mick laBriola

Wilbur James Cobb (January 20, 1929 – May 24, 2020) was an American jazz drummer. He was part of Miles Davis‘s First Great Sextet. At the time of his death, he had been the band’s last surviving member for nearly thirty years. He was awarded an NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship in 2009.

Cobb was born in Washington, D.C. on January 20, 1929. Before he began his music career, he listened to jazz albums and stayed awake into the late hours of the night in order to listen to Symphony Sid performing in New York City. Cobb started his touring career in 1950 with the saxophonist Earl Bostic. He subsequently performed with vocalist Dinah Washington, pianist Wynton Kelly, saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, bassist Keter Betts, Frank Wess, Leo Parker, and Charlie Rouse. His website also recounts his gigs with Billie Holiday, Pearl Bailey, and Dizzy Gillespie that took place before 1957.

Huddie William Ledbetter (/ˈhjuːdi/; January 23, 1888 – December 6, 1949), better known by the stage name Lead Belly, was an American folkand blues singer, musician and songwriter notable for his strong vocals, virtuosity on the twelve-string guitar, and the folk standards he introduced, including his renditions of “Goodnight, Irene“, “Midnight Special“, “Cotton Fields“, and “Boll Weevil“.

Lead Belly usually played a twelve-string guitar, but he also played the piano, mandolin, harmonica, violin, and windjammer. In some of his recordings, he sang while clapping his hands or stomping his foot.

Lead Belly’s songs covered a wide range of genres and topics including gospel music; blues about women, liquor, prison life, and racism; and folk songs about cowboys, prison, work, sailors, cattle herding, and dancing. He also wrote songs about people in the news, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler, Jean Harlow, Jack Johnson, the Scottsboro Boys and Howard Hughes. Lead Belly was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 and the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2008.

Though many releases credit him as “Leadbelly”, he himself wrote it as “Lead Belly”, which is also the spelling on his tombstone and the spelling used by the Lead Belly Foundation.

Name: MGTC J095959.63+024608.6
Distance: 2.08 billion light-years
Diameter: 2.42 Mpc (7.9 million light-years)

The 2 big radio galaxies discovered with the MeerKAT telescope. Within the background is the sky as seen … [+] in optical mild. Overlaid in pink is the radio mild from the large radio galaxies, as seen by MeerKAT. Left: MGTC J095959.63+024608.6. Proper: MGTC J100016.84+015133.0.

Robert Allen Palmer (19 January 1949 – 26 September 2003) was an English singer-songwriter, musician and record producer. He was known for his powerful, distinctive, gritty and soulful voice, sartorial elegance and for combining soul, jazz, rock, pop, reggae and blues.

Palmer’s involvement in the music industry began in the 1960s, covered four decades and included a spell with the band Vinegar Joe. He found success both in his solo career and with the Power Station, and had Top 10 songs in both the United Kingdom and the United States in the 1980s. Three of his hit singles, “I Didn’t Mean to Turn You On“, “Addicted to Love” and “Simply Irresistible“, were accompanied with stylish music videos directed by British fashion photographer Terence Donovan.

Palmer received a number of awards throughout his career, including two Grammy Awards for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance, an MTV Video Music Award and two Brit Award nominations for Best British Male Solo Artist. He died aged 54, following a heart attack on 26 September 2003.

