mick laBriola

Blind Boy Fuller (born Fulton Allen, July 10, 1904 or 1907 – February 13, 1941) was an American blues guitarist and singer. Fuller was one of the most popular of the recorded Piedmont blues artists with rural African Americans along with Blind Blake, Josh White, and Buddy Moss.

Allen was born in Wadesboro, North Carolina, United States, one of ten children of Calvin Allen and Mary Jane Walker. Most sources date his birth to 1907, but the researchers Bob Eagle and Eric LeBlanc indicate 1904. After the death of his mother, he moved with his father to Rockingham, North Carolina. As a boy he learned to play the guitar and also learned from older singers the field hollers, country rags, traditional songs and bluespopular in poor rural areas.

He married young, to Cora Allen, and worked as a laborer. He began to lose his eyesight when he was in his mid-teens. According to the researcher Bruce Bastin, “While he was living in Rockingham he began to have trouble with his eyes. He went to see a doctor in Charlotte who allegedly told him that he had ulcers behind his eyes, the original damage having been caused by some form of snow-blindness.” Only the first part of this diagnosis was correct. A 1937 eye examination attributed his vision loss to the long-term effects of untreated neonatal conjunctivitis.

By 1928 he was completely blind. He turned to whatever employment he could find as a singer and entertainer, often playing in the streets. By studying the records of country blues players like Blind Blake and live performances by Gary Davis, Allen became a formidable guitarist, playing on street corners and at house parties in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Danville, Virginia; and then Durham, North Carolina. In Durham, playing around the tobacco warehouses, he developed a local following, which included the guitarists Floyd Council and Richard Trice, the harmonica player Saunders Terrell (better known as Sonny Terry), and the washboard player and guitarist George Washington.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FShhBW-NBPQ

Fandango is a lively couples dance originating from Portugal and Spain, usually in triple metre, traditionally accompanied by guitars, castanets, or hand-clapping (“palmas” in Spanish). Fandango can both be sung and danced. Sung fandango is usually bipartite: it has an instrumental introduction followed by “variaciones”. Sung fandango usually follows the structure of “cante” that consist of four or five octosyllabic verses (coplas) or musical phrases (tercios). Occasionally, the first copla is repeated.

Fandango rhythm. The meter of fandango is similar to that of the bolero and seguidilla.

The spiral pattern shown by the galaxy in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is striking because of its delicate, feathery nature. These “flocculent” spiral arms indicate that the recent history of star formation of the galaxy, known as NGC 2775, has been relatively quiet. There is virtually no star formation in the central part of the galaxy, which is dominated by an unusually large and relatively empty galactic bulge, where all the gas was converted into stars long ago.

NGC 2275 is classified as a flocculent spiral galaxy, located 67 million light-years away in the constellation of Cancer.

Millions of bright, young, blue stars shine in the complex, feather-like spiral arms, interlaced with dark lanes of dust. Complexes of these hot, blue stars are thought to trigger star formation in nearby gas clouds. The overall feather-like spiral patterns of the arms are then formed by shearing of the gas clouds as the galaxy rotates. The spiral nature of flocculents stands in contrast to the grand design spirals, which have prominent, well defined-spiral arms.

John Graham “Mitch” Mitchell (9 July 1946 – 12 November 2008) was an English drummer and child actor, who was best known for his work in the Jimi Hendrix Experience. He was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 2009.

Mitchell was born in Ealing, Middlesex, to Phyliss C (née Preston) and Thomas J Mitchell on 9 July 1946 (although several modern sources have incorrectly claimed that he was born in 1947). As a teenager he starred in a children’s television programme, Jennings at School, and starred in a leading role in the 1960 British film Bottoms Up with Jimmy Edwards.

Mitchell became a musician through working at Jim Marshall‘s drum shop on Saturdays while still at school. Among drummers, his chief influences were Elvin Jones and Tony Williams. One of his first bands was the Soul Messengers, formed at the Ealing Club with saxophonist Terry Marshall, son of Jim Marshall.

Haydée Mercedes Sosa (Spanish pronunciation: [meɾˈseðes ˈsosa]; 9 July 1935 – 4 October 2009), sometimes known as La Negra (literally: The Black One), was an Argentine singer who was popular throughout Latin America and many countries outside the region. With her roots in Argentine folk music, Sosa became one of the preeminent exponents of nueva canción. She gave voice to songs written by many Latin American songwriters. Her music made people hail her as the “voice of the voiceless ones”.

