mick laBriola

Eddie Durham (August 19, 1906 – March 6, 1987) was an American jazz guitarist who was one of the pioneers of the electric guitar in jazz. He was a guitarist, trombonist, composer, and arranger for the orchestras of Bennie Moten, Jimmie Lunceford, and Count Basie.

With Edgar Battle he composed “Topsy“, which was recorded by Count Basie and became a hit for Benny Goodman.

In 1938, Durham wrote “I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire” with Bennie Benjamin, Sol Marcus, and Eddie Seiler. During the 1940s, Durham created Eddie Durham’s All-Star Girl Orchestra, an African-American all female swing band that toured the United States and Canada. Durham was born in San Marcos, Texas on August 19, 1906 to Joseph Durham, Sr., and Luella Rabb (nee Mohawk) Durham. From an early age, Durham performed with his family in the Durham Brothers Band. At the age of eighteen, Eddie began traveling and playing in regional bands.

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features the spectacular galaxy NGC 2442.

This galaxy was host to a supernova explosion, known as SN2015F, that was created by a white dwarf star. The white dwarf was part of a binary star system and syphoned mass from its companion, eventually becoming too greedy and taking on more than it could handle. This unbalanced the star and triggered runaway nuclear fusionthat eventually led to an intensely violent supernova explosion.

SN2015F was spotted in March 2015 in the galaxy named NGC 2442, nicknamed the Meathook Galaxy owing to its extremely asymmetrical and irregular shape. The supernova shone brightly for quite some time and was easily visible from Earth through even a small telescope until later that summer.

Antonio Salieri (UK: /ˌsæliˈɛəri/ SAL-ee-AIR-ee, US: /sɑːlˈjɛəri/ sahl-YAIR-ee, Italian: [anˈtɔːnjo saˈljɛːri]; 18 August 1750 – 7 May 1825) was an Italian classicalcomposer, conductor, and teacher. He was born in Legnago, south of Verona, in the Republic of Venice, and spent his adult life and career as a subject of the Habsburg Monarchy.

Salieri was a pivotal figure in the development of late 18th-century opera. As a student of Florian Leopold Gassmann, and a protégé of Christoph Willibald Gluck, Salieri was a cosmopolitan composer who wrote operas in three languages. Salieri helped to develop and shape many of the features of operatic compositional vocabulary, and his music was a powerful influence on contemporary composers.

Appointed the director of the Italian opera by the Habsburg court, a post he held from 1774 until 1792, Salieri dominated Italian-language opera in Vienna. During his career he also spent time writing works for opera houses in Paris, Rome, and Venice, and his dramatic works were widely performed throughout Europe during his lifetime. As the Austrian imperial Kapellmeister from 1788 to 1824, he was responsible for music at the court chapel and attached school. Even as his works dropped from performance, and he wrote no new operas after 1804, he still remained one of the most important and sought-after teachers of his generation, and his influence was felt in every aspect of Vienna’s musical life. Franz Liszt, Franz Schubert, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Nepomuk Hummel and Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart were among the most famous of his pupils.

Salieri’s music slowly disappeared from the repertoire between 1800 and 1868 and was rarely heard after that period until the revival of his fame in the late 20th century. This revival was due to the fictionalized depiction of Salieri in Peter Shaffer‘s play Amadeus (1979) and its 1984 film version. The death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1791 at the age of 35 was followed by rumors that he and Salieri had been bitter rivals, and that Salieri had poisoned the younger composer, yet this has been proven false, and it is likely that they were, at least, mutually respectful peers.

August 18th 1952

Ed Laub is a locally renowned guitarist and vocalist whose style has been compared to a blend of Kenny Rankin, Chet Baker and James Taylor all being accompanied by Bucky Pizzarelli.  Ed says, “ that’s not bad company to be associated with. They were amongst the artists to whom I listened to and was most influenced by.  I guess I would say I am honored with that comparison”
Because of Ed’s talent as an accompanist and the fact that he is one of the more accomplished 7 String guitarists, he is sought after by many of the top guitarists in the NYC metropolitan area to back them up and adds a pianistic style that makes a duo sound more like a trio.  Focusing mostly on the American Songbook genre Ed also loves to perform the great Brazilian classics using a nylon 7 string guitar.

