mick laBriola

Gigi Gryce (born George General Grice Jr.; November 28, 1925 – March 14, 1983), later Basheer Qusim, was an American jazz saxophonist, flautist, clarinetist, composer, arranger, and educator.

While his performing career was relatively short, much of his work as a player, composer, and arranger was quite influential and well-recognized during his time. However, Gryce abruptly ended his jazz career in the 1960s. This, in addition to his nature as a very private person, has resulted in very little knowledge of Gryce today. Several of his compositions have been covered extensively (“Minority“, “Social Call”, “Nica’s Tempo”) and have become minor jazz standards. Gryce’s compositional bent includes harmonic choices similar to those of contemporaries Benny Golson, Tadd Dameron and Horace Silver. Gryce’s playing, arranging, and composing are most associated with the classic hard bop era (roughly 1953–1965). He was a well-educated composer and musician, and wrote some classical works as a student at the Boston Conservatory. As a jazz musician and composer he was very much influenced by the work of Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk.

George General Grice Jr. was born in Pensacola, Florida on November 28, 1925.

After graduating with a degree in composition in 1952, Gryce relocated to New York City, where he would enjoy much success in the mid fifties. In 1953 Max Roach recorded one of Gryce’s charts with his septet, and soon after Gryce recorded with Howard McGhee and wrote for Horace Silver‘s sextet as well.

Gryce was influenced by Tadd Dameron, with whom he played in 1953 at the Paradise Club. Gryce had not yet reached his peak as a musician or soloist, but was developing a reputation as a versatile and talented composer and arranger. Later in 1953 Gryce also contributed a tune, “Up in Quincy’s Place” to Art Farmer‘s Prestige recordings. While this recording was rather inconsequential, Farmer would become one of Gryce’s closest colleagues.

One of the most important connections Gryce made in New York was with Quincy Jones, who encouraged Lionel Hampton to hire Gryce for his band in the summer of 1953. After playing with Hampton’s band in the States, Gryce was invited to join the band for their European tour.

While the style of the Hampton band was outdated and overly commercialized in Gryce’s eyes, the opportunities and connections made on the European tour were largely what propelled Gryce into success as an artist. In Hampton’s band, Gryce played with Anthony Ortega, Clifford Solomon (tenor saxophone), Clifford Scott, Oscar Estelle (baritone saxophone), Walter Williams (trumpet), Art Farmer, Clifford Brown, Quincy Jones, Al Hayse, Jimmy Cleveland, George “Buster” Cooper, William “Monk” Montgomery, and Alan Dawson. Gryce became particularly close friends with Clifford Brown, with whom he found much in common. The Hampton tour did not pay well, and Gryce and others frequently sought recording opportunities on the side, particularly in Stockholm and Paris, where Europeans were eager to record touring Americans. There was already some tension in the band between young bebop-influenced musicians and the more established swing musicians (including Hampton himself), and Hampton did not react well when he heard his musicians were recording on the side.

The recordings Gryce made with Clifford Brown and others on the tour were often hurried and done on the fly, yet they were instrumental in building his career, particularly as a composer. Notable of these European recordings were “Paris the Beautiful”, featuring tonal centers a third apart and a Parker-influenced solo by Gryce; “Brown Skins”, a concerto for a large jazz ensemble; “Blue Concept”, recorded by the Gryce-Brown sextet; and “Strictly Romantic”, which oscillates between A flat and G major. In addition, Henri Renaud recorded an entire album exclusively of Gryce’s work, which did a great deal to build his reputation.

Lyle David Mays (born November 27, 1953) is an American jazz pianist and composer best known as a member of the Pat Metheny Group.Metheny and Mays composed and arranged nearly all of the group’s music, for which Mays has won eleven Grammy Awards.

While growing up, Mays had four main interests: chess, mathematics, architecture, and music. His parents were musically inclined – his mother was a pianist, his father was a guitarist – and he was able to study the piano with the help of instructor Rose Barron. She allowed Mays the opportunity to practice improvisation after the structured elements of the lesson were completed. At age 9 he played organ at a family member’s wedding, and at age 14 he began to play organ in church. In summer camp he was introduced to important jazz artists.

