mick laBriola

Howard McGhee (March 6, 1918 – July 17, 1987) was one of the first bebop jazz trumpeters, with Dizzy Gillespie, Fats Navarro and Idrees Sulieman. He was known for his fast fingers and very high notes. What is generally not known is the influence that he had on younger hard bop trumpeters, with Fats Navarro.

Howard McGhee was raised in Detroit, Michigan. During his career, he played in bands led by Lionel Hampton, Andy Kirk, Count Basie and Charlie Barnet. He was in a club listening to the radio when he first heard Parker and was one of the early adopters of the new style, a fact that was disapproved by older musicians like Kid Ory.

Walter E. “Furry” Lewis (March 6, 1893 or 1899 – September 14, 1981) was an American country blues guitarist and songwriter from Memphis, Tennessee. He was one of the first of the blues musicians active in the 1920s to be brought out of retirement and given new opportunities to record during the folk blues revival of the 1960s.

Lewis was born in Greenwood, Mississippi. His birth year is uncertain. Many sources give 1893, the date he gave in his later years, but the researchers Bob Eagle and Eric LeBlanc suggest 1899, based on his 1900 census entry, and other sources suggest 1895 or 1898. His family moved to Memphis when he was seven. He acquired the nickname “Furry” from childhood playmates. By 1908, he was playing solo at parties, in taverns, and on the street. He was also invited to play several dates with W. C. Handy‘s Orchestra.

In his travels as a musician, he was exposed to a wide variety of performers, including Bessie Smith, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and Alger “Texas” Alexander. Like his contemporary Frank Stokes, he grew tired of traveling and took a permanent job in 1922. His position as a street sweeper for the city of Memphis, a job he held until his retirement in 1966, allowed him to continue performing music in Memphis.

Lewis made his first recordings for Vocalion Records in Chicago in 1927. A year later he recorded for Victor Records at the Memphis Auditorium, in a session with the Memphis Jug Band, Jim Jackson, Frank Stokes, and others. He again recorded for Vocalion in Memphis in 1929. The tracks were mostly blues but included two-part versions of “Casey Jones” and “John Henry”. He sometimes fingerpicked and sometimes played with a slide. He made many successful records in the late 1920s, including “Kassie Jones”, “Billy Lyons & Stack-O-Lee” and “Judge Harsh Blues” (later called “Good Morning Judge”).

The most flamenco “bulerías” are in Phrygian mode (with the I chord mutation that becomes Major perfect, often combining melodic and harmonic turns on the I and VI).

The basic structure of bulerías

Bulerías, like other flamenco forms, has its own language. When we dance we are in conversation with the singer, the guitarist, and the palmeros. The structure offers a formula for clear communication, and it looks like this:

• Salida

• Marcaje(s)

• Paso de bulerías (or a more upbeat marcaje)

• Llamada

• Patá (Patada)

• (Another Marcaje or Paso de Bulerías)

• Llamada

• Final

This colorful skyscape spans about four full moons across nebula rich starfields along the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy in the royal northern constellation Cepheus. Near the edge of the region’s massive molecular cloud some 2,400 light-years away, bright reddish emission region Sharpless (Sh) 155 is left of center, also known as the Cave Nebula. About 10 light-years across the cosmic cave’s bright walls of gas are ionized by ultraviolet light from the hot young stars around it. Dusty blue reflection nebulae, like vdB 155 at lower right, and dense obscuring clouds of dust also abound on the interstellar canvas. Astronomical explorationshave revealed other dramatic signs of star formation, including the bright red fleck of Herbig-Haro (HH) 168. Below center in the frame, the Herbig-Haro object emission is generated by energetic jets from a newborn star.

Edmond Montague Grant (born 5 March 1948) is a Guyanese-British singer-songwriter and musician. He was a founding member of The Equals, one of the United Kingdom’s first racially integrated pop groups. His subsequent solo career included the platinum single “Electric Avenue”. He also pioneered the genre ringbang.

Grant was born in Plaisance, British Guiana, later moving to Linden. His father, Patrick, was a trumpeter who played in Nello and the Luckies.While at school, his parents lived and worked in the United Kingdom, sending back money for his education. In 1960, he emigrated to join his parents in London. He lived in Kentish Town and went to school at the Acland Burghley Secondary Modern at Tufnell Park, where he learned to read and write music. He became a big fan of Chuck Berry, and after seeing him play at the Finsbury Park Astoria decided on a career in music.