Born in northern Bergen County, New Jersey in 1952, Ed grew up in a family of musicians and his one uncle was an accomplished organist/arranger who spent many years with Mitch Miller and Fred Waring.  There was always live music at every family gathering and the desire to be part of that encouraged Ed to pursue learning an instrument.  After abandoning the trumpet and the piano, the February 1964 performance of the Beatles on Ed Sullivan’s show was the catalyst to taking up the guitar and singing.

In ’66 Ed had the good fortune to study with a marvelous guitarist and banjoist, Bobby Domenic (Uncle to jazz legend, Bucky Pizzarelli) and ultimately a few years later in 1969, studying the 7 String guitar with Bucky.  Ed graduated from Fairleigh Dickinson University with a degree in music and business and maintained a dual career in both his family business and as a musician in a variety of bands.

12 years ago Ed divorced himself of all his business ties and became the steady partner to his childhood teacher, idol and close friend, Bucky Pizzarelli.  They now travel all over the metropolitan area and major cities in the US, playing in clubs, concert venues and jazz festivals.  All About Jazz Magazine said, “Pizzarelli is the complete jazz musician and Laub complements him perfectly!”

James Alfred Smith Preston (August 18, 1913 – December 17, 1984), known as Jimmy Preston, was an American R&B bandleader, alto saxophonist, drummer and singer who made an important contribution to early rock and roll.

Preston was born in Chester, Pennsylvania, and formed his own group in 1945. His first R&B top ten hit was with “Hucklebuck Daddy” in 1949, recorded for Philadelphia’s Gotham Records. His main claim to fame was to record, as Jimmy Preston and His Prestonians, the original version of “Rock the Joint” for Gotham in 1949. The sax breaks on “Rock the Joint” were the work of tenor player Danny Turner (1920–1995). “Rock the Joint” was re-recorded by Jimmy Cavallo in 1951, and Bill Haley and the Saddlemen in 1952.

In 1950, tenor saxophone player Benny Golson and pianist Billy Gaines were added to his new line-up and recorded songs like “Early Morning Blues” and “Hayride”. Preston moved to Derby Records and had a final R&B hit with a cover of Louis Prima’s “Oh Babe”. Preston gave up playing music in 1952, but as Reverend Dr. James S. Preston, he founded the Victory Baptist Church in 1962. He died in Philadelphia in 1984, aged 71.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksYq6JZl0Ks

Enoch Henry Light (18 August 1905, in Canton, Ohio – 31 July 1978, in Redding, Connecticut) was an American classically trained violinist, danceband leader, and recording engineer. As the leader of various dance bands that recorded as early as March 1927 and continuing through at least 1940, Light and his band primarily worked in various hotels in New York. For a time in 1928 he also led a band in Paris. In the 1930s Light also studied conducting with the French conductor Maurice Frigara in Paris.

Throughout the 1930s, Light and his outfits were steadily employed in the generally more upscale hotel restaurants and ballrooms in New York that catered to providing polite ambiance for dining and functional dance music of current popular songs rather than out-and-out jazz.

At some point his band was tagged “The Light Brigade” and they often broadcast over radio live from the Hotel Taft in New York where they had a long residency. Through 1940, Light and his band recorded for various labels including Brunswick, ARC, Vocalion and Bluebird. Later on, as A&R (Artists and Repertoire) chief and vice-president of Grand Award Records, he founded his own label, Command Records, in 1959. Light’s name was prominent on many albums both as musician and producer.

Light is credited with being one of the first musicians to go to extreme lengths to create high-quality recordings that took full advantage of the technical capabilities of home audio equipment of the late 1950s and early 1960s, particularly stereo effects that bounced the sounds between the right and left channels (often described as “Ping-pong recording“), which had huge influence on the whole concept of multi-track recording that would become commonplace in the ensuing years. Doing so, he arranged his musicians in ways to produce the kinds of recorded sounds he wished to achieve, even completely isolating various groups of them from each other in the recording studio. The first of the albums produced on his record label, Command Records, Persuasive Percussion, became one of the first big-hit LP discs based solely on retail sales. His music received little or no airplay on the radio, because AM radio, the standard of the day, was monaural and had very poor fidelity. Light went on to release several albums in the Persuasive Percussion series, as well as a Command test record.

