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Julian Edwin “Cannonball” Adderley (September 15, 1928 – August 8, 1975) was an American jazz alto saxophonist of the hard bop era of the 1950s and 1960s.
Adderley is remembered for his 1966 soul jazz single “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy“, written by Joe Zawinul and also a major crossover hit on the pop charts (it was covered by the Buckinghams). He worked with trumpeter Miles Davis, on his own 1958 Somethin’ Else album, and on the seminal Davis records Milestones (1958) and Kind of Blue (1959). He was the elder brother of jazz trumpeter Nat Adderley, a longtime member of his band.
Originally from Tampa, Florida, Adderley moved to New York in 1955. His nickname derived from “cannibal”, a title imposed on him by high school colleagues as a tribute to his voracious appetite.
Cannonball moved to Tallahassee, when his parents obtained teaching positions at Florida A&M University. Both Cannonball and brother Nat played with Ray Charles when Charles lived in Tallahassee during the early 1940s. Adderley moved to Broward County, Florida, in 1948 after finishing his music studies at Florida A&M and became the band director at Dillard High School in Fort Lauderdale, a position which he held until 1950.
Cannonball left Southeast Florida and moved to New York City in 1955. One of his known addresses in New York was in the neighborhood of Corona, Queens. He left Florida originally to seek graduate studies at New York conservatories, but one night in 1955 he brought his saxophone with him to the Café Bohemia. Cannonball was asked to sit in with Oscar Pettiford in place of his band’s regular saxophonist, who was late for the gig. The “buzz” on the New York jazz scene after Adderley’s performance announced him as the heir to the mantle of Charlie Parker.
Adderley formed his own group with his brother Nat after signing onto the Savoy jazz label in 1957. He was noticed by Miles Davis, and it was because of his blues-rooted alto saxophone that Davis asked him to play with his group. He joined the Davis band in October 1957, three months prior to the return of John Coltrane to the group. Some of Davis’s finest trumpet work can be found on Adderley’s solo album Somethin’ Else (also featuring Art Blakey and Hank Jones), which was recorded shortly after the two giants met. Adderley then played on the seminal Davis records Milestones and Kind of Blue. This period also overlapped with pianist Bill Evans‘ time with the sextet, an association that led to recording Portrait of Cannonball and Know What I Mean?.
more...Roger “Ram” Ramirez (September 15, 1913 – 11 January 1994) was an American jazz pianist and composer. He was a co-writer of the song “Lover Man (Oh, Where Can You Be?)”
Ramirez was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico on September 15, 1913. He grew up in New York and started playing the piano at a young age. Ramirez’s first professional performances were in the early 1930s. In 1933 he played with Monette Moore, then with Rex Stewart and Sid Catlett in New York. He joined Willie Bryant in 1935, and toured Europe with Bobby Martin in 1937. During the first half of the 1940s Ramirez played with Ella Fitzgerald, Frankie Newton, Charlie Barnet, John Kirby, and Catlett, in addition to leading his own band.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHPhCWIKcO0
more...Arvell Shaw (September 15, 1923, St. Louis, Missouri – December 5, 2002, Roosevelt, New York) was an American jazz double-bassist, best known for his work with Louis Armstrong.
Shaw learned to play tuba in high school, but switched to bass soon after. In 1942 he worked with Fate Marable on riverboats traveling on the Mississippi River, then served in the Navy from 1942 to 1945. After his discharge he played with Armstrong in his last big band, from 1945 to 1947. Shaw and Sid Catlett then joined the Louis Armstrong All-Stars until 1950, when Shaw broke off to study music. He returned to play with Armstrong from 1952 to 1956, and performed in the 1956 musical High Society.
Shaw performed with Louis Armstrong and his All Stars with Velma Middleton singing vocals for the famed ninth Cavalcade of Jazz concert held at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles. The concert was produced by Leon Hefflin, Sr. on June 7, 1953. Also featured that day were Roy Brownand his Orchestra, Don Tosti and His Mexican Jazzmen, Earl Bostic, Nat “King” Cole, and Shorty Rogers and his Orchestra.[1][2]
Following this he worked at CBS with Russ Case, did time in Teddy Wilson‘s trio, and played with Benny Goodman at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair. After a few years in Europe, he played again with Goodman on a tour of Central America in 1962. From 1962–64 Shaw played again with Armstrong, and occasionally accompanied him through the end of the 1960s. After the 1960s Shaw mostly freelanced in New York and kept playing until his death. He recorded only once as a leader, a live concert from 1991 of his Satchmo Legacy Band.
more...Silas Hogan (September 15, 1911 – January 9, 1994) was an American blues musician. His most notable recordings are “Airport Blues” and “Lonesome La La”. He was the front man of the Rhythm Ramblers. Hogan was inducted into the Louisiana Blues Hall of Fame.
