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Albert Gene Drewery, known as Albert Collins and the Ice Man (October 1, 1932 – November 24, 1993), was an American electric blues guitarist and singer with a distinctive guitar style. He was noted for his powerful playing and his use of altered tunings and a capo. His long association with the Fender Telecaster led to the title “The Master of the Telecaster”.
Collins was born in Leona, Texas, on October 1, 1932. He was introduced to the guitar at an early age by his cousin Lightnin’ Hopkins, also a Leona resident, who played at family gatherings. The Collins family relocated to Marquez, Texas, in 1938 and to Houston in 1941, where he attended Jack Yates High School. Collins took piano lessons when he was young, but when his piano tutor was unavailable his cousin Willow Young would lend Albert his guitar and taught him the altered tuning that he used throughout his career. Collins tuned his guitar to an open F-minor chord (FCFAbCF), with a capo at the 5th, 6th or 7th fret. At the age of twelve, he decided to concentrate on learning the guitar after hearing “Boogie Chillen’” by John Lee Hooker.
more...Franklin Joseph Lymon (September 30, 1942 – February 27, 1968) was an American rock and roll/rhythm and blues singer and songwriter, best known as the boy soprano lead singer of the New York City-based early rock and roll group The Teenagers. On February 27, 1968, Lymon was found dead of a heroin overdose at the age of 25 on the floor of his grandmother’s bathroom with a syringe by his side.
more...The Cartwheel Galaxy (also known as ESO 350-40 or PGC 2248) is a lenticular galaxy and ring galaxy about 500 million light-years away in the constellation Sculptor. It is an estimated 150,000 light-years diameter, and has a mass of about 2.9–4.8 × 109 solar masses; its outer ring has a circular velocity of 217 km/s.
It was discovered by Fritz Zwicky in 1941. Zwicky considered his discovery to be “one of the most complicated structures awaiting its explanation on the basis of stellar dynamics.” An estimation of the galaxy’s span resulted in a conclusion of 150,000 light years, which is slightly smaller than the Milky Way.
This galaxy resembles a bull’s eye, which is appropriate because its appearance is partly due to a smaller galaxy that passed through the middle of this object. The violent collision produced shock waves that swept through the galaxy and triggered large amounts of star formation. X-rays from Chandra (purple) show disturbed hot gas initially hosted by the Cartwheel galaxy being dragged over more than 150,000 light years by the collision. Optical data from Hubble (red, green, and blue) show where this collision may have triggered the star formation.
more...Patrice Louise Rushen (born September 30, 1954) is an American jazz pianist and R&B singer. She is also a composer, record producer, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and music director.
Her 1982 single, “Forget Me Nots“, received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance. The instrumental “Number One” from her album Straight from the Heart earned an additional Grammy nomination for best instrumental. Her 12th album, Signature, also received a Grammy nomination for best instrumental in 1998.
Rushen also serves as an ambassador for artistry in education at the Berklee College of Music and the chair of the popular music program at the USC Thornton School of Music.
Rushen is the elder of two daughters born to Allen and Ruth Rushen. Patrice was three years old when she began playing the piano, and by the time she was six she was giving classical recitals. In her teens, she attended south LA’s Locke High School and went on to earn a degree in music from the University of Southern California.
After winning a competition at the age of 17 that enabled her to perform with her band at the Monterey Jazz Festival, Rushen signed with the Prestige label, releasing three albums with them – Prelusion (1974), Before the Dawn (1975), and Shout It Out (1977). In 1978, when she was 23, she began recording with Elektra.
more...Marc Bolan (/ˈboʊlən/ BOH-lən; born Mark Feld; 30 September 1947 – 16 September 1977) was an English singer, songwriter, musician, record producer, and poet. He was the lead singer of the band T. Rex and was one of the pioneers of the glam rock movement of the 1970s.
Bolan’s appearance on the BBC’s music show Top of the Pops in March 1971, wearing glitter and satins, is often cited as the beginning of the glam rock movement. Music critic Ken Barnes called Bolan “the man who started it all”. T. Rex’s 1971 album Electric Warrior, with all songs written by Bolan, including the UK chart topper “Get It On“, has been described by AllMusic as “the album that essentially kick-started the UK glam rock craze.”Producer Tony Visconti, who would also work with another major glam rock pioneer David Bowie, stated, “What I saw in Marc Bolan had nothing to do with strings, or very high standards of artistry; what I saw in him was raw talent. I saw genius. I saw a potential rock star in Marc – right from the minute, the hour I met him.”
