mick laBriola

Glowing in the cosmos at a distance of about 50 million light-years away, the galaxy NGC 936 bears a striking resemblance to the Twin Ion Engine (TIE) starfighters used by the evil Dark Lord Darth Vader and his crew in the epic motion picture Star Wars. The galaxy’s shiny bulge and a bar-like structure crossing it bring to mind the central engine and cockpit of the spacecraft; while a ring of stars surrounding the galactic core completes the parallel, corresponding to the wings of the TIE fighters that are equipped with solar panels.

This galaxy harbours exclusively old stars and shows no sign of any recent star formation. Bars such as that observed in NGC 936 are common features of galaxies; however, this one is significantly more marked than average. Although a perfect symbol for the dark side of the “Force”, it is still debatable whether this galaxy is dominated, like most others, by a large amount of dark matter.

This image has been obtained using the FORS instrument mounted on one of the 8.2-metre telescopes of ESO’s Very Large Telescope on top of Cerro Paranal, Chile. It combines data acquired through four wide-band filters (B, V, R, I). The field of view is about 7 arcminutes.

James Lee Keltner (born April 27, 1942) is an American drummer known primarily for his session work. He was characterized by Bob Dylanbiographer Howard Sounes as “the leading session drummer in America”.

Keltner was initially inspired to start playing because of an interest in jazz, but the popularity of jazz was declining during the late 1950s and early 1960s, and it was the explosion of pop/rock in the mid-1960s that enabled him to break into recording work in Los Angeles. His first gig as a session musician was recording “She’s Just My Style” for the pop group Gary Lewis and the Playboys.

Keltner’s music career was hardly paying a living, and for several years at the outset he was supported by his wife. Toward the end of the 1960s, he finally began getting regular session work and eventually became one of the busiest drummers in Los Angeles. His earliest credited performances on record were with Gabor Szabo on the 1968 album Bacchanal.

In 1968, Keltner was also working in a music shop in Pasadena just down the street from the old “Ice House” coffeehouse when he was recruited to play drums in a “psychedelic” vocal group named “MC Squared” along with Michael Crowley, Michael Clough, Linda Carey, (all from the folk group The Back Porch Majority) and session guitarist/bassist Randy Cierley Sterling. They were signed by Mo Ostin and recorded an album for Warner/Reprise originally titled “MC Squared” which has later been re-mastered and re-released in 2012 with the album title “Tantalizing Colors.”They appeared live that same year on the Hugh Hefner / Playboy Magazine television show Playboy After Dark playing two songs: an original by MC Squared members Michael Clough and Michael Crowley titled “I Know You” and a cover version of the Fred Neil song Everybody’s Talkin’. Both Playboy After Dark performances with Keltner playing drums can currently be viewed on YouTube.

It was his work with Leon Russell playing on Delaney & Bonnie’s Accept No Substitute that attracted the attention of Joe Cocker, who recruited Russell and everyone else he could out of the Delaney & Bonnie band for his Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour. Playing with Joe Cocker led to work in 1970 and 1971, on records by Carly Simon (No Secrets), Barbra Streisand (Barbra Joan Streisand), Booker T. Jones (Booker T. & Priscilla), George Harrison (The Concert for Bangladesh), and John Lennon (Imagine).

Frederick “Freddie” Douglas Waits (April 27, 1943 – November 18, 1989) was a hard bop and post-bop drummer.

He never officially recorded as leader, but was a prominent member and composer in Max Roach‘s M’Boom percussion ensemble.

He worked as sideman with a number of influential pianists, including McCoy Tyner, Kenny Barron, Andrew Hill, Gene Harris, Billy Taylor and Joe Zawinul.

In 1967, Waits recorded with Freddie Hubbard.

He was a member of the last Lee Morgan Quintet, a journey cut short by Morgan’s murder in 1972.

In the late 1970s, Waits formed Colloquium III with fellow drummers Horace Arnold and Billy Hart. In the 1980s he became a music faculty member of Rutgers University. He died of pneumonia and kidney failure in New York in 1989.

His son is the drummer Nasheet Waits.

Conrad Henry Kirnon (April 27, 1927 – November 30, 1994) known professionally as Connie Kay, was an American jazz and R&B drummer, who was a member of the Modern Jazz Quartet.

Self-taught on drums, he began performing in Los Angeles in the mid-1940s. His drumming is recorded in The Hunt, the recording of a famous Los Angeles jam session featuring the dueling tenors of Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray on July 6, 1947. He recorded with Lester Young‘s quintet from 1949 to 1955 and with Stan Getz, Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Parker, and Miles Davis.

