mick laBriola

This bi-color image of the Orion Nebula (M42) was taken through Hydrogen-alpha and Oxygen-III filters. This celestial object combines emission, reflection, and dark nebulosity into one star-forming region. The Orion Nebula (also known as Messier 42, M42, or NGC 1976) is a diffuse nebula situated in the Milky Way, being south of Orion’s Belt in the constellation of Orion. It is one of the brightest nebulae, and is visible to the naked eye in the night sky. M42 is located at a distance of 1,344 ± 20 light yearsand is the closest region of massive star formation to Earth. The M42 nebula is estimated to be 24 light years across. It has a mass of about 2,000 times that of the Sun. Older texts frequently refer to the Orion Nebula as the Great Nebula in Orion or the Great Orion Nebula.

Jesse Colin Young is an American singer and songwriter. He was a founding member and lead singer of the 1960s group The Youngbloods. Young was born Perry Miller on November 22, 1941 and raised in Queens, New York. His mother was a violinist, and his father was an accountant with a strong interest in classical music. When he was 15 years old, Young received a scholarship to Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. He was later expelled from the school.

During the 1960s, while living in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan, Young released two solo albums, The Soul of a City Boy and Young Blood. He then formed the group the Youngbloods with guitarist Jerry Corbitt, keyboardist and guitarist Lowell “Banana” Levinger, and drummer Joe Bauer. The group’s first album contained the song “Get Together“, written by Chet Powers, which was re-released as a single in 1969. Young and his band founded Raccoon Records and released four additional albums on that label.

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

James Minter Knepper (November 22, 1927 – June 14, 2003) was an American jazz trombonist. In addition to his own recordings as leader, Knepper performed and recorded with Charlie Barnet, Woody Herman, Claude Thornhill, Stan Kenton, Benny Goodman, Gil Evans, Thad Jones and Mel Lewis, Toshiko Akiyoshi and Lew Tabackin, and, most famously, Charles Mingus in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Knepper died in 2003 of complications of Parkinson’s disease.

Knepper was born in Los Angeles, California, the second son of a nurse and a police officer. His parents divorced shortly after his birth, and his mother had to take her abusive husband to court in order to get child support. He and his older brother, Robert, were sent to several boarding and military schools, Page Military Academy and St. John’s Military Academy, while their mother worked. He picked up his first instrument, an alto horn, at the age of 6 while he was a pupil there. His first teacher persuaded him to put aside the alto and pick up the trombone because, as he said, he had a “trombone mouth”. He played his first professional gigs in LA, and traveled to Spokane, WA at the age of 15. He graduated high school, and later attended classes at Los Angeles Community College.

Hoagland Howard “Hoagy” Carmichael (November 22, 1899 – December 27, 1981) was an American singer, songwriter, and actor. American composer and author Alec Wilder described Carmichael as the “most talented, inventive, sophisticated and jazz-oriented of all the great craftsmen” of pop songs in the first half of the 20th century. Carmichael was one of the most successful Tin Pan Alley songwriters of the 1930s and was among the first singer-songwriters in the age of mass media to utilize new communication technologies, such as television and the use of electronic microphones and sound recordings.

Carmichael composed several hundred songs, including 50 that achieved hit record status. He is best known for composing the music for “Stardust“, “Georgia on My Mind” (lyrics by Stuart Gorrell), “The Nearness of You“, and “Heart and Soul” (in collaboration with lyricist Frank Loesser), four of the most-recorded American songs of all time. He also collaborated with lyricist Johnny Mercer on “Lazybones” and “Skylark.” Carmichael’s “Ole Buttermilk Sky” was an Academy Award nominee in 1946, from Canyon Passage, in which he co-starred as a musician riding a mule. “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening,” with lyrics by Mercer, won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1951. Carmichael also appeared as a character actor and musical performer in 14 films, hosted three musical-variety radio programs, performed on television, and wrote two autobiographies.

