mick laBriola

Douglas Clare Fischer (October 22, 1928 – January 26, 2012 Durand,MI) was an American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader. After graduating from Michigan State University (from which, five decades later, he would receive an honorary doctorate), he became the pianist and arranger for the vocal group the Hi-Lo’s in the late 1950s. Fischer went on to work with Donald Byrd and Dizzy Gillespie, and became known for his Latin and bossa nova recordings in the 1960s. He composed the Latin jazz standard “Morning“, and the jazz standard “Pensativa“. Consistently cited by jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock as a major influence (“I wouldn’t be me without Clare Fischer”), he was nominated for eleven Grammy Awards during his lifetime, winning for his landmark album, 2+2 (1981), the first of Fischer’s records to incorporate the vocal ensemble writing developed during his Hi-Lo’s days into his already sizable Latin jazz discography; it was also the first recorded installment in Fischer’s three-decade-long collaboration with his son Brent. Fischer was also a posthumous Grammy winner for ¡Ritmo! (2012) and for Music for Strings, Percussion and the Rest (2013).

Beginning in the early 1970s, Brent Fischer embarked on a parallel (and far more lucrative) career, eventually becoming a much sought-after arranger, providing orchestral “sweeteners” for pop and R&B artists such as Rufus (with Chaka Khan), Prince (a regular client from 1984 onwards, and by far Fischer’s most frequent in pop music), Robert Palmer, Paul McCartney, Michael Jackson, Celine Dion, Elvis Costello & The Roots, D’Angelo song Really Love from the album Black Messiah Grammy-winner (2016) for best R&B album, Sheila E, and many others.

Cándido de Guerra Camero (born April 22, 1921), also known simply as Cándido, is a Cuban conga and bongo player. He also plays the tres, drums, and acoustic bass. He has worked in many genres of popular music from pop, rock, R&B and disco to Afro-Cuban dance music and Latin jazz. He is the first player to develop techniques to play multiple conga drums, coordinated independence and the use of multiple percussion, one player playing a variety of percussion instruments simultaneously.

Early in his career, Camero recorded in his native Cuba with many of the early pioneers of the son movement as well as being the conga drummer for the Tropicana night club in Havana from its opening night in 1940 and subsequently for the next eight years. He first appeared in NYC in the musical review, Tidbits, at the Plymouth Theater on Broadway in 1946 backing up the Cuban dance team of Carmen and Rolando. In 1948 he made his first U.S. recording with Machito and His Afro-Cubans on the tune, “El Rey Del Mambo.” as well as working with Dizzy Gillespie. During 1953–54, he was in the Billy Taylor Trio and in 1954 he performed and recorded with Stan Kenton.

The featured dark sky composite combines over 60 exposures spanning over 220 degrees to create a veritable menagerie of night sky wonders. Visible celestial icons include the Belt of Orion, the Orion Nebula, the Andromeda Galaxy, the California Nebula, and bright stars Sirius and Betelgeuse. You can verify that you found these, if you did, by checking an annotated version of the image. A bit harder, though, is finding Polaris and the Big Dipper. Also discernible are several meteors from the Quandrantids meteor shower, red and green airglow, and two friends of the astrophotographer. The picture was captured in January from Sardinia, Italy. You can see sky wonders in your own night sky tonight — including more meteors than usual — because tonight is near peak of the yearly Orionids meteor shower.

Manfred Mann (born Manfred Sepse Lubowitz, 21 October 1940 in Johannesburg, Transvaal, Union of South Africa) is a British keyboard player, guitarist, and vocalist, born in South Africa, who became best known as a founding member and eponym of the bands Manfred Mann, Manfred Mann Chapter Three and Manfred Mann’s Earth Band.

Lubowitz was raised in a Jewish family in Johannesburg, South Africa, the son of David Lubowitz and Alma Cohen.He studied music at the University of the Witwatersrand, and worked as a jazz pianist at a number of clubs in Johannesburg. Between 1959 and 1961 he and his childhood friend Saul Ozynski recorded two albums as the Vikings, South Africa’s first rock and roll band.

Doctor Ross (October 21, 1925 – May 28, 1993), also known as Doctor Ross the Harmonica Boss, born Charles Isaiah Ross in Tunica, Mississippi, was an American blues singer, guitarist, harmonica player and drummer.

Ross’s blues style has been compared to that of John Lee Hooker and Sonny Boy Williamson I. His recordings for Sun Records in the 1950s include “The Boogie Disease” and “Chicago Breakdown”. Within the lyrics of “The Boogie Disease”, Ross notably sang “I may get better / but I’ll never get well”.

In 1951 Ross’s records began to get airplay in Mississippi and Arkansas. He recorded with Chess Records and Sun with a group that included folk instruments, such as the washboard.