Kay did R&B sessions for Atlantic Records in the early to mid-1950s, and he was featured on hit records such as Shake, Rattle and Roll by Big Joe Turner and Ruth Brown‘s (Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean.

Kay joined the Modern Jazz Quartet in 1955, replacing original drummer Kenny Clarke. He remained through the group’s dissolution in 1974 and occasional reunions into the 1990s. In addition to his MJQ compatriots, he had an enduring partnership with cool jazz altoist Paul Desmond through the first half of the 1960s. He played drums on several of Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison‘s albums: Astral Weeks, one song on Saint Dominic’s Preview, and four songs on Tupelo Honey.

Kay was known for incorporating percussion instruments alongside his drum kit, such as timpani, small cymbals, triangle, bell tree, and darbukas, the latter referred to as “exotic-looking” drums in a 2006 article.

In 1989, Kay received an honorary doctorate of music from Berklee College of Music.

Kay had a stroke in 1992, but recovered enough to resume performing. He died of cardiac arrest in Manhattan in 1994 at the age of 67. He was survived by his wife, Addie, and two sons.

Herbig Haro 901 is an immense pillar of gas and dust inside the Carina Nebula, a huge star-forming region in our galaxy. The pillar is several light-years tall and contains a few massive young stars. They shoot out powerful jets that emerge from the cloud. In some cases, the jets create bow-shock patterns similar to the effects of a ship plowing through the ocean. In the visible-light (Hubble) view, very few stars can be seen because the gas and dust block starlight. But in the infrared (Hubble) view, stars become visible and numerous. The visible-light colors emerge from the glow of different gases: oxygen (blue), hydrogen/nitrogen (green), and sulfur (red). The Carina Nebula is approximately 7,500 light years from Earth. C

Lakshminarayana Shankar (born 26 April 1950), also known as L. Shankar and Shenkar, (aka L.Shankar, Shankar) is an Indian violinist, vocalist, composer and record producer.

Shenkar created and designed his own invention, the first of its kind 10 string stereophonic Double Violin, built by Ken Parker. The Double Violin covers the entire range of the orchestra. He formed the groundbreaking band Shakti with the British guitarist John Mclaughlin, Zakir Hussain and Vikku Vinayakram and toured the world. He also performed extensively his Indian classical tours with Zakir Hussain and Vinayakram. He recorded 8 world music albums for the reputed German label ECM and toured extensively featuring the renowned Sax Player Jan Garbarek, Kenny Wheeler, Don Cherry, Ed Blackwell, Trilok Gurtu in many Jazz and world music festivals organized by his label ECM featuring other ECM artists such as Keith Jarrett, Jack DeJohnette etc.

Shenkar’s pop DVD, “One in a Million”, became the number 1 DVD in the US spending 4 weeks on top of the U.S. Soundscan/Billboard charts. Shenkar has also collaborated with Frank Zappa (who produced Shenkar’s solo record for Zappa Records), Talking Heads, Pete Townsend, Lou Reed, Marianne Faithful, Sting, Jeff Beck, U2, The Pretenders, Echo & The Bunnymen, John Lydon (Public Image Ltd.), George Harrison, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Dave Stewart, Pete Townsend (The Who), Peter Gabriel, Jonathan Davis (Korn), Robert Trujillo (Metallica), Stephen Perkins (Jane’s Addiction) and many more.

Theodore Marcus Edwards (April 26, 1924 – April 20, 2003) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. Edwards was born in Jackson, Mississippi, United States. He learned to play at a very early age, first on alto saxophone and then clarinet.

His uncle sent for him to come to Detroit to live because he felt opportunities were better. Due to illness in the family, he went back to Jackson and ventured to Alexandria, Louisiana. He was persuaded by Ernie Fields to join his band after going to Tampa, Florida. Teddy had planned to go to New York City, but Ernie Fields convinced him he could get there by way of Washington, DC, if he worked with his band. Teddy ended up at the “Club Alabam” on Central Avenue in Los Angeles, which later became his city of residence.

Teddy Edwards played with many jazz notables, including his personal friend Charlie Parker, Roy Milton, Wynonie Harris, Vince Guaraldi, Joe Castroand Ernie Andrews. A classic 1947 recording with Dexter Gordon, The Duel, helped set him up as a legend, a status he liked to maintain by challenging other worthy sax players to similar duels whenever possible, including a recording with Houston Person. One such “memorable” duel took place in the 1980s at London’s 100 Club with British tenor Dick Morrissey.

In 1964, Edwards played with Benny Goodman at Disneyland, and at the 1964 New York World’s Fair.