Image showing a sky field in the southern constellation Hydra (The Water-snake) that includes the peculiar spiral galaxy ESO 510-13 . It resembles the famous “Sombrero” galaxy, but its equatorial dust plane is pronouncedly warped. The velocity is 3300 km/sec, the distance is about 170 million light-years and the size is 100,000 light-years. The fact that the dust band and the rest of this galaxy are not well aligned is a clear sign that the former was acquired recently (in astronomical terms). The dust band is still in the process of achieving a more stable state by becoming flat. It is not obvious how it was formed; it may for instance be the result of a merger with a gas-rich dwarf galaxy and the elliptical galaxy. In any case, this is a most interesting object that will undoubtedly soon be studied in more detail, with the VLT and other large telescopes. The photo displays a very large number of fainter objects near this galaxy. Many of these are likely to be globular clusters of stars associated with the galaxy; others are background galaxies. It would indeed appear that ESO 510-13 is located right in front of one or more, distant clusters of galaxies. This three-colour composite (BVI) was obtained with VLT ANTU and FORS in the morning of March 15, 1999. Field size: 6.8×6.8 arcmin 2 ; North is up and East is to the left.

Dave “Snaker” Ray (August 17, 1943 – November 28, 2002) was an American blues singer and guitarist from St. Paul, Minnesota, United States, who was most notably associated with Spider John Koerner and Tony “Little Sun” Glover in the early Sixties folk revival. Together, the three released albums under the name Koerner, Ray & Glover. They gained notice with their album Blues, Rags and Hollers, originally released by Audiophile in 1963 and re-released by Elektra Records later that year.

Born James David Ray, he was the eldest child of James and Nellie Ray. In this teens, he was inspired by a Segovia concert, and his parents gave him a gut-string guitar. He and his brother Tom took classical guitar lessons for about a year. Ray’s youngest brother, Max, started on the clarinet and then moved on to the saxophone; his mother, Nellie, played the organ well into her eighties. On occasion Tom would play piano and Max saxophone in various iterations of Ray’s local bands. Max Ray went on to have a successful musical career with the Wallets and Gondwana.

In 1967, Ray was in a motorcycle accident and broke his wrist. While in a cast, he relearned to play the guitar with a flat pick. The years from 1963 to 1971 were prolific for Koerner, Ray and Glover. Either solo or in some combination of the trio, they released at least one album a year. The group never rehearsed together or did much at all together. Ray liked to call the group, “Koerner and/or Ray and/or Glover”.

Luther Allison (August 17, 1939 – August 12, 1997) was an American blues guitarist. He was born in Widener, Arkansas, although some accounts suggest his actual place of birth was Mayflower, Arkansas. Allison was interested in music as a child and during the late 1940s he toured in a family gospel group called The Southern Travellers. He moved with his family to Chicago in 1951 and attended Farragut High School where he was classmates with Muddy Water‘s son. He taught himself guitar and began listening to blues extensively. Three years later he dropped out of school and began hanging around outside blues nightclubs with the hopes of being invited to perform. Allison played with the bands of Howlin’ Wolfand Freddie King, taking over King’s band when King toured nationally. He worked with Jimmy Dawkins, Magic Sam and Otis Rush, and also backed James Cotton.

From 1954 Allison would sit in and jam with his brother’s band, the Ollie Lee Allison Band. By 1957 he had formed a band with Ollie and another brother, Grant Allison, initially called The Rolling Stones, later changed to The Four Jivers, and they performed at clubs in Chicago.

Allison’s big break came in 1957, when Howlin’ Wolf invited him to the stage. The same year he worked briefly with Jimmy Dawkins, playing in local clubs. Freddie King took Allison under his wing, and after King got a record deal, Allison took over his gig in the house band of a club on Chicago’s West Side. He worked the club circuit in the late 1950s and early 1960s. During this period, Allison moved to California for a year where he worked with Shakey Jake Harris and Sunnyland Slim. He recorded his first single in 1965. He signed a recording contract with Delmark Records in 1967 and released his debut album, Love Me Mama, the following year. He performed a well-received set at the 1969 Ann Arbor Blues Festival and as a result was asked to perform there in each of the next three years. He toured nationwide. In 1972, he signed with Motown Records, one of the few blues artists on that label. In the mid-1970s he toured Europe. He moved to France in 1977.

Floyd Westerman, also known as Kanghi Duta (“Red Crow” in Dakota) (August 17, 1936 – December 13, 2007), was a Dakota Sioux musician, political activist, and actor. After establishing a career as a country music singer, later in his life he became an actor, usually depicting Native American elders in American films and television. He is also credited as Floyd Red Crow Westerman. As a political activist, he spoke and marched for Native American causes.