Úrsula Hilaria Celia de la Caridad Cruz Alfonso (October 21, 1925 – July 16, 2003), known as Celia Cruz, was a Cuban singer and one of the most popular Latin artists of the 20th century. Cruz rose to fame in Cuba during the 1950s as a singer of guarachas, earning the nickname “La Guarachera de Cuba”. In the following decades, she became known internationally as the “Queen of Salsa” or “The Queen of Latin Music” due to her contributions to Latin music in the United States.

She began her career in her native Cuba, earning recognition as a vocalist of the popular musical group Sonora Matancera, a musical association that lasted fifteen years (1950-1965). Cruz mastered a wide variety of Afro-Cuban music styles including guaracha, rumba, afro, son and bolero, recording numerous singles in these styles for Seeco Records. In the early 1960s, after the Cuban Revolution caused the nationalization of the music industry, Cruz left her native country, becoming one of the symbols and spokespersons of the Cuban community in exile. Cruz continued her career, first in Mexico, and then in the United States, the country that she took as her definitive residence. In the 1960s, she collaborated with Tito Puente, recording her signature tune “Bemba colorá”. In the 1970s, she signed for Fania Records and became strongly associated with the salsa genre, releasing hits such as “Quimbara”. She often appeared live with Fania All-Stars and collaborated with Johnny Pacheco and Willie Colón. During the last years of her career, Cruz continued to release successful songs such as “La vida es un carnaval” and “La negra tiene tumbao“.

Her musical legacy is made up of a total of 37 studio albums, as well as numerous live albums and collaborations. Throughout her career, she was awarded numerous prizes and distinctions, including two Grammy Awards and three Latin Grammy Awards. In addition to her prolific career in music, Cruz also made several appearances as an actress in movies and telenovelas. Her catchphrase “¡Azúcar!” (“Sugar!”) has become one of the most recognizable symbols of salsa music.

John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie (/ɡɪˈlɛspi/; October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993 Cheraw, SC) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer, educator and singer. He was a trumpet virtuoso and improviser, building on the virtuoso style of Roy Eldridge^[3] but adding layers of harmonic and rhythmic complexity previously unheard in jazz. His combination of musicianship, showmanship, and wit made him a leading popularizer of the new music called bebop. His beret and horn-rimmed spectacles, his scat singing, his bent horn, pouched cheeks, and his light-hearted personality provided some of bebop’s most prominent symbols.

In the 1940s Gillespie, with Charlie Parker, became a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz. He taught and influenced many other musicians, including trumpeters Miles Davis, Jon Faddis, Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown, Arturo Sandoval, Lee Morgan, Chuck Mangione, and balladeer Johnny Hartman.

Scott Yanow wrote, “Dizzy Gillespie’s contributions to jazz were huge. One of the greatest jazz trumpeters of all time, Gillespie was such a complex player that his contemporaries ended up being similar to those of Miles Davis and Fats Navarro instead, and it was not until Jon Faddis‘s emergence in the 1970s that Dizzy’s style was successfully recreated [….] Gillespie is remembered, by both critics and fans alike, as one of the greatest jazz trumpeters of all time”.

Carlos Wesley “Don” Byas (October 21, 1912 – August 24, 1972) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist, most associated with bebop. He played with Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Art Blakey, and Dizzy Gillespie, among others, and also led his own band. He lived in Europe for the last 26 years of his life.

Byas was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Both of Byas’ parents were musicians. His mother played the piano, and his father, the clarinet. Byas started his training in classical music, learning to play violin, clarinet and alto saxophone, which he played until the end of the 1920s.

NGC 2936 is an interacting spiral galaxy located at a distance of 326 million light years, in the constellation Hydra. NGC 2936 is interacting with elliptical galaxy NGC 2937, located just beneath it. They were both discovered by Albert Marth on Mar 3, 1864.. To some astronomers, the galaxy looks like a penguin or a porpoise. NGC 2936, NGC 2937, and PGC 1237172 are included in the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies as Arp 142 in the category “Galaxy triplet”.

On 20 June 2013, the Hubble Space Telescope examined and photographed NGC 2936.

NGC 2936 was once part of a flat, spiral disk. The orbits of the galaxies stars have been mixed due to gravitational tidal interactions with NGC 2937. Gas from the center of NGC 2936 became compressed out during the encounter with NGC 2937, which is shown as blue knots closest to NGC 2937. The red dust that has been inside the center of the galaxy has been mostly thrown out due to the collision. During the collision, gas coming from NGC 2936 triggered star formation.