Born in Bloomington, Indiana, on November 22, 1899, Hoagland Howard “Hoagy” Carmichael was the first child and only son of Howard Clyde and Lida Mary (Robison) Carmichael. His parents named him after a circus troupe called the “Hoaglands” that had stayed at the Carmichael house during his mother’s pregnancy.

Featuring Fandangos.

The earliest fandango melody is found in the anonymous “Libro de diferentes cifras de guitarra” from 1705, and the earliest description of the dance itself is found in a 1712 letter by Martín Martí, a Spanish priest. The fandango’s first sighting in a theatrical work was in Francisco de Leefadeal‘s entremés “El novio de la aldeana” staged in Seville, ca. 1720. By the late 18th century it had become fashionable among the aristocracy and was often included in tonadillas, zarzuelas, ballets and operas, not only in Spain, but also elsewhere in Europe.

Widely varying claims have been made about the origin of fandango: its relation to the soleá, jabera and petenera; to the Andalusian malagueña, granadina, murciana and rondeña; to the canarioand gitano; to the jota aragonesa

Tribute to Bill Thompson.
Passed on June 14, 2015.
I published his album Cat Went Blind (interesting story) on YouTube.
I played drum kit on the album and helped with Production and Editing. Recorded in River Falls, WI and mastered by Christopher Blood.
This is my favorite tune Black Grate with the exquisitely haunting fiddle/violin of Lisa Fuglie; with Mike Rivard on bass.

Intricate looping filaments in this detailed image of supernova remnant Simeis 147. Also cataloged as Sharpless 2-240 it goes by the popular nickname, the Spaghetti Nebula.Seen toward the boundary of the constellations Taurus and Auriga, it covers nearly 3 degrees or 6 full moons on the sky. That’s about 150 light-years at the stellar debris cloud’s estimated distance of 3,000 light-years. This composite includes image data taken through narrow-band filters where reddish emission from ionized hydrogen atoms and doubly ionized oxygen atoms in faint blue-green hues trace the shocked, glowing gas. The supernova remnant has an estimated age of about 40,000 years, meaning light from the massive stellar explosion first reached Earth 40,000 years ago. But the expanding remnant is not the only aftermath. The cosmic catastrophe also left behind a spinning neutron star or pulsar, all that remains of the original star’s core.

Alphonse Lee Mouzon (November 21, 1948 – December 25, 2016) was an American jazz fusion drummer and the owner of Tenacious Records, a label that primarily released Mouzon’s recordings. He was a composer, arranger, producer, and actor. He gained popularity in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Mouzon, of African, French, and Blackfoot descent, was born on November 21, 1948, in Charleston, South Carolina. He received his first musical training at Bonds-Wilson High School, and moved to New York City upon graduation. He studied drama and music at the City College of New York, as well as medicine at Manhattan Medical School. He continued receiving drum lessons from Bobby Thomas, the drummer for jazz pianist Billy Taylor. He played percussion in the 1968 Broadway show Promises, Promises, and he then worked with pianist McCoy Tyner. He spent a year as a member of the jazz fusion band, Weather Report. After that Mouzon signed as a solo artist to the Blue Note label in 1972.

Mouzon’s visibility increased during his tenure with guitarist Larry Coryell‘s Eleventh House fusion band from 1973 to 1975. Albums from this period include Introducing the Eleventh House, Level One, Mind Transplant (a solo album), and in 1977, a reconciliation recording with Coryell entitled Back Together Again.

Mouzon recorded Mind Transplant in 1974 with guitarist Tommy Bolin, who had previously played on Billy Cobham‘s Spectrum.

