mick laBriola

Kenneth Clarke Spearman (January 9, 1914 – January 26, 1985), nicknamed Klook, was an American jazz drummer and bandleader. A major innovator of the bebop style of drumming, he pioneered the use of the Ride cymbal to keep time rather than the hi-hat, along with the use of the bass drum for irregular accents (“dropping bombs“).

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he was orphaned at the age of about five and began playing the drums when he was about eight or nine on the urging of a teacher at his orphanage. Turning professional in 1931 at the age of seventeen, he moved to New York City in 1935, establishing his drumming style and reputation. As the house drummer at Minton’s Playhouse in the early 1940s, he participated in the after-hours jams that led to the birth of bebop. After military service in the US and Europe between 1943 and 1946,he returned to New York, but between 1948 and 1951 he was mostly based in Paris. He stayed in New York between 1951 and 1956, performing with the Modern Jazz Quartet and playing on early Miles Davisrecordings during this time. He then moved permanently to Paris, where he performed and recorded with European and visiting American musicians and co-led the Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big Band between 1961 and 1972. He continued to perform and record until the month before he died of a heart attack in January 1985. Clarke was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on January 9, 1914 as the youngest of two sons, to Martha Grace Scott, a pianist from Pittsburgh, and Charles Spearman, a trombonist from Waycross, Georgia. The family home was on Wylie Avenue in the Lower Hill District of Pittsburgh. Clarke’s father left the household to start a new family in Yakima, Washington, and his mother, who began a relationship with a Baptist preacher shortly afterwards, died suddenly in her late twenties when Clarke was about five, leaving him an orphan. He and his brother were placed in the Coleman Industrial Home for Negro Boys.

Clarke was drafted into the US army and reported for induction in 1943. During his basic training in 1944, he married singer Carmen McRae. He went absent without leave for nearly four months, during which time he played with Cootie Williams and Dinah Washington, before being captured and sent to Europe. he eventually became part of the Special Services where he led and sang in chorales and performed on drums, trombone, and piano in various bands. While in Paris he met pianist and arranger John Lewis, with whom he began a long association.

Shortly after being discharged from the military and 1946, Clarke converted to Islam and took the name Liaquat Ali Salaam. He joined Dizzy Gillespie’s band for eight months, replacing Max Roach, who had become the most important bebop drummer in Clarke’s absence. Clarke introduced Lewis to the band and made several bop recordings with Gillespie’s sextet including “One Bass Hit (part 1)” and “Oop Bop Sh’Bam“, where his nickname was enshrined in the scat lyrics “Oop bop sh’bam a klook a mop”. He left Gillespie’s band temporarily and worked with Tadd Dameron, Sonny Stitt, Fats Navarro, and his own 52nd Street Boys, before rejoining Gillespie’s group in December 1947. He embarked on a tour with the band in Europe in early 1948, which he considered the highlight of his career. He stayed on in Paris until that August, recording, performing, teaching, and helping to select musicians for the First International Jazz Festival. He then returned to New York for nine months to work with Dameron’s group at the Royal Roost. During this time he also played with bassist Oscar Pettiford‘s band and recorded in the second session of the Miles Davis album Birth of the Cool. Also around this time, or perhaps shortly afterward, he developed an addiction to heroin that lasted until at least the 1960s. In 1948 he permanently separated from McRae; they divorced in 1956.^[3][8][10] In May 1949 Clarke returned to Paris for the festival, making the city his home base for the next two years. While there he worked and recorded with bands led by pianist Bernard Peiffer and saxophonist Coleman Hawkins, and returned to Bechet’s band. At this time he met and had a brief affair with jazz singer Annie Ross, which resulted in a son, Kenny Clarke Jr. (born 1950), who was raised by Clarke’s brother and his wife.

Upon returning to New York in 1951, he toured with Billy Eckstine, and made recordings with saxophonist Charlie Parker‘s quintet and Milt Jackson‘s quartet. Jackson’s ensemble, which included Clarke’s friend John Lewis, became the Modern Jazz Quartet, and he performed with the group at the first Newport Jazz Festival in 1954 and recorded for their albums Modern Jazz Quartet (1952), 1953: An Exceptional Encounter (1953), and Django (1953–1955).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjS39J5QHA4

Large galaxies grow by eating small ones. Even our own galaxy engages in a sort of galactic cannibalism, absorbing small galaxies that are too close and are captured by the Milky Way’s gravity. In fact, thepractice is common in the universe and illustrated by this striking pair of interacting galaxies from the banks of the southern constellation Eridanus, The River. Located over 50 million light years away, the large, distortedspiral NGC 1532 is seen locked in a gravitational struggle with dwarf galaxy NGC 1531 (right of center), a struggle the smaller galaxy will eventually lose. Seen edge-on, spiral NGC 1532 spans about 100,000 light-years. Nicely detailed in this sharp image, the NGC 1532/1531 pair is thought to be similar to the well-studied system of face-on spiral and small companion known as M51.

