mick laBriola

Conrad Yeatis “Sonny” Clark (July 21, 1931 – January 13, 1963) was an American jazz pianist and composer who mainly worked in the hard bop idiom. Clark was born and raised in Herminie, Pennsylvania, a coal mining town east of Pittsburgh. His parents were originally from Stone Mountain, Georgia. His miner father, Emery Clark, died of a lung disease two weeks after Sonny was born. Sonny was the youngest of eight children. At age 12, he moved to Pittsburgh. While visiting an aunt in California at age 20, Clark decided to stay and began working with saxophonist Wardell Gray. Clark went to San Francisco with Oscar Pettiford and after a couple months, was working with clarinetist Buddy DeFranco in 1953. Clark toured the United States and Europe with DeFranco until January 1956, when he joined The Lighthouse All-Stars, led by bassist Howard Rumsey. Clark died in New York City on January 13, 1963 (aged 31). The official cause was listed as a heart attack, but the likely cause was a heroin overdose.

Floyd Edward “Butter” McDaniel (born July 21, 1915 in Athens (Alabama) ;  July 22, 1995 in Chicago ) was an American guitarist and singer in the fields of blues , jazz , rhythm & blues and doo-wop .

McDaniel came to Chicago at the age of 15 and began his career in 1933 in the youth band The Rhythm Rascals , which debuted at the Chicago World’s Fair . A talent scout for the Cotton Club discovered him during an appearance at New York’s Apollo Theater , resulting in a longer commitment as head of the Cotton Club Tramp band led; Recordings were made in 1937 with The Tramp Band (with Lester “Pinky” Johnson and Al Cowans).  From 1941 to 1954 he played in the Chicago Jump blues group The Four Blazes(in alternating line-ups with Paul Lindsley “Jelly” Holt, Tommy Braden, Ernie Harper, William “Shorty” Hill, later as Five Blazers ), which also served as the backing band for Sam Cooke in the late 1950s . The Four Blazes successfully released several 78s on Aristocrat ( Chicago Boogie , 1947) and United Artists Records such as Night Train / Rug Cutter , Perfect Woman, Please Send Her Back to Me, Mary Jo (# 1 on the R&B charts in 1952), All Night Long and Please Send Her Back to Me / Stop Boogie Woogie (1952) or as Five Blazesthe single Chicago Boogie / Dedicated to You .  After the Five Blazes broke up , McDaniels bought a bar in Chicago.

For the following decade, McDaniel was a member of a rock band; in the 1970s appeared as a guitarist with one of the revival groups trading as Ink Spots . In the 1980s he played with Willie Dixon in the Big Three Trio . Recordings were made in 1991 for Delmark Records with the band The Blues Swingers , led by tenor saxophonist Dave Clark, stylistically based on the blues and rhythm & blues of the 1940s ( Let Your Hair Down!, Delmark).  Shortly before his death occurred Floyd McDaniel 1994 at the Bremen Blue Festival Breminale on. He died of a heart attack on the Dan Ryan Expressway the day after his eightieth birthday . In1997, McDaniel’s album West Side Baby (Live in Europe) was released posthumously by Delmark .

Carlos Humberto Santana Barragán (born July 20, 1947) is an American guitarist, best known as a founding member of the rock band Santana. Born and raised in Mexico where he developed his musical background, he rose to fame in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United States with Santana, which pioneered a fusion of rock and roll and Latin American jazz. Its sound featured his melodic, blues-based lines set against Latin American and African rhythms played on percussion instruments not generally heard in rock, such as timbales and congas. He experienced a resurgence of popularity and critical acclaim in the late 1990s.

In 2015, Rolling Stone magazine listed Santana at No. 20 on their list of the 100 greatest guitarists. In 2023, Rolling Stone named him the 11th greatest guitarist of all time. He has won 10 Grammy Awards and three Latin Grammy Awards, and was inducted along with his namesake band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998.

Santana was born in Autlán de Navarro in Jalisco, Mexico on July 20, 1947. He learned to play the violin at age five and the guitar at age eight, under the tutelage of his father, who was a mariachi musician. His younger brother, Jorge, also became a professional guitarist.

