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Dennis Milton Chambers (born May 9, 1959) is an American drummer. He was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 2001.
Chambers was born on May 9, 1959. He began drumming at the age of four years, and was gigging in Baltimore-area nightclubs by the age of six. He was recruited in 1981 by the Sugar Hill Label to be their “house drummer.” Chambers played on many Sugar Hill releases [?]— sounds like Keith LeBlanc [not Chambers], who was the Original Sugar Hill Rhythm Section drummer [“White Lines,” “The Message,” “8th Wonder,” and so on], with Skip McDonald (guitar) and Doug Wimbish (bass)]. Contrary to popular belief he did not play on “Rapper’s Delight” which was revealed in a recent interview on Drumeo.com on 6/8/2017.
In an interview by Bonedo in 2011, Chambers was asked who some of his influences and favorite drummers were and he mentioned Clyde Stubblefield, Al Jackson Jr., Steve Gadd, Vinnie Colaiuta, Gary Husband, Jack Dejohnette, Billy Cobham, Buddy Rich, Elvin Jones, Roy Haynes, and Tony Williams.
In 1978 (at 18 years old) he joined Parliament/Funkadelic, and stayed with them until 1985. In 1986 he joined the John Scofield band. Since then he has played with most of the major figures in jazz fusion music.
He has recorded and performed with Tommy Coster, John Scofield, George Duke, Victor Wooten, Brecker Brothers, Santana, Parliament/Funkadelic, John McLaughlin, Niacin, Mike Stern, CAB, Greg Howe, and many others.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F3oMmadnGQ
more...Richard Edwin Morrissey (9 May 1940 – 8 November 2000) was a British jazz musician and composer. He played the tenor sax, soprano sax and flute.
Dick Morrissey emerged in the early 1960s in the wake of Tubby Hayes, Britain’s pre-eminent sax player at the time. Self-taught, he started playing clarinet in his school band, The Delta City Jazzmen, at the age of sixteen with fellow pupils Robin Mayhew (trumpet), Eric Archer (trombone), Steve Pennells (banjo), Glyn Greenfield (drums), and young brother Chris on tea-chest bass. He then joined the Original Climax Jazz Band. Going on to join trumpeter Gus Galbraith‘s Septet, where alto-sax player Peter King introduced him to Charlie Parker‘s recordings, he began specialising on tenor saxophone shortly after.
Making his name as a hard bop player, he appeared regularly at the Marquee Club from August 1960, and recorded his first solo album at the age of 21, It’s Morrissey, Man! (1961) for Fontana, featuring Stan Jones on piano, Colin Barnes on drums, and The Jazz Couriers founding member Malcolm Cecil on bass. He spent most of 1962 in Calcutta, India as part of the Ashley KozakQuartet, playing three 2-hour sessions seven days a week, before returning to the UK and forming his quartet with Harry South – who had also been in the quartet in Calcutta – on piano. They were joined by former The Jazz Couriers bassist Phil Bates and variously, another ex-The Jazz Couriers member, Bill Eyden, Jackie Dougan or Phil Seamen on drums. The Dick Morrissey Quartet recorded three LPs, Have You Heard? (1963); the live recording Storm Warning! (1965) on Mercury; and Here and Now and Sounding Good! (1966). The quartet, played regular London gigs at The Bull’s Head, Barnes and at Ronnie Scott’s, whose manager, Pete King, once said that Ronnie’s was kept going in those days due to the crowds Dick Morrissey pulled in. During this time he also played extensively in bands led by Ian Hamer and Harry South, including The Six Sounds, featuring Ken Wray and Dick Morrissey, a band which by 1966 had developed into the Ian Hamer Sextet featuring South, Dick Morrissey, Keith Christie, Kenny Napper and Bill Eyden, among other leading UK-based jazz musicians.
more...Nole Floyd “Nokie” Edwards (May 9, 1935 – March 12, 2018) was an American musician and member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was primarily a guitarist, best known for his work with The Ventures,[1] and was known in Japan as the ‘King of Guitars’. Edwards was also an actor, who appeared briefly on Deadwood, an American Western drama television series.
Edwards was born in Lahoma, Oklahoma, the son of Elbert Edwards and Nannie Mae Quinton Edwards,an original enrollee of the Western Cherokee. Edwards came from a family of accomplished musicians, so that by age five he began playing a variety of string instruments, including the steel guitar, banjo, mandolin, violin, and bass. His family relocated from Oklahoma to Puyallup, Washington.
more...Aaron Corthen, better known as A.C. Reed (May 9, 1926 – February 24, 2004) was an American blues saxophonist, closely associated with the Chicago blues scene from the 1940s into the 2000s.
