mick laBriola

Louis Hayes (born May 31, 1937) is an American jazz drummer and band leader. He was with McCoy Tyner‘s trio for more than three years. Since 1989 he has led his own band, and together with Vincent Herring formed the Cannonball Legacy Band. He is part of the NEA Jazz Masters awards class of 2023.

Louis Sedell Hayes was born in Detroit, Michigan, United States, to a father, an automaker, who played drums and piano. His mother waited tables and played the piano. She was the sister of John Nelson, the father of the musician Prince. Hayes got his first drum set at age 10. The key influence in his early development was his cousin Clarence Stamps, an accomplished drummer who grounded his technical fundamentals and gave him lessons that stuck for life. He refers to the early influence of hearing jazz, especially big bands on the radio. His main influence was Philly Joe Jones  and he was mentored by Jo Jones. His three main associations were with Horace Silver‘s Quintet (1956–59), the Cannonball Adderley Quintet (1959–65), and the Oscar Peterson Trio (1965–67). Hayes often joined Sam Jones, both with Adderley and Peterson, and in freelance settings.

When he was a teenager, he led a band in Detroit clubs before he was 16. He worked with Yusef Lateefand Curtis Fuller from 1955 to 1956. He moved to New York in August 1956, to replace Art Taylor in the Horace Silver Quintet and, in 1959, joined the Cannonball Adderley Quintet, with which he remained until mid-1965, when he succeeded Ed Thigpen in the Oscar Peterson Trio. He left Peterson in 1967, and formed a series of groups, which he led alone or with others; among his sidemen were Freddie Hubbard, Joe Henderson, Kenny Barron, and James Spaulding. He returned to Peterson in 1971.

The Louis Hayes Sextet, formed in 1972, became, in 1975, the Louis Hayes-Junior Cook Quintet and the Woody Shaw-Louis Hayes Quintet (Cook remained as a sideman until Rene McLean joined); in its last form the quintet played successful engagements throughout Europe and (without McLean) acted as the host group when, in 1976, Dexter Gordon visited the U.S. for the first time in many years. After Shaw left the group in 1977, Hayes continued to lead it as a hard-bop quintet.

Albert “Tootie” Heath (May 31, 1935 – April 3, 2024) was an American jazz hard bop drummer, the brother of tenor saxophonist Jimmy Heath and the double-bassist Percy Heath. With Stanley Cowell, the Heaths formed the Heath Brothers jazz band in 1975.

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States on May 31 1935, he first recorded in 1957 with John Coltrane. From 1958 to 1974, he worked with, among others, J. J. Johnson, Wes Montgomery, Art Farmer and Benny Golson‘s Jazztet, Cedar Walton, Bobby Timmons, Kenny Drew, Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon, Johnny Griffin, Herbie Hancock, Friedrich Gulda, Nina Simone, and Yusef Lateef. In 1975, he, Jimmy and Percy formed the Heath Brothers.^[2] He remained with the group until 1978, then left to freelance. He recorded extensively throughout his career.

Among his many workshop and classroom teaching assignments, Heath was a regular instructor at the Stanford Jazz Workshop.

Heath was later the producer and leader of The Whole Drum Truth, a jazz drum ensemble featuring Ben Riley, Ed Thigpen, Jackie Williams, Billy Hart, Charlie Persip, Leroy Williams and Louis Hayes.

Albert Heath died of leukemia in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on April 3, 2024, at the age of 88.

There was once a poor man who made tea everyday on a fire. He didn’t realize that his hearthstones were made of gold. So everyday, he lived in poverty with unknown riches at his fingertips. We are like that. We have a limitless mind, yet we choose to not be okay. One of the most beneficial first steps we can take is to stop hating suffering…to actually be okay with it. Over time we work with our mind and exercise our “being okay” muscle. The essential point is that our mind is very flexible and its capacity is limitless. Therefore, how we relate to whatever is appearing, is a choice. Mind and that it is limitless, is our hearthstone of gold, our treasure. We should know this. – Khentrul Rinpoche

Dark markings and bright nebulae in this telescopic southern sky view are telltale signs of young stars and active star formation. They lie a mere 650 light-years away, at the boundary of the local bubble and the Chamaeleon molecular cloud complex. Regions with young stars identified as dusty reflection nebulae from the 1946 Cederblad catalog include the C-shaped Ced 110 just above and right of center, and bluish Ced 111 below it. Also a standout in the frame, the orange tinted V-shape of the Chamaeleon Infrared Nebula (Cha IRN) was carved by material streaming from a newly formed low-mass star. The well-composed image spans 1.5 degrees. That’s about 17 light-years at the estimated distance of the nearby Chamaeleon I molecular cloud.