Dave Weckl (born January 8, 1960) is an American jazz fusion drummer and leader of the Dave Weckl Band. He was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 2000.

Weckl attended Francis Howell High School in St. Charles, Missouri, and graduated in 1978. He majored in jazz studies at the University of Bridgeportin Connecticut. Starting out on the New York fusion scene in the early 1980s, Weckl soon began working with artists such as Paul Simon, Madonna, George Benson, Michel Camilo, Robert Plant and Anthony Jackson. His most famous early work though, where his popularity blossomed, was with the Chick Corea Elektric Band from 1985 to 1991.^{[citation needed]}

Weckl spent a total of seven years with Corea, during which he performed on many albums and also appeared with Corea’s Akoustic Band. He augmented his work with Corea by continuing his session work and appearing often with the GRP All-Star Big Band. He recorded four albums in 1988 and 1989 with the Manhattan Jazz Quintet. Weckl has released a series of instructional videotapes, and in 1990, he led his first solo date, Master Plan, for GRP. Heads Up followed in 1992, as well as Hard-Wired in 1994.

After leaving Corea’s band, Weckl recorded and toured with guitarist Mike Stern. Under his own name, he has been the leader of twelve recordings since 1990, seven of which as the Dave Weckl Band. He currently resides in Los Angeles, California, where he has his own home studio.

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

David Robert Jones (8 January 1947 – 10 January 2016), known professionally as David Bowie (/ˈboʊi/ BOH-ee), was an English singer-songwriter and actor. He was a leading figure in the music industry and is considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, acclaimed by critics and musicians, particularly for his innovative work during the 1970s. His career was marked by reinvention and visual presentation, with his music and stagecraft having a significant impact on popular music. During his lifetime, his record sales, estimated at over 100 million albums worldwide, made him one of the world’s best-selling music artists. In the UK, he was awarded ten platinum album certifications, eleven gold and eight silver, and released eleven number-one albums. In the US, he received five platinum and nine gold certifications. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.

Born in Brixton, South London, Bowie developed an interest in music as a child, eventually studying art, music and design before embarking on a professional career as a musician in 1963. “Space Oddity” became his first top-five entry on the UK Singles Chart after its release in July 1969. After a period of experimentation, he re-emerged in 1972 during the glam rock era with his flamboyant and androgynous alter ego Ziggy Stardust. The character was spearheaded by the success of his single “Starman” and album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, which won him widespread popularity. In 1975, Bowie’s style shifted radically towards a sound he characterised as “plastic soul“, initially alienating many of his UK devotees but garnering him his first major US crossover success with the number-one single “Fame” and the album Young Americans. In 1976, Bowie starred in the cult film The Man Who Fell to Earth, directed by Nicolas Roeg, and released Station to Station. The following year, he further confounded musical expectations with the electronic-inflected album Low (1977), the first of three collaborations with Brian Eno that came to be known as the “Berlin Trilogy“. “Heroes” (1977) and Lodger (1979) followed; each album reached the UK top five and received lasting critical praise.

After uneven commercial success in the late 1970s, Bowie had UK number ones with the 1980 single “Ashes to Ashes“, its parent album Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), and “Under Pressure“, a 1981 collaboration with Queen. He reached his commercial peak in 1983 with Let’s Dance; the album’s title track topped both UK and US charts. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Bowie continued to experiment with musical styles, including industrial and jungle. He also continued acting; his roles included Major Jack Celliers in Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983), Jareth the Goblin King in Labyrinth (1986), Pontius Pilate in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), and Nikola Tesla in The Prestige (2006), among other film and television appearances and cameos. He stopped touring after 2004 and his last live performance was at a charity event in 2006. In 2013, Bowie returned from a decade-long recording hiatus with The Next Day. He remained musically active until he died of liver cancer at his home in New York City, two days after his 69th birthday and the release of his final album, Blackstar (2016).

Elvis Aaron Presley^[a] (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), also known mononymously as Elvis, was an American singer and actor. Regarded as one of the most significant cultural icons of the 20th century, he is often referred to as the “King of Rock and Roll” or simply “the King”.

Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, and relocated to Memphis, Tennessee with his family when he was 13 years old. His music career began there in 1954, recording at Sun Records with producer Sam Phillips, who wanted to bring the sound of African-American music to a wider audience. Presley, on rhythm acoustic guitar, and accompanied by lead guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black, was a pioneer of rockabilly, an uptempo, backbeat-driven fusion of country music and rhythm and blues. In 1955, drummer D. J. Fontana joined to complete the lineup of Presley’s classic quartet and RCA Victor acquired his contract in a deal arranged by Colonel Tom Parker, who would manage him for more than two decades. Presley’s first RCA single, “Heartbreak Hotel“, was released in January 1956 and became a number-one hit in the United States. With a series of successful network television appearances and chart-topping records, he became the leading figure of the newly popular sound of rock and roll. His energized interpretations of songs and sexually provocative performance style, combined with a singularly potent mix of influences across color lines during a transformative era in race relations, made him enormously popular—and controversial.

In November 1956, Presley made his film debut in Love Me Tender. Drafted into military service in 1958, Presley relaunched his recording career two years later with some of his most commercially successful work. He held few concerts however, and guided by Parker, proceeded to devote much of the 1960s to making Hollywood films and soundtrack albums, most of them critically derided. In 1968, following a seven-year break from live performances, he returned to the stage in the acclaimed television comeback special Elvis, which led to an extended Las Vegas concert residency and a string of highly profitable tours. In 1973, Presley gave the first concert by a solo artist to be broadcast around the world, Aloha from Hawaii. Years of prescription drug abuse severely compromised his health, and he died suddenly in 1977 at his Graceland estate at the age of 42.

Presley is the best-selling solo artist in the history of recorded music. He was commercially successful in many genres, including pop, country, blues, and gospel. He won three competitive Grammys, received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award at age 36, and has been inducted into multiple music halls of fame.

Hudson Whittaker (born Hudson Woodbridge, January 8, 1903 – March 19, 1981), known as Tampa Red, was an American Chicago bluesmusician.

Tampa Red is best known as a blues guitarist who had a distinctive single-string slide style. His songwriting and his bottleneck technique influenced other leading Chicago blues guitarists, such as Big Bill Broonzy, Robert Nighthawk and Muddy Waters, and many others, including Elmore James and Mose Allison. In a career spanning over 30 years he also recorded pop, R&B and hokum songs. His best-known recordings include “Anna Lou Blues”, “Black Angel Blues“, “Crying Won’t Help You”, “It Hurts Me Too“, and “Love Her with a Feeling“. Tampa Red was born Hudson Woodbridge in Smithville, Georgia. His parents died when he was a child, and he moved to Tampa, Florida, where he was raised by his aunt and grandmother and adopted their surname, Whittaker. He emulated his older brother, Eddie, who played the guitar, and he was especially inspired by an old street musician called Piccolo Pete, who first taught him to play blues licks on the guitar.

In the 1920s, having already perfected his slide technique, he moved to Chicago, Illinois, and began his career as a musician, adopting the name “Tampa Red”, with reference to his childhood home and his light-colored skin. His big break came when he was hired to accompany Ma Rainey. He began recording in 1928, with “It’s Tight Like That”, in a bawdy and humorous style that became known as hokum. His early recordings were mostly collaborations with Thomas A. Dorsey, known as Georgia Tom. The two recorded almost 90 sides, sometimes as the Hokum Boys or, with Frankie Jaxon, as Tampa Red’s Hokum Jug Band.

Rippling dust and gas lanes give the Flaming Star Nebula its name. The orange and purple colors of the nebula are present in different regions and are created by different processes. The bright star AE Aurigae, visible toward the image left, is so hot it is blue, emitting light so energetic it knocks electrons away from surrounding gas. When a proton recaptures an electron, red light is frequently emitted (depicted here in orange). The purple region’s color is a mix of this red light and blue light emitted by AE Aurigae but reflected to us by surrounding dust. The two regions are referred to as emission nebula and reflection nebula, respectively. Pictured here in the Hubble color palette, the Flaming Star Nebula, officially known as IC 405, lies about 1500 light years distant, spans about 5 light years, and is visible with a small telescope toward the constellation of the Charioteer (Auriga).

Earl Wilberforce “Wire” Lindo (7 January 1953 – 4 September 2017), sometimes referred to as Wya, was a Jamaican reggae musician. He was a member of Bob Marley and the Wailers and collaborated with numerous reggae artists including Burning Spear.

While attending Excelsior High School in Jamaica, he played with Barry Biggs, Mikey “Boo” Richards, and Ernest Wilson in the Astronauts, and later played organ in the band Now Generation, and with Tommy McCook and the Supersonics, and the Meters. Aston “Familyman” Barrett heard Lindo and recommended him to play for a Saturday afternoon television program Where It’s At on JBC. Lindo also spent his early days working at Coxsone Dodd‘s Studio One, where he played on innumerable recordings. In 1973, he was invited to join The Wailers on a US tour, going on to play on Burnin’. He left the Wailers in 1974 to join Taj Mahal‘s band.

