mick laBriola

Mitchell Herbert Ellis (August 4, 1921 – March 28, 2010), known professionally as Herb Ellis, was an American jazz guitarist. During the 1950s, he was in a trio with pianist Oscar Peterson.

Born in Farmersville, Texas, and raised in the suburbs of Dallas, Ellis first heard the electric guitar performed by George Barnes on a radio program. This experience is said to have inspired him to take up the guitar. He became proficient on the instrument by the time he entered North Texas State University. Ellis majored in music, but because they did not yet have a guitar program at that time, he studied the string bass. Unfortunately, due to lack of funds, his college days were short-lived. In 1941, Ellis dropped out of college and toured for six months with a band from the University of Kansas.

Louis Daniel Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971), nicknamed “Satchmo“, “Satch“, and “Pops“, was an American trumpeter, composer, vocalist, and actor who was among the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades, from the 1920s to the 1960s, and different eras in the history of jazz. In 2017, he was inducted into the Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame.

Armstrong was born and raised in New Orleans. Coming to prominence in the 1920s as an inventive trumpet and cornet player, Armstrong was a foundational influence in jazz, shifting the focus of the music from collective improvisation to solo performance. Around 1922, he followed his mentor, Joe “King” Oliver, to Chicago to play in the Creole Jazz Band. In Chicago, he spent time with other popular jazz musicians, reconnecting with his friend Bix Beiderbecke and spending time with Hoagy Carmichael and Lil Hardin. He earned a reputation at “cutting contests“, and relocated to New York in order to join Fletcher Henderson‘s band.

With his instantly recognizable rich, gravelly voice, Armstrong was also an influential singer and skillful improviser, bending the lyrics and melody of a song. He was also skilled at scat singing. Armstrong is renowned for his charismatic stage presence and voice as well as his trumpet playing. By the end of Armstrong’s career in the 1960s, his influence had spread to popular music in general. Armstrong was one of the first popular African-American entertainers to “cross over” to wide popularity with white (and international) audiences. He rarely publicly politicized his race, to the dismay of fellow African Americans, but took a well-publicized stand for desegregation in the Little Rock crisis. He was able to access the upper echelons of American society at a time when this was difficult for black men.

Armstrong appeared in films such as High Society (1956) alongside Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, and Frank Sinatra, and Hello, Dolly! (1969) starring Barbra Streisand. He received many accolades including three Grammy Award nominations and a win for his vocal performance of Hello, Dolly! in 1964.

The barred spiral galaxy known as NGC 4907 shows its best side from 270 million light-years away to anyone who can see it from the northern hemisphere.This is a new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope of the face-on the galaxy, displaying its beautiful spiral arms, wound loosely around its central bright bar of stars.

Shining brightly below the galaxy is a star that is actually within our own Milky Way galaxy. This star appears much brighter than the many millions of stars in NGC 4907 as it is 100 000 times closer, residing only 2500 light-years away.

NGC 4907 is also part of the Coma Cluster, a group of over 1000 galaxies, some of which can be seen around NGC 4907  in this image. This massive cluster of galaxies lies within the constellation of Coma Berenices, which is named for the locks of Queen Berenice II of Egypt: the only constellation named after a historical person.

Roscoe Mitchell (born August 3, 1940) is an American composer, jazz instrumentalist, and educator, known for being “a technically superb – if idiosyncratic – saxophonist”. The Penguin Guide to Jazz described him as “one of the key figures” in avant-garde jazz; All About Jazz states that he has been “at the forefront of modern music” for the past 35 years. Critic Jon Pareles in The New York Times has mentioned that Mitchell “qualifies as an iconoclast”. In addition to his own work as a bandleader, Mitchell is known for cofounding the Art Ensemble of Chicago and the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM).

Mitchell was born in Chicago, Illinois. He also grew up in the Chicago area, where he played saxophone and clarinet at around age twelve. His family was always involved in music with many different styles playing in the house when he was a child as well as having a secular music background. His brother, Norman, in particular was the one who introduced Mitchell to jazz. While attending Englewood High School in Chicago, he furthered his study of the clarinet. In the 1950s, he joined the United States Army, during which time he was stationed in Heidelberg, Germany and played in military parades with fellow saxophonists Albert Ayler and Rubin Cooper, the latter of whom, Mitchell commented, “took me under his wing and taught me a lot of stuff”. He also studied under the first clarinetist of the Heidelberg Symphony while in Germany. Mitchell returned to the United States in the early 1960s, relocated to the Chicago area, and performed in a band with Wilson Junior College undergraduates Malachi Favors (bass), Joseph Jarman, Henry Threadgill, and Anthony Braxton (all saxophonists). Mitchell also studied with Muhal Richard Abrams and played in his band, the Muhal Richard Abrams’ Experimental Band, starting in 1961.

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