He recorded four R&B albums: The Essence of Mystery (Blue Note, 1972), Funky Snakefoot (Blue Note, 1973), The Man Incognito (Blue Note, 1976) (including “Take Your Troubles Away”), and in the 1980s By All Means, which featured Herbie Hancock, Lee Ritenour, the Seawind Horns, and Freddie Hubbard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ybIzZNesXU

Carlos Manuel “Charlie” Palmieri (November 21, 1927 – September 12, 1988) was a renowned bandleader and musical director of salsa music. He was known as the “Giant of the Keyboards”. Palmieri’s parents migrated to New York from Ponce, Puerto Rico in 1926 and settled down in the South Bronx where Palmieri was born. As a child, Palmieri taught himself to play the piano by ear. He attended the public school system. At age 7, his father enrolled him at The Juilliard School, where he took piano lessons. By the time Palmieri was 14 years old, he and his 5-year-old brother, Eddie, participated in many talent contests, often winning prizes. It was at this time that his godfather introduced him to the music of the Latin bands – an experience which inspired him to become a musician. In 1943, when still only 16 years old and still in high school, he made his professional debut as a piano player for the Osario Selasie Band. He graduated from high school in 1946, and immediately went to play for various bands. He made his recording debut with the song “Se Va La Rumba” as a member of the Rafael Muñiz Band. In October 1947, Tito Puente, the musical director of the Fernando Álvarez Band, was impressed with Palmieri and hired him to play for his band at the Copacabana Club; here he played with Tito until 1953 and during the 1950s he played with various bands. Besides having played with Tito Puente, he played with Pupi Campo’s Band and worked on Jack Paar‘s CBS daytime television show. Palmieri also formed a couple of bands that performed at the Palladium Ballroom – these were however short-lived because of a lack of work. During this time, he also worked as an accompanist for other bands.

Sal Salvador (1925–1999) was a bebop jazz guitarist and a prominent music educator.

Salvador was born in Monson, Massachusetts and began his professional career in New York City. He eventually moved to Stamford, Connecticut. He taught guitar at the University of Bridgeport in Bridgeport, Connecticut as well as at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, Connecticut. He authored several instruction books for beginning to advanced guitarists.

In addition to recordings with Stan Kenton and with his own groups, Salvador can be heard in the film Blackboard Jungle during a scene in a bar where a recording on which he is featured is played on the jukebox. He is also featured playing with Sonny Stitt in the film Jazz on a Summer’s Day at the Newport Jazz Festival.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3EG-mOcy94

Coleman Randolph Hawkins (November 21, 1904 – May 19, 1969), nicknamed “Hawk” and sometimes “Bean”, was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. One of the first prominent jazz musicians on his instrument, as Joachim E. Berendt explained: “there were some tenor players before him, but the instrument was not an acknowledged jazz horn”. Hawkins biographer John Chilton described the prevalent styles of tenor saxophone solos prior to Hawkins as “mooing” and “rubbery belches.” Hawkins cited as influences Happy Caldwell, Stump Evans, and Prince Robinson, although he was the first to tailor his method of improvisation to the saxophone rather than imitate the techniques of the clarinet. Hawkins’ virtuosic, arpeggiated approach to improvisation, with his characteristic rich, emotional, loud, and vibrato-laden tonal style, was the main influence on a generation of tenor players that included Chu Berry, Charlie Barnet, Tex Beneke, Ben Webster, Vido Musso, Herschel Evans, Buddy Tate, and Don Byas, and through them the later tenormen, Arnett Cobb, Illinois Jacquet, Flip Phillips, Ike Quebec, Al Sears, Paul Gonsalves, and Lucky Thompson.  While Hawkins became well known with swing music during the big band era, he had a role in the development of bebop in the 1940s.

Fellow saxophonist Lester Young, known as “Pres”, commented in a 1959 interview with The Jazz Review: “As far as I’m concerned, I think Coleman Hawkins was the President first, right? As far as myself, I think I’m the second one.” Miles Davis once said: “When I heard Hawk, I learned to play ballads.” Hawkins was born in Saint Joseph, Missouri, in 1904. Although some sources say 1901, there is no evidence to prove an earlier date; instead, there is record of Hawkins’s parents’ first child, a girl, being born in 1901 and dying at the age of two, possibly the basis for the mistaken belief. He was named Coleman after his mother Cordelia’s maiden name.