Janis Lyn Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970 {Port Authur, TX) was an American singer-songwriter who sang rock, soul and blues music. One of the most successful and widely known rock stars of her era, she was noted for her powerful mezzo-soprano vocals and “electric” stage presence. In 1967, Joplin rose to fame following an appearance at Monterey Pop Festival, where she was the lead singer of the then little-known San Francisco psychedelic rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company.  After releasing two albums with the band, she left Big Brother to continue as a solo artist with her own backing groups, first the Kozmic Blues Band and then the Full Tilt Boogie Band. She appeared at the Woodstock festival and the Festival Express train tour. Five singles by Joplin reached the Billboard Hot 100, including a cover of the Kris Kristofferson song “Me and Bobby McGee“, which reached number one in March 1971. Her most popular songs include her cover versions of “Piece of My Heart“, “Cry Baby“, “Down on Me“, “Ball and Chain“, and “Summertime“; and her original song “Mercedes Benz“, her final recording. Joplin died of an accidental heroin overdose in 1970 aged 27, after releasing three albums. A fourth album, Pearl, was released in January 1971, just over three months after her death. It reached number one on the Billboard charts. She was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. Rolling Stone ranked Joplin number 46 on its 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time  and number 28 on its 2008 list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. She remains one of the top-selling musicians in the United States, with Recording Industry Association of America certifications of 18.5 million albums sold.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWm81fpd1g8

Horace Parlan (January 19, 1931 – February 23, 2017) was an American hard bop and post-bop pianist and composer. He was known for his contributions to the Charles Mingus recordings Mingus Ah Um and Blues & Roots.

In his birth year, Parlan was stricken with polio, resulting in the partial crippling of his right hand. The handicap contributed to his development of a particularly “pungent” left-hand chord voicing style, while comping with highly rhythmic phrases with the right. Between 1952 and 1957, he worked in Washington DC with Sonny Stitt, then spent two years with Mingus’ Jazz Workshop. In 1973, Parlan moved to Copenhagen, Denmark. He later settled in the small village of Rude in southern Zealand. In 1974 he completed a State Department tour of Africa with Hal Singer. His later work, such as a series of duos with the tenor saxophonist Archie Shepp included the album Goin’ Home, steeped in gospel music. Parlan received the 2000 Ben Webster Prize awarded by the Ben Webster Foundation.

Henry Gray (January 19, 1925 – February 17, 2020) was an American blues piano player and singer born in Kenner, Louisiana. He played for more than seven decades and performed with many artists, including Robert Lockwood Jr., Billy Boy Arnold, Morris Pejoe, the Rolling Stones, Muddy Waters, and Howlin’ Wolf. He has more than 58 albums to his credit, including recordings for Chess Records. He is credited as helping to create the distinctive sound of the Chicago blues piano. In 2017, Gray was inducted in to the Blues Hall of Fame.

Shortly after he was born, Gray, an only child, moved with his parents to a farm in Alsen, Louisiana, a few miles north of Baton Rouge, where he lived during his childhood. He began studying the piano at the age of eight, taking lessons from a neighborhood woman, Mrs. White. Gray also credits the radio and music records in his home for inspiring his love of music at an early age. A few years later, he began playing piano and organ at the local Baptist church, and his family eventually acquired a piano for the house. Playing the blues was not encouraged in his family, but Henry played blues at Mrs. White’s house, and by the time he was 16 he was playing blues at a club in Alsen. His father initially disapproved of the job but became supportive after seeing how much money his son was making.

As demonstrated by the last four years and particularly since March of 2020

CTB-1 is the expanding gas shell that was left when a massive star toward the constellation of Cassiopeia exploded about 10,000 years ago. The star likely detonated when it ran out of elements, near its core, that could create stabilizing pressure with nuclear fusion. The resulting supernova remnant, nicknamed the Medulla Nebula for its brain-like shape, still glows in visible light by the heat generated by its collision with confining interstellar gas. Why the nebula also glows in X-ray light, though, remains a mystery. One hypothesis holds that an energetic pulsar was co-created that powers the nebula with a fast outwardly moving wind. Following this lead, a pulsar has recently been found in radio waves that appears to have been expelled by the supernova explosion at over 1000 kilometers per second. Although the Medulla Nebula appears as large as a full moon, it is so faint that it took 130-hours of exposure with two small telescopes in New Mexico, USA, to create the featured image.