Preston Haynes Love (April 26, 1921–February 12, 2004) was a saxophonist, bandleader, and songwriter from Omaha, Nebraska. Preston Love grew up in North Omaha and graduated from North High. He became renowned as a professional sideman and saxophone balladeer in the heyday of the big band era. He was a member of the bands of Nat Towles, Lloyd Hunter, Snub Mosley, Lucky Millinder and Fats Waller before getting his big break with the Count Basie Orchestra when he was 22. Love played and recorded with the Count Basie band from 1945–1947 and played on Basie’s only #1 hit record, ‘Open The Door Richard.’

Love eventually became a bandleader himself, playing with Lena Horne, Billie Holiday, his friends Johnny Otis and Wynonie Harris, with whom he had several hits.

In 1952, he launched the short-lived Spin Records, as a joint effort with songwriter Otis René (“When It’s Sleepy Time Down South“). The label released material by the Preston Love Orchestra, among others.

In the early 1960s Love worked with Ray Charles in California and Aretha Franklin, eventually becoming Motown‘s West Coast house bandleader with whom he played & toured with The Four Tops, The Temptations, Tammi Terrell, Marvin Gaye, Gladys Knight and others. Love also recorded with Nichelle Nichols, Janis Joplin, Frank Zappa (Freak Out), Shuggie Otis, T-Bone Walker, Charles Brown, Ruth Brown, and many others. Love also appears in the Clint Eastwood film Play Misty For Me with the Johnny Otis band. (Love toured the U.S. and Europe quite frequently into the 2000s, additionally lecturing and writing about the history he was part of. Other legends he played with included Smokey Robinson, Diana Ross, and Stevie Wonder.

John Ned “Johnny” Shines (April 26, 1915 – April 20, 1992) was an American blues singer and guitarist.

Shines was born in the community of Frayser, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was taught to play the guitar by his mother and spent most of his childhood in Memphis, playing slide guitar at an early age in juke joints and on the street. He moved to Hughes, Arkansas, in 1932 and worked on farms for three years, putting aside his music career. A chance meeting with Robert Johnson, his greatest influence, gave him the inspiration to return to music. In 1935, Shines began traveling with Johnson, touring in the United States and Canada. They parted in 1937, one year before Johnson’s death.

Shines played throughout the southern United States until 1941, when he settled in Chicago. There he found work in the construction industry but continued to play in local bars.

He made his first recording in 1946 for Columbia Records, but the takes were never released. He recorded for Chess Records in 1950, but again no records were released. He kept playing with blues musicians in the Chicago area for several more years. In 1952, Shines recorded what is considered his best work, for J.O.B. Records. The recordings were a commercial failure, and Shines, frustrated with the music industry, sold his equipment and returned to working in construction.

Dave Tough (April 26, 1907 – December 9, 1948, was an American jazz drummer associated with Dixieland and swing jazz in the 1930s and 1940s.

Born in Oak Park, Illinois, Tough was a friend of Bud Freeman, who was part of a group of musicians known as the Austin High School Gang in Chicago. In 1925, he became a professional musician, playing with Jack Gardner, Art Kassel, Sig Meyers, and Husk O’Hare’s Wolverines. After two years in Europe, he returned home and played with Benny Goodman and Red Nichols.

He left music for three years until 1935, then joined the big bands of Tommy Dorsey, Red Norvo, Bunny Berigan, and Benny Goodman. He played Dixieland jazz with Bud Freeman, Jack Teagarden, Eddie Condon, Mezz Mezzrow, and Joe Marsala. In the 1940s, he played with the big bands of Charlie Spivak and Claude Thornhill, in Artie Shaw‘s Symphonic Swing Orchestra (1941) and the subsequent naval band led by Shaw (1942-1944), then joined Woody Herman‘s big band (1945). He subsequently worked with Eddie Condon, Jerry Gray, Muggsy Spanier, Will Bradley and Jazz at the Philharmonic.

The centre of the Swan Nebula, or M17, a hotbed of newly born stars wrapped in colourful blankets of glowing gas and cradled in an enormous cold, dark hydrogen cloud. This stunning picture was taken by the newly installed Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

The region of the nebula shown in this picture is about 3500 times wider than our Solar System. The area also represents about 60 percent of the total view captured by ACS. The nebula resides 5500 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius.

Like its famous cousin in Orion, the Swan Nebula is illuminated by ultraviolet radiation from young, massive stars – each about six times hotter and 30 times more massive than the Sun – located just beyond the upper right corner of the image. The powerful radiation from these stars evaporates and erodes the dense cloud of cold gas within which the stars formed. The blistered walls of the hollow cloud shine primarily in the blue, green, and red light emitted by excited atoms of hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and sulphur. Particularly striking is the rose-like feature, seen to the right of centre, which glows in the red light emitted by hydrogen and sulphur.