The upper galaxy is labelled UGC 1810 by itself, but together with its collisional partners is known as Arp 273. The overall shape of the UGC 1810 — in particular its blue outer ring — is likely a result of wild and violent gravitational interactions. The blue color of the outer ring at the top is caused by massive stars that are blue hot and have formed only in the past few million years. The inner part of the upper galaxy — itself an older spiral galaxy — appears redder and threaded with cool filamentary dust. A few bright stars appear well in the foreground, unrelated to colliding galaxies, while several far-distant galaxies are visible in the background. Arp 273 lies about 300 million light years away toward the constellation of Andromeda. Quite likely, UGC 1810 will devour its galactic sidekicks over the next billion years and settle into a classic spiral form.

Howard Duane Allman (November 20, 1946 – October 29, 1971) was an American guitarist, session musician, and founder and leader of the Allman Brothers Band.

The Allman Brothers Band was formed in Jacksonville, Florida in 1969, and achieved its greatest success in the early 1970s. Allman is best remembered for his brief but influential tenure in the band and in particular for his expressive slide guitar playing and inventive improvisational skills.In 2003, he was ranked number 2 in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time. In 2011, he was ranked number 9. His guitar tone (achieved with a Gibson Les Paul and two 50-watt bass Marshall amplifiers) was named one of the greatest of all time by Guitar Player.

A sought-after session musician both before and during his tenure with the band, Duane Allman performed with such established stars as King Curtis, Aretha Franklin, Herbie Mann, Wilson Pickett, and Boz Scaggs. He also contributed greatly to the 1970 album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, by Derek and the Dominos. He died following a motorcycle crash in 1971, at the age of 24.

Duane Allman’s skills as a guitarist were complemented by personal qualities such as his intensity, drive and ability to draw the best out of others in making music. He is still referred to by his nickname “Skydog”.

Duane Allman was born on November 20, 1946, in Nashville, Tennessee. He was the eldest son of Willis Allman (1918–1949), a World War II non-commissioned officer turned recruiting officer in the United States Army, and Geraldine Allman (née Robbins) (1917–2015). His brother, Gregg, was born on December 8, 1947. Allman was killed in a motorcycle crash shortly after the release and initial success of At Fillmore East. On October 29, 1971, while the band was on a break from touring and recording, Allman was riding his Harley-Davidson Sportster motorcycle at high speed on Hillcrest Avenue, in the western part of Macon. As he approached Bartlett Street, a flatbed truck carrying a lumber crane stopped suddenly in the intersection, forcing him to swerve sharply. He struck either the back of the truck or the ball on the lumber crane and was thrown from the motorcycle, which landed on top of him and skidded another 90 feet with him pinned underneath it, crushing his internal organs. He was alive when he was taken to a hospital, but despite immediate medical treatment, he died several hours later from massive internal injuries.

Meredith Jane Monk (born November 20, 1942) is an American composer, performer, director, vocalist, filmmaker, and choreographer. Since the 1960s, Monk has created multi-disciplinary works which combine music, theatre, and dance, recording extensively for ECM Records. In 1991, Monk composed an opera called Atlas, commissioned and produced by the Houston Opera and the American Music Theater Festival.

Her music has been used in films by the Coen Brothers (The Big Lebowski, 1998) and Jean-Luc Godard (Nouvelle Vague, 1990 and Notre musique, 2004). Trip hop musician DJ Shadow sampled Monk’s “Dolmen Music” on the song “Midnight in a Perfect World.”

