mick laBriola

Mercy Dee Walton (born Mercy Davis Walton, August 30, 1915 – December 2, 1962) was an American jump blues pianist, singer and songwriter, whose compositions went from blues to R&B numbers. According to journalist Tony Russell in his book The Blues – From Robert Johnson to Robert Cray, “Walton created a series of memorable blues about the unattractiveness of rural life, sardonically aimed at the black migrant workers in southern California who constituted his typical audience”.

Born in Waco, Texas, he moved to California just before World War II. He started playing piano at age 13 and learned his style from many of the ten-cent party house pianists that played out in the country on weekends. To make ends meet, he had to earn his living in the fields chopping cotton, picking grapes or cutting spinach. During this time, the musician who impressed Walton the most was Delois Maxey, who never had an opportunity to record. In 1949, Walton made his first record for the small record label, Spire Records in Fresno. The track was “Lonesome Cabin Blues”. Shortly after that, he had a national hit on Specialty Records with “One Room Country Shack”, now considered a blues standard. After that success, he was able to start working as a musician full-time, and he toured with the jump blues band of Big Jay McNeely.

A half dozen tracks recorded for the Flair Records label in 1955, included “Come Back Maybellene,” a sequel to Chuck Berry‘s then-current hit, “Maybellene“.

In 1961, Arhoolie Records released an album recorded in Stockton, California entitled Mercy Dee. Featured with him was Sidney Maiden on harmonica, K. C. Douglas on electric guitar and Otis Cherry playing the drums.

Walton died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Murphys, California the following year.

Eddie Jefferson (August 3, 1918 – May 9, 1979) was a jazz vocalist and lyricist. He is credited as an innovator of vocalese, a musical style in which lyrics are set to an instrumental composition or solo. Jefferson himself claims that his main influence was Leo Watson. Perhaps Jefferson’s best-known song is “Moody’s Mood for Love“, though it was first recorded by King Pleasure, who cited Jefferson as an influence. Jefferson’s songs “Parker’s Mood” and “Filthy McNasty” were also hits.

Jefferson was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.^[2] One of his most notable recordings, “So What“, combined the lyrics of artist Christopher Acemandese Hall with the music of Miles Davis to highlight his skills, and enabled him to turn a phrase, into his style he calls jazz vocalese.

Jefferson’s last recorded performance was at the Joe Segal’s Jazz Showcase in Chicago and was released on video by Rhapsody Films. He shared the stand with Richie Cole (alto sax), John Campbell (piano), Kelly Sill (bass) and Joel Spencer (drums). The performance was part of a tour that Jefferson and Cole led together. Their opening night in Detroit, Michigan, was at Baker’s Keyboard Lounge, a jazz club built in the 1930s that has played host to famous musicians including musicians who spanned the genre with artists as diverse as Dexter Gordon and Sonny Stitt.

A previously unreleased live recording from July 1976 was released in August 2009 as Eddie Jefferson At Ali’s Alley, with the quintet of drummer Rashied Ali featured.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4eI_vSFBZM

Charles James Shavers (August 3, 1920 – July 8, 1971) was an American swing era jazz trumpeter who played with Dizzy Gillespie, Nat King Cole, Roy Eldridge, Johnny Dodds, Jimmie Noone, Sidney Bechet, Midge Williams, and Billie Holiday. He was an arranger and composer, and one of his compositions, “Undecided“, is a jazz standard.

Shavers’s father, a distant relative of Fats Navarro, was from the Shavers family of Key West, Florida. Charlie Shavers was a cousin of heavyweight boxer Earnie Shavers. Born in New York City, he took up piano and banjo before switching to trumpet. In the mid-1930s, he performed with Tiny Bradshaw and Lucky Millinder. In 1935 he played in the trumpet section with Dizzy Gillespie and Carl (Bama) Warwick in Frankie Fairfax’s Campus Club Orchestra. In 1936 he joined John Kirby‘s Sextet as trumpet soloist and arranger. He was only 16, but gave his birth date as 1917 to avoid child labor laws; many biographies still list this date.