Al Foster (born January 18, 1943) is an American jazz drummer. Foster played with Miles Davis during the 1970s and was one of the few people to have contact with Davis during his retirement from 1975–1981. Foster also played on Davis’s 1981 comeback album The Man with the Horn. He was the only musician to play in Davis’s band both before and after his retirement. He has toured extensively with Herbie Hancock, Sonny Rollins, and Joe Henderson.

Foster was born in Richmond, Virginia, and grew up in New York. He began playing drums at the age of 13 and made his recording debut on Blue Mitchell‘s The Thing to Do at age 20.

He joined Miles Davis‘s group when Jack DeJohnette left in 1972, and played with Davis until 1985. In his 1989 autobiography, Davis described the first time he heard Foster play live in 1972 at the Cellar Club in Manhattan: “He [Foster] knocked me out because he had such a groove and he would just lay it right in there. That was the kind of thing I was looking for. Al could set it up for everybody else to play-off and just keep the groove going forever.” Foster began composing in the 1970’s, and has toured with his own band, including musicians such as bassist Doug Weiss, saxophonist Dayna Stephens, and pianist Adam Birnbaum.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgTeiCzY1xc

Johnny Costa (born John Costanza; January 18, 1922 – October 11, 1996) was an American jazz pianist. Given the title “The White Art Tatum” by jazz legend Art Tatum, Costa is best known for his work as musical director of the children’s television program Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.

Costa learned to play accordion at age seven and was reading music three years later. Frank Oliver, Costa’s high school music teacher, urged him to learn the piano after discovering that Costa had perfect pitch. Costa graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with degrees in music and in education. In case he failed as a musician, Costa prepared himself to teach. On the day of his graduation, he began work as the house pianist for a radio station in Pittsburgh. Eventually he performed the same role for KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh. He provided piano and organ music for many programs, eventually teaming with Fred Rogers to arrange and perform the music heard on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.

Costa’s first recording was The Amazing Johnny Costa, a Savoy LP released in 1955 and reissued on CD as Neighborhood in 1989. Although his increasingly lucrative career was beginning to bring him international attention, the amount of time away from his family and friends led him to live and perform only in western Pennsylvania. He stopped traveling and gave up his job as musical director of The Mike Douglas Show. He returned to Pittsburgh and remained there for the rest of his life.

Costa appeared along with guitarist Joe Negri on the 1954 Ken Griffin TV series 67 Melody Lane. Johnny and Joe played two numbers, “After You’ve Gone” and “Little Brown Jug”, the latter with Ken Griffin at the organ.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7Q1a_r6-vM&t=23s

Vassilis Tsitsanis (Greek: Βασίλης Τσιτσάνης 18 January 1915 – 18 January 1984) was a Greek songwriter and bouzouki player. He became one of the leading Greek composers of his time and is widely regarded as one of the founders of modern Rebetiko and Laiko music. Tsitsanis wrote more than 500 songs and is still remembered as an extraordinary composer and bouzouki player.

Tsitsanis was born in Trikala. From a young age, Tsitsanis was interested in music and learned to play violin, mandola and mandolin which were mainstays of so many of his songs. In 1936, he left for Athens to study law, and by 1937 had also learned bouzouki and made his first musical recording.

In 1938, he moved to Thessaloniki, where he completed his military service, and stayed there for about ten years, during the German occupation of Greece. There he became famous, opened also an ouzeri, got married and wrote many of his best songs that were later recorded after the end of the War. By the shut-down of the record companies by the German occupation Forces in 1941, he had already recorded about 100 of his own songs and played on many recordings of other composers.

In 1946, Tsitsanis returned to Athens and began recording many of his own compositions that made famous many of the singers that worked with him, such as Sotiria Bellou (Σωτηρία Μπέλου), Marika Ninou (Μαρίκα Νίνου), Ioanna Georgakopoulou and Prodromos Tsaousakis. Tsitsanis developed the “westernization” of the rebetiko and made it more known to large sections of the population, setting also the bases for the future laiko.