In 1965, Grant formed the Equals, playing guitar and singing background vocals, and the band had two hit albums and a minor hit with the single “I Get So Excited” before having a number one hit in 1968 with his song “Baby Come Back“. The tune also topped the UK Singles Chart in 1994, when covered by Pato Banton featuring Robin and Ali Campbell of the reggae group UB40. The Equals had five further top 40 hits in the UK up to the end of 1970. The Baby Come Back album featured a song by Grant titled, “Police on My Back” which was recorded by the Clash for their 1980 album Sandinista!. Willie Nile released his version of “Police on My Back” on his Streets of New York CD. The Equals’ song “Green Light” co-written by Grant from their 1968 album Supreme, was recorded by the Detroit Cobras, for their 2007 album, Tied & True.

Louis A. “Lou” Levy (March 5, 1928 – January 23, 2001) was an American jazz pianist. Levy was born to Jewish parents in Chicago and started playing piano when he was twelve. His chief influences were Art Tatum and Bud Powell.

A professional at age nineteen, Levy played with Georgie Auld (1947 and later), Sarah Vaughan, Chubby Jackson (1947–1948), Boyd Raeburn, Woody Herman’s Second Herd (1948–1950), Tommy Dorsey (1950) and Flip Phillips. Levy left music for a few years in the early fifties and then returned to gain a strong reputation as an accompanist to singers, working with Peggy Lee (1955–1973), Ella Fitzgerald (1957–1962), June Christy, Anita O’Day and Pinky Winters. Levy also played with Dizzy Gillespie, Shorty Rogers, Stan Getz, Terry Gibbs, Benny Goodman, Supersax and most of the major West Coast players. Levy recorded as a leader for Nocturne (1954), RCA, Jubilee, Philips, Interplay (1977), and Verve.

Levy died of a heart attack in Dana Point, California at the age of 72.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loK2ym8b-bE&t=12s

Gene Rodgers (March 5, 1910, New York City – October 23, 1987, New York City) was an American jazz pianist and arranger. He is best known for being the pianist on Coleman Hawkins‘ famous 1939 recording of “Body and Soul“.

Rodgers worked professionally from the mid-1920s, and in the next few years made recordings with Clarence Williams and King Oliver in addition to playing with Chick Webb and Teddy Hill. He started his own variety show in the 1930s, doing tours of Australia and England; while in the latter in 1936 he recorded with Benny Carter.

Upon his return he played with Coleman Hawkins (1939–40), Zutty Singleton, and Erskine Hawkins (1943). He did work in Hollywood in the 1940s, including an appearance in the film Sensations of 1945 with Cab Calloway and Dorothy Donegan. After this he worked mainly in New York, leading a trio for many years. He played with the Harlem Blues and Jazz Band in 1981-82.

Rodgers appears, with opening title credits, in the 1947 film Shoot to Kill, though it doesn’t look like the sound was miked during filming. Appearing about 9:40 into the film is “Ballad of the Bayou” and later is “Rajah’s Blues.” Both are Rodgers compositions.

Rodgers recorded sparingly as a leader; he did two sides for Vocalion in 1936, four in a session for Joe Davis in 1945, and albums as a trio leader for EmArcy (1958), Black & Blue Records (1972), and 88 Up Right (1980).

Heitor Villa-Lobos (UK: /ˌvɪləˈloʊbɒs, ˌviːlɑːˈ-/, US: /ˌviːləˈloʊboʊs, –bəs, –boʊʃ, ˌviːlɑːˈlɔːbʊs/, Portuguese: [ejˈtoʁ ˌvilɐ ˈlobus]; March 5, 1887 – November 17, 1959) was a Brazilian composer, conductor, cellist, and guitarist described as “the single most significant creative figure in 20th-century Brazilian art music”.^[5] Villa-Lobos has become the best-known South American composer of all time. A prolific composer, he wrote numerous orchestral, chamber, instrumental and vocal works, totaling over 2000 works by his death in 1959. His music was influenced by both Brazilian folk music and by stylistic elements from the European classical tradition, as exemplified by his Bachianas Brasileiras (Brazilian Bachian-pieces). His Etudes for guitar (1929) were dedicated to Andrés Segovia, while his 5 Preludes (1940) were dedicated to his spouse Arminda Neves d’Almeida, a.k.a. “Mindinha.” Both are important works in the guitar repertory.

