mick laBriola

NGC 253 is one of the brightest spiral galaxies visible, but also one of the dustiest. Dubbed the Silver Coin for its appearance in smalltelescopes, it is more formally known as the Sculptor Galaxy for its location within the boundaries of the southern constellation Sculptor. Discovered in 1783 by mathematician and astronomer Caroline Herschel, the dusty island universe lies a mere 10 million light-years away. About 70 thousand light-years across, NGC 253, pictured, is the largest member of the Sculptor Group of Galaxies, the nearest to our own Local Group of galaxies. In addition to its spiral dust lanes, tendrils of dust seem to be rising from a galactic disk laced with young star clusters and star forming regions in this sharp color image. The high dust content accompanies frantic star formation, earning NGC 253 the designation of a starburst galaxy. NGC 253 is also known to be a strong source of high-energy x-rays and gamma rays, likely due to massive black holes near the galaxy’s center. Take a trip through extragalactic space in this short video flyby of NGC 253.

Eugene “Jug” Ammons (April 14, 1925 – August 6, 1974), also known as “The Boss”, was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. The son of boogie-woogie pianist Albert Ammons, Gene Ammons is remembered for his accessible music, steeped in soul and R&B.

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Ammons studied music with instructor Walter Dyett at DuSable High School. Ammons began to gain recognition while still at high school when in 1943, at the age of 18, he went on the road with trumpeter King Kolax‘s band. In 1944 he joined the band of Billy Eckstine (who bestowed on him the nickname “Jug” when straw hats ordered for the band did not fit), playing alongside Charlie Parker and later Dexter Gordon. Notable performances from this period include “Blowin’ the Blues Away,” featuring a saxophone duel between Ammons and Gordon. After 1947, when Eckstine became a solo performer, Ammons then led a group, including Miles Davis and Sonny Stitt, that performed at Chicago’s Jumptown Club. In 1949 Ammons replaced Stan Getz as a member of Woody Herman‘s Second Herd, and then in 1950 formed a duet with Sonny Stitt.

The 1950s were a prolific period for Ammons and produced some acclaimed recordings such as “The Happy Blues” (1955). Musicians who played in his groups, apart from Stitt, included Donald Byrd, Jackie McLean, John Coltrane, Kenny Burrell, Mal Waldron, Art Farmer, and Duke Jordan.

Milton “Shorty” Rogers (April 14, 1924 – November 7, 1994) was one of the principal creators of West Coast jazz. He played trumpet and flugelhornand was in demand for his skills as an arranger.

Rogers worked first as a professional musician with Will Bradley and Red Norvo. From 1947 to 1949, he worked extensively with Woody Herman and in 1950 and 1951 he played with Stan Kenton.

Rogers had with his Orchestra including Johnny “Guitar” Watson, perform for the famed ninth Cavalcade of Jazz concert held at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles which was produced by Leon Hefflin, Sr. on June 7, 1953. Also featured that day were Roy Brown and his Orchestra, Don Tosti and His Mexican Jazzmen, Earl Bostic, Nat “King” Cole, and Louis Armstrong and his All Stars with Velma Middleton.

From 1953 through 1962, Rogers recorded a series of albums for RCA Victor (later reissued on RCA’s Bluebird label), as well as a series of albums for Atlantic Records with his own group, Shorty Rogers and His Giants, including Shorty Courts the Count (1954), The Swinging Mr. Rogers (1955), and Martians Come Back (1955), the album title alluding to the tune “Martians Go Home” which Rogers had composed and performed on The Swinging Mr. Rogers earlier the same year. These albums incorporated some of his more avant-garde music. To some extent they could be classified as “cool” jazz; but they also looked back to the “hot” style of Count Basie, whom Rogers always credited as a major inspiration.

Rogers died of melanoma in Van Nuys, California, at the age of 70.

Ali Akbar Khan (14 April 1922 – 18 June 2009) was an Indian Hindustani classical musician of the Maihar gharana, known for his virtuosity in playing the sarod. Trained as a classical musician and instrumentalist by his father, Allauddin Khan, he also composed numerous classical ragas and film scores. He established a music school in Calcutta in 1956, and the Ali Akbar College of Music in 1967, which moved with him to the United States and is now based in San Rafael, California, with a branch in Basel, Switzerland.