Reed was born in Wardell, Missouri, and grew up in southern Illinois. He took his stage name from his friend Jimmy Reed. He moved to Chicagoduring World War II, playing with Earl Hooker and Willie Mabon in the 1940s.[2] He toured with Dennis “Long Man” Binder in 1956 and worked extensively as a sideman for Mel London‘s blues record labels Chief/Profile/Age in the 1960s, with Lillian Offitt and Ricky Allen, among others. He had a regionally popular single in 1961, “This Little Voice” (Age 29101), and cut several more singles over the course of the decade with Age, USA, Cool, and Nike Records.
He became a member of Buddy Guy‘s band in 1967, playing with him on his tour of Africa in 1969 and, with Junior Wells, opening for the Rolling Stones in 1970. He remained with Guy until 1977. He then played with Son Seals and Albert Collins in the late 1970s and 1980s. He began recording solo material for Alligator Records in the 1980s. His 1987 album, I’m in the Wrong Business, includes cameo appearances by Stevie Ray Vaughan and Bonnie Raitt.
more...Comet SWAN (C/2020 F8) extends far across this 10 degree wide telephoto field of view. Captured on May 2 its greenish coma was about 6 light-minutes from Earth. The pretty background starfield lies near the border of the constellations Cetus and Aquarius. This comet SWAN was discovered at home by Australian amateur Michael Mattiazzo by checking images from the Sun-staring SOHO spacecraft’s SWAN (Solar Wind ANisotropies) camera. The comet has now become just visible to the naked-eye as it sweeps from southern to northern skies. Appearing in morning twilight near the eastern horizon, Comet SWAN will make its closest approach to planet Earth on May 12 and reach perihelion on May 27.
more...Mahmoud Ahmed (Amharic: ማሀሙድ አህመድ; born May 8 or 18, 1941) is an Ethiopian singer of Gurage ancestry. He gained great popularity in Ethiopia in the 1970s and among the Ethiopian diaspora in the 1980s, before rising to international fame with African music fans in Europe and the Americas.
Born in Addis Ababa, Mercato district, Mahmoud was enthralled with the music he heard on Ethiopian radio from an early age. Having poorly learned in school, he worked shoeshiner before becoming a handyman at the Arizona Club, which was the after hours hangout of Emperor Haile Selassie I‘s Imperial Bodyguard Band. One night in 1962 when the band’s singer didn’t show up, Mahmoud asked to sing a few songs. He soon became part of the band’s regular lineup, where he remained until 1974.
After cutting his first single with Venus Band “Nafqot New Yegodagn” and “Yasdestal” in 1971, Mahmoud continued to record with several bands for the Amha and Kaifa record labels throughout the 1970s[citation needed]. The overthrow of Emperor Selassie and the suspension of musical nightlife under the military government created shifts in the Ethiopian music industry—the Imperial Body Guard Band were no more, and Mahmoud continued to make hit records and cassettes with many musicians who remained in the country, including the Dahlak Band, and the Ibex Band. He also began to release solo cassettes, accompanying himself on the krar, guitar or mandolin.
By 1978, censorship laws prevented Mahmoud from releasing his music on vinyl and so he switched to releasing cassettes. In the 1980s, Mahmoud operated his own music store in Addis Ababa’s Piazza district while continuing his singing career. With many Ethiopian refugees living abroad, Mahmoud became one of the first modern Ethiopian music makers to perform in the United States on a 1980–1981 tour with the Walias Band, Getatchew Kassa, and Webeshet Fisseha. Mahmoud soon began releasing records with the Roha Band and became popular in diaspora communities.
more...Keith Jarrett (born May 8, 1945) is an American jazz and classical music pianist and composer.
Jarrett started his career with Art Blakey, moving on to play with Charles Lloyd and Miles Davis. Since the early 1970s he has enjoyed a great deal of success as a group leader and a solo performer in jazz, jazz fusion, and classical music. His improvisations draw from the traditions of jazz and other genres, especially Western classical music, gospel, blues, and ethnic folk music.
In 2003, Jarrett received the Polar Music Prize, the first recipient of both the contemporary and classical musician prizes,[2] and in 2004 he received the Léonie Sonning Music Prize. His album The Köln Concert (1975) became the best-selling piano recording in history.