Shavers’s arrangements and solos helped make the band one of the most commercially successful and imitated of its day. In 1937, he performed with Midge Williams and her Jazz Jesters. In 1944 he began playing sessions in Raymond Scott‘s CBS staff orchestra. In 1945 he left John Kirby‘s band to join Tommy Dorsey‘s Orchestra, with whom he toured and recorded, off and on, until Dorsey’s passing in 1956. In 1949, he sang and played the hit “The Hucklebuck” with TD. He can be seen as a member of Dorsey’s Orchestra on numerous “Stage Show” telecasts for CBS, including early Elvis Presley appearances. During this time he also continued to play at CBS; he also appeared with the Metronome All-Stars, and made a number of recordings as trumpet soloist with Billie Holiday. From 1953 to 1954 he worked with Benny Goodman and toured Europe with Norman Granz‘s popular Jazz at the Philharmonic series, where he was a crowd favorite. He formed his own band with Terry Gibbs and Louie Bellson.

James “Jim” Capaldi (2 August 1944 – 28 January 2005) was an English singer-songwriter and drummer. His musical career spanned more than four decades. He co-founded the psychedelic rock band Traffic in 1967 with Steve Winwood with whom he co-wrote the majority of the band’s material. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a part of Traffic’s original line-up.

Capaldi also performed with Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, George Harrison, Alvin Lee, Cat Stevens, and Mylon LeFevre, and wrote lyrics for other artists, such as “Love Will Keep Us Alive” and “This is Reggae Music”. As a solo artist he scored more than a half dozen chart hits in various countries, the most well-known being “That’s Love” as well as his cover of “Love Hurts“.

Capaldi was born Nicola James Capaldi in Evesham, Worcestershire, to English parents Marie (Née Couchier) and Nicholas Capaldi. His father was born Nicola Capaldi in 1913 in Evesham to Italian parents. As a child Capaldi studied piano and voice with his father, a music teacher, and by his teens he was playing drums with his friends. At age 14 he founded the band the Sapphires and served as their lead vocalist. At 16 he took an apprenticeship at a factory in Worcester, where he met Keith Miller and Dave Mason. In 1963 he formed the Hellions, with Mason on guitar and Gordon Jackson on rhythm guitar, while Capaldi himself switched to drums. In August 1964, Tanya Day took the Hellions to the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany, as her backing group. The Spencer Davis Group were staying at the same hotel as the Hellions and it was there that Steve Winwood befriended Capaldi and Mason.

Juvenal de Holanda Vasconcelos, known as Naná Vasconcelos (2 August 1944 – 9 March 2016), was a Brazilian percussionist, vocalist and berimbau player, notable for his work as a solo artist on over two dozen albums, and as a backing musician with Pat Metheny, Don Cherry, Björk, Jan Garbarek, Egberto Gismonti, Gato Barbieri, and Milton Nascimento.

Vasconcelos was born in Recife, Brazil. Beginning from 1967 he joined many artists’ works as a percussionist. Among his many collaborations, he contributed to four Jon Hassell albums from 1976 to 1980 (including Possible Musics by Brian Eno and Hassell), and later to several Pat Metheny Group works and Jan Garbarek concerts from early 1980s to early 1990s. In 1984 he appeared on the Pierre Favre album Singing Drums along with Paul Motian. He also appears on Arild Andersen‘s album If You Look Far Enough with Ralph Towner.

He formed a group named Codona with Don Cherry and Collin Walcott, which released three albums in 1978, 1980 and 1982.

George Walker “Big Nick” Nicholas (August 2, 1922, – October 29, 1997) was an American jazz saxophonist and singer. Strongly influenced by his hero, Coleman Hawkins, Nicholas in turn influenced a young John Coltrane to compose his tribute “Big Nick”, included on the 1962 album Duke Ellington & John Coltrane.