Sosa performed in venues such as the Lincoln Center in New York City, the Théâtre Mogador in Paris and the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City, as well as sell-out shows in New York’s Carnegie Hall and the Roman Colosseum during her final decade of life. Her career spanned four decades and she was the recipient of six Latin Grammy awards (2000, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2009, 2011), including a Latin Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004 and two posthumous Latin Grammy Award for Best Folk Album in 2009 and 2011. She won the Premio Gardel in 2000, the main musical award in Argentina. She served as an ambassador for UNICEF.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brI6TFM0TrQ

Frank Wright (9 July 1935 – 17 May 1990) was an American free jazz musician from Grenada, Mississippi, Memphis, Tennessee and Cleveland, Ohio, known for his frantic style of tenor saxophone.

Wright was born in Grenada, Mississippi, but he grew up in Memphis, Tennessee. He began to play tenor sax in his late teens, when his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio as part of the Great Migration out of the South. More than 1.5 million black Americans left the South before World War II to seek opportunities in the industrial cities of the North and Midwest. Another 5.5 million left during and after the war, up to 1970.

In Cleveland, Wright met Bobby Few and Albert Ayler, both of whom became friends and musical influences. Originally a bass player, Wright played in numerous local R&B bands before taking up the saxophone. He also toured with B. B. King and Bobby “Blue” Bland. Ayler’s musical influence persuaded Wright to switch to saxophone; his style is often associated with Ayler’s. In addition to tenor saxophone, he also played the soprano saxophone and bass clarinet. A pioneer of experimental music, Wright is a widely acclaimed artist among his colleagues in the free jazz movement.

Joseph Christopher “Joe” Liggins, Jr. (born Theodro Elliott; July 9, 1916 – July 26, 1987) was an American R&B, jazz and blues pianist and vocalist who led Joe Liggins and his Honeydrippers in the 1940s and 1950s. His band appeared often on the Billboard magazine charts. The band’s biggest hit was “The Honeydripper“, released in 1945. Joe Liggins was the older brother of R&B performer Jimmy Liggins.

The son of Harriett and Elijah Elliott, he was born in Seminole, Oklahoma, and took his stepfather’s surname, Liggins, as a child. He apparently dropped the name Theodro and adopted the names Joseph Christopher during the 1930s. The family moved to San Diego in 1932.

He moved to Los Angeles in 1939, where he played with Sammy Franklin’s California Rhythm Rascals and other groups. When Franklin turned down a chance to record Liggins’ song “The Honeydripper”, Liggins decided to start his own band. The original Joe Liggins and His Honeydrippers recordings were issued on the Exclusive Records imprint of brothers Leon and Otis René. Joe Liggins’ Honeydrippers was formed in the basement of the Los Angeles home of the saxophonist Little Willie Jackson, who co-founded the group and who, at the time of his death in 2001, was the last original surviving member of the Honeydrippers. “The Honeydripper” topped the R&B chart, then called the race chart, for 18 weeks in 1945. More than 60 years later, “The Honeydripper” remains tied with Louis Jordan‘s “Choo Choo Ch’Boogie” for the longest-ever stay at the top of that chart. It reportedly logged two million sales.

Comet C/2019 U6 or Lemmon Comet. Comet Lemmon’s delicate ion and dust tails overlap in this photo taken on June 29, 2020, with a 500-mm telescope. The comet is named for the Mt. Lemmon Survey (part of the Catalina Sky Survey) conducted near the summit of Mount Lemmon north of Tucson. Lemmon makes its initial appearance low in the western sky around July 4th in Sextans and gradually ascends, crossing the rich Virgo Cluster of galaxies at mid-month before reaching Coma Berenices at month’s end. The comet passed perihelion on June 18 and swung closest to Earth at 124 million km on June 29th. Like NEOWISE, it will slowly fade, dimming by about 1.5 magnitudes during July.

Jai Johanny Johanson (born July 8, 1944), frequently known by the stage name Jaimoe, is an American drummer and percussionist. He is best known as one of the founding members of The Allman Brothers Band.

Johanson came up in the R&B world and began drumming at an early age, often accompanied by friend Lamar Williams on bass. Johanson backed soul singers, including a membership in Otis Redding‘s touring band in 1966, and afterward touring with the acclaimed soul duo, Sam & Dave. After joining up with Duane Allman in February 1969, he quickly became the first recruit into Allman’s new group, soon joined by bassist Berry Oakley, fellow drummer Butch Trucks, guitarist Dickey Betts and lastly Allman’s younger brother, singer, organist and pianist Gregg Allman. The group, quickly named after the brothers Allman, began recording demos that April in Macon, Georgia, which became the group’s home base.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Jaimoe’s “passion for jazz helped form the nascent Allman Brothers Band’s improvisational approach, which incorporated blues, country and Western swing into a unique musical approach that nodded toward the Grateful Dead’s West Coast explorations but never became as loosey-goosey.”