In 2008, he was inducted into the Down Beat Hall of Fame in the magazine’s 73rd Annual Readers’ Poll.
Keith Jarrett was born on May 8, 1945, in Allentown, Pennsylvania, United States, to a mother of Hungarian descent and a father of either French or Scots-Irish descent. He grew up in suburban Allentown with significant early exposure to music. Jarrett possesses absolute pitch, and he displayed prodigious musical talents as a young child. He began piano lessons before his third birthday, and at age five he appeared on a TV talent program hosted by the swing bandleader Paul Whiteman. He gave his first formal piano recital at the age of seven, playing works by composers such as Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, and Saint-Saëns, and ending with two of his own compositions. Encouraged by his mother, he took classical piano lessons with a series of teachers, including Eleanor Sokoloff of the Curtis Institute.
more...Mary Lou Williams (born Mary Elfrieda Scruggs; May 8, 1910 – May 28, 1981) was an American jazz pianist, arranger, and composer. She wrote hundreds of compositions and arrangements and recorded more than one hundred records (in 78, 45, and LP versions). Williams wrote and arranged for Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, and she was friend, mentor, and teacher to Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Tadd Dameron, Bud Powell, and Dizzy Gillespie.
The second of eleven children, Williams was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and grew up in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A young musical prodigy, at the age of three, she taught herself to play the piano. Mary Lou Williams played piano out of necessity at a very young age; her white neighbors were throwing bricks into her house until Williams began playing the piano in their homes. At the age of six, she supported her ten half-brothers and sisters by playing at parties. She began performing publicly at the age of seven when she became known admiringly in Pittsburgh as “The Little Piano Girl.” She became a professional musician at the age of 15, citing Lovie Austin as her greatest influence. She married jazz saxophonist John Williams in November 1926.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaQHxALR_aI
more...Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911 – August 16, 1938 Hazrlhurst, MS) was an American blues singer, songwriter and musician. His landmark recordings in 1936 and 1937 display a combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that has influenced later generations of musicians. Johnson’s poorly documented life and death have given rise to much legend. The one most closely associated with his life is that he sold his soul to the devil at a local crossroads to achieve musical success. He is now recognized as a master of the blues, particularly the Delta blues style.
As an itinerant performer who played mostly on street corners, in juke joints, and at Saturday night dances, Johnson had little commercial success or public recognition in his lifetime. He participated in only two recording sessions, one in San Antonio in 1936, and one in Dallas in 1937, that produced 29 distinct songs (with 13 surviving alternate takes) recorded by famed Country Music Hall of Fame producer Don Law. These songs, recorded at low fidelity in improvised studios, were the totality of his recorded output. Most were released as 10-inch, 78 rpm singles from 1937–1938, with a few released after his death. Other than these recordings, very little was known of him during his life outside of the small musical circuit in the Mississippi Delta where he spent most of his life; much of his story has been reconstructed after his death by researchers.
His music had a small, but influential, following during his life and in the two decades after his death. In late 1938 John Hammond sought him out for a concert at Carnegie Hall, From Spirituals to Swing, only to discover that Johnson had died. Brunswick Records, which owned the original recordings, was bought by Columbia Records, where Hammond was employed. Musicologist Alan Lomax went to Mississippi in 1941 to record Johnson, also not knowing of his death. Law, who by then worked for Columbia Records, assembled a collection of Johnson’s recordings titled King of the Delta Blues Singers that was released by Columbia in 1961. It is widely credited with finally bringing Johnson’s work to a wider audience. The album would become influential, especially on the nascent British blues movement; Eric Clapton has called Johnson “the most important blues singer that ever lived.” Musicians such as Bob Dylan, Keith Richards, and Robert Plant have cited both Johnson’s lyrics and musicianship as key influences on their own work. Many of Johnson’s songs have been covered over the years, becoming hits for other artists, and his guitar licks and lyrics have been borrowed by many later musicians.
Renewed interest in Johnson’s work and life led to a burst of scholarship starting in the 1960s. Much of what is known about him was reconstructed by researchers such as Gayle Dean Wardlow. Two films, the 1991 documentary The Search for Robert Johnson by John Hammond, Jr., and a 1997 documentary, Can’t You Hear the Wind Howl, the Life and Music of Robert Johnson, which included reconstructed scenes with Keb’ Mo’ as Johnson, were attempts to document his life, and demonstrated the difficulties arising from the scant historical record and conflicting oral accounts.