Lindo can be heard on an album credited to the Impact All-Stars. Released in 1975, the album is a collection of dub tracks recorded at Randy’s Studio 17. On his return to Jamaica he played on recordings by Big Youth, Culture, I Roy, and Al Brown, and had some success with solo singles “No Soul Today” and “Who Done It”. In 1978 he rejoined the Wailers, playing on Babylon by Bus, Survival, and Uprising. After Marley’s death, Lindo was a member of The Wailers Band. Lindo died in a London hospital on 4 September 2017, aged 64, shortly after being admitted with abdominal pain. Among the tributes paid, Olivia Grange, Minister of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport, described him as “an exceptionally gifted musician who played a pivotal role alongside Bob Marley and the Wailers in the global success of Jamaica’s reggae music.

Sam Woodyard (January 7, 1925 – September 20, 1988) was an American jazz drummer.

Woodyard was largely an autodidact on drums and played locally in the Newark, New Jersey area in the 1940s. He performed with Paul Gayten in an R&B group, then played in the early 1950s with Joe Holiday, Roy Eldridge, and Milt Buckner. In 1955 he joined Duke Ellington‘s orchestra and remained until 1966.

After his time with Ellington, Woodyard worked with Ella Fitzgerald, then moved to Los Angeles. In the 1970s he played less due to health problems, but he recorded with Buddy Rich and toured with Claude Bolling. In 1983 he belonged to a band with Teddy Wilson, Buddy Tate, and Slam Stewart. His last recording was on Steve Lacy‘s 1988 album The Door.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggWuAHTe3Xk

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Bobo Jenkins (January 7, 1916 – August 14, 1984) was an American Detroit blues and electric blues guitarist, singer and songwriter. He also built and set up his own recording studio and record label in Detroit. Jenkins is best known for his recordings of “Democrat Blues” and “Tell Me Where You Stayed Last Night”.

He was born John Pickens Jenkins in Forkland, Alabama. His father, a sharecropper, died when John was not yet one year old, and the boy grew up with his mother and uncle. He left home before the age of 12, and arrived in Memphis, Tennessee. He had a wife at the age of 14, the first of ten marriages. Jenkins took casual work in the Mississippi Delta for several years and then enrolled in the United States Army. Following his 1944 military discharge, he relocated to Detroit, working for Packard and managing a garage, before spending twenty-seven years working for Chrysler.

In the late 1940s Jenkins learned to play the guitar and started writing songs. He wrote the politically themed “Democrat Blues”, about the U.S. Election Day in 1952, expressing his unease about Dwight D. Eisenhower becoming the first Republican in the White House in almost twenty years.

With assistance from John Lee Hooker, Jenkins recorded “Democrat Blues” in Chicago in 1954, which was released by Chess Records. Another recording was issued by Boxer Records, based in Chicago, and then “Ten Below Zero” (1957) was released by Fortune Records, based in Detroit. In 1959, Jenkins established his own record label, Big Star Records, whose first release was his single “You”ll Never Understand” and “Tell Me Where You Stayed Last Night”. He met and played alongside Sonny Boy Williamson II, before constructing his own recording studio. He recorded mainly local musicians, including James “Little Daddy” Walton, Little Junior Cannady, Chubby Martin and Syl Foreman.

Henry James “Red” Allen (January 7, 1908 – April 17, 1967) was an American jazz trumpeter and vocalist whose style has been claimed to be the first to fully incorporate the innovations of Louis Armstrong.

Allen was born in the Algiers neighborhood of New Orleans, Louisiana, the son of the bandleader Henry Allen. He took early trumpet lessons from Peter Bocage and Manuel Manetta.

Allen’s career began in Sidney Desvigne‘s Southern Syncopators. He was playing professionally by 1924 with the Excelsior Brass Band and the jazz dance bands of Sam Morgan, George Lewis and John Casimir. After playing on riverboats on the Mississippi River, he went to Chicago in 1927 to join King Oliver‘s band. Around this time he made recordings on the side in the band of Clarence Williams. After returning briefly to New Orleans, where he worked with the bands of Fate Marable and Fats Pichon, he was offered a recording contract with Victor Records and went to New York City, where he joined the Luis Russell band, which was later fronted by Louis Armstrong in the late 1930s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU2fHcmkPxI

Luciano Pozo González (January 7, 1915 in Havana – December 3, 1948 in New York City), known professionally as Chano Pozo was a Cuban jazz percussionist, singer, dancer, and composer. Despite only living to age 33, he played a major role in the founding of Latin jazz. He co-wrote some of Dizzy Gillespie’s Latin-flavored compositions, such as “Manteca” and “Tin Tin Deo“, and was the first Latin percussionist in Gillespie’s band.