Bill Evans‘ album Live in Montreux and Miles Davis‘ album Filles de Kilimanjaro were important influences on his formation as a jazz musician. He graduated from the University of North Texas after attending the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. He composed and arranged for the One O’Clock Lab Band and was the composer and arranger of Grammy-nominated album Lab 75.

Randal Edward Brecker (born November 27, 1945) is an American trumpeter, flugelhornist, and composer. His versatility has made him a popular studio musician who has recorded with acts in jazz, rock, and R&B.

Brecker was born on November 27, 1945 in the Philadelphia suburb of Cheltenham to a musical family. His father Bob (Bobby) was a lawyer who played jazz piano and his mother Sylvia was a portrait artist. Randy described his father as “a semipro jazz pianist and trumpet fanatic. In school when I was eight, they only offered trumpet or clarinet. I chose trumpet from hearing Diz, Miles, Clifford, and Chet Baker at home. My brother [Michael Brecker] didn’t want to play the same instrument as I did, so three years later he chose the clarinet!” Randy’s father, Bob, was also a songwriter and singer who loved to listen to recordings of the great jazz trumpet players such as Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Clifford Brown. He took Randy and his younger brother Michael Brecker to see Davis, Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, and many other jazz icons. Brecker attended Cheltenham High School from 1959 to 1963 and then Indiana University from 1963 to 1966 studying with Bill Adam, David Baker and Jerry Coker and later moved to New York and performed with Clark Terry‘s Big Bad Band, the Duke Pearson and the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra.

In 1967, Brecker ventured into jazz-rock with the band Blood, Sweat & Tears, on their first album Child Is Father to the Man, but left to join the Horace Silver Quintet. Brecker recorded his first solo album, Score, in 1968, featuring his brother Michael Brecker.

James Marshall “Jimi” Hendrix (born Johnny Allen Hendrix; November 27, 1942 – September 18, 1970) was an American rock guitarist, singer, and songwriter. His mainstream career lasted only four years, but he is widely regarded as one of the most influential guitarists in history and one of the most celebrated musicians of the 20th century. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes him as “the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music”.

Born in Seattle, Washington, Hendrix began playing guitar at age 15. In 1961, he enlisted in the US Army and trained as a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne Division, but he was discharged the following year. He moved to Clarksville, Tennessee soon after and began playing gigs on the Chitlin’ Circuit, earning a place in the Isley Brothers‘ backing band and later with Little Richard, with whom he continued to work through mid-1965. He played with Curtis Knight and the Squires before moving to England in late 1966 after being discovered by Linda Keith, who interested bassist Chas Chandlerof the Animals in becoming his first manager. Within months, Hendrix earned three UK top ten hits with the Jimi Hendrix Experience: “Hey Joe“, “Purple Haze“, and “The Wind Cries Mary“. He achieved fame in the US after his performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, and his third and final studio album Electric Ladyland reached number one in the US in 1968; it was Hendrix’s most commercially successful release and his only number-one album. He was the world’s highest-paid performer, and he headlined the Woodstock Festival in 1969 and the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970. He died from barbiturate-related asphyxia on September 18, 1970, at age 27.

Hendrix was inspired by American rock and roll and electric blues. He favored overdriven amplifiers with high volume and gain, and he was instrumental in popularizing the previously undesirable sounds caused by guitar amplifier feedback. He was also one of the first guitarists to make extensive use of tone-altering effects units in mainstream rock, such as fuzz tone, Octavia, wah-wah, and Uni-Vibe. He was the first musician to use stereophonic phasing effects in recordings. Holly George-Warren of Rolling Stone writes: “Hendrix pioneered the use of the instrument as an electronic sound source. Players before him had experimented with feedback and distortion, but Hendrix turned those effects and others into a controlled, fluid vocabulary every bit as personal as the blues with which he began.”