He was born Floyd Westerman on the Lake Traverse Indian Reservation, home of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, a federally recognized tribe that is one of the sub-tribes of the Eastern Dakota section of the Great Sioux Nation, located in the U.S. state of South Dakota. His Indigenous name Kanghi Duta means “Red Crow” in the Dakota language (which is one of the three inter-related Siouan languages of the Great Plains).

At the age of 10, Westerman was sent to the Wahpeton Boarding School, where he first met Dennis Banks (who as an adult became a leader of the American Indian Movement). There Westerman and the other children were forced to cut their traditionally long hair and forbidden to speak their native languages. This experience would profoundly impact Westerman’s development and entire life. As an adult, he reclaimed his heritage and became an outspoken advocate for Indigenous cultural preservation.

Westerman graduated from Northern State University with a B.A. degree in secondary education. He served two years in the US Marines, before beginning his career as a country singer.

Columbus Calvin “Duke” Pearson Jr. (August 17, 1932 – August 4, 1980) was an American jazz pianist and composer. Allmusic describes him as having a “big part in shaping the Blue Note label’s hard bop direction in the 1960s as a record producer.”

Pearson was born Columbus Calvin Pearson Jr. in Atlanta, Georgia, to Columbus Calvin and Emily Pearson. The moniker “Duke” was given to him by his uncle, who was a great admirer of Duke Ellington. Before he was six, his mother started giving him piano lessons. He studied the instrument until he was twelve, when he took an interest in brass instruments: mellophone, baritone horn and ultimately trumpet. He was so fond of the trumpet that through high school and college he neglected the piano. He attended Clark College while also playing trumpet in groups in the Atlanta area. While in the U.S. Army, during his 1953–54 draft, he continued to play trumpet and met, among others, the pianist Wynton Kelly. Pearson himself confessed in a 1959 interview that he was “so spoiled by Kelly’s good piano” that he decided to switch to piano again. Also, it seems that dental problems forced him to give up brass instruments.

Pearson performed with different ensembles in Georgia and Florida, including with Tab Smith and Little Willie John, before he moved to New York City in January 1959. He had, however, been able to get at least one song, “Tribute to Brownie” (dedicated to Clifford Brown), recorded by the Cannonball Adderley Quintet on their 1957 album, Sophisticated Swing. In New York, Pearson gained the attention of the trumpeter Donald Byrd, who saw Pearson performing with the Art Farmer/Benny Golson Sextet (known as the Jazztet). Shortly afterwards, Byrd asked Pearson to join his newly formed band, the Donald Byrd–Pepper Adams Quintet. Pearson was also the accompanist for Nancy Wilson on tour in 1961. During that same year, Pearson became ill before a Byrd-Adams show, and a newcomer, Herbie Hancock, took over for him. Hancock eventually took over the position permanently.

Ike Abrams Quebec (August 17, 1918 – January 16, 1963) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. He began his career in the big band era of the 1940s, then fell from prominence for a time until launching a comeback in the years before his death.

Critic Alex Henderson wrote, “Though he was never an innovator, Quebec had a big, breathy sound that was distinctive and easily recognizable, and he was quite consistent when it came to down-home blues, sexy ballads, and up-tempo aggression.”

Quebec was born in Newark, New Jersey, United States. An accomplished dancer and pianist, he switched to tenor sax as his primary instrument in his early twenties, and quickly earned a reputation as a promising player. His recording career started in 1940, with the Barons of Rhythm.

Later on, he recorded or performed with Frankie Newton, Hot Lips Page, Roy Eldridge, Trummy Young, Ella Fitzgerald, Benny Carter and Coleman Hawkins. Between 1944 and 1951, he worked intermittently with Cab Calloway. He began to record for the Blue Note label in this era, and served as a talent scout (helping pianists Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell come to wider attention). Due to his exceptional sight reading skills, Quebec was also an uncredited impromptu arranger for many Blue Note sessions.

Due in part to struggles with heroin addiction (but also due to the fading popularity of the big bands), Quebec recorded only sporadically during the 1950s, though he still performed regularly. He kept abreast of new developments in jazz, and his later playing incorporated elements of hard bop, bossa nova, and soul jazz.