mick laBriola

This image was obtained with the wide-field view of the Mosaic camera on the Mayall 4-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory. HFG1 is a planetary nebula in the constellation of Cassiopeia. It was produced by a binary star system (V664 Cas) that is moving rapidly through our Galaxy. The star is moving towards the upper-right of the image. As HFG1 plows through the interstellar medium, a bluish bowshock is produced; and a red trail of gas is left behind in its wake. The image was generated with observations in the Hydrogen alpha (red) and Oxygen [OIII] (blue) filters. In this image, North is down and East is to the right.

Mark Whitfield (born October 6, 1966) is an American jazz guitarist.

Whitfield was born in Lindenhurst, New York. He has worked with Jack McDuff, Jimmy Smith, Courtney Pine, Nicholas Payton, and Chris Botti.

In 2000, Whitfield released an instructional guitar video titled Mark Whitfield: Star Licks Master Sessions for Star Licks Productions. In 2017, he shot a series of instructional videos entitled Mark Whitfield: Land the Gig

Millicent Dolly May Small CD (6 October 1947 – 5 May 2020) was a Jamaican singer and songwriter, best known for her 1964 recording of “My Boy Lollipop“, which reached number two in both the UK Singles Chart and the US Billboard Hot 100. On her UK records, she was usually credited mononymously as Millie. She was the Caribbean’s first international recording star, and its most successful female performer.

Small was born in Clarendon, Jamaica, the daughter of a sugar plantation overseer. She was one of seven brothers and five sisters. Like many Jamaican singers of the era, her career began by winning the Vere Johns Opportunity Hour talent contest, which she won at the age of twelve.Wishing to pursue a career as a singer, she moved to live with relatives in Love Lane in Kingston. She auditioned for Studio One record producerCoxsone Dodd, who was struck by the similarity of her voice to that of Shirley Goodman of the American duo Shirley and Lee. He paired her with singer Owen Gray, and they made several records together, including “Sugar Plum”, which became a local hit.

When Gray resumed his solo career, Small began recording with another singer, Samuel Augustus “Roy” Panton. Working with producer Roy Robinson, the duo of Roy & Millie had a run of local hits, including “We’ll Meet”. They had further successes working with Dodd, as well with producer Lindon Pottinger, including the local hit “Marie” in 1963; and then with Prince Buster. Her popularity brought her to the attention of Anglo-Jamaican entrepreneur Chris Blackwell, who was convinced of her wider international potential, and became her manager and legal guardian. In late 1963 he took her to Forest Hill, London, where she was given intensive training in dancing and diction.

Tony Oladipo Allen (July 20th 1940 – 30 April 2020) was a Nigerian drummer, composer, and songwriter who lived and worked in Paris, France. Allen was the drummer and musical director of Fela Kuti‘s band Africa ’70 from 1968 to 1979, and was one of the primary co-founders of the genre of Afrobeat music. Fela once stated that, “without Tony Allen, there would be no Afrobeat.”He was described by Brian Eno as “perhaps the greatest drummer who has ever lived”.

Allen’s career and life story were documented in his 2013 autobiography Tony Allen: Master Drummer of Afrobeat, co-written with author/musician Michael E. Veal, who previously wrote a comprehensive biography of Fela Kuti.

Allen was born in Lagos, Nigeria. He began playing drums at the age of 18, while working as an engineer for a radio station. Allen was influenced by music his father listened to Jùjú, a popular Yoruba music from the 1940s, but also American jazz, and the growing highlife scene in Nigeria and Ghana. Allen worked hard to develop a unique voice on the drums, feverishly studying LPs and magazine articles by Max Roach and Art Blakey, but also revolutionary Ghanaian drummer Guy Warren (later known as Kofi Ghanaba – who developed a highly sought-after sound that mixed tribal Ghanaian drumming with bop – working with Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, and Max Roach).

