Blog

Booker T Jones Day

November 12, 2019

Booker Taliaferro Jones Jr. (born November 12, 1944) is an American multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, record producer and arranger, best known as the frontman of the band Booker T. & the M.G.’s. He has also worked in the studios with many well-known artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, earning him a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement. Booker T. Jones was born in Memphis, Tennessee, on November 12, 1944. He was named after his father, Booker T. Jones, Sr., who was named in honor of Booker T. Washington, the educator. Booker T. Jones, Sr. was a science teacher at the school, providing the family with a relatively stable, lower middle-class lifestyle.

Jones was musically a child prodigy, playing the oboe, saxophone, trombone, double bass, and piano at school and organ at church. Jones attended Booker T. Washington High School, the alma mater of Rufus Thomas, and contributed with future stars like Isaac Hayes‘s writing partner David Porter, saxophonist Andrew Love of the Memphis Horns, soul singer/songwriter William Bell, and Earth, Wind & Fire‘s singer/songwriter Maurice White.

more...

Sam Jones Day

November 12, 2019

Samuel Jones (November 12, 1924 – December 15, 1981) was an American jazz double bassist, cellist, and composer.

Sam Jones was born in Jacksonville, Florida, and moved in 1955 to New York City. There, he played with Bobby Timmons, Tiny Bradshaw, Les Jazz Modes, Kenny Dorham, Illinois Jacquet, Freddie Hubbard, Dizzy Gillespie (1958–59) and Thelonious Monk. He is probably best known for his work with Cannonball Adderley (1959–65). He also spent several years working with Oscar Peterson (1966-1970) and Cedar Walton and recorded with Bill Evans in the 1950s. His career primarily revolved around the New York City jazz scene. Jones wrote the jazz standards “Del Sasser” and “Unit 7” while working with Adderley. Other compositions include “Blue Funk”, “O.P.”, “Bittersweet”, and “Seven Minds”.

more...

Bukka White Day

November 12, 2019

Booker T. Washington “Bukka” White (November 12, 1906  – February 26, 1977)[1] was an African-American Delta blues guitarist and singer. Bukka is a phonetic spelling of White’s first name; he was named after the African-American educator and civil rights activist Booker T. Washington.

White was born south of Houston, Mississippi. He was a first cousin of B.B. King‘s mother (White’s mother and King’s grandmother were sisters). He played National resonator guitars, typically with a slide, in an open tuning. He was one of the few, along with Skip James, to use a crossnote tuning in E minor, which he may have learned, as James did, from Henry Stuckey. He also played piano, but less adeptly.

White started his career playing the fiddle at square dances. He claimed to have met Charlie Patton soon after, but some have doubted this recollection. Nonetheless, Patton was a strong influence on White. “I wants to come to be a great man like Charlie Patton”, White told his friends.

He first recorded for Victor Records in 1930. His recordings for Victor, like those of many other bluesmen, included country blues and gospel music. Victor published his photograph in 1930. His gospel songs were done in the style of Blind Willie Johnson, with a female singer accentuating the last phrase of each line. From fourteen recordings, Victor released two records under the name Washington White, two gospel songs with Memphis Minnie on backing vocals and two country blues.

more...

World Music with the African Brothers Dance Band International

November 12, 2019

more...

Daily Roots with the African Brothers

November 12, 2019

more...

Happy Veterans Day 2019

November 11, 2019

Honoring my dad Mike LaBriola who served in the Army stationed back in his native country of Italy.

more...

Rhythm Roots Workshop Residency

November 11, 2019

Wilder Community Center for the Elderly in St Paul. November 11th & 13th 945-1145 in Great Room. 1-230 in Day Room.

more...

The Cosmos with Alnitak, Alnilam & Mintaka

November 11, 2019

Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka, are the bright bluish stars from east to west (lower right to upper left) along the diagonal in this cosmic vista. Otherwise known as the Belt of Orion, these three blue supergiant stars are hotter and much more massive than the Sun. They lie from 800 to 1,500 light-years away, born of Orion’s well-studied interstellar clouds. In fact, clouds of gas and dust adrift in this region have some surprisingly familiar shapes, including the dark Horsehead Nebula and Flame Nebula near Alnitak at the lower right. The famous Orion Nebula itself is off the right edge of this colorful starfield. This well-framed, 2-panel telescopic mosaic spans about 4 degrees on the sky.

more...

Lavern Baker Day

November 11, 2019

Delores LaVern Baker (November 11, 1929 – March 10, 1997) was an American rhythm-and-blues singer who had several hit records on the pop chart in the 1950s and early 1960s. Her most successful records were “Tweedle Dee” (1955), “Jim Dandy” (1956), and “I Cried a Tear” (1958).