As the infant stars evaporate the surrounding cloud, they expose dense pockets of gas that may contain developing stars. Because these dense pockets are more resistant to the withering radiation than the surrounding cloud, they appear as sculptures in the walls of the cloud or as isolated islands in a sea of glowing gas. One isolated pocket is seen at the centre of the brightest region of the nebula and is about 10 times larger than our Solar System. Other dense pockets of gas have formed the remarkable feature jutting inward from the left edge of the image, which resembles the famous Horsehead Nebula in Orion.

The ACS made this observation on 1 and 2 April 2002. The colour image is constructed from four separate images taken in these filters: blue, near infrared, hydrogen alpha, and doubly ionised oxygen.

Carl Allen (born April 25, 1961) is an American jazz drummer.

Allen attended William Paterson University.

He has worked with a wide variety of musicians, including Freddie Hubbard, Jackie McLean, George Coleman, Phil Woods, the Benny Green Trio and Rickie Lee Jones.

It was with Green that Allen met bassist Christian McBride. The two have teamed up frequently, working for many combos of big name leaders. McBride recruited Allen for his band, Christian McBride & Inside Straight. Allen is that quintet’s drummer for both its first recording, Kinda Brown, and its road tours.

In 1988 Allen and Vincent Herring founded Big Apple Productions, which produced several albums featuring young jazz performers.

He joined the faculty of The Juilliard School in 2001, and became the Artistic Director of Jazz Studies in 2008. He was replaced as director by Wynton Marsalis in 2013, and left Juilliard at the end of the academic year.

In 2011, Allen appeared as himself in two episodes of the HBO series Tremé, in a studio recording scene in New York City.

In 2014, he formed his own group, The Art of Elvin to pay tribute to Art Blakey and Elvin Jones. The band debuted at the Percussive Arts Society (PAS) conference in Indianapolis, Indiana with Allen on drums, Freddie Hendrix (trumpet), Tivon Pennicott (tenor sax), Xavier Davis (piano), Yasushi Nakamura (bass).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Keu3FH8SXqo

Vassar Carlton Clements (April 25, 1928 – August 16, 2005) was a Grammy Award-winning American jazz, swing, and bluegrass fiddler. Clements has been dubbed the Father of Hillbilly Jazz, an improvisational style that blends and borrows from swing, hot jazz, and bluegrass along with roots also in country and other musical traditions.

Clements was born in Kinard, Florida, but grew up in Kissimmee. He taught himself to play the fiddle at age 7, learning “There’s an Old Spinning Wheel in the Parlor” as his first song. Soon, he joined with two first cousins, Red and Gerald, to form a local string band. In his early teens Clements met Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys when they came to Florida to visit Clements’ stepfather, a friend of fiddler Chubby Wise. Clements was impressed with his playing.

In late 1949 Wise left Monroe’s group, and the 21 year-old Clements traveled by bus to ask for an audition. When told he would have to return the next day, Clements was crestfallen, lacking the money for either a hotel room or return bus trip. Monroe gave him some money to a night’s lodging, and the next day Clements auditioned and was hired. He remained with Monroe for seven years, recording with the band in 1950 and 1951. He soon became one of the most distinctive, inventive, and popular fiddlers in bluegrass music. His virtuosity and ability to blend several different genres, including swing and hot jazz, made him a pioneer in country music and much sought-after session musician.

Between 1957 and 1962, he was a member of the bluegrass band Jim and Jesse & the Virginia Boys. He also gained recognition joining with the popular bluegrass duo of Flatt and Scruggs on the popular theme to the hit television sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies. Earl Scruggs‘ path-breaking banjo style had premiered with Bill Monroe in the late 1940s, and thereafter gained widespread renown with Lester Flatt and the Foggy Mountain Boys. Stardom was within his grasp.

Albert Nelson (April 25, 1923 – December 21, 1992), known by his stage name Albert King, was an American blues guitarist and singer whose playing influenced many other blues guitarists. He is perhaps best known for the popular and influential album Born Under a Bad Sign (1967) and its title track. He is one of the three performers (together with B.B. King and Freddie King) known as the “Kings of the Blues.” King was known for his “deep, dramatic sound that was widely imitated by both blues and rock guitarists.”

He was also known as “The Velvet Bulldozer” because of his smooth singing and large size—he stood taller than average, with sources reporting 6 ft 4 in (1.93 m) or 6 ft 7 in (2.01 m), and weighed 250 lb (110 kg)—and also because he drove a bulldozer in one of his day jobs early in his career.

King was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1983. He was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013. In 2011, he was ranked #13 on Rolling Stone‘s 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.

Albert King was born on a cotton plantation in Indianola, Mississippi.