Khan was instrumental in popularizing Indian classical music in the West, both as a performer and as a teacher. He first came to America in 1955 on the invitation of violinist Yehudi Menuhin and later settled in California. He was a Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Music at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Khan was accorded India’s second highest civilian honour, the Padma Vibhushan, in 1989. Nominated five times for the Grammy Award, Khan was a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and the National Endowment for the Arts‘s National Heritage Fellowship.

Ali Akbar Khan was born in the village of Shibpur, Nabinagar Upazila, Brahmanbaria, in present-day Bangladesh, (then Comilla, East Bengal), to renowned musician and teacher, Allauddin Khanand Madina Begum. Soon after his birth, Khan’s family returned to Maihar (in present-day Madhya Pradesh, India) where his father was the primary court musician for the Maharaja of the princely state.

Distorted galaxy NGC 2442 can be found in the southern constellation of the flying fish, (Piscis) Volans. Located about 50 million light-years away, the galaxy’s two spiral arms extending from a pronounced central bar give it a hook-shaped appearance. This deep color image also shows the arms’ obscuring dust lanes, young blue star clusters and reddish star forming regions surrounding a core of yellowish light from an older population of stars. But the star forming regions seem more concentrated along the drawn-out (right side) spiral arm. The distorted structure is likely the result of an ancient close encounter with the smaller galaxy to the left of NGC 2442. The two interacting galaxies are separated by about 150,000 light-years at the estimated distance of NGC 2442.

Albert Leornes Greene (born April 13, 1946), often known as The Reverend Al Green, is an American singer, songwriter and record producer; he is best known for recording a series of soul hit singles in the early 1970s, including “Take Me to the River“, “Tired of Being Alone“, “I’m Still in Love with You“, “Love and Happiness“, and his signature song, “Let’s Stay Together“. After an incident in which his girlfriend committed suicide, Green became an ordained pastor and turned to gospel music. He later returned to secular music.

Green was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. He was referred to on the museum’s site as being “one of the most gifted purveyors of soul music”. He has also been referred to as “The Last of the Great Soul Singers”. Green is the winner of 11 Grammy Awards, including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. He has also received the BMI Icon award and is a Kennedy Center Honors recipient. He was included in the Rolling Stone list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time, ranking at No. 65, as well as its list of the 100 Greatest Singers, at No. 14. Albert Leornes Greene was born on April 13, 1946, in Forrest City, Arkansas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtrR8J-ZdBo

Lowell Thomas George (April 13, 1945 – June 29, 1979) was an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and record producer, who was the primary guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter for the rock band Little Feat.

Lowell George was born in Hollywood, California, the son of Willard H. George, a furrier who raised chinchillas and supplied furs to the movie studios.

George’s first instrument was the harmonica. At the age of six he appeared on Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour performing a duet with his older brother, Hampton. As a student at Hollywood High School (where he befriended Paul Barrere and future wife Elizabeth), he took up the flute in the school marching band and orchestra. He had already started to play Hampton’s acoustic guitar at age 11, progressed to the electric guitar by his high school years, and later learned to play the saxophone, shakuhachi and sitar. During this period, George viewed the teen idol-oriented rock and roll of the era with contempt, instead favoring West Coast jazz and the soul jazz of Les McCann and Mose Allison. Following graduation in 1963, he briefly worked at a gas station (an experience that inspired such later songs as “Willin’“) to support himself while studying art and art history at Los Angeles Valley College for two years.

Initially funded by the sale of his grandfather’s stock, George’s first band The Factory formed in 1965 and released at least one single on the Uni Records label, “Smile, Let Your Life Begin” (co-written by George). Members included future Little Feat drummer Richie Hayward (who replaced Dallas Taylor in September 1966), Martin Kibbee (a.k.a. Fred Martin) who would later co-write several Little Feat songs with George (including “Dixie Chicken” and “Rock and Roll Doctor”), and Warren Klein on guitar. Frank Zappa produced two tracks for the band, but they were not released until 1993 on the album Lightning-Rod Man, credited to Lowell George and The Factory.^[2] The band made an appearance on the 1960s sitcom F Troop as “The Bedbugs”. They were also featured in an episode of Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., “Lost, the Colonel’s Daughter” (season 3, episode 27). They appeared in the scene inside the A-Go-Go club, with their music heard playing loudly. They received credits at the end of the episode as “‘The Factory’ Lowell-Warren-Martin-Rich, Courtesy of Universal Records”. Following the disbanding of The Factory, George briefly joined The Standells.

