mick laBriola

James Edgar Spruill (June 9, 1934 – February 3, 1996), also known as Wild Jimmy Spruill, was an American New York based session guitarist, whose guitar solos featured on many rhythm and blues and pop hits of the 1950s and 1960s.

Spruill was born into a sharecropping family in Fayetteville, North Carolina, United States. As a child he listened to both country music and blues. He learned to play guitar, first with a cigar box guitar with an elastic band, and then graduated within a few years to a Fender Telecaster and Standel amplifier. Later in his career, he took to playing a Gibson Les Paul which he “modified” by sawing off most of the body.

He moved to New York City in 1955, and began working as a session musician. He most frequently worked for the record producers Danny and Bobby Robinson, who ran the Fire, Fury, Everlast, Enjoy and VIM record labels based at Bobby Robinson’s Happy House of Hits record store in Harlem. He also worked for the Old Town, Vanguard and other New York-based labels, and appeared on records by King Curtis, Little Anthony and the Imperials, the Shirelles, Tarheel Slim, and Elmore James, as well as releasing singles under his own name.

In May 1959 “The Happy Organ” by Dave “Baby” Cortez reached the top of the Billboard pop chart and was succeeded, the following week, by Wilbert Harrison‘s “Kansas City“; both records featured guitar solos by Spruill. Another well-known recording on which Spruill plays is “Fannie Mae” by Buster Brown, which hit the top of the R&B charts in early 1960. In 1961, he featured on Bobby Lewis‘s no.1 hit “Tossin’ and Turnin’“, and at the same time featured on The Shirelles‘ “Dedicated to the One I Love“, which peaked at no.3.

Lester William Polsfuss (June 9, 1915 – August 12, 2009 Waukesha, WI), known as Les Paul, was an American jazz, country, and blues guitarist, songwriter, luthier, and inventor. He was one of the pioneers of the solid-body electric guitar, and his techniques served as inspiration for the Gibson Les Paul. Paul taught himself how to play guitar, and while he is mainly known for jazz and popular music, he had an early career in country music. He is credited with many recording innovations. Although he was not the first to use the technique, his early experiments with overdubbing (also known as sound on sound), delay effects such as tape delay, phasing effects and multitrack recording were among the first to attract widespread attention.

His innovative talents extended into his playing style, including licks, trills, chording sequences, fretting techniques and timing, which set him apart from his contemporaries and inspired many guitarists of the present day. He recorded with his wife, the singer and guitarist Mary Ford, in the 1950s, and they sold millions of records.

Among his many honors, Paul is one of a handful of artists with a permanent, stand-alone exhibit in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He is prominently named by the music museum on its website as an “architect” and a “key inductee” with Sam Phillips and Alan Freed. Les Paul is the only person to be included in both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Cole Albert Porter (June 9, 1891 – October 15, 1964 Peru, IN) was an American composer and songwriter. Many of his songs became standards noted for their witty, urbane lyrics, and many of his scores found success on Broadway and in film.

Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, Porter defied his grandfather’s wishes and took up music as a profession. Classically trained, he was drawn to musical theatre. After a slow start, he began to achieve success in the 1920s, and by the 1930s he was one of the major songwriters for the Broadway musical stage. Unlike many successful Broadway composers, Porter wrote the lyrics as well as the music for his songs. After a serious horseback riding accident in 1937, Porter was left disabled and in constant pain, but he continued to work. His shows of the early 1940s did not contain the lasting hits of his best work of the 1920s and ’30s, but in 1948 he made a triumphant comeback with his most successful musical, Kiss Me, Kate. It won the first Tony Award for Best Musical.

Porter’s other musicals include Fifty Million Frenchmen, DuBarry Was a Lady, Anything Goes, Can-Can and Silk Stockings. His numerous hit songs include “Night and Day“, “Begin the Beguine“, “I Get a Kick Out of You“, “Well, Did You Evah!“, “I’ve Got You Under My Skin“, “My Heart Belongs to Daddy” and “You’re the Top“. He also composed scores for films from the 1930s to the 1950s, including Born to Dance (1936), which featured the song “You’d Be So Easy to Love“; Rosalie (1937), which featured “In the Still of the Night“; High Society (1956), which included “True Love“; and Les Girls (1957).