Thomas Earl Petty (October 20, 1950 – October 2, 2017) was an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer, and actor. He was the lead vocalist and guitarist of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, formed in 1976. He previously led the band Mudcrutch, and was also a member of the late 1980s supergroup the Traveling Wilburys.

Petty recorded a number of hit singles with the Heartbreakers and as a solo artist. His hit singles with the Heartbreakers include “Don’t Do Me Like That” (1979), “Refugee” (1980), “The Waiting” (1981), “Don’t Come Around Here No More” (1985) and “Learning to Fly” (1991). Petty’s hit singles as a solo act include “I Won’t Back Down” (1989), “Free Fallin’” (1989), and “You Don’t Know How It Feels” (1994). In his career, he sold more than 80 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. Petty and the Heartbreakers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002.

Petty died of an accidental drug overdose on October 2, 2017, one week after the end of the Heartbreakers’ 40th Anniversary Tour.

Eddie Harris (October 20, 1934 – November 5, 1996) was an American jazz musician, best known for playing tenor saxophone and for introducing the electrically amplified saxophone. He was also fluent on the electric piano and organ. His best-known compositions are “Freedom Jazz Dance”, recorded and popularized by Miles Davis in 1966, and “Listen Here.”

Harris was born and grew up in Chicago. His father was from Cuba and his mother from Mississippi. He studied music under Walter Dyett at DuSable High School, as had many other successful Chicago musicians (such as Nat King Cole, Dinah Washington, Clifford Jordan, Johnny Griffin, Gene Ammons, Julian Priester, and Bo Diddley and others). He later studied music at Roosevelt University, by which time he was proficient on piano, vibraphone, and tenor saxophone. While in college, he performed professionally with Gene Ammons.

After college, Harris was drafted into the United States Army and while serving in Europe, he was accepted into the 7th Army Band, which also included Don Ellis, Leo Wright, and Cedar Walton.

Leaving military service, he worked in New York City before returning to Chicago where he signed a contract with Vee Jay Records. His first album for Vee Jay, Exodus to Jazz, included his own jazz arrangement of Ernest Gold‘s theme from the movie Exodus. A shortened version of this track, which featured his masterful playing in the upper register of the tenor saxophone, was heavily played on radio and became the first jazz record ever to be certified gold.

William “Willie” Jones, Jr. (October 20, 1929 – April 1991) was a jazz drummer. He is known for playing and recording with Thelonious Monk, Elmo Hope, and Charles Mingus.

Jones was born in New York on October 20, 1929. He mainly taught himself to play the drums, and played left handed. He played and recorded with pianist Thelonious Monk in 1953,including on the album Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins. This recording, on November 13, was Jones’ first. He also appeared with Monk on the television program The Tonight Show, on June 10, 1955. Jones was sideman for another pianist’s recording in 1955 – Elmo Hope‘s Meditations; and for Randy Weston‘s The Modern Art of Jazz by Randy Weston in the following year.^[3]:1491 In 1956 Jones had a two-week engagement with Monk in Philadelphia.^[2]:212 Jones also played with Kenny Dorham, J. J. Johnson, Charlie Parker, and Cecil Payne in the mid-1950s.

Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe (September 20, c. 1890 – July 10, 1941), known professionally as Jelly Roll Morton, was an American ragtime and jazz pianist, bandleader, and composer. Morton was jazz’s first arranger, proving that a genre rooted in improvisation could retain its essential characteristics when notated. His composition “Jelly Roll Blues“, published in 1915, was one of the first published jazz compositions. Morton also wrote “King Porter Stomp“, “Wolverine Blues“, “Black Bottom Stomp“, and “I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say”, the last a tribute to New Orleans musicians from the turn of the 20th century.

Morton’s claim to have invented jazz in 1902 was criticized. Music critic Scott Yanow wrote, “Jelly Roll Morton did himself a lot of harm posthumously by exaggerating his worth…Morton’s accomplishments as an early innovator are so vast that he did not really need to stretch the truth.” Gunther Schuller says of Morton’s “hyperbolic assertions” that there is “no proof to the contrary” and that Morton’s “considerable accomplishments in themselves provide reasonable substantiation”. In 2013, Katy Martin published an article arguing that Alan Lomax‘s book of interviews put Morton in a negative light. Lomax disagreed that Morton was an egotist. “In being called a supreme egotist, Jelly Roll was often a victim of loose and lurid reporting. If we read the words that he himself wrote, we learn that he almost had an inferiority complex and said that he created his own style of jazz piano because ‘All my fellow musicians were much faster in manipulations, I thought than I, and I did not feel as though I was in their class.’ So he used a slower tempo to permit flexibility through the use of more notes, a pinch of Spanish to give a number of right seasoning, the avoidance of playing triple forte continuously, and many other points”. – Quoted in John Szwed, Dr. Jazz.

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