In November 1968, George joined Zappa’s Mothers of Invention as rhythm guitarist and nominal lead vocalist; he can be heard on Weasels Ripped My Flesh, Burnt Weeny Sandwich, You Can’t Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 1, You Can’t Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 4 and the first disc of You Can’t Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 5. During this period, he absorbed Zappa’s autocratic leadership style and avant garde-influenced conceptual/procedural-oriented compositional methods. He earned his first production credit (in conjunction with Zappa and Russ Titelman) on Permanent Damage, an album recorded by “groupie group” The GTOs. George later asserted that “he performed no real function in the band” and left the group in May 1969 under nebulous circumstances. GTOs member Pamela Des Barres has claimed that George was fired by Zappa for smoking marijuana, while George claimed at a 1975 Little Feat concert that he was fired because he “wrote a song [“Willin'”] about dope.”^[3] On the other hand, biographer Mark Brend asserts that Zappa liked the song but thought there was no place for it in the Mothers’ set; George himself alternatively claimed that “it was decided that I should leave and form a band” by mutual agreement. George also claimed to have played uncredited guitar on Hot Rats.

After leaving the Mothers of Invention, George invited fellow musicians former Zappa bassist Roy Estrada, keyboardist Bill Payne, and drummer Richie Hayward to form a new band, which they named Little Feat. George usually (but not always) played lead guitar and focused on slide guitar, but Ry Cooder played the slide on “Willin'” on the debut Little Feat album after George badly injured his hand while working on a powered model airplane, although George rerecorded some of his material and he played the rest of the slide work on the album. Mark Brend wrote that George’s “use of compression defined his sound and gave him the means to play his extended melodic lines.” George began his slide playing using the casing of a Sears, Roebuck and Co. 11/16ths spark plug socket wrench, rather than the traditional glass or steel finger tube.

Little Feat signed to Warner Bros. Records through Zappa’s efforts and their first album was Little Feat, produced by Russ Titelman, but it was not a commercial success and only sold 11,000 copies on initial release.

John William “Jack” Casady (born April 13, 1944) is an American bass guitarist, best known as a member of Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna. Jefferson Airplane became the first successful exponent of the San Francisco Sound. Their singles, including “Somebody to Love” and “White Rabbit“, had a more polished style than their other material, and successfully charted in 1967 and 1968. Casady, along with the other members of Jefferson Airplane, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.

Casady was born in Washington D.C., the son of Mary Virginia (née Quimby) and William Robert Casady. His father was of half Irish Protestant and half Polish Jewish ancestry. His mother was a relative of aviator Harriet Quimby; some of her family had been in North America since the 1600s.

Edwin “Eddie” Marshall (April 13, 1938 – September 7, 2011) was an American jazz drummer.

Marshall was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. He played in his father’s swing group and in R&B bands while in high school. He moved to New York City in 1956, developing his percussion style under the influence of Max Roach and Art Blakey. Two years later he played in the quartet of Charlie Mariano and with Toshiko Akiyoshi; after two years’ service in the Army, he returned to play with Akiyoshi again in 1965. He worked with Mike Nock for a year in the house band of the New York nightclub The Dom, and also worked with Stan Getz and Sam Rivers, and accompanied Dionne Warwick on tours.

In 1967 he was a member of The Fourth Way, a fusion group which included Nock, Michael White, and Ron McClure. This group toured the San Francisco Bay Area through the early 1970s; after this Marshall played with Jon Hendricks and The Pointer Sisters.

Marshall was a member of the group Almanac with Bennie Maupin (flute, tenor saxophone), Cecil McBee (bass) and Mike Nock (piano). They released one album in 1977.

In the 1980s he worked in the project Bebop & Beyond, who recorded tribute albums to Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk.

Lawrence “Bud” Freeman (April 13, 1906 – March 15, 1991) was an American jazz musician, bandleader, and composer, known mainly for playing the tenor saxophone, but also able at the clarinet. He had a smooth and full tenor sax style with a heavy robust swing. He was one of the most influential and important jazz tenor saxophonists of the big band era. His major recordings were “The Eel”, “Tillie’s Downtown Now”, “Crazeology”, “The Buzzard”, and “After Awhile”, composed with Benny Goodman.

Freeman was born on April 13, 1906, in Chicago. In 1922, he and some friends from high school formed a jazz group, the Austin High School Gang, Freeman played the C melody saxophone alongside his other band members such as Jimmy McPartland and Frank Teschemacher before switching to tenor saxophone two years later. Influenced by artists like the New Orleans Rhythm Kings and Louis Armstrong from the South, they would begin to formulate their own style, becoming part of the emerging Chicago Style of jazz.