Bolan died at the age of 29 in a car crash two weeks before his 30th birthday. In 1977, a memorial stone and bust of Bolan, Marc Bolan’s Rock Shrine, was unveiled at the site where he died in Barnes, London. As a member of T. Rex, Bolan will be posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2020. On 16 September 1977, Bolan was riding in a Mini 1275GT driven by Gloria Jones as they headed home from Mortons club and restaurant in Berkeley Square. After she crossed a small humpback bridge near Gipsy Lane on Queens Ride, Barnes, southwest London, the car struck a fence post and then a tree. Bolan was killed instantly, while Jones suffered a broken arm and broken jaw.
more...Oscar Pettiford (September 30, 1922 – September 8, 1960) was an American jazz double bassist, cellist and composer. He was one of the earliest musicians to work in the bebop idiom.
Pettiford was born at Okmulgee, Oklahoma. His mother was Choctaw, and his father was half Cherokee and half African American.
He grew up playing in the family band in which he sang and danced before switching to piano at the age of 12, then to double bass when he was 14. He is quoted as saying he did not like the way people were playing the bass so he developed his own way of playing it. Despite being admired by the likes of Milt Hinton at the age of 14, he gave up in 1941 as he did not believe he could make a living. Five months later, he once again met Hinton, who persuaded him to return to music.
In 1942 he joined the Charlie Barnet band and in 1943 gained wider public attention after recording with Coleman Hawkins on his “The Man I Love“. Pettiford also recorded with Earl Hines and Ben Webster around this time. After he moved to New York, he was one of the musicians (together with Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Kenny Clarke) who in the early 1940s jammed at Minton’s Playhouse, where the music style developed that later was called bebop. He and Dizzy Gillespie led a bop group in 1943. In 1945 Pettiford went with Hawkins to California, where he appeared in The Crimson Canary, a mystery movie known for its jazz soundtrack, which also featured Josh White. He then worked with Duke Ellington from 1945 to 1948 and for Woody Herman in 1949 before working mainly as a leader in the 1950s. He died in 1960 in Copenhagen shortly before his 38th birthday, from a virus closely related to polio.
more...Bernard “Buddy” Rich (September 30, 1917 – April 2, 1987 NY,NY) was an American jazz drummer and bandleader. He is considered one of the most influential drummers of all time.
Rich was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He discovered his affinity for jazz music at a young age and began drumming at the age of 2. He began playing jazz in 1937, working with acts such as Tommy Dorsey, Count Basie, and Harry James. From 1942 to 1944, Rich served in the U.S. Marines. In 1966, he recorded a big-band style arrangement of songs from West Side Story. He found lasting success in 1967 with the formation of the Buddy Rich Big Band.
Rich was known for his virtuoso technique, power, and speed.[1] He was an advocate of the traditional grip, though he occasionally used match grip when playing the toms. Despite his commercial success and musical talent, Rich never learned how to read sheet music, preferring to listen to drum parts and play them from memory.
In 1987, Rich was admitted to the hospital after suffering a paralysis on his left side. Doctors later discovered and removed a malignant brain tumor. He died on April 2, 1987 at the age of 69, and was buried in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.
more...Arp 227 consists of two galaxies in the constellation Pisces: the large (250,000 light-years across) lenticular galaxy NGC 474 (also known as UGC 864) located about 93 million light-years away, and the spiral galaxy NGC 470 at about 95 million light-years away. They lie at a separation of about 160,000 light-years.
Astronomers detected two additional members of the group which indicates that the pair constitutes the dominant members of a loose group. Evidence also suggests that Arp 227 is an evolving group in the early phase of its evolution and that its drivers are the accretion of faint galaxies and the ongoing large-scale interaction between NGC 470 and 474.
There is a tidal tail of gas and dust that connects NGC 474 to NGC 470, showing that the two are currently undergoing interaction. The low X-ray luminosity of NGC 470 seems to be a characteristic of dynamically young systems.
NGC 474 is a classic shell galaxy. These are usually the result of a merger though there’s no evidence of this in this case. All stars in it have a common motion. Normally if there’s a recent merger there are two families of stellar motion evident in the galaxy. That isn’t the case here.
The origin of the faint, wide arcs or shells of NGC 474 could have been formed by a gravitational encounter with NGC 470. But if NGC 470 caused the distortions in 474 why isn’t it similarly distorted as its mass appears less it should be even more torn up? This remains unknown.
more...Roy Sinclair Campbell Jr. (September 29, 1952 – January 9, 2014) was an American trumpeter frequently linked to free jazz, although he also performed rhythm and blues and funk during his career.