Baker was born Delores Evans in Chicago. Some sources refer to her as Delores Williams, the name by which she was known during her early marriage to Eugene Williams.

more...

Hank Garland Day

November 11, 2019

Walter Louis Garland (11 November 1930 – 27 December 2004) professionally Hank Garland, was an American guitarist and songwriter. He started as a country musician, played rock and roll as it became popular in the 1950s, and released a jazz album in 1960. His career was cut short when a car accident in 1961 left him unable to perform.

Born in Cowpens, South Carolina, Garland began playing guitar at the age of six. He appeared on local radio shows at 12 and was discovered at 14 at a South Carolina record store.

He moved to Nashville at age 16, staying in Ma Upchurch’s boarding house, where he roomed with Bob Moore and Dale Potter. At age 18, he recorded his million-selling hit “Sugarfoot Rag“. He appeared on the Jubilee program with Grady Martin‘s band and on The Eddy Arnold Show. Garland is perhaps best known for his Nashville studio work with Elvis Presley from 1958 to 1961 which produced such rock hits as: “I Need Your Love Tonight”, “A Big Hunk o’ Love”, ” I’m Coming Home”, “I Got Stung”, “A Fool Such As I”, “Stuck on You”, “Little Sister”, “(Marie’s The Name) His Latest Flame”, and “I Feel So Bad”. He worked with many country music rock and roll musicians of the late 1950s and early 1960s, such as Patsy Cline, Brenda Lee, Mel Tillis, Marty Robbins, The Everly Brothers, Boots Randolph, Roy Orbison, Conway Twitty, and Moon Mullican.

more...

Ernestine Anderson Day

November 11, 2019

Ernestine Anderson (November 11, 1928 – March 10, 2016) was an American jazz and blues singer. In a career spanning more than six decades, she recorded over 30 albums. She was nominated four times for a Grammy Award. She sang at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Monterey Jazz Festival (six times over a 33-year span), as well as at jazz festivals all over the world. In the early 1990s she joined Qwest Records, the label founded by fellow Garfield High School graduate Quincy Jones.

Ernestine Irene Anderson (and her twin sister Josephine) were born in Houston, Texas, on November 11, 1928. Her mother, Erma, was a housewife, and her father, Joseph, a construction worker who sang bass in a gospel quartet. By the age of three, Anderson showed a talent for singing along with her parents’ old blues 78 rpm records by the likes of Bessie “The Empress of the Blues” Smith. Anderson started singing at a local church, singing solos in its gospel choir.

Anderson tells of her early life in the 1998 book The Jazz Scene:

“My parents used to play blues records all the time,” Ernestine Anderson told me. “John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, all the blues greats. In Houston, where I grew up, you turned on the radio and what you got was country and western and gospel. I don’t even remember what my first experience with music was. I sort of grew into it. My father sang in a gospel quartet and I used to follow him around, and both my grandparents sang in the Baptist church choir. And they had big bands coming through Houston like Jimmie Lunceford, Billy Eckstine, Erskine Hawkins, and Count Basie.” Ernestine’s godmother entered her in a local talent contest when she was twelve years old. “I only knew two songs,” she admitted, “‘On the Sunny Side of the Street‘ and ‘So Long’. The piano player asked me what key did I do these songs in and I just said ‘C’ for some reason and it was the wrong key. In order to save face I sang around the melody, improvised among the melody, and when I finished one of the musicians told me I was a jazz singer.”

Her family moved to Seattle, Washington, in 1944, when she was 16. Anderson attended Garfield High School, graduating in 1946. While a teenager, she was discovered by bandleader “Bumps” Blackwell, who hired her as a singer for his Junior Band. Anderson’s first show was at the Washington Social Club on East Madison Street. The band (which later included Quincy Jones on trumpet, and a young Ray Charles on keyboard) performed regularly in jazz clubs on Seattle’s Jackson Street.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiGNHGGsG1M

more...

Mose Allison Day

November 11, 2019

Mose John Allison Jr. (November 11, 1927 – November 15, 2016) was an American jazz and blues pianist, singer, and songwriter. He became notable for playing a unique mix of blues and modern jazz, both singing and playing piano. After moving to New York in 1956, he worked primarily in jazz settings, playing with jazz musicians like Stan Getz, Al Cohn, and Zoot Sims, along with producing numerous recordings.