Samuel Blythe Price (October 6, 1908 – April 14, 1992) was an American jazz, boogie-woogie and jump blues pianist and bandleader. Price’s playing is dark, mellow, and relaxed rather than percussive, and he was a specialist at creating the appropriate mood and swing for blues and rhythm and blues recordings.

Price was born in Honey Grove, Texas, United States. Price formally studied the piano with Booker T. Washington‘s daughter, Portia Marshall Washington (1883–1978). In the mid-1920s, when he was employed in a Dallas music store, Price wrote to Paramount Records recommending Blind Lemon Jefferson to the label.

During his early career, he was a singer and dancer in local venues in the Dallas area. Price lived and played jazz in Kansas City, Chicago and Detroit. In 1938 he was hired by Decca Records as a session sideman on piano, assisting singers such as Trixie Smith and Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

Price was most noteworthy for his work on Decca Records with his own band, known as the Texas Bluesicians, that included fellow musicians Don Stovall and Emmett Berry. He was the accompanist on countless recording sessions for the Decca blues, race, and rhythm-and-blues catalogs, and featuring such singers as Trixie Smith (“Trixie Blues”), Blue Lu Barker (“Georgia Grind”), and Cousin Joe (“Box Car Shorty”). Price recorded under his own name, with gospel singers (Rosetta Tharpe, Evelyn Knight) and with Lester Young, toured Europe with Jimmy Rushing, appeared at numerous jazz festivals, and performed in a Broadway play starring Tallulah Bankhead (Clash By Night).Price also had a decade-long partnership with Henry “Red” Allen.

The year of 2015 has been declared the International Year of Light (IYL) by the United Nations. Organizations, institutions, and individuals involved in the science and applications of light will be joining together for this yearlong celebration to help spread the word about the wonders of light.

NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory explores the universe in X-rays, a high-energy form of light.  By studying X-ray data and comparing them with observations in other types of light, scientists can develop a better understanding of objects likes stars and galaxies that generate temperatures of millions of degrees and produce X-rays.

To recognize the start of IYL, the Chandra X-ray Center is releasing a set of images that combine data from telescopes tuned to different wavelengths of light. From a distant galaxy to the relatively nearby debris field of an exploded star, these images demonstrate the myriad ways that information about the universe is communicated to us through light.

In this image, an expanding shell of debris called SNR 0519-69.0 is left behind after a massive star exploded in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way. Multimillion degree gas is seen in X-rays from Chandra, in blue. The outer edge of the explosion (red) and stars in the field of view are seen in visible light from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Delroy George Wilson CD (5 October 1948 – 6 March 1995) was a Jamaican ska, rocksteady and reggae singer. Wilson is often regarded as Jamaica’s first child star, having first found success as a teenager. His youngest son, Karl “Konan” Wilson, has found success as part of British duo Krept and Konan (founded 2009).

Delroy Wilson began his recording career at the age of thirteen, while still a pupil at Boys Town Primary School. Wilson released his first single “Emy Lou”in 1962 for record producer, Clement “Coxsone” Dodd. His early years with Coxsone yielded a number of ska hits, the biggest of which, the Lee Perry-written “Joe Liges” was an attack on rival producer and former Dodd employee Prince Buster. This was followed by another Perry-written attack on Buster, “Spit in the Sky”. Further singles followed, including “One Two Three”, “I Shall Not Remove”, “Look Who Is Back Again” (a duet with Slim Smith), and another anti-Buster song, “Prince Pharaoh”, notably the only record featuring the voice of Dodd himself. He is regarded as Jamaica’s first child star. Delroy Wilson died at the age of 46 on 6 March 1995 at Kingston‘s UWI hospital, of complications from cirrhosis of the liver.

Steven Haworth Miller (born October 5, 1943) is an American guitarist, singer and songwriter, known as leader of the Steve Miller Band. He began his career in blues and blues rock and evolved to a more pop-oriented sound during the mid-1970s through the early 1980s, releasing popular singles and albums. Miller was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016.

Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Miller received his first exposure to music from his mother, Bertha, whom he described as a remarkable jazz-influenced singer, and his physician father, George, known as “Sonny” who, in addition to his profession as a pathologist, was a jazz enthusiast and an accomplished amateur recording engineer. Guitar virtuoso Les Paul and his musical partner Mary Ford were regular visitors at the Miller house. The Millers were best man and matron of honor at the December 1949 Paul/Ford wedding. Paul became Steve’s godfather. Les Paul heard Steve, who was six, on a wire recording made by Dr. Miller, as the youngster was “banging away” on a guitar given to him by his uncle, Dr. K. Dale Atterbury.Paul encouraged Miller to continue with his interest in the guitar… and “perhaps he will be something one day.”

In 1950, the family relocated to Dallas, Texas. Many distinguished musicians came to the house to record, and Steve absorbed much from “greats” such as T-Bone Walker, Charles Mingus, and Tal Farlow. Walker taught Steve how to play his guitar behind his back and also with his teeth in 1952. In 1955, Steven began attending Dallas‘ St. Mark’s School, a non-denominational preparatory day school for boys where he formed his first band, The Marksmen. He taught his older brother Buddy to play the bass guitar and also instructed his classmate, future musical star Boz Scaggs, guitar chords so that he could join the band.

Ismael Rivera a.k.a. “Maelo” (October 5, 1931 – May 13, 1987), was a Puerto Rican composer and salsa singer.

Rivera was born in Santurce, Puerto Rico, a sector of San Juan, Puerto Rico. He was the first of five children born to Luis and Margarita Rivera. His father, Luis, was a carpenter and his mother a housewife. As a child, Rivera was always singing and banging on cans with sticks. He received his primary education at the Pedro G. Goyco Elementary School and then went on to learn carpentry at a vocational school. He also shined shoes to help his family financially and when he was 16 years old, he worked as a carpenter. During his free time he would hang around the corner with his best friend Rafael Cortijo and sing songs. In 1948, Rivera and Cortijo joined El Conjunto Monterrey, where Rivera played the conga and Cortijo the bongos. Rivera was unable to work full-time as a musician because of his work as a carpenter.

William Robert “Bill” Dixon (October 5, 1925 – June 16, 2010) was an American composer, improviser, visual artist, activist, and educator. Dixon was one of the seminal figures in free jazz and late twentieth-century contemporary music. His was also a prominent voice arguing for artist’s rights and insisting, through words and deeds, on the cultural and aesthetic richness of the African American music tradition. He played the trumpet, flugelhorn, and piano, often using electronic delay and reverb.

Dixon hailed from Nantucket, Massachusetts. His family moved to Harlem, in New York City, in 1934. He enlisted in the Army in 1944; his unit served in Germany before he was discharged in 1946. His studies in music came relatively late in life, at the Hartnette Conservatory of Music (1946–1951), which he attended on the GI Bill. He studied painting at Boston University and the WPA Arts School and the Art Students League. From 1956 to 1962, he worked at the United Nations, where he founded the UN Jazz Society.

James Blanton (October 5, 1918 – July 30, 1942) was an American jazz double bassist. Blanton is credited with being the originator of more complex pizzicato and arco bass solos in a jazz context than previous bassists. Nicknamed “Jimmie,” Blanton’s nickname is usually misspelled as “Jimmy,” including by Duke Ellington.

Blanton was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He originally learned to play the violin, but took up the bass while at Tennessee State University, performing with the Tennessee State Collegians from 1936 to 1937, and during the vacations with Fate Marable.

Blanton left university in 1938 to play full-time in St Louis with the Jeter-Pillars Orchestra. Blanton joined Duke Ellington‘s band in 1939. On November 22 of that year, Blanton and Ellington recorded two tracks – “Blues” and “Plucked Again” – which were the first commercially recorded piano–bass duets. In 1941, Blanton was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Blanton died on July 30, 1942, at a sanatorium in Duarte, California, aged 23.