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Poncho Sánchez (born Filoberto Sanchez, October 30, 1951) is a Mexican American conguero (conga player), Latin jazz band leader, and salsa singer. In 2000, he and his ensemble won the Grammy Award for Best Latin Jazz Album for their work on the Concord Picante album Latin Soul. Sanchez has performed with artists including Cal Tjader, Mongo Santamaría, Hugh Masekela, Clare Fischer, and Tower of Power. The youngest of eleven children, Poncho Sanchez was born in Laredo, Texas and reared in Norwalk, California. Growing up, he was exposed to and influenced by two different styles of music: Afro-Cuban music (mambo, son, cha-cha, rumba, guaracha, and Changui) by greats such as Tito Puente, and bebop jazz, including the works of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker.
Originally a guitarist, he discovered his talent for singing during an audition for the R&B band The Halos that rehearsed across the street from his residence. Sanchez became the lead vocalist of The Halos, and would go on to teach himself the flute, the drums, and timbales before finally deciding in high school to pursue conga drumming above all.
Sanchez’s long career includes a vast musical legacy with dozens of LP and CD album releases and many thousands of public appearances. He is a favorite and often-featured artist at regional and national Latin Jazz festivals and concerts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTYUe4NgnEk
more...Clifford Benjamin Brown (October 30, 1930 – June 26, 1956) was an American jazz trumpeter. He died at the age of 25 in a car accident, leaving behind four years’ worth of recordings. He was also a composer of note: his compositions “Sandu,” “Joy Spring,” and “Daahoud“ have become jazz standards.
Brown won the Down Beat critics’ poll for New Star of the Year in 1954; he was inducted into the DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame in 1972 in the critics’ poll. He influenced later jazz trumpeters such as Booker Little, Freddie Hubbard, and Lee Morgan.
Brown was born into a musical family in a progressive East-Side neighborhood of Wilmington, Delaware. His father organized his four youngest sons, including Clifford, into a vocal quartet. Around age ten, Brown started playing trumpet at school after becoming fascinated with the shiny trumpet his father owned.
more...The Lion Nebula (Sharpless 2-132) is a huge emission nebula in the constellation Cepheus the King. For this image, the author used the same filters the Hubble Space Telescope uses to capture its exposures.
Sh2 -132 is an extended emission nebula visible in the constellation of Cepheus .
It is located on the southern edge of the constellation, a short distance from the border with the Lizard , along the plane of the Milky Way; the most suitable period for its observation in the evening sky falls between the months of July and December and is greatly facilitated for observers placed in the regions of the Earth’s northern hemisphere .
Sh2-132 is located at a distance of almost 3200 parsecs (almost 10400 light years ), thus placing itself inside the Perseus Arm , in the Cepheus OB1 region, a large and bright OB association . The stars responsible for the ionization of its gases are very hot and massive; in particular two Wolf-Rayet stars have been identified, known with the letters HD 211564 and HD 211853 (the latter also having the initials WR 153), in addition to a star of spectral class O8.5V and a dozen of class stars B. Around the star of class O and one of the stars of Wolf-Rayet extends a clearly visible bubble in the band of radio waves.
more...Peter Green (born Peter Allen Greenbaum, 29 October 1946) is an English blues rock singer-songwriter and guitarist. As a co-founder of Fleetwood Mac, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. Green’s songs, such as “Albatross“, “Black Magic Woman“, “Oh Well“, “The Green Manalishi (With the Two Prong Crown)” and “Man of the World“, appeared on singles charts, and several have been adapted by a variety of musicians.
Green was a major figure in the “second great epoch” of the British blues movement. B.B. King commented, “He has the sweetest tone I ever heard; he was the only one who gave me the cold sweats.” Eric Clapton has praised his guitar playing; he is noted for his use of string bending, vibrato, and economy of style.
Rolling Stone ranked Green at number 58 in its list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time”. His tone on the instrumental “The Supernatural” was rated as one of the 50 greatest of all time by Guitar Player. In June 1996, Green was voted the third-best guitarist of all time in Mojo magazine. Peter Allen Greenbaum was born in Bethnal Green, London on 29 October 1946, into a Jewish family, the youngest of Joe and Ann Greenbaum’s four children. His brother, Michael, taught him his first guitar chords and by the age of eleven Green was teaching himself. He began playing professionally by the age of fifteen. He first played bass guitar in a band called Bobby Dennis and the Dominoes, which performed pop chart covers and rock ‘n’ roll standards, including Shadows covers. He later stated that Hank Marvin was his guitar hero and he played The Shadows song Midnight on the 1996 tribute album “Twang.” He went on to join a rhythm and blues outfit, the Muskrats, then a band called The Tridents in which he played bass. In 1966, Green played lead guitarin Peter Bardens‘ band “Peter B’s Looners”, where he met drummer Mick Fleetwood. It was with Peter B’s Looners that he made his recording début with the single “If You Wanna Be Happy” with “Jodrell Blues” as a B-side. His recording of “If You Wanna Be Happy” was an instrumental cover of a song by Jimmy Soul.
more...Willem Bernard “Pim” Jacobs (29 October 1934 – 3 July 1996) was a Dutch jazz pianist, composer and television presenter. Jacobs was born on 29 October 1934 in Hilversum, the Netherlands. His parents were artistic. He started playing the piano at the age of six. His brother, Ruud, was born in 1938 and became a jazz bassist. Pim and Ruud formed a trio with drummer Wessel Ilcken in 1954. The band grew with the addition of guitarist Wim Overgaauw and Ilcken’s wife, Rita Reys. The trio recorded with Herbie Mann in 1956. Following Ilcken’s death in 1957, Pim Jacobs and Reys performed as a duo or trio with Overgaauw, and married in 1960. They often recorded and played jazz festivals in Europe and New Orleans, “their typical program featuring arrangements of vocal music standards as well as bebop material”. He also composed film music.
“Jacobs also worked as a producer of non-jazz radio and television programs from 1964, briefly operated the Go Go Club in Loosdrecht, near Hilversum, from 1967, and recorded with Herbie Mann, Bob Cooper, Louis van Dijk, and his own trio.” For television, he hosted the music show Music for All. In the 1970s and 1980