Looking deep into the Universe, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope catches a passing glimpse of the numerous arm-like structures that sweep around this barred spiral galaxy, known as NGC 2608. Appearing as a slightly stretched, smaller version of our Milky Way, the peppered blue and red spiral arms are anchored together by the prominent horizontal central bar of the galaxy.

In Hubble photos, bright Milky Way stars will sometimes appear as pinpoints of light with prominent lens flares. A star with these features is seen in the lower right corner of the image, and another can be spotted just above the pale center of the galaxy. The majority of the fainter points around NGC 2608, however, lack these features, and upon closer inspection they are revealed to be thousands of distant galaxies. NGC 2608 is just one among an uncountable number of kindred structures.

Similar expanses of galaxies can be observed in other Hubble images such as the Hubble Deep Field which recorded over 3000 galaxies in one field of view.

Bonnie Tyler (born Gaynor Hopkins; 8 June 1951) is a Welsh singer, known for her distinctive husky voice. Tyler came to prominence with the release of her 1977 album The World Starts Tonight and its singles “Lost in France” and “More Than a Lover“. Her 1978 single “It’s a Heartache” reached number four on the UK Singles Chart, and number three on the US Billboard Hot 100.

In the 1980s, Tyler ventured into rock music with songwriter and producer Jim Steinman. He wrote Tyler’s biggest hit “Total Eclipse of the Heart“, the lead single from her 1983 UK chart topping album Faster Than the Speed of Night. Steinman also wrote Tyler’s other major 1980s hit “Holding Out for a Hero“. She had success in mainland Europe during the 1990s with Dieter Bohlen, who wrote and produced her hit “Bitterblue“. In 2003, Tyler re-recorded “Total Eclipse of the Heart” with singer Kareen Antonn. Their bilingual duet topped the French charts.

Rocks and Honey was released in 2013 and features the single “Believe in Me” which she performed representing the United Kingdom at the Eurovision Song Contest 2013 in Malmö, Sweden. Her latest album Between the Earth and the Stars was released on 15 March 2019.

Both “It’s a Heartache” and “Total Eclipse of the Heart” are among the best-selling singles of all time, with sales in excess of six million each. Her work has earned her three Grammy Award nominations and three Brit Award nominations, among other accolades.

William Royce “Boz“ Scaggs (born June 8, 1944) is an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He became prominent for his series of albums in the late 1970s, and songs “Lido Shuffle” and “Lowdown” from Silk Degrees (1976), which peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200. Scaggs continues to write, record music, and tour.

Scaggs was born in Canton, Ohio, the eldest child of a traveling salesman. Their family moved to McAlester, Oklahoma, then to Plano, Texas (at that time a farm town), just north of Dallas. He attended a Dallas private school, St. Mark’s School of Texas, where schoolmate Mal Buckner gave him the nickname “Bosley”, later shortened to “Boz”.

After learning guitar at the age of 12, Scaggs met Steve Miller at St. Mark’s School. In 1959, he became the vocalist for Miller’s band, the Marksmen. The pair later attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison together, playing in blues bands like the Ardells and the Fabulous Knight Trains.

William Russell Watrous III (June 8, 1939 – July 2, 2018) was an American jazz trombonist. He is perhaps best known by casual fans of jazz music for his rendition of Sammy Nestico‘s arrangement of the Johnny Mandel ballad “A Time for Love” which he recorded on a 1993 album of the same name. A self-described “bop-oriented” player, he was well known among fellow trombonists as a master technician and for his mellifluous sound.