Johnson was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in its first induction ceremony, in 1986, as an early influence on rock and roll. He was awarded a posthumous Grammy Award in 1991 for The Complete Recordings, a 1990 compilation album. His single “Cross Road Blues” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998, and he was given a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006. In 2003, David Fricke ranked Johnson fifth in Rolling Stone magazine’s “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4x_QBp3S7Y&list=PLTc1olkPrwI_zqCTIXF0p5VDSpFmOs70Z&index=15
more...Malagueñas (Spanish pronunciation: [malaˈɣeɲas]) is one of the traditional styles of Andalusian music (flamenco), derived from earlier types of fandango from the area of Málaga, classified among the Cantes de Levante. Originally a folk-song type, it became a flamenco style in the 19th century. It is not normally used for dance, as it is generally interpreted with no regular rhythmic pattern, as a “cante libre”. It has a very rich melody with virtuous flourishes and use of microtones. Its guitar accompaniment is normally played in open position first inversion giving E for the tonic, which can be transposed by using a capo.
more...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fTYhctc_ew
more...Arp 299, the enigmatic colliding galaxies expelling the radiation. The two galaxies of Arp 299 have been locked in a gravitational combat for millions of years, while their central black holes will soon do battle themselves. Featured, the high-resolution visible-light image was taken by Hubble, while the superposed diffuse glow of X-ray light was imaged by NuSTAR and shown in false-color red, green, and blue. NuSTAR observations show that only one of the central black holes is seen fighting its way through a region of gas and dust — and so absorbing matter and emitting X-rays. The energetic radiation, coming only from the galaxy center on the right, is surely created nearby — but outside — the central black hole‘s event horizon. In a billion years or so, only one composite galaxy will remain, and only one central supermassive black hole. Soon thereafter, though, another galaxy may enter the fray.
more...William Kreutzmann Jr. (/ˈkrɔɪtsmɑːn/ KROYTS-mahn; born May 7, 1946) is an American drummer. He played with the Grateful Dead for its entire thirty-year career, usually alongside fellow drummer Mickey Hart, and has continued to perform with former members of the Grateful Dead in various lineups, and with his own bands BK3, 7 Walkers and Billy & the Kids.
Kreutzmann was born in Palo Alto, California, the son of Janice Beryl (née Shaughnessy) and William Kreutzmann Sr. His father was of German descent. His maternal grandfather was football coach and innovator Clark Shaughnessy.
Kreutzmann started playing drums at the age of 13. At first he practiced on a Slingerland drum kit lent to him. As a teenager, practicing drums alone in a large building at his high school, Aldous Huxley and another man walked in. Huxley told Bill he’d never heard anything like it, and encouraged him in his drumming – despite the fact Bill had been told by his sixth grade music teacher that he could not keep a beat. Kreutzmann continued to practice a great deal. His earliest enthusiasm was for the music of Ray Charles and other R&B musicians. He has explained that later he learned some advanced technique or tricks from Mickey Hart.
Kreutzmann listened to jazz groups in clubs when he found an opportunity for an under-age guy to get in. After joining the Warlocks (later called the Grateful Dead), bassist Phil Lesh introduced him the work of one of the top jazz drummers of the time, Elvin Jones. Kreutzmann became an enthusiast, also, for the funk music of The Meters.
more...
Joe Ford (born May 7, 1947, Buffalo, New York) is an American jazz saxophonist.
Ford studied saxophone under Makanda Ken McIntyre, Jackie McLean, and Frank Foster, and percussion under Joe Chambers. He took his Bachelor’s in music education in 1968 from Central State University, then taught in Buffalo public schools from 1968 to 1972. While working at the Buffalo Public Library in 1974-75, Ford played in the Birthright ensemble, then played with McCoy Tyner in 1976. Since the early 1980s he has worked extensively as a sideman, playing with Sam Jones, Lester Bowie, Jimmy Owens, Idris Muhammad, Abdullah Ibrahim, Chico O’Farrill, Saheb Sarbib (1984), Avery Sharpe (1988), Jerry Gonzalez (from 1988), Larry Willis (1989), Michael Logan (1990), Malachi Thompson (1991), John Blake (1992), Ronnie Burrage (1993), Hannibal Marvin Peterson (1993), Freddie Cole (1993), Steve Berrios (1995), and Nova Bossa Nova (1997).