He is described as having been “one of the finest songwriters in 20th-century blues.” His songs were strongly dependent on evoking moods, with his individualistic, “quirky”, and subtle ironic humor. His writing influence on R&B had well-known fans recording his songs, among them Pete Townshend, who recorded his “Young Man Blues” for the Who‘s Live At Leeds album in 1970. John Mayall was one of dozens who recorded his classic, “Parchman Farm“, and Georgie Fame used many of Allison’s songs. Others who recorded his songs included Leon Russell (“I’m Smashed”) and Bonnie Raitt (“Everybody’s Crying’ Mercy”).

The 1980s saw an increase in his popularity with new fans drawn to his unique blend of modern jazz. In the 1990s he began recording more consistently. Van Morrison, Georgie Fame and Ben Sidran collaborated with him on a tribute album, Tell Me Something: The Songs of Mose Allison. The Pixies wrote the song “Allison” as a tribute.

Allison’s music had an important influence on other artists, such as Jimi Hendrix, J. J. Cale, the Yardbirds, the Rolling Stones, Tom Waits, and Pete Townshend. He was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame in 2006. Allison was born outside Tippo, Mississippi, on his grandfather’s farm, known as the Island, “because Tippo Bayou encircles it.” He took piano lessons at 5, picked cotton, played piano in grammar school and trumpet in high school, and wrote his first song at 13.

more...

World Fusion with Apichat Pakwan

November 11, 2019

more...

Daily Roots with Larry Marshall

November 11, 2019

more...

Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot

November 10, 2019

Local History through the music of Gordon Lightfoot!

more...

Edmund Fitzgerald 44th Anniversary

November 10, 2019

44 years ago the Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior.

There have been many other shipwrecks on Lake Superior over the years. Many other mammoth November storms. Many other lives lost. But thanks in large part to singer Gordon Lightfoot, one shipwreck stands above the rest in the Great Lakes’ collective memory: the Edmund Fitzgerald. Sunday, Nov. 10, marks the 44th anniversary of the sinking of the Fitzgerald in a November gale on eastern Lake Superior with the loss of all 29 men aboard — a tragedy memorialized by Lightfoot in the now-iconic song he released the following year.

As the song recounts, the “Mighty Fitz” had left Superior on Nov. 9 with a load of iron ore pellets, and made its way across Lake Superior as a storm intensified. The Fitzgerald spent hours battling wind and waves, making its way toward Whitefish Point. On the evening of Nov. 10, 1975, the captain of the Fitzgerald, Ernest McSorley, radioed to the neaby freighter Arthur M. Anderson that the Fitzgerald crew was, quote, “holding our own.” Soon after, the Fitzgerald sank without giving a distress signal. On its final voyage across Lake Superior, the Fitzgerald passed several miles offshore from Split Rock Lighthouse, on Minnesota’s North Shore. And each Nov. 10 since 1985, the 10th anniversary of the wreck, the lighthouse has hosted a memorial ceremony and beacon lighting.

 

more...

Mercury Transit 11-11-19

November 10, 2019

Mercury will pass over Sun tomorrow morning & we should be able to see it here in Minnesota.

Mercury – the innermost planet of our solar system – will transit the sun on November 11, 2019. In other words, Mercury will pass directly in front of the sun and be visible through telescopes with solar filters as a small black dot crossing the sun’s face. It’ll be visible in part from most of Earth’s globe. The entire transit is visible from South America, eastern North America, and far-western Africa. The last transit of Mercury was in 2016. The next one won’t be until 2032.

Be aware that this is a morning event on November 11, according to U.S. clocks. Mercury will come into view on the sun’s face around 7:36 a.m. Eastern Standard Time (12:36 UTC; translate UTC to your time) on November 11. It’ll make a leisurely journey across the sun’s face, reaching greatest transit (closest to sun’s center) at approximately 10:20 a.m. EST (15:20 UTC) and finally exiting around 1:04 p.m. EST (18:04 UTC). The entire 5 1/2 hour path across the sun will be visible across the U.S. East – with magnification and proper solar filters – while those in the U.S. West can observe the transit already in progress after sunrise.

 

more...

The Cosmos with M16

November 10, 2019

The Eagle Nebula (M16) doesn’t look its usual red in this image. That’s because the photographer shot through Sulfur-II, Hydrogen-alpha, and Oxygen-III filters, and then assigned colors that would bring out details best to each filter. M16 is famous for housing the feature known as the Pillars of Creation. The Eagle Nebula is part of a diffuse emission nebula, or H II region, which is catalogued as IC 4703. This region of active current star formation is about 7000 light-years distant. A spire of gas that can be seen coming off the nebula in the northeastern part is approximately 9.5 light-years or about 90 trillion kilometers long.

more...