“Music is music, and there’s no such things as jazz or rock ’n’ roll,” Jaimoe told the WSJ. “I wanted to be the world’s greatest jazz drummer, and I thought rock or funk were too easy—then I got a chance and couldn’t play what needed to be played. I had to learn, and music was everything to me.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJ9twEldw_M

Johnnie Clyde Johnson (July 8, 1924 – April 13, 2005) was an American pianist who played jazz, blues and rock and roll. His work with Chuck Berry led to his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for breaking racial barriers in the military, as he was a Montford Point Marine – where the African-American unit endured racism and inspired social change while integrating the previously all-white Marine Corps during World War II.

Johnson was born in Fairmont, West Virginia, United States. He began playing the piano in 1928. He joined the United States Marine Corps during World War II and became a member of Bobby Troup‘s all-serviceman jazz orchestra, the Barracudas. After his service, he moved to Detroit and then Chicago, where he sat in with many notable artists, including Muddy Waters and Little Walter.

He moved to St. Louis, Missouri, in 1952 and immediately assembled a jazz and blues group, the Sir John Trio, with the drummer Ebby Hardy and the saxophonist Alvin Bennett. The three had a regular engagement at the Cosmopolitan Club, in East St. Louis. On New Year’s Eve 1952, Bennett had a stroke and could not perform. Johnson, searching for a last-minute replacement, called a young man named Chuck Berry, the only musician Johnson knew who, because of his inexperience, would likely not be playing on New Year’s Eve. Although then a limited guitarist, Berry added vocals and showmanship to the group. Bennett was not able to play after his stroke, so Johnson hired Berry as a permanent member of the trio.

Berry took one of their tunes, a reworking of Bob Wills‘s version of “Ida Red“, to Chess Records in 1955. The Chess brothers liked the song, and soon the trio were in Chicago recording “Maybellene” and “Wee Wee Hours” – a song Johnson had been playing as an instrumental for years, for which Berry quickly wrote some lyrics. “Maybellene” got Berry and Johnson onto the Billboard charts in 1955. Berry got signed as a solo act, and Johnson and Hardy became part of Berry’s band. Said Johnson, “I figured we could get better jobs with Chuck running the band. He had a car and rubber wheels beat rubber heels any day.”

Louis Thomas Jordan (July 8, 1908 – February 4, 1975 Brinkley, AK) was an American musician, songwriter and bandleader who was popular from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. Known as “The King of the Jukebox“, his highest profile came towards the end of the swing era.

Jordan was a talented singer with great comedic flair, and he fronted his own band for more than twenty years. He duetted with some of the biggest solo singing stars of his time, including Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. Jordan was also an actor and a film personality—he appeared in dozens of “soundies” (promotional film clips), made numerous cameos in mainstream features and short films, and starred in two musical feature films made especially for him. He was an instrumentalist who played all forms of the saxophone but specialized in the alto. He also played the piano and clarinet. A productive songwriter, he wrote or co-wrote many songs that were influential classics of 20th-century popular music.

Jordan began his career in big-band swing jazz in the 1930s, but he became known as one of the leading practitioners, innovators and popularizers of jump blues, a swinging, up-tempo, dance-oriented hybrid of jazz, blues and boogie-woogie. Typically performed by smaller bands consisting of five or six players, jump music featured shouted, highly syncopated vocals and earthy, comedic lyrics on contemporary urban themes. It strongly emphasized the rhythm section of piano, bass and drums; after the mid-1940s, this mix was often augmented by electric guitar. Jordan’s band also pioneered the use of the electronic organ.

With his dynamic Tympany Five bands, Jordan mapped out the main parameters of the classic R&B, urban blues and early rock-and-roll genres with a series of highly influential 78-rpm discs released by Decca Records. These recordings presaged many of the styles of black popular music of the late 1940s, 1950s and 1960s and exerted a strong influence on many leading performers in these genres. Many of his records were produced by Milt Gabler, who went on to refine and develop the qualities of Jordan’s recordings in his later production work with Bill Haley, including “Rock Around the Clock“.

Jordan ranks fifth in the list of the most successful African-American recording artists according to Joel Whitburn‘s analysis of Billboard magazine’s R&B chart. Though comprehensive sales figures are not available, he had at least four million-selling hits during his career. Jordan regularly topped the R&B “race” charts and was one of the first black recording artists to achieve significant crossover in popularity with the mainstream (predominantly white) American audience, having simultaneous Top Ten hits on the pop charts on several occasions.

Americans have plans to send a message at the checkout counter on Tuesday amid renewed calls for racial equality across the country.  Tuesday, July 7, has been designated Blackout Day, a call to action and “day of solidarity in America where not one Black person in America spends a dollar” outside of businesses owned by Black people,” according to the movement’s official website.

The initiative comes in the wake of protests against police brutality and renewed attention to the nation’s decades-long racial wealth gap. As society has awakened to unfairness plaguing Black people in America, Black-owned businesses are getting showered with support in a loosely connected push for social and economic justice.