Two galaxies, NGC 5394 and NGC 5395, slowly whirl about each other in a gravitational interaction that sets off a flourish of sparks in the form of new stars. The featured image, taken with the Gemini North 8-meter telescope on Maunakea, Hawaii, USA, combines four different colors. Emission from hydrogen gas, colored red, marks stellar nurseries where new stars drive the evolution of the galaxies. Also visible are dark dust lanes that mark gas that will eventually become stellar nurseries. If you look carefully you will see many more galaxies in the background, some involved in their own slow cosmic dances.

NGC 5395 is an interacting spiral galaxy located at a distance of 160 million light years, but receding away from the earth at 3511 kilometers (2181.6 miles) per second, in the constellation Canes Venatici. It was discovered by William Herschel on May 16, 1787. NGC 5395 and NGC 5394 are included in the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies as Arp 84 in the category “Spiral galaxies with large high surface brightness companions”.

Ricky Ford (born March 4, 1954) is an American jazz tenor saxophonist. Ford was born in Boston and studied at the New England Conservatory. In 1974 he recorded with Gunther Schuller and then played in the Duke Ellington Orchestra under Mercer Ellington from 1974 to 1976. After this he played with Charles Mingus (1976–77), Dannie Richmond (1978–81), Lionel Hampton (1980–82), and then in the Mingus Dynasty (1982). He also played with Abdullah Ibrahim (1983–90) and Mal Waldron (1989–94), and has recorded with many other notable musicians including Yusef Lateef, Sonny Stitt, McCoy Tyner, Freddie Hubbard, Amina Claudine Myers, Sathima Bea Benjamin, Steve Lacy, and others.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCbXd1ddWWM

Jan Garbarek (born 4 March 1947) is a Norwegian jazz saxophonist, who is also active in classical music and world music.

Garbarek was born in Mysen, Norway, the only child of a former Polish prisoner of war, Czesław Garbarek, and a Norwegian farmer’s daughter. He grew up in Oslo, stateless until the age of seven, as there was no automatic grant of citizenship in Norway at the time. When he was 21, he married Vigdis. He is the father of musician and composer Anja Garbarek.

Garbarek’s sound is one of the hallmarks of the ECM Records label, which has released virtually all of his recordings. His style incorporates a sharp-edged tone, long, keening, sustained notes, and generous use of silence. He began his recording career in the late 1960s, notably featuring on recordings by the American jazz composer George Russell (such as Electronic Sonata for Souls Loved by Nature). By 1973 he had turned his back on the harsh dissonances of avant-garde jazz, retaining only his tone from his previous approach. Garbarek gained wider recognition through his work with pianist Keith Jarrett‘s European Quartet which released the albums Belonging (1974), My Song (1977) and the live recordings Personal Mountains (1979), and Nude Ants (1979). He was also a featured soloist on Jarrett’s orchestral works Luminessence (1974) and Arbour Zena(1975).

Zenzile Miriam Makeba (4 March 1932 – 9 November 2008), nicknamed Mama Africa, was a South African singer, songwriter, actress, United Nations goodwill ambassador, and civil rights activist. Associated with musical genres including Afropop, jazz, and world music, she was an advocate against apartheid and white-minority government in South Africa.

Born in Johannesburg to Swazi and Xhosa parents, Makeba was forced to find employment as a child after the death of her father. She had a brief and allegedly abusive first marriage at the age of 17, gave birth to her only child in 1950, and survived breast cancer. Her vocal talent had been recognized when she was a child, and she began singing professionally in the 1950s, with the Cuban Brothers, the Manhattan Brothers, and an all-woman group, the Skylarks, performing a mixture of jazz, traditional African melodies, and Western popular music. In 1959, Makeba had a brief role in the anti-apartheid film Come Back, Africa, which brought her international attention, and led to her performing in Venice, London, and New York City. In London, she met the American singer Harry Belafonte, who became a mentor and colleague. She moved to New York City, where she became immediately popular, and recorded her first solo album in 1960. Her attempt to return to South Africa that year for her mother’s funeral was prevented by the country’s government.