In 1967, readers of Melody Maker voted Hendrix the Pop Musician of the Year, and Rolling Stone declared him the Performer of the Year in 1968. Disc and Music Echo magazine honored him with the World Top Musician of 1969, and Guitar Player named him the Rock Guitarist of the Year in 1970. The Jimi Hendrix Experience was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005. Rolling Stone ranked the band’s three studio albums among the 100 greatest albums of all time, and ranked Hendrix the greatest guitarist and the sixth greatest artist of all time.

Jimi Hendrix had a diverse heritage. His paternal grandmother, Zenora “Nora” Rose Moore, was African American and one-quarter Cherokee. Hendrix’s paternal grandfather, Bertran Philander Ross Hendrix (born 1866), was born out of an extramarital affair between a woman named Fanny, and a grain merchant from Urbana, Ohio, or Illinois, one of the wealthiest men in the area at that time. After Hendrix and Moore relocated to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, they had a son they named James Allen Hendrix on June 10, 1919; the family called him “Al”.

In 1941, after moving to Seattle, Al met Lucille Jeter (1925–1958) at a dance; they married on March 31, 1942. Lucille’s father (Jimi’s maternal grandfather) was Preston Jeter (born 1875), whose mother was born in similar circumstances as Bertran Philander Ross Hendrix. Lucille’s mother, née Clarice Lawson, had African American and Cherokee ancestors. Al, who had been drafted by the US Army to serve in World War II, left to begin his basic training three days after the wedding. Johnny Allen Hendrix was born on November 27, 1942, in Seattle; he was the first of Lucille’s five children. In 1946, Johnny’s parents changed his name to James Marshall Hendrix, in honor of Al and his late brother Leon Marshall.

Stationed in Alabama at the time of Hendrix’s birth, Al was denied the standard military furlough afforded servicemen for childbirth; his commanding officer placed him in the stockade to prevent him from going AWOL to see his infant son in Seattle. He spent two months locked up without trial, and while in the stockade received a telegram announcing his son’s birth. During Al’s three-year absence, Lucille struggled to raise their son. When Al was away, Hendrix was mostly cared for by family members and friends, especially Lucille’s sister Delores Hall and her friend Dorothy Harding. Al received an honorable discharge from the US Army on September 1, 1945. Two months later, unable to find Lucille, Al went to the Berkeley, California, home of a family friend named Mrs. Champ, who had taken care of and had attempted to adopt Hendrix; this is where Al saw his son for the first time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPrAg3sXIAM

The Phoenix galaxy cluster contains the first confirmed supermassive black hole that is unable to prevent large numbers of stars from forming in the core of the galaxy cluster where it resides. The Phoenix Cluster system has several distinct elements that help tell the story of its unusually high star formation. Data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory show that the coolest gas it can detect is located near the center of the cluster. In the absence of significant sources of heat, astronomers expect cooling to occur at the highest rates in a cluster’s center, where the densest gas is located.

The Phoenix Cluster (SPT-CL J2344-4243) is a massive, type I galaxy cluster located at its namesake constellation, the southern constellation of Phoenix. It was initially detected in 2010 using the Sunyaev–Zel’dovich effect by the South Pole Telescope collaboration. It is one of the most massive galaxy clusters known, with the mass on the order of 2×10¹⁵ M_☉. Most of the mass of the Phoenix Cluster is in the form of dark matter and its intracluster medium. The vast stellar halo of the Phoenix Cluster central galaxy extends to over 1.1 million light years from the center, making it one of the largest galaxies known. It is 22 times the diameter of our galaxy, and its starburst activity suggests that the galaxy is still growing larger.

Tina Turner (born Anna Mae Bullock, November 26, 1939) is an American-Swiss singer and actress. Originally from the United States, she became a Swiss citizen in 2013. Turner rose to prominence as a duo with her then-husband Ike Turner before reinventing herself as a solo performer. One of the best-selling recording artists of all time, she has been referred to as The Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll and has sold more than 200 million records worldwide. Turner is noted for her energetic stage presence, powerful vocals, career longevity, and trademark legs.