In the late 1990s he led two ensembles, the Black Art Sax Quartet and a big band called The Thing. He has released one album as a leader, 1993’s Today’s Night on Blue Moon Records. It features Charles Fambrough, Kenny Kirkland and Jeff “Tain” Watts.
more...Admirl Amos Easton (May 7, 1905 – June 8, 1968), better known by the stage name Bumble Bee Slim, was an American Piedmont bluessinger and guitarist.
Easton was born in Brunswick, Georgia. Several original sources confirm that he spelled his first name “Admirl”. Around 1920 he joined the Ringling Brothers circus. He then returned to Georgia and was briefly married before heading north on a freight train to Indianapolis, where he settled in 1928. There he met and was influenced by the pianist Leroy Carr and the guitarist Scrapper Blackwell.
By 1931 he had moved to Chicago, where he made his first recordings, as Bumble Bee Slim, for Paramount Records. The following year his song “B&O Blues” was a hit for Vocalion Records, inspiring a number of other railroad blues and eventually becoming a popular folk song. In the next five years he recorded over 150 songs for Decca Records, Bluebird Records and Vocalion,often accompanied by other musicians, including Big Bill Broonzy, Peetie Wheatstraw, Tampa Red, Memphis Minnie, and Washboard Sam.
In 1937, he returned to Georgia. He relocated to Los Angeles, California, in the early 1940s, apparently hoping to break into motion pictures as a songwriter and comedian. During the 1950s he recorded several albums, but they had little impact. His last album was released in 1962 by Pacific Jazz Records.
He continued to perform in clubs around Los Angeles until his death in 1968.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9i1xrwYBlFw
more...Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (English: /tʃaɪˈkɒfski/ chy-KOF-skee;[1] Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский, tr. Pëtr Ilʹič Čajkovskij, IPA: [pʲɵtr ɪlʲˈjitɕ tɕɪjˈkofskʲɪj]; 7 May [O.S. 25 April] 1840 – 6 November [O.S. 25 October] 1893) was a Russian composer of the Romantic period. He was the first Russian composer whose music made a lasting impression internationally, bolstered by his appearances as a guest conductor in Europe and the United States. He was honored in 1884 by Tsar Alexander III, and awarded a lifetime pension.
Although musically precocious, Tchaikovsky was educated for a career as a civil servant. There was scant opportunity for a musical career in Russia at that time and no system of public music education. When an opportunity for such an education arose, he entered the nascent Saint Petersburg Conservatory, from which he graduated in 1865. The formal Western-oriented teaching he received there set him apart from composers of the contemporary nationalistmovement embodied by the Russian composers of The Five, with whom his professional relationship was mixed. Tchaikovsky’s training set him on a path to reconcile what he had learned with the native musical practices to which he had been exposed from childhood. From this reconciliation he forged a personal but unmistakably Russian style—a task that did not prove easy. The principles that governed melody, harmony and other fundamentals of Russian music ran completely counter to those that governed Western European music; this seemed to defeat the potential for using Russian music in large-scale Western composition or for forming a composite style, and it caused personal antipathies that dented Tchaikovsky’s self-confidence. Russian culture exhibited a split personality, with its native and adopted elements having drifted apart increasingly since the time of Peter the Great. This resulted in uncertainty among the intelligentsia about the country’s national identity—an ambiguity mirrored in Tchaikovsky’s career.
Despite his many popular successes, Tchaikovsky’s life was punctuated by personal crises and depression. Contributory factors included his early separation from his mother for boarding school followed by his mother’s early death, the death of his close friend and colleague Nikolai Rubinstein, and the collapse of the one enduring relationship of his adult life, which was his 13-year association with the wealthy widow Nadezhda von Meck who was his patron even though they never actually met each other. His homosexuality, which he kept private, has traditionally also been considered a major factor, though some musicologists now downplay its importance. Tchaikovsky’s sudden death at the age of 53 is generally ascribed to cholera; there is an ongoing debate as to whether cholera was indeed the cause of death, and whether his death was accidental or self-inflicted.
While his music has remained popular among audiences, critical opinions were initially mixed. Some Russians did not feel it was sufficiently representative of native musical values and expressed suspicion that Europeans accepted the music for its Western elements. In an apparent reinforcement of the latter claim, some Europeans lauded Tchaikovsky for offering music more substantive than base exoticism and said he transcended stereotypes of Russian classical music. Others dismissed Tchaikovsky’s music as “lacking in elevated thought” and derided its formal workings as deficient because they did not stringently follow Western principles.
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