Hubert Laws Day

November 10, 2019

Hubert Laws (born November 10, 1939) is an American flutist and saxophonist with a career spanning over 50 years in jazz, classical, and other music genres. Considering the artistry of the late Eric Dolphy and the popularity of the late Herbie Mann, Laws is notably in the company of the most recognized and respected jazz flutists in the history of jazz, (also the most imitated). Laws is one of the few classical artists who has also mastered jazz, pop, and rhythm-and-blues genres, moving effortlessly from one repertory to another. Hubert Laws, Jr. was born November 10, 1939, in the Studewood section of Houston, Texas, the second of eight children to Hubert Laws, Sr. and Miola Luverta Donahue.

While at Juilliard, Laws played flute during the evenings with several acts, including Mongo Santamaría, 1963–67 and in 1964 began recording as a bandleader for Atlantic, and he released the albums The Laws of Jazz, Flute By-Laws, and Laws Cause. He appeared on albums by Ashford & Simpson, Chet Baker, George Benson, and Moondog. He recorded with his younger brother Ronnie on the album The Laws in the early 1970s. He played flute on Gil Scott-Heron‘s 1971 album Pieces of a Man, which featured the jazz poem “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”. During the 1970s he was a member of the New York Jazz Quartet. He can also be heard playing tenor saxophone on some records from the 1970s.

In 1980 he had a minor hit with the tune “Family” on CBS records played on many UK soul radio stations.

In the 1990s Laws resumed his career, playing on the 1991 Spirituals in Concert recording by opera singers Kathleen Battle and Jessye Norman. His albums on the Music Masters Jazz label—My Time Will Come in 1990 and, more particularly, Storm Then Calm in 1994—are regarded by critics as a return to the form he exhibited on his early 1970s albums. He also recorded a tribute album to jazz pianist and pop-music vocalist Nat King Cole, Hubert Laws Remembers the Unforgettable Nat King Cole, which received critical accolades. Among the many artists he has played and recorded with are Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, Nancy Wilson, Quincy Jones, Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, Aretha Franklin, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Lena Horne, Leonard Bernstein, James Moody, Jaco Pastorius, Sérgio Mendes, Bob James, Carly Simon, George Benson, Clark Terry, Stevie Wonder, J. J. Johnson, and The Rascals. In 1998, Laws recorded with Morcheebafor the Red Hot Organization‘s compilation album Red Hot + Rhapsody, a tribute to George Gershwin, which raised money for various charities devoted to increasing AIDS awareness and fighting the disease.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdetER25-Mw

more...

Russell Means Day

November 10, 2019

Russell Charles Means (November 10, 1939 – October 22, 2012) was an Oglala Lakota activist for the rights of American Indian people, libertarianpolitical activist, actor, writer and musician, who became a prominent member of the American Indian Movement (AIM) after joining the organization in 1968 and helped organize notable events that attracted national and international media coverage.

Means was active in international issues of indigenous peoples, including working with groups in Central and South America and with the United Nations for recognition of their rights. He was active in politics at his native Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and at the state and national level.

Beginning an acting career in 1992, he appeared on numerous television series and in several films, including The Last of the Mohicans and released his own music CD. He published his autobiography Where White Men Fear to Tread in 1995. Means died in 2012, less than a month before his 73rd birthday. Means was born in Porcupine, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, to Theodora Louise Feather and Walter “Hank” Means. His mother was a Yankton Dakota from Greenwood, South Dakota and his father, an Oglala Lakota. As well as Russell, the family had two other boys (William “Bill” and Warren) and three girls (Madonna, Mabel Ann and Phyllis). He was given the name Wanbli Ohitika by his mother, which means “Brave Eagle” in the Lakota language.

Means participated in the 1969 Alcatraz occupation. He had been there once before, to occupy it for 24 hours under the lead of his father, Walter “Hank” Means, and a few other Lakota men in March 1964 (Means’ father died in January 1967).

On Thanksgiving Day 1970, Means and other AIM activists staged their first protest in Boston: they seized the Mayflower II, a replica ship of the Mayflower, to protest the Puritans’ and United States’ mistreatment of Native Americans. In 1971 Means was one of the leaders of AIM’s takeover of Mount Rushmore, a federal monument. Rushmore is within the Black Hills, an area sacred to the Lakota tribe.

In November 1972, he participated in AIM’s occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) headquarters in Washington, D.C. to protest abuses. Many records were taken or destroyed, and more than $2 million in damages was done to the building.

In 1973, Dennis Banks and Carter Camp led AIM’s occupation of Wounded Knee, which became the group’s most well-known action. Means appeared as a spokesman and prominent leader. The armed standoff of more than 300 Lakota and AIM activists with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and state law enforcement lasted for 71 days. A visiting Cherokee from North Carolina and an Oglala Lakota activist from Pine Ridge Reservation were killed in April.

 

more...