Meredith Monk was born to businessman Theodore Glenn Monk (1909–1998) and singer Audrey Lois Monk (née Audrey Lois Zellman; 1911–2009), in Manhattan, New York. Her mother, a professional singer of popular and classical music known under the stage name of Audrey Marsh, was herself the daughter of professional musicians: the Russian Jewish bass-baritone Joseph B. Zellman, and Rose (Kornicker) Zellman, a concert pianist of German Jewish background from Philadelphia. Meredith has a sister, Tracy (born 1948).

Malcolm John Rebennack Jr. (November 20, 1941 – June 6, 2019), better known by his stage name Dr. John, was an American singer and songwriter. His music combined blues, pop, jazz, boogie-woogie, and rock and roll.

Active as a session musician from the late 1950s until his death, he gained a following in the late 1960s after the release of his album Gris-Grisand his appearance at the Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music. He typically performed a lively, theatrical stage show inspired by medicine shows, Mardi Gras costumes, and voodoo ceremonies. Rebennack recorded 30 studio albums and 9 live albums, as well as contributing to thousands of other musicians’ recordings. In 1973 he achieved a top-10 hit single with “Right Place, Wrong Time“.

The winner of six Grammy Awards, Rebennack was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by singer John Legend in March 2011. In May 2013, Rebennack received an honorary doctorate of fine arts from Tulane University. Rebennack was born in New Orleans on November 20, 1941. He was the son of Dorothy (Cronin) and Malcolm John Rebennack, and had German, Irish, Spanish, English, and French heritage. His father ran an appliance shop in the East End of New Orleans, fixing radios and televisions and selling records. Growing up in the 3rd Ward of New Orleans, he found early musical inspiration in the minstrel tunes sung by his grandfather and a number of aunts, uncles, sister, and cousins who played piano. He did not take music lessons before his teens and endured only a short stint in choir before getting kicked out. His father exposed him as a young boy to jazz musicians King Oliver and Louis Armstrong, who later inspired his 2014 release, Ske-Dat-De-Dat: The Spirit of Satch. Throughout his adolescence his father’s connections enabled him access to the recording rooms of rock artists, including Little Richard and Guitar Slim. Later he began to perform in New Orleans clubs, mainly on guitar, and played on stage with various local artists. As a young man Rebennack was interested in New Orleans voodoo, and in Los Angeles he developed the idea of the Dr. John persona for his old friend Ronnie Barron, based on the life of Dr. John, a Senegalese prince, conjure man, herb doctor and spiritual healer who came to New Orleans from Haiti. This free man of color lived on Bayou Road and claimed to have 15 wives and over 50 children. He kept an assortment of snakes and lizards, along with embalmed scorpions and animal and human skulls, and sold gris-gris, voodoo amulets which supposedly protect the wearer from harm.

Along with Gris-Gris, Dr. John is perhaps best known for his recordings in the period 1972-74. 1972’s Dr. John’s Gumbo, an album covering several New Orleans R&B standards with only one original, is considered a cornerstone of New Orleans music. In his 1994 autobiography, Under a Hoodoo Moon, Dr. John writes, “In 1972, I recorded Gumbo, an album that was both a tribute to and my interpretation of the music I had grown up with in New Orleans in the late 1940s and 1950s. I tried to keep a lot of little changes that were characteristic of New Orleans, while working my own funknology on piano and guitar.” The lead single from the album, “Iko Iko“, broke into the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, eventually reaching #71. In 2003, Dr. John’s Gumbo was ranked number 404 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

With Gumbo, Dr. John expanded his career beyond the psychedelic voodoo music and theatrics which had driven his career since he took on the Dr. John persona, although it always remained an integral part of his music and identity. It was not until 1998’s Anutha Zone that he again concentrated on this aspect of his music wholly for a full album. “After we cut the new record”, he wrote, “I decided I’d had enough of the mighty-coo-de-fiyo hoodoo show, so I dumped the Gris-Gris routine we had been touring with since 1967 and worked up a new act—a Mardi Gras revue featuring the New Orleans standards we had covered in Gumbo.”