mick laBriola

Alfred Viola (June 16, 1919 – February 21, 2007) was an American jazz guitarist who worked with Frank Sinatra for 25 years and also played the mandolin on the soundtrack of the film The Godfather.

Viola grew up in an Italian family in Brooklyn, and learned to play the guitar and mandolin as a teenager. He enlisted in the Army during World War IIfrom 1942 to 1945 and played in an Army jazz band. After he was discharged in 1946, he and Page Cavanaugh, whom he had met while serving in the Army, along with joined bassist Lloyd Pratt, formed a trio. The ensemble appeared in several films, including the Doris Day vehicle Romance on the High Seas, and played a few dates in 1946 and 1947 with Frank Sinatra. Viola continued to work with Sinatra regularly, accompanying him on several hundred studio recordings and concert dates between 1956 and 1980.

Viola was a highly regarded session musician in Los Angeles, performing in films, on television and in commercial spots. His mandolin playing can be heard on the soundtrack of The Godfather; other credits include West Side Story and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. He continued playing jazz as well, with Bobby Troup, Ray Anthony, Harry James, Buddy Collette, Stan Kenton, Gerald Wilson and Terry Gibbs. He also worked as a session musician on over 500 albums, including releases by Jimmy Witherspoon, Helen Humes, June Christy, Natalie Cole, Neil Diamond, Ella Fitzgerald, Marvin Gaye, Steve Lawrence, Julie London, Anita O’Day, Nelson Riddle, Linda Ronstadt and Joe Williams.

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows IC 2051, a galaxy in the southern constellation of Mensa (the Table Mountain) lying about 85 million light-years away. It is a spiral galaxy, as evidenced by its characteristic whirling, pinwheeling arms, and it has a bar of stars slicing through its center.

This galaxy was observed for a Hubble study on galactic bulges, the bright round central regions of spiral galaxies. Spiral galaxies like IC 2051 are shaped a bit like flying saucers when seen from the side; they comprise a thin, flat disk, with a bulky bulge of stars in the center that extends above and below the disk. These bulges are thought to play a key role in how galaxies evolve, and to influence the growth of the supermassive black holes lurking at the centers of most spirals. While more observations are needed in this area, studies suggest that some, or even most, galactic bulges may be complex composite structures rather than simple ones, with a mix of spherical, disk-like, or boxy components, potentially leading to a wide array of bulge morphologies in the universe.

This image comprises data from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 at visible and infrared wavelengths.

Harry Edward Nilsson III (June 15, 1941 – January 15, 1994), known professionally as Nilsson, was an American singer-songwriter who achieved the peak of his commercial success in the early 1970s. His work is characterized by pioneering vocal overdub experiments, returns to the Great American Songbook, and fusions of Caribbean sounds. A tenor with a 3½ octave range, Nilsson was one of the few major pop-rock recording artists of his era to achieve significant commercial success without ever performing major public concerts or undertaking regular tours. The craft of his songs and the defiant attitude he projected remains a touchstone for later generations of indie rock musicians.

Born in Brooklyn, Nilsson moved to Los Angeles as a teenager to escape his family’s poor financial situation. While working as a computer programmer at a bank, he grew interested in musical composition and close-harmony singing, and was successful in having some of his songs recorded by various artists such as the Monkees. In 1967, he debuted on RCA Victor with the LP Pandemonium Shadow Show, followed by a variety of releases that include a collaboration with Randy Newman (Nilsson Sings Newman, 1970) and the original children’s story The Point! (1971). His most commercially successful album, Nilsson Schmilsson (1971), produced the international top 10 singles “Without You” and “Coconut“. His other top 10 hit, “Everybody’s Talkin’” (1968), was featured prominently in the 1969 film Midnight Cowboy. A version of Nilsson’s “One“, released by Three Dog Night in 1969, also reached the U.S. top 10.

During a 1968 press conference, the Beatles were asked what their favorite American group was and answered “Nilsson”. Sometimes called “the American Beatle“, he soon formed close friendships with John Lennon and Ringo Starr. In the 1970s, Nilsson and Lennon were members of the Hollywood Vampires drinking club, embroiling themselves in a number of widely publicized, alcohol-fueled incidents. They produced one collaborative album, Pussy Cats (1974). After 1977, Nilsson left RCA, and his record output diminished. In response to Lennon’s 1980 murder, he took a hiatus from the music industry to campaign for gun control. For the rest of his life, he recorded only sporadically. In 1994, Nilsson died of a heart attack while in the midst of recording what became his last album, Losst and Founnd (2019).

Nilsson created the first remix album (Aerial Pandemonium Ballet, 1971) and recorded the first mashup song (“You Can’t Do That“, 1967). He was voted No. 62 in Rolling Stone‘s 2015 list of the “100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time“, where he was described as “a pioneer of the Los Angeles studio sound, a crucial bridge between the baroque psychedelic pop of the late Sixties and the more personal singer-songwriter era of the Seventies”. The RIAA certified Nilsson Schmilsson and Son of Schmilsson (1972) as gold records, indicating over 500,000 units sold each. He earned Grammy Awards for two of his recordings; Best Contemporary Vocal Performance, Male in 1970 for “Everybody’s Talkin'” and Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male in 1973 for “Without You”.