Nicholas contributed the 16-bar solo to Dizzy Gillespie‘s classic African-Cuban jazz piece “Manteca” (1947). At that time, he also started playing with Hot Lips Page, a working relationship that continued until 1954. He joined Buck Clayton in 1955.

Nicholas started playing with Hank and Thad Jones, Earl Hines, and Tiny Bradshaw before going into the army and, on being discharged in the late 1940s, he worked with bands led by Sabby Lewis, J. C. Heard, and Lucky Millinder. He went on to play with Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Charlie Parker, and Charlie Mingus.

Nicholas died of heart failure in October 1997 at the age of 75

The Elephant’s Trunk Nebula winds through the emission nebula and young star cluster complex IC 1396, in the high and far off constellation of Cepheus. Also known as vdB 142, the cosmic elephant’s trunk is over 20 light-years long. This detailed close-up view was recorded through narrow band filters that transmit the light from ionized hydrogen and oxygen atoms in the region. The resulting composite highlights the bright swept-back ridges that outline pockets of cool interstellar dust and gas. Such embedded, dark, tendril-shaped clouds contain the raw material for star formation and hideprotostars within. Nearly 3,000 light-years distant, the relatively faint IC 1396 complex covers a large region on the sky, spanning over 5 degrees. This dramatic scene spans a 1 degree wide field of view though, about the size of 2 Full Moons.

Robert William Cray (born August 1, 1953) is an American blues guitarist and singer. He has led his own band and won five Grammy Awards.

Robert Cray was born on August 1, 1953, in Columbus, Georgia, while his father was stationed at Fort Benning. Cray’s musical beginnings go back to when he was a student at Denbigh High School in Newport News, Virginia. While there, he played in his first band, The One-Way Street. His family eventually settled in the Tacoma, Washington, area. There, he attended Lakes High School in Lakewood, Washington.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac649pX8lPQ

Thomas Richard Bolin (August 1, 1951 – December 4, 1976) was an American guitarist and songwriter who played with Zephyr (from 1969 to 1971), The James Gang (from 1973 to 1974), and Deep Purple (from 1975 to 1976), in addition to maintaining a notable career as a solo artist and session musician.

Tommy Bolin was born in Sioux City, Iowa, United States, and began playing with a band called The Miserlous before he was asked to join another band called Denny and The Triumphs, in 1964 at the young age of thirteen. The band included Dave Stokes on lead vocals, Brad Miller on guitar and vocals, Bolin on lead guitar, Steve Bridenbaugh on organ and vocals and finally Denny Foote on bass & Brad Larvick on drums. They played a blend of rock and roll, R&B and the pop hits of the moment, and when bassist Denny Foote left the band to be replaced by the drummer’s brother George Larvick Jr, they changed their name and became A Patch of Blue. An album was released in 1999, Patch of Blue Live! from two 1967 concerts in Correctionville, Iowa and in Sioux City. In 1999, the band was inducted in the Iowa Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Bolin moved to Boulder, Colorado, in his late teens and then played in a band called American Standard (with future songwriting collaborator Jeff Cook) before joining Ethereal Zephyr, a band named after a train that ran between Denver and Chicago. When record companies became interested, the name was shortened to Zephyr. This band included Bolin on lead guitar, David Givens on bass, and Givens’ wife Candy Givens on vocals. The band had begun to do larger venues, opening for more established acts such as Led Zeppelin. Their second album, entitled Going Back to Colorado, featured a new drummer, Bobby Berge, who would pop up from time to time in musician credits in album liner notes from Bolin’s later projects.

In 1972, the 20-year old Bolin formed the fusion jazz-rock-blues band Energy. Unable to secure a record contract, the band never released an album during Bolin’s lifetime. However, several recordings have been released posthumously. Bolin briefly reunited with David and Candy Givens in a band called the 4-Nikators, after which he took nearly a year off from music. During this time, he wrote close to a hundred songs.