Luciano “Chano” Pozo González was born in Havana to Cecelio González and Carnación Pozo. Chano grew up with three sisters and a brother, as well as his older half brother, Félix Chappottín, who would later become one of the great Cuban soneros. The family struggled with poverty throughout his youth. His mother died when Chano was eleven, and Cecelio took his family to live with his long-time mistress, Natalia, who was Felix’s mother.

Chano showed an early interest in playing drums, and performed ably in Afro-Cuban religious ceremonies in which drumming was a key element. The family lived for many years at El África Solar (Africa neighborhood), a former slave quarters, by all accounts a foul and dangerous place, where it was said even the police were afraid to venture. In this environment criminal activities flourished, and Chano learned the ways of the street as means of survival. He dropped out of school after the third grade and earned a solid reputation as a rowdy tough guy, big for his age and exceptionally fit. He spent his days playing drums, fighting, drinking, and engaging in petty criminal activities, the latter of which landed him a stint in a youth reformatory. No official records document the crime he was sentenced for, though at least one account has him causing the accidental death of a foreign tourist, adding to a record of thievery, assault, and truancy. At the age of 13, Chano was sent to the reformatory in Guanajay, where he learned reading and writing, auto body repair, and honed his already exceptional skills playing a variety of drums.

During this time he became a devotee of Santería. Also known as “La Regla de Ocha”, this is an Afro-Caribbean religion derived from traditional beliefs of the Yoruba people of Nigeria. Developed among Afro-Cuban slaves, the religion began as a blending of these West African spiritual beliefs and Catholic doctrine. Yoruba deities were identified with Catholic saints to fool the slave owners, as the Spanish colonialists had forbidden the practice of African religions. Chano pledged allegiance to the Catholic Saint Barbara, identified widely with Shango, the Yoruba god of fire and thunder, and took him as his personal protector.

Chano Pozo was shot and killed on December 2, 1948 in the El Rio Bar at 111th St and Lenox Avenue in Harlem. The Rio Bar no longer exists—even the small triangular block where it was located has been removed. Pozo’s killer was a local bookie named Eusebio “Cabito” Munoz. Pozo had accused Cabito of selling him poor quality marijuana and Cabito retaliated.

Pozo is buried in the Colón Cemetery, Havana.

Compared to their more intricate spiral cousins, elliptical galaxies resemble soft, hazy clouds. These galaxies have smooth, undefined boundaries, and bright cores surrounded by a fuzzy, diffuse glow. However, looks can be deceiving. At least 10% of ellipticals extend much further out into the cosmos than you might expect, and possess a range of far finer structures than first meets the eye — features such as loops and shells.

Located around 100 million light-years away in the constellation of Pisces (The Fish), the galaxy to the upper-left of this image is named NGC 474. It is a stunning example of a shell elliptical galaxy; enormous wispy tails flick around the galaxy’s main body, while the inner structure is formed of a series of nested concentric rings. In fact, the full extent of the galaxy cannot even be contained in this field of view. The tendril-like outer regions of NGC 474 billow and wisp away like smoke, extending outwards for large distances from the galaxy’s main bulk.

Astronomers are unsure why some galaxies take on this kind of appearance and structure, but they believe it concerns gravity — namely, how nearby galaxies gravitationally interact with one another. It is possible that the spiral galaxy to the lower-right, NGC 470, has been tugging on its larger friend for billions of years, causing density waves to reshape its structure.

Maurice “Mobetta” Brown (born January 6, 1981) originally from Harvey, Illinois is a Grammy Award-winning American jazz trumpeter, producer and composer. As a member of Tedeschi Trucks Band, he shared the 2011 Grammy for Best Blues Album (Revelator).

Brown was born in Harvey, Illinois and grew up in the south suburbs of Chicago. He met Wynton Marsalis in the 8th grade while performing at a seminar attended by Marsalis. While attending Hillcrest High School in Country Club Hills, Brown was chosen to participate in the National High School GRAMMY Band, which led Ramsey Lewis to begin hiring Brown to perform with his band.

Brown began college at Northern Illinois University, then transferred to Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, studying under jazz clarinetist Alvin Batiste. Later, he moved to New Orleans, where he led a regular Tuesday night residency at the Snug Harbor jazz club and released his first album, “Hip to Bop”.