Waylon Arnold Jennings (June 15, 1937 – February 13, 2002) was an American singer, songwriter, and musician. He is best known as one of the founding pioneers of the Outlaw Movement.

Jennings first played guitar at age eight and first performed at age twelve on KVOW radio, after which he formed his first band, The Texas Longhorns. Jennings left high school at age sixteen, determined to become a musician, and bounced around as a performer and DJ on KVOW, KDAV, KYTI, KLLL, in Coolidge, Arizona, and Phoenix.

In 1958, Buddy Holly arranged Jennings’s first recording session, and hired him to play bass. Jennings gave up his seat on the ill-fated flight in 1959 that crashed and killed Holly, J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson and Ritchie Valens.

Jennings formed a rockabilly club band, The Waylors, which became the house band at “JD’s”, a club in Scottsdale, Arizona. He recorded for independent label Trend Records and A&M Records, but did not achieve success until moving to RCA Victor, taking on Neil Reshen as a manager, who negotiated significantly better touring and recording contracts for him.

After finally wresting creative control from RCA Victor, his career turning point became the critically acclaimed albums Lonesome, On’ry and Mean and Honky Tonk Heroes, followed by hit LPs Dreaming My Dreams and Are You Ready for the Country. During the 1970s, Jennings was instrumental in the inception of outlaw country and with Willie Nelson, Tompall Glaser, and Jessi Colter recorded country music’s first platinum album, Wanted! The Outlaws. It was followed by Ol’ Waylon and the hit song “Luckenbach, Texas“.

Jennings was featured in the 1978 album White Mansions, performed by various artists documenting the lives of people in the Confederacy during the Civil War. Jennings also appeared in films and television series, including Sesame Street, and a stint as the balladeer for The Dukes of Hazzard, composing and singing the show’s theme song and providing narration for the show.

By the early 1980s, Jennings struggled with a cocaine addiction, which he overcame in 1984. Later, he joined the country supergroup The Highwaymen with Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, and Johnny Cash, which released three albums between 1985 and 1995. During that period, Jennings released the successful album Will the Wolf Survive.

He toured less after 1997 to spend more time with his family. Between 1999 and 2001, his appearances were limited by health problems. In 2001, he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. In 2007, he was posthumously awarded the Cliffie Stone Pioneer Award by the Academy of Country Music.

John Arthur “Jaki” Byard (June 15, 1922 – February 11, 1999) was an American jazz multi-instrumentalist, composer and arranger. Mainly a pianist, he also played tenor and alto saxophones, among several other instruments. He was known for his eclectic style, incorporating everything from ragtime and stride to free jazz.

Byard played with trumpeter Maynard Ferguson in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and was a member of bands led by bassist Charles Mingus for several years, including on several studio and concert recordings. The first of his recordings as a leader was in 1960, but, despite being praised by critics, his albums and performances did not gain him much wider attention. In his 60-year career, Byard recorded at least 35 albums as leader, and more than 50 as a sideman. Byard’s influence on the music comes from his combining of musical styles during performance, and his parallel career in teaching.

From 1969 Byard was heavily involved in jazz education: he began teaching at the New England Conservatory of Music and went on to work at several other music institutions, as well as having private students. He continued performing and recording, mainly in solo and small group settings, but he also led two big bands – one made up of some of his students, and the other of professional musicians. His death, from a single gunshot while in his home, remains an unsolved mystery.

Byard was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. At that time, his parents – John Sr and Geraldine Garr – were living at 47 Clayton Street. Both of his parents played musical instruments; his mother played the piano, as did his uncles and grandmother, the last playing in cinemas during the silent film era. He began piano lessons at the age of six, but they ended when his family was affected by the Great Depression.

Erroll Louis Garner (June 15, 1921 – January 2, 1977)  was an American jazz pianist and composer known for his swing playing and ballads. His best-known composition, the ballad “Misty“, has become a jazz standard. Scott Yanow of Allmusic calls him “one of the most distinctive of all pianists” and a “brilliant virtuoso.” He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6363 Hollywood Blvd. His live album, Concert by the Sea, first released in 1955, sold over a million copies by 1958 and Scott Yanow’s opinion is: “this is the album that made such a strong impression that Garner was considered immortal from then on.”

Garner was born with his twin brother Ernest in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on June 15, 1921, the youngest of six children in an African-American family. He attended George Westinghouse High School (as did fellow pianists Billy Strayhorn and Ahmad Jamal). Interviews with his family and music teachers (and with other musicians), plus a detailed family tree are given in Erroll Garner: The Most Happy Piano by James M Doran.

Astronomers spend their time gazing out into the Universe — and occasionally the Universe seems to peer right back! This image, a composite of data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows a very rare cosmic sight: a pair of interacting galaxies that have taken on an ocularstructure.

