot the Yabassi language in favour of the Douala. However, his family did live in the Yabassi encampment on the Yabassi plateau, close to the Wouri River in central Douala. While a child, Dibango attended Protestant church every night for religious education, or nkouaida. He enjoyed studying music there, and reportedly was a fast learner. In 1941, after being educated at his village school, Dibango was accepted into a colonial school, near his home, where he learned French. He admired the teacher, whom he described as “an extraordinary draftsman and painter”. In 1944, French president Charles de Gaulle chose this school to perform the welcoming ceremonies upon his arrival in Cameroon. In 1949, at age 15, Dibango was sent to college in Saint-Calais, France. After that he attended the lycée de Chartres where he learned the piano.