She began her career in 1958 as a featured singer with Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm, recording under the name “Little Ann” on “Boxtop.” Her introduction to the public as Tina Turner began in 1960 as a member of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue with the hit single “A Fool In Love.” Success followed with a string of notable hits, including “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine” (1961), “River Deep – Mountain High” (1966), the Grammy-winning “Proud Mary” (1971), and “Nutbush City Limits” (1973). In her autobiography, I, Tina: My Life Story (1986), Turner revealed that she had subjected to domestic violence prior to their 1976 split and subsequent 1978 divorce. Raised a Baptist, she became an adherent of Nichiren Buddhism in 1973, crediting the spiritual chant of Nam Myoho Renge Kyo with helping her to endure during difficult times. After her separation from Ike Turner, she rebuilt her career through live performances.

In the 1980s, Turner launched a major comeback as a solo artist. The 1983 single “Let’s Stay Together” was followed by the 1984 release of her fifth solo album, Private Dancer, which became a worldwide success. The album contained the song “What’s Love Got to Do with It“; becoming Turner’s biggest hit and winning four Grammy Awards, including Record of the Year.^[6] Turner’s solo success continued throughout the 1980s and 1990s with multi-platinum albums and hit singles. In 1993, What’s Love Got to Do with It, a biographical film adapted from Turner’s autobiography, was released along with an accompanying soundtrack album. In 2008, Turner returned from semi-retirement to embark on her Tina!: 50th Anniversary Tour; the tour became one of the highest-selling ticketed shows of all time. Turner has also garnered success acting in films such as the 1975 rock musical Tommy, the 1985 action film Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, and the 1993 film Last Action Hero.

Turner has won 12 Grammy Awards; those awards include eight competitive awards, three Grammy Hall of Fame awards, and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Rolling Stone ranked Turner 63rd on its list of the 100 greatest artists of all time and 17th on its list of the 100 greatest singers of all time. Turner has her own stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and on the St. Louis Walk of Fame. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Ike Turner in 1991.^[9] Turner is a 2005 recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors.

Tina Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock on November 26, 1939, in Nutbush, Tennessee, the youngest daughter of Zelma Priscilla (née Currie) and Floyd Richard Bullock. She was born at Poindexter Farm on Highway 180, where her father worked as an overseer of the sharecroppers; Bullock later recalled picking cotton with her family at an early age. Turner participated in the PBS documentary African American Lives 2 with Dr. Henry Louis Gates, who shared her DNA estimates of predominantly African-American descent, with approximately 33% European and 1% Native American ancestry.

Jim Mullen (born 26 November 1945) is a Glasgow-born jazz guitarist with a distinctive style, like Wes Montgomery before him, picking with the thumb rather than a plectrum.

It was while both musicians were touring the United States with AWB in the mid-70s that Mullen met tenor saxophone player Dick Morrissey, and throughout the 1980s, he found critical notice as joint leader of the British jazz funk band Morrissey–Mullen. Record producer Richard Niles, who produced the band’s sixth album, It’s About Time, later produced three solo albums for Mullen.

Mullen has also played and recorded with, among others, Mose Allison, Hamish Stuart, Joanna Eden, Tam White, Claire Martin, Mike Carr, Jimmy Witherspoon, Dave O’Higgins and Georgie Fame, Sinan Alimanović, David Tughan, Jimmy Smith and Frank Holder. Mullen has recorded as part of The AllStars, a collective of session musicians on their Paul McCartney-produced album All About the Music, alongside special guests Jocelyn Brown, Hamish Stuart and Angelo Starr. In 2014, he featured prominently on the Citrus Sun album, ‘People of Tomorrow’, produced by Incognito co-founder, Jean-Paul ‘Bluey’ Maunick.