Hogan learned to play the guitar as a teenager and was performing regularly by the late 1930s. He was influenced by Jimmy Reed, as were Lazy Lester and Slim Harpo. He had relocated to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, by the early 1950s and, equipped with a Fender electric guitar, formed the Rhythm Ramblers, with Isaiah Chapman (lead guitar), Jimmy Dotson (drums), and Sylvester Buckley (harmonica). They stayed together for almost ten years and contributed to the development of the Baton Rouge blues sound.
more...Roy Claxton Acuff (September 15, 1903 – November 23, 1992 Maynardville, TN) was an American country music singer, fiddler, promoter, and freemason. Known as the “King of Country Music”, Acuff is often credited with moving the genre from its early string band and “hoedown” format to the singer-based format that helped make it internationally successful. In 1952, Hank Williams told Ralph Gleason, “He’s the biggest singer this music ever knew. You booked him and you didn’t worry about crowds. For drawing power in the South, it was Roy Acuff, then God.”
Acuff began his music career in the 1930s and gained regional fame as the singer and fiddler for his group, the Smoky Mountain Boys. He joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1938, and although his popularity as a musician waned in the late 1940s, he remained one of the Opry’s key figures and promoters for nearly four decades. In 1942, Acuff and Fred Rose founded Acuff-Rose Music, the first major Nashville-based country music publishing company, which signed such artists as Hank Williams, Roy Orbison, and the Everly Brothers. In 1962, Acuff became the first living inductee into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-gwQkJOphI
more...The twisting patterns created by the multiple spiral arms of NGC 2835 create the illusion of an eye. This is a fitting description, as this magnificent galaxy resides near the head of the southern constellation of Hydra, the water snake. This stunning barred spiral galaxy, with a width of just over half that of the Milky Way, is brilliantly featured in this image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Although it cannot be seen in this image, a supermassive black hole with a mass millions of times that of our Sun is known to nestle in the very centre of NGC 2835 .
This galaxy was imaged as part of PHANGS-HST, a large galaxy survey with Hubble that aims to study the connections between cold gas and young stars in a variety of galaxies in the local Universe. Within NGC 2835, this cold, dense gas produces large numbers of young stars within large star formation regions. The bright blue areas, commonly observed in the outer spiral arms of many galaxies, show where near-ultraviolet light is being emitted more strongly , indicating recent or ongoing star formation.
Expected to image over 100 000 gas clouds and star-forming regions outside our Milky Way, this survey hopes to uncover and clarify many of the links between cold gas clouds, star formation and the overall shape and morphology of galaxies. This initiative is a collaboration with the international Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope’s MUSE instrument, through the greater PHANGS program (PI: E. Schinnerer).
more...Oliver Lake (born September 14, 1942 Marianna, AK) is an American jazz saxophonist, flutist, composer, poet, and visual artist. He is known mainly for alto saxophone but he also performs on soprano and flute. During the 1960s Lake worked with the Black Artists Group in St. Louis. In 1977 he founded the World Saxophone Quartet with David Murray, Julius Hemphill, and Hamiet Bluiett. He has worked in the group Trio 3 with Reggie Workman and Andrew Cyrille. He has appeared on more than 80 albums as a bandleader, co-leader, and side musician. He is the father of drummer Gene Lake. Lake has been a resident of Montclair, New Jersey.
more...Joseph Jarman (September 14, 1937 – January 9, 2019) was an American jazz musician, composer, poet, and Shinshu Buddhist priest. He was one of the first members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and a member of the Art Ensemble of Chicago.
Jarman grew up in Chicago, Illinois. At DuSable High School he studied drums with Walter Dyett, switching to saxophone and clarinet when he joined the United States Army after graduation. During his time there, he was part of the 11th Airborne Division Band for a year. After he was discharged from the army in 1958, Jarman attended Wilson Junior College, where he met bassist Malachi Favors Maghostut and saxophonists Roscoe Mitchell, Henry Threadgill, and Anthony Braxton. These men would often perform long jam sessions at the suggestion of their professor Richard Wang (now with Illinois University). Mitchell introduced Jarman to pianist Muhal Richard Abrams, and Jarman, Mitchell, and Maghostut joined Abrams’ Experimental Band, a private, non-performing ensemble, when that group was founded in 1961. The same group of musicians continued to play together in a variety of configurations, and went on to found the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in 1965, along with Fred Anderson and Phil Cohran.
more...Israel López Valdés (September 14, 1918 – March 22, 2008), better known as Cachao (/kəˈtʃaʊ/ kə-CHOW), was a Cuban double bassist and composer. Cachao is widely known as the co-creator of the mambo and a master of the descarga (improvised jam sessions).[2] Throughout his career he also performed and recorded in a variety of music styles ranging from classical music to salsa. An exile in the United States since the 1960s, he only achieved international fame following a career revival in the 1990s.
Born into a family of musicians in Havana, Cachao and his older brother Orestes were the driving force behind one of Cuba’s most prolific charangas, Arcaño y sus Maravillas. As members of the Maravillas, Cachao and Orestes pioneered a new form of ballroom music derived from the danzón, the danzón-mambo, which subsequently developed into an international genre, mambo. In the 1950s, Cachao became famous for popularizing improvised jam sessions known as descargas. He emigrated to Spain in 1961, and moved to the United States in 1963, starting a career as a session and live musician for a variety of bands in New York during the rise of boogaloo, and later, salsa.