Born in Los Angeles, California, in 1952, Campbell was raised in New York City. At the age of fifteen he began learning to play trumpet and soon studied at the Jazz Mobile program along with Kenny Dorham, Lee Morgan and Joe Newman. Throughout the 1960s, still unacquainted with the avant-garde movement, Campbell performed in the big bands of the Manhattan Community College. From the 1970s onwards he performed primarily within the context of free jazz, spending some of this period studying with Yusef Lateef.
In the early 1990s Campbell moved to the Netherlands and performed regularly with Klaas Hekman and Don Cherry. In addition to leading his own groups, he performed with Yo La Tengo, William Parker, Peter Brötzmann, Matthew Shipp, and other improvisors. Upon returning to the United Stateshe began leading his group Other Dimensions In Music and also formed the Pyramid Trio, a pianoless trio formed with William Parker. He died in January 2014 of hypertensive atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease at the age of 61.
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Jean-Luc Ponty (born 29 September 1942) is a French jazz violinist and composer.
Ponty was born into a family of classical musicians on 29 September 1942 in Avranches, France. His father taught violin, his mother taught piano. At sixteen, he was admitted to the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, graduating two years later with the institution’s highest honor, Premier Prix (first prize). He was hired by the Concerts Lamoureux symphony in which he played for three years.
While still a member of the orchestra in Paris, Ponty picked up a side job playing clarinet (which his father had taught him) for a college jazz band that regularly performed at local parties. It proved life-changing. A growing interest in Miles Davis and John Coltrane compelled him to take up tenor saxophone. One night after an orchestra concert, and still wearing his tuxedo, Ponty found himself at a local club with only his violin. Within four years, he was widely accepted as the leading figure in “jazz fiddle”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fE29sbv6gik
more...Jerry Lee Lewis (born September 29, 1935) is an American singer, musician and pianist, often known by his nickname, The Killer. He has been described as “rock & roll’s first great wild man and one of the most influential pianists of the twentieth century.”
A pioneer of rock and roll and rockabilly music, Lewis made his first recordings in 1956 at Sun Records in Memphis. “Crazy Arms” sold 300,000 copies in the South, but it was his 1957 hit “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” that shot Lewis to fame worldwide. He followed this with “Great Balls of Fire“, “Breathless” and “High School Confidential“. However, Lewis’s rock and roll career faltered in the wake of his marriage to Myra Gale Brown, his 13-year-old cousin.
His popularity quickly eroded following the scandal and with few exceptions such as a cover of Ray Charles‘s “What’d I Say“, he did not have much chart success in the early 1960s. His live performances at this time were increasingly wild and energetic. His 1964 live album Live at the Star Club, Hamburg is regarded by music journalists and fans as one of the wildest and greatest live rock albums ever. In 1968, Lewis made a transition into country music and had hits with songs such as “Another Place, Another Time“. This reignited his career, and throughout the late 1960s and 1970s he regularly topped the country-western charts; throughout his seven-decade career, Lewis has had 30 songs reach the top 10 on the “Billboard Country and Western Chart“. His No. 1 country hits included “To Make Love Sweeter for You“, “There Must Be More to Love Than This“, “Would You Take Another Chance on Me“, and “Me and Bobby McGee“.
Lewis’s successes continued throughout the decades and he embraced his rock and roll past with songs such as a cover of the Big Bopper‘s “Chantilly Lace” and Mack Vickery‘s “Rockin’ My Life Away”. In the 21st century, Lewis continues to tour around the world and still releases new albums. His 2006 album Last Man Standing is his best selling to date, with over a million copies sold worldwide. This was followed by Mean Old Manin 2010, which has received some of the best sales of Lewis’s career.
more...This stunning image by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features the spiral galaxy NGC 5643 in the constellation of Lupus (The Wolf). Looking this good isn’t easy; thirty different exposures, for a total of 9 hours observation time, together with the high resolution and clarity of Hubble, were needed to produce an image of such high level of detail and of beauty.
NGC 5643 is about 60 million light-years away from Earth and has been the host of a recent supernova event (not visible in this latest image). This supernova (2017cbv) was a specific type in which a white dwarf steals so much mass from a companion star that it becomes unstable and explodes. The explosion releases significant amounts of energy and lights up that part of the galaxy.
The observation was proposed by Adam Riess, who was awarded a Nobel Laureate in physics 2011 for his contributions to the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe, alongside Saul Perlmutter and Brian Schmidt.
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