Watrous’ father, also a trombonist, introduced him to the instrument at an early age. While serving in the U.S. Navy, Watrous studied with jazz pianist and composer Herbie Nichols. His first professional performances were in Billy Butterfield‘s band.

Watrous’ career blossomed in the 1960s. He played and recorded with many jazz luminaries, including Maynard Ferguson, Woody Herman, Quincy Jones, Johnny Richards, and trombonist Kai Winding. He also played in the house band on the Merv Griffin Show from 1965 to 1968.

In 1971, he played with the jazz fusion group Ten Wheel Drive. Also in the 1970s, Watrous formed his own band, The Manhattan Wildlife Refuge Big Band, which recorded two albums for Columbia Records. The band was later renamed Refuge West when Watrous moved to southern California.

He continued to work as a bandleader, studio musician, and performer at jazz clubs. In 1983, Watrous collaborated with Alan Raph to publish Trombonisms, an instructional manual covering performance techniques for trombone. He has recorded as a solo artist, bandleader, and in small ensembles. These recordings include a Japanese Import album in 2001 containing material recorded in 1984 with Carl Fontana, whom Watrous has cited as his favorite trombonist. He traveled periodically to San Diego to play with his good friend and former student, Dave Scott, a noted jazz musician himself and TV broadcast host.

Wilhelmina Madison Goodson, known professionally as Billie Pierce (June 8, 1907 – September 29, 1974) was an American jazz pianist and singer, who performed and recorded with her husband De De Pierce. Her style has been described as a “potent mixture of barrelhouse, boogie-woogie, and ragtime“. After settling in New Orleans in 1930, she played in the bands of A.J. Piron, Alphonse Picou, Emile Barnes, and George Lewis.

Wilhelmina (Billie) Goodson was born on June 8, 1907 in her mother’s home town of Marianna, Florida, United States, and grew up in Pensacola, Florida. She was one of six piano-playing sisters (including Ida Goodson and Sadie Goodson) whose father, Madison H. Goodson, and mother, Sarah Jenkins Goodson, also played the piano. There was a seventh daughter, Maggie, who died young. Billie was the second youngest of the girls; the order of the sisters from oldest to youngest went Mabel (b. 1899), Della (1901), Sadie (1903), Edna (1904), Billie (1907), and Ida (1909).

Goodson was never formally trained to read music. Both of her parents musicians, they played hymns and sang in the choir at the Baptist church where Madison Goodson was a Deacon. According to Billie, she was about two years old when she first started to play the piano.

Though her parents disapproved of ragtime, blues, and jazz, only playing religious music, Billie and her sisters were drawn to it. When Ms. Pierce was about ten years old, she and her sisters would go down to the Belmont Theatre to listen to Ma Rainey, Ida Cox, and Bessie Smith when they passed through Pensacola, Florida. In 1922, when Ms. Pierce was almost thirteen, Bessie Smith passed through town again. Bessie’s pianist, Clarence Williams, suffered a heart attack and Ms. Pierce subbed in to played piano with Bessie Smith for two weeks at the Belmont Theatre. At the age of 15 (in 1922), Pierce began playing piano professionally. Some accounts claim she toured with Gertrude “Ma” Rainey; however, during this time she was actually accompanying Ida Cox at the Belmont Theatre. After her time accompanying Ms. Cox, Billie toured as a singer, dancer, and pianist. At the beginning of the 1920s, Billie would only accompany bands on the Florida leg of their tours. In 1929, she was working in a nine-piece band named the Nighthawks Orchestra in Birmingham, Alabama when she heard that her sister, Sadie, had fallen ill and needed a temporary replacement. Sadie and her husband, Abbey “Chinee” Foster on drums, in Buddy Petit‘s band on the SS Madison in New Orleans.