Slavko Avsenik (November 26, 1929 – July 2, 2015) was a Slovene composer and musician. Beginning in 1953 with the formation of the Avsenik Brothers Ensemble, Avsenik produced more than 1,000 songs and enjoyed success both in Slovenia and in other parts of Europe and America, and is viewed as a Slovenian cultural icon.

Over forty years, the Avsenik Ensemble’s original “Oberkrainer” sound became the primary vehicle of ethnic musical expression for Austria, (Germany), Slovenia, Switzerland, northern Italy and the Benelux countries, spawning hundreds of Alpine orchestras in the process.

The Ensemble, known as “Ansambel bratov Avsenik” or “Slavko Avsenik und seine Original Oberkrainer” has performed before millions, including heads of state, on radio and television, and in thousands of concerts. Selling about 12 million records, Avsenik has earned thirty-one Gold, two Diamond, and one Platinum record. The “Johann Strauss of the twentieth century,” Avsenik collaborated with his brother, Vilko, to produce nearly 1000 original compositions and an integral part of the Cleveland-Style legacy. The Avsenik saga began in 1953 with a band formed in Slovenia, broadcast on the Slovene Hour from Austria, and dubbed the “Musicians of the Oberkrain” by a Vienna disc jockey. Growing in popularity, they soon began appearing in broadcasts, movies, and concerts in West Germany.

Etta Jones (November 25, 1928 – October 16, 2001) was an American jazz singer. Her best-known recordings were “Don’t Go to Strangers” and “Save Your Love for Me”. She worked with Buddy Johnson, Oliver Nelson, Earl Hines, Barney Bigard, Kenny Burrell, Milt Jackson, Cedar Walton, and Houston Person. Jones was born in Aiken, South Carolina, and raised in Harlem, New York. Still in her teens, she joined Buddy Johnson‘s band for a tour although she was not featured on record. Her first recordings—”Salty Papa Blues”, “Evil Gal Blues”, “Blow Top Blues”, and “Long, Long Journey”—were produced by Leonard Feather in 1944, placing her in the company of clarinetist Barney Bigard and tenor saxophonist Georgie Auld. In 1947, she recorded and released an early cover version of Leon Rene’s “I Sold My Heart to the Junkman” (previously released by the Basin Street Boys on Rene’s Exclusive label) while at RCA Victor Records. She performed with the Earl Hines sextet from 1949 to 1952.

Nat Adderley (November 25, 1931 – January 2, 2000) was an American jazz trumpeter. He was the younger brother of saxophonist Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, whom he remained very close to in his career, but under whose shadow he lived for most of his life.

Adderley’s composition “Work Song” is a jazz standard, and also became a success on the pop charts after singer Oscar Brown Jr. wrote lyrics for it.

Nathaniel Carlyle Adderley was born in Tampa, Florida, but moved to Tallahassee when his parents were hired to teach at Florida A&M University. His father played trumpet professionally in his younger years, and he passed down his trumpet to Cannonball. When Cannonball picked up the alto saxophone, he passed the trumpet to Nat, who began playing in 1946. He and Cannonball played with Ray Charles in the early 1940s in Tallahassee and in amateur gigs around the area.

Adderley attended Florida University, majoring in sociology with a minor in music. He switched to cornet in 1950. From 1951–1953 he served in the army and played in the army band under his brother, taking at least one tour of Korea before returning to a station in the United States. After returning home, he attended Florida A&M intending to become a teacher.

Shortly before Adderley was expected to begin student teaching, Lionel Hampton played a concert at Florida A&M. Confident in his abilities, he played for Hampton, and Hampton invited him to join the band. Putting school on hold, he played under Hampton from 1954 to 1955 and went to Europe on tour. After returning, he intended to go back to school to become a teacher.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnOdKkHkP5o&t=246s

Paul Desmond (born Paul Emil Breitenfeld, November 25, 1924 – May 30, 1977) was an American jazz alto saxophonist and composer, best known for his work with the Dave Brubeck Quartet and for composing that group’s biggest hit, “Take Five“. He was one of the most popular musicians to come out of the cool jazz scene.