Tony Oladipo Allen (20 July 1940 – 30 April 2020) was a Nigerian and French drummer, composer, and songwriter who lived and worked in Paris, France. Allen was the drummer and musical director of Fela Kuti‘s band Africa ’70 from 1968 to 1979, and was one of the founders of the Afrobeat genre. Fela once stated that “without Tony Allen, there would be no Afrobeat”. He was described by Brian Eno as “perhaps the greatest drummer who has ever lived”.

Later in life, Allen collaborated with Damon Albarn on several projects, including Gorillaz, the Good, the Bad & the Queen and Rocket Juice & the Moon. Allen’s career and life were documented in his 2013 autobiography Tony Allen: Master Drummer of Afrobeat, co-written with Michael E. Veal, who previously wrote a comprehensive biography of Fela Kuti.

Ernest Brooks Wilkins Jr. (July 20, 1922 – June 5, 1999 St Louis, MO) was an American jazz saxophonist, conductor and arranger who spent several years with Count Basie. He also wrote for Tommy Dorsey, Harry James, and Dizzy Gillespie. He was musical director for albums by Cannonball Adderley, Dinah Washington, Oscar Peterson, and Buddy Rich.

Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen were an American country rock band founded in 1967. The group’s leader and co-founder was pianist and vocalist George Frayne IV, alias Commander Cody (born July 19, 1944, in Boise, Idaho; died September 26, 2021, in Saratoga Springs, New York).

The band became known for marathon live shows. Alongside Frayne, the classic lineup was Billy C. Farlow (b. Decatur, Alabama) on vocals and harmonica; John Tichy (b. St. Louis, Missouri) on guitar and vocals; Bill Kirchen (Kirchen was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, June 29, 1948, but grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan) on lead guitar; Andy Stein (b. August 31, 1948, in New York City) on saxophone and fiddle; “Buffalo” Bruce Barlow (b. December 3, 1948, in Oxnard, California) on bass guitar; Lance Dickerson (b. October 15, 1948, in Livonia, Michigan, died November 10, 2003, in Fairfax, California)^{[citation needed]} on drums; and Steve “The West Virginia Creeper” Davis (b. July 18, 1946, in Charleston, West Virginia), followed by Bobby Black, on pedal steel guitar.

Arley “Buster“ Benton (July 19, 1932 – January 20, 1996) was an American bluesguitarist and singer. He played guitar in Willie Dixon‘s Blues All-Stars and is best known for his solo rendition of Dixon’s song “Spider in My Stew.” Benton was tenacious, and despite the amputation of parts of both legs in the latter part of his lengthy career, he never stopped playing his own version of Chicago blues.

He was born Arley Benton, in Texarkana, Arkansas. While residing in Toledo, Ohio, in the mid-1950s, and having been influenced by Sam Cooke and B.B. King, Benton began playing blues. By 1959, he was leading his own band in Chicago. During the 1960s, the local record labels Melloway, Alteen, Sonic, and Twinight released several singles by Benton. However, because of a lack of opportunities in the early 1960s, he gave up playing professionally for several years and worked as an auto mechanic. His earlier work was an amalgam of blues and soul. According to the music journalist Bill Dahl, “in the late 1970s, when the popularity of blues music was at low ebb, Benton’s recordings, particularly for Ronn Records, were a breath of fresh air.”

William C. “Buster“ Bailey (July 19, 1902 – April 12, 1967) was an American jazz clarinetist.

Buster Bailey was taught clarinet by classical teacher Franz Schoepp, who also taught Benny Goodman. Bailey gained his start with W.C. Handy’s Orchestra in 1917, when he was just fifteen years old. After two years of touring with Handy, Bailey quit the orchestra while the band was in Chicago. In 1919, Bailey joined Erskine Tate’s Vendome Orchestra and remained with Tate until 1923 when he joined up with Joe “King” Oliver. As a member of King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, Bailey met and became friends with Louis Armstrong, who was also a member of the band at that time. In 1924, Armstrong left King Oliver’s Jazz Band to join Fletcher Henderson’s Orchestrain New York. Within a month, Armstrong extended an invitation for Buster Bailey to join him as a member of Henderson’s band. Bailey accepted and moved to New York City.