The Cat’s Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) is one of the best known planetary nebulae in the sky. Its haunting symmetries are seen in the very central region of this stunning false-color picture, processed to reveal the enormous but extremely faint halo of gaseous material, over three light-years across, which surrounds the brighter, familiar planetary nebula. Made with data from the Nordic Optical Telescope in the Canary Islands, the composite picture shows extended emission from the nebula. Planetary nebulae have long been appreciated as a final phase in the life of a Sun-like star. Only much more recently however, have some planetaries been found to have halos like this one, likely formed of material shrugged off during earlier active episodes in the star’s evolution. While the planetary nebula phase is thought to last for around 10,000 years, astronomers estimate the age of the outer filamentary portions of this halo to be 50,000 to 90,000 years.

Prince Rogers Nelson (June 7, 1958 – April 21, 2016) was an American singer-songwriter, musician, record producer, dancer, actor, and filmmaker. A guitar virtuoso and multi-instrumentalist known for his eclectic genre-crossing work, flamboyant and androgynous persona, and his far reaching falsetto and high-pitched screams, Prince is regarded as one of the greatest musicians of his generation. His innovative music integrated a wide variety of styles, including funk, R&B, rock, new wave, soul, psychedelia, and pop. Prince pioneered the late 1970s Minneapolis sound, a funk rock subgenre drawing from synth-pop and new wave.

Born and raised in Minneapolis, Prince developed an interest in music as a young child and wrote his first song, “Funk Machine”, at the age of seven. He signed a recording contract with Warner Bros. Records at the age of 19, and released his debut album For You in 1978. Following up with his next four albums—Prince (1979), Dirty Mind (1980), Controversy (1981), and 1999 (1982)—Prince gained critical success, prominently showcasing his explicit lyrics as well as his blending of funk, dance, and rock music. In 1984, he began referring to his backup band as The Revolution and released his sixth album Purple Rain, which was also the soundtrack to his hugely successful film acting debut of the same name. It quickly became his most commercially successful record, spending 24 consecutive weeks atop the Billboard 200. The film itself was critically and commercially successful and also won the Academy Award for Best Original Song Score, the last film to receive the award.

Following the disbandment of The Revolution, Prince released the critically acclaimed double album Sign o’ the Times (1987). He released three more solo albums—Lovesexy (1988), the Batman soundtrack (1989), and the Graffiti Bridge soundtrack (1990)—before debuting his New Power Generationbacking band in 1991. In the midst of a contractual dispute with Warner Bros. in 1993, Prince changed his stage name to the unpronounceable symbol , known to fans as the “Love Symbol”, and began releasing new albums at a faster rate in order to quickly meet his contract quota and release himself from further obligations to the record label. He released five records between 1994 and 1996 before he signed with Arista Records in 1998. He began referring to himself as “Prince” again in 2000 and subsequently released 16 albums, including Musicology (2004), his most successful album of that decade. His final album, Hit n Run Phase Two, was first released on the Tidal streaming service in 2015.

In April 2016, at the age of 57, Prince died of an accidental fentanyl overdose at his Paisley Park home and recording studio in Chanhassen, Minnesota. He sold over 100 million records worldwide, ranking him among the best-selling music artists of all time. He won seven Grammy Awards, seven Brit Awards, six American Music Awards, four MTV Video Music Awards, an Academy Award, and a Golden Globe Award. He was also honored with special awards including the Grammy President’s Merit Award, American Music Awards for Achievement and of Merit, and the Billboard Icon Award. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004, the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2006, and the Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame in 2016. In 2016, he was posthumously honored with a Doctor of Humane Letters by the University of Minnesota. Rolling Stone placed him among its list of both the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time and 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time.^[9] He is also ranked among Billboard‘s Top 100 Artists of All Time list.

Jonathan Paul Clegg, OBE, OIS (7 June 1953 – 16 July 2019) was a South African musician and anthropologist, some of whose work was in musicology focused on the music of indigenous South African peoples. His band Juluka began as a duo with Sipho Mchunu, and was the first group in the South African apartheid-era with a white man and a black man. The pair performed and recorded, later with an expanded lineup.