In addition to his work with Brubeck, he led several groups and collaborated with Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker, Jim Hall, and Ed Bickert. After years of chain smoking and poor health, Desmond succumbed to lung cancer in 1977 after a tour with Brubeck.

Desmond was born Paul Emil Breitenfeld in San Francisco, California, in 1924, the son of Shirley (née King) and Emil Aron Breitenfeld. His grandfather, Sigmund Breitenfeld was, according to an obituary, born in Austria in 1857. Sigmund Breitenfeld, a medical doctor, emigrated to New York City with his wife Hermine (born Hermine Lewy) at the end of the 19th century, and the Breitenfelds raised their four children (including Desmond’s father Emil) with no religion. Interviewed by Desmond biographer Doug Ramsey, Desmond’s first cousin Rick Breitenfeld said that no one in the Breitenfeld family could find evidence of Jewish ancestry or Jewish religious observance, but Paul Desmond and members of his father’s family “frequently speculated as to whether or not Sigmund or Hermine Breitfeld had Jewish backgrounds”. Biographer Ramsey notes that “[t]he name Breitenfeld could be Jewish or non-Jewish. There are plenty of Breitenfelds in Germany and Austria to support both sides of the argument. Lewy, the maiden surname of Paul’s paternal grandmother Hermine, is more likely to be of Jewish origin, but no evidence of her genealogy has surfaced.”Desmond’s mother, born Shirley King, was Catholic, and of Irish descent.

Desmond produced a light, melodic tone on the alto saxophone, trying to sound, he said, “like a dry martini.” With a style that was similar to that of Lee Konitz, one of his influences, he quickly became one of the best-known saxophonists from the West Coast‘s cool school of jazz. Much of the success of the classic Brubeck quartet was due to the juxtaposition of his airy style over Brubeck’s sometimes relatively heavy, polytonal piano work.

His rare gift for improvised counterpoint is perhaps most evident on the two albums he recorded with baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan (Mulligan-Desmond Quartet and Two of a Mind). Desmond’s playing was also notable for his ability to produce extremely high notes, the altissimo register, on his saxophone.

Desmond played a Selmer Super Balanced Action model alto saxophone coupled with an M. C. Gregory model 4A-18M hard rubber mouthpiece, both dating from circa 1951, with a moderately stiff Rico 3 ½ reed.

William Henry Joseph Bonaparte Bertholf Smith (November 23, 1893 – April 18, 1973), also known as “The Lion“, was an American jazz pianist and one of the masters of the stride style, usually grouped with James P. Johnson and Thomas “Fats” Waller as the three greatest practitioners of the genre in its golden age, from about 1920 to 1943.

William Henry Joseph Bonaparte Bertholf was born in Goshen, New York. His mother and grandmother chose the names to reflect the different parts of his heritage: Joseph after Saint Joseph (Bible), Bonaparte (French), Bertholf (biological father’s last name), Smith (added when he was three, his stepfather’s name), and William and Henry which were added for “spiritual balance”.

In his memoir he reports that his father, Frank Bertholf (incorrectly spelled Bertholoff in many sources), was Jewish. Smith’s New York birth record shows him as William H. Bertholf, and his father, Frank Bertholf, was a white electrician from nearby Monroe, New York. Willie was at least somewhat conversant in Yiddish, as he demonstrated in a television interview late in his life. Willie’s mother, Ida Oliver, had “Spanish, Negro, and Mohawk Indian blood”. Her mother, Ann Oliver, was a banjo player and had been in Primrose and West minstrel shows (Smith also had two cousins who were dancers in the shows, Etta and John Bloom). According to Ida, “Frank Bertholoff [sic] was a light-skinned playboy who loved his liquor, girls, and gambling.” His mother threw Frank out of the house when “The Lion” was two years old. When his father died in 1901, his mother married John Smith, a master mechanic from Paterson, New Jersey. The surname Smith was added to that of “The Lion” at age three. He grew up living at 76 Academy Street in Newark, New Jersey

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_xiF4UVpsU