As the name suggests, some types of grazing encounters between galaxies create shapes that resemble the human eye. While galaxy collisions of this type are not uncommon, only a few galaxies with eye-like, or ocular, structures have been observed. The paucity of these features is likely due to their very ephemeral nature — ocular structures like these tend to only last for several tens of millions of years, which is merely the blink of an eye in a galactic lifetime.

These two galaxies are named IC 2163 (left) and NGC 2207 (right) — IC 2163 displays the ocular structure in this image. The duo lies approximately 114 million light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation of Canis Major (The Greater Dog).

The galaxies have brushed past each other — scraping the outer edges of their spiral arms —with IC 2163 passing behind NGC 2207. This glancing collision triggered a tsunami of stars and gas in IC 2163, with material in the outer portions of the disc of the galaxy travelling inwards This colossal wave of material decelerated rapidly moving from the outer to the inner edge of the eyelids and crashed midway through the galaxy’s disc, producing dazzling ribbons of intense star formation and compressed ridges of gas and dust that resemble a pair of cosmic “eyelids”.

Marcus Miller (born William Henry Marcus Miller Jr.; June 14, 1959) is an American film composer, jazz composer, record producer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist, best known as a bass guitarist. He has worked with trumpeter Miles Davis, pianist Herbie Hancock, singer Luther Vandross, and saxophonist David Sanborn, among others.

Miller was born in Brooklyn, New York City, in 1959 and raised in a musical family. His father, William Miller, was a church organist and choir director; Miller is jazz pianist Wynton Kelly‘s cousin. Miller is classically trained as a clarinetist and also plays keyboards, saxophone and guitar. He began to work regularly in New York City, eventually playing bass and writing music for jazz flutist Bobbi Humphrey and keyboardist Lonnie Liston Smith. Miller became a session musician.

Kenny Drew Jr. (June 14, 1958 – August 3, 2014) was an American jazz pianist. His music is known for its hard-swinging bluesy sound and large, two-handed rooty chords contrasting with fast runs. The son of jazz pianist Kenny Drew, he did not credit his father as an influence.

His initial study was in classical music with his aunt and grandmother. In his teens he became interested in jazz and pop, but initially worked in funk bands. Later he went into jazz piano and in 1990 won The Great American Jazz Piano Competition in Jacksonville, Florida. Drew continued to perform jazz, but he also performed some chamber music. His style has some similarities to his father’s, but is different enough to generally avoid comparison; he was considered the more eclectic of the two men.

Drew attended Iona College in New Rochelle, New York, for a period during 1977 to 1978. There, he became pianist for the Iona College Singers, an entertainment troop promoting the college’s name and goodwill among local high schools, retirement homes and the like in the Northeast region of the USA.

Drew cited Thelonious Monk as an influence and like Monk often recorded (and performed) solo.

Drew died at home in St. Petersburg, Florida, on August 3, 2014.

Jules Shungu Wembadio Pene Kikumba (14 June 1949 – 24 April 2016), known professionally as Papa Wemba, was a Congolese singer and musician who played Congolese rumba, soukous and ndombolo. Dubbed the “King of Rumba Rock”, he was one of the most popular musicians of his time in Africa and played an important role in world music. He was also a fashion icon who popularized the Sape look and style through his musical group Viva la Musica, with whom he performed on stages throughout the world.

Papa Wemba’s road to fame and prominence began when he joined the music group Zaiko Langa Langa in the late 1960s. This was followed by his success as a founding member both of Isifi Lokole and then Yoka Lokole, along with a short stint as a member of Afrisa International for a few months. During these early stages of his career, he was establishing a style that included traditional Congolese rumba and soukous, infused with traditional African sounds, Caribbean rhythms, rock and soul. But Wemba gained international success and status with his band Viva La Musica, especially after he took them to Paris, France in the early 1980s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHzS-dBzv6g

Joseph Hilton “Nappy” Lamare (June 14, 1905 – May 8, 1988) was an American jazz banjoist, guitarist, and vocalist.

Lamare was born in New Orleans. He got his nickname from his friend, Eddie Miller, because he had curly hair. He started playing trumpet, then dropped it for banjo when he was thirteen. Weeks later, he was a member of the Midnight Serenaders. In his teens he worked with Sharkey Bonano, Monk Hazel, and Johnny Wiggs and in 1925 toured in California with Johnny Bayersdorffer. He recorded for the first time two years later with the New Orleans Owls.

He moved to New York City, playing mostly guitar instead of banjo. He became of a member of the Ben Pollack orchestra and sang on “Two Tickets to Georgia”. After Pollack left, Bob Crosby took over the orchestra in 1934, and Lamare remained with him until about 1942, performing in records and films, sometimes as a vocalist. After the orchestra dissolved again, he moved to California and spent the rest of his career playing Dixieland as leader of the Louisiana Levee Loungers, then the Straw Hat Strutters in the 1940s and 1950s. The Strutters appeared in the movie Hollywood Rhythm and on the weekly TV variety show Dixie Showboat. While heading the Riverboat Dandies, he injured his pinky finger and played bass guitar for five years until his finger healed.