Makeba’s career flourished in the United States, and she released several albums and songs, her most popular being “Pata Pata” (1967). Along with Belafonte she received a Grammy Award for her 1965 album An Evening with Belafonte/Makeba. She testified against the South African government at the United Nations and became involved in the civil rights movement. She married Stokely Carmichael, a leader of the Black Panther Party, in 1968. As a result, she lost support among white Americans and faced hostility from the US government, leading her and Carmichael to move to Guinea. She continued to perform, mostly in African countries, including at several independence celebrations. She began to write and perform music more explicitly critical of apartheid; the 1977 song “Soweto Blues“, written by her former husband Hugh Masekela, was about the Soweto uprising. After apartheid was dismantled in 1990, Makeba returned to South Africa. She continued recording and performing, including a 1991 album with Nina Simone and Dizzy Gillespie, and appeared in the 1992 film Sarafina!. She was named a UN goodwill ambassador in 1999, and campaigned for humanitarian causes. She died of a heart attack during a 2008 concert in Italy.

Makeba was among the first African musicians to receive worldwide recognition. She brought African music to a Western audience, and popularized the world music and Afropop genres. She also made popular several songs critical of apartheid, and became a symbol of opposition to the system, particularly after her right to return was revoked. Upon her death, former South African President Nelson Mandela said that “her music inspired a powerful sense of hope in all of us.”

Willie Johnson (March 4, 1923 – February 26, 1995) was an African American electric blues guitarist. He is best known as the principal guitarist in Howlin’ Wolf‘s band from 1948–53. His raucous, distorted guitar playing features on Howlin’ Wolf’s Memphis recordings of 1951–3, including the hit song “How Many More Years” (recorded May 1951).

In 2017, Johnson was posthumously inducted in to the Blues Hall of Fame.

Antonio Lucio Vivaldi (UK: /vɪˈvældi/, US: /vɪˈvɑːldi, –ˈvɔːl-/, Italian: [anˈtɔːnjo ˈluːtʃo viˈvaldi] ; 4 March 1678 – 28 July 1741) was an ItalianBaroque musical composer, virtuoso violinist, teacher, and Roman Catholic priest. Born in Venice, the capital of the Venetian Republic, he is regarded as one of the greatest Baroque composers, and his influence during his lifetime was widespread across Europe. He composed many instrumental concertos, for the violin and a variety of other instruments, as well as sacred choral works and more than forty operas. His best-known work is a series of violin concertos known as the Four Seasons.

Many of his compositions were written for the all-female music ensemble of the Ospedale della Pietà, a home for abandoned children. Vivaldi had worked there as a Catholic priest for 1 1/2 years and was employed there from 1703 to 1715 and from 1723 to 1740. Vivaldi also had some success with expensive stagings of his operas in Venice, Mantua and Vienna. After meeting the Emperor Charles VI, Vivaldi moved to Vienna, hoping for royal support. However, the Emperor died soon after Vivaldi’s arrival, and Vivaldi himself died in poverty less than a year later.

By analyzing planets orbiting a star called Kepler-32, astronomers at Caltech estimate that there are at least 100 billion planets in our galaxy.

Pasadena, California —Look up at the night sky and you’ll see stars, sure. But you’re also seeing planets—billions and billions of them. At least.

That’s the conclusion of a new study by astronomers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) that provides yet more evidence that planetary systems are the cosmic norm. The team made their estimate while analyzing planets orbiting a star called Kepler-32—planets that are representative, they say, of the vast majority in the galaxy and thus serve as a perfect case study for understanding how most planets form.

“There’s at least 100 billion planets in the galaxy—just our galaxy,” says John Johnson, assistant professor of planetary astronomy at Caltech and coauthor of the study, which was recently accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. “That’s mind-boggling.”

“It’s a staggering number, if you think about it,” adds Jonathan Swift, a postdoc at Caltech and lead author of the paper. “Basically there’s one of these planets per star.”

The planetary system in question, which was detected by the Kepler space telescope, contains five planets. The existence of two of those planets have already been confirmed by other astronomers. The Caltech team confirmed the remaining three, then analyzed the five-planet system and compared it to other systems found by the Kepler mission.

The planets orbit a star that is an M dwarf—a type that accounts for about three-quarters of all stars in the Milky Way. The five planets, which are similar in size to Earth and orbit close to their star, are also typical of the class of planets that the telescope has discovered orbiting other M dwarfs, Swift says. Therefore, the majority of planets in the galaxy probably have characteristics comparable to those of the five planets.

While this particular system may not be unique, what does set it apart is its coincidental orientation: the orbits of the planets lie in a plane that’s positioned such that Kepler views the system edge-on. Due to this rare orientation, each planet blocks Kepler -32’s starlight as it passes between the star and the Kepler telescope.