In the 1970s, Cachao fell into obscurity after moving to Las Vegas and later Miami, releasing albums sporadically as a leader. In the 1990s, he was re-discovered by actor Andy García, who brought him back to the forefront of the Latin music scene with the release of a documentary and several albums. Before his death in 2008, Cachao had earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and several Grammy Awards. He is ranked number 24 on Bass Player magazine’s list of “The 100 Greatest Bass Players of All Time”.
more...Hezekiah Leroy Gordon Smith (August 14, 1909 – September 25, 1967), better known as Stuff Smith, was an American jazz violinist. He is well known for the song “If You’re a Viper” (the original title was “You’se a Viper”).
Smith was, along with Stéphane Grappelli, Michel Warlop, Svend Asmussen and Joe Venuti, one of jazz music’s preeminent violinists of the swing era.
He was born in Portsmouth, Ohio, United States in 1909, and studied violin with his father. Smith cited Louis Armstrong as his primary influence and inspiration to play jazz, and like Armstrong, was a vocalist as well as instrumentalist. In the 1920s, he played in Texas as a member of Alphonse Trent‘s band. After moving to New York City he performed regularly with his sextet at the Onyx Club starting in 1935, and also with Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and later, Sun Ra.
more...Giorgos Papasideris (Greek: Γιώργος Παπασιδέρης 14 September 1902 – 8 October 1977) was a Greek singer, composer, and lyricist of Arvanite origin. He was born on Salamis Island. After leaving elementary school, he spent his entire career working professionally in the field of traditional Greek folk music and Arvanite folk music, producing many popular recordings. He died of a heart attack in 1977 on Salamis Island. In a district of Salamis City, named Alonia in the birthplace of Papasideris, there is a bust in memory of him.
more...Memorial
Born in Bellharbour in 1924 (died 9-9-2020), Chris is regarded as a legendary concertina player. Over his near nine decade music career, he has been acknowledged with many prestigious accolades including the TG4 Grádam Saoil award for lifetime achievement; a CCÉ Bardic Award, a Teastas award, the Clare Person of the Year Award in 2012 and the 2018 MÓRglór award.
From 1956 onwards, he would become a ten-time senior All-Ireland concertina champion, nine of which were solo efforts and one included a duet with fiddler Gus Tierney. Droney travelled the country and the world playing music. He played alongside the Bell Harbour Céilí Band, the Kilfenora Céilí Band, the Ballinakill Céilí Band, Augrim Slopes and the Kincora Céilí Band throughout his career. He also released three solo recordings, The Flowing Tide, (1962), The Fertile Rock, (1995) and Down From Bell Harbour, (2005).
more...In the case of low-mass stars like our Sun and M2-9 pictured here, the stars transform themselves from normal stars to white dwarfs by casting off their outer gaseous envelopes. The expended gas frequently forms an impressive display called a planetary nebula that fades gradually over thousands of years. M2-9, a butterfly planetary nebula 2100 light-years away shown in representative colors, has wings that tell a strange but incomplete tale. In the center, two stars orbit inside a gaseous disk 10 times the orbit of Pluto. The expelled envelope of the dying star breaks out from the disk creating the bipolar appearance. Much remains unknown about the physical processes that cause and shape planetary nebulae.
more...Tony Russell “Charles” Brown (September 13, 1922 – January 21, 1999) was an American blues singer and pianist whose soft-toned, slow-paced blues-club style influenced blues performance in the 1940s and 1950s. Between 1949 and 1952, Brown had seven Top 10 hits in the U.S. BillboardR&B chart. His best-selling recordings included “Driftin’ Blues” and “Merry Christmas Baby“.
Brown was born in Texas City, Texas. As a child he loved music and received classical music training on the piano. He graduated from Central High School in Galveston, Texas, in 1939 and Prairie View A&M College in 1942 with a degree in chemistry. He then became a chemistry teacher at George Washington Carver High School in Baytown, Texas, a mustard gas worker at the Pine Bluff Arsenal at Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and an apprentice electrician at a shipyard in Richmond, California, before settling in Los Angeles in 1943.
more...Leon Brown “Chu” Berry (September 13, 1908 – October 30, 1941) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist during the 1930s.
According to music critic Gary Giddins, musicians called him “Chu” either because he chewed on the mouthpiece of his saxophone or because he had a Fu Manchu mustache.
Berry was born in Wheeling, West Virginia. He graduated from Lincoln High School, in Wheeling, then attended West Virginia State College for three years. His sister Ann played piano. Berry became interested in music at an early age, playing alto saxophone, at first with local bands. He was inspired to take up the tenor saxophone after hearing Coleman Hawkins on tour.
Most of Berry’s career was spent with swing bands: Sammy Stewart, 1929–1930, with whom he switched to tenor sax, Benny Carter, 1932–1933, Teddy Hill, 1933–1935, Fletcher Henderson, 1935–1937, Cab Calloway, his best-known affiliation, from 1937 to 1941.
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