Jerome John Garcia (August 1, 1942 – August 9, 1995) was an American singer-songwriter and guitarist, best known for his work as the lead guitarist and as a vocalist with the band the Grateful Dead, which came to prominence during the counterculture of the 1960s. Although he disavowed the role, Garcia was viewed by many as the leader or “spokesman” of the group.

As one of its founders, Garcia performed with the Grateful Dead for their entire 30-year career (1965–1995). Garcia also founded and participated in a variety of side projects, including the Saunders–Garcia Band (with longtime friend Merl Saunders), the Jerry Garcia Band, Old & In the Way, the Garcia/Grisman acoustic duo, Legion of Mary, and New Riders of the Purple Sage (which Garcia co-founded with John Dawson and David Nelson).He also released several solo albums, and contributed to a number of albums by other artists over the years as a session musician. He was well known for his distinctive guitar playing, and was ranked 13th in Rolling Stone‘s “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time” cover story in 2003. In the 2015 version of the list he was ranked at #46.

Garcia was also renowned for his musical and technical ability, particularly his ability to play a variety of instruments, and his ability to sustain long improvisations with the Grateful Dead. Garcia believed that improvisation took stress away from his playing and allowed him to make spur of the moment decisions that he would not have made intentionally. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Garcia noted that “my own preferences are for improvisation, for making it up as I go along. The idea of picking, of eliminating possibilities by deciding, that’s difficult for me”.

Later in life, Garcia struggled with diabetes, and in 1986 went into a diabetic coma that nearly cost him his life. Although his overall health improved somewhat after that, he continued to struggle with obesity, smoking, and longstanding heroin and cocaine addictions. He was staying in a California drug rehabilitation facility when he died of a heart attack on August 9, 1995 at the age of 53. Garcia’s ancestors on his father’s side were from Galicia in northwest Spain. His mother’s ancestors were Irish and Swedish. He was born in the Excelsior District of San Francisco, California, on August 1, 1942, to Jose Ramon “Joe” Garcia and Ruth Marie “Bobbie” (née Clifford) Garcia, who was herself born in San Francisco.^[ His parents named him after composer Jerome Kern. Jerome John was their second child, preceded by Clifford Ramon “Tiff”, who was born in 1937. Shortly before Clifford’s birth, their father and a partner leased a building in downtown San Francisco and turned it into a bar, partly in response to Jose being blackballed from a musicians’ union for moonlighting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QE3BTUjrevE

Paddy Moloney (Irish: Pádraig Ó Maoldomhnaigh; born 1 August 1938) is an Irish musician, composer, and producer who is the founder and leader of the Irish musical group The Chieftains and has played on every one of their albums.

Paddy Moloney was born in Donnycarney, Dublin, Ireland. His mother bought him a tin whistle when he was six and he started to learn the Uilleann pipes at the age of eight.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott (born Elliot Charles Adnopoz; August 1, 1931) is an American folk singer.

Elliott was born in 1931 in Brooklyn, New York, United States, the son of Florence (Rieger) and Abraham Adnopoz, an eminent doctor. His family was Jewish. He attended Midwood High School in Brooklyn and graduated in 1949. Elliott grew up inspired by the rodeos at Madison Square Garden, and wanted to be a cowboy. Encouraged instead to follow his father’s example and become a surgeon, Elliott rebelled, running away from home at the age of 15 to join Col. Jim Eskew’s Rodeo, the only rodeo east of the Mississippi. They traveled throughout the Mid-Atlantic states and New England. He was with them for only three months before his parents tracked him down and had him sent home, but Elliott was exposed to his first singing cowboy, Brahmer Rogers, a rodeo clown who played guitar and five-string banjo, sang songs, and recited poetry. Back home, Elliott taught himself guitar and started busking for a living. Eventually he got together with Woody Guthrie and stayed with him as an admirer and student.