In 1986 Clegg founded the band Savuka, and also recorded as a solo act, occasionally reuniting with his earlier band partners. Sometimes called Le Zoulou Blanc (French: [lə zulu blɑ̃], for “The White Zulu“), he was an important figure in South African popular music and one of the most prominent white figures in the resistance to apartheid, becoming for a period the subject of investigation by the Security Branch of the South African Police(SAP-SB). His songs mixed English with Zulu lyrics, and also combined idioms of traditional African music with those of modern Western styles.

Harold Floyd “Tina” Brooks (June 7, 1932 – August 13, 1974) was an American hard bop, blues, and funk tenor saxophonist and composer.

Harold Floyd Brooks was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and was the brother of David “Bubba” Brooks. The nickname “Tina”, pronounced Teena, was a variation of “Teeny”, a childhood moniker. His favourite tune was “My Devotion”. He studied harmony and theory with Herbert Bourne.

Initially, he studied the C-melody saxophone, which he began playing shortly after he moved to New York with his family in 1944. Brooks’ first professional work came in 1951 with rhythm and blues pianist Sonny Thompson, and in 1955 Brooks played with vibraphonist Lionel Hampton. Brooks also received less formal guidance from trumpeter and composer “Little” Benny Harris, who led the saxophonist to his first recording as a leader. Harris, in fact, was the one who recommended him to Blue Note producer Alfred Lion in 1958.

Brooks is best known for his work for the Blue Note label between 1958 and 1961, recording as a sideman with Kenny Burrell, Freddie Hubbard, Jackie McLean, Freddie Redd, and Jimmy Smith. Around the same period, Brooks was McLean’s understudy in The Connection, a play by Jack Gelber with music by Redd, and performed on an album of music from the play on Felsted Records, a session which also featured Howard McGhee.

Talmage Holt Farlow (June 7, 1921 – July 25, 1998) was an American jazz guitarist. He was nicknamed “Octopus” because of how his large, quick hands spread over the fretboard. As Steve Rochinski notes, “Of all the guitarists to emerge in the first generation after Charlie Christian, Tal Farlow, more than any other, has been able to move beyond the rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic vocabulary associated with the early electric guitar master. Tal’s incredible speed, long, weaving lines, rhythmic excitement, highly developed harmonic sense, and enormous reach (both physical and musical) have enabled him to create a style that clearly stands apart from the rest.” Where guitarists of his day combined rhythmic chords with linear melodies, Farlow placed single notes together in clusters, varying between harmonically enriched tones. As music critic Stuart Nicholson put it, “In terms of guitar prowess, it was the equivalent of Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile.”

Talmage Holt Farlow was born in Greensboro, in 1921. He taught himself how to play guitar, which he started when he was twenty-two years old. He learned chord melodies by playing a mandolin tuned like a ukulele. He said playing the ukulele was the reason he used the higher four strings on the guitar for the melody and chord structure, with the two bottom strings for bass counterpoint, which he played with his thumb. His only professional training was as an apprentice sign painter. He requested the night shift so he could listen to big band standards on the shop radio. He listened to Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Armstrong, and Eddie Lang. His career was influenced by hearing Charlie Christian playing electric guitar with the Benny Goodman band. He said he made his own electric guitar because he couldn’t afford one.

Farlow employed artificial harmonics and tapped his guitar for percussion, creating a flat, snare drum sound or a hollow backbeat like the bongos.His large, quick hands earned him the nickname “The Octopus”.

He caught the public’s attention in 1949 when he was in a trio with Red Norvo and Charles Mingus. In 1953, he was a member of the Gramercy Five led by Artie Shaw, and two years later he led his own trio with Vinnie Burke and Eddie Costa in New York City. After getting married in 1958, he partially retired and settled in Sea Bright, New Jersey, returning to a career as a sign painter. He continued to play occasional dates in local clubs. In 1962 the Gibson Guitar Corporation, with Farlow’s participation, produced the “Tal Farlow” model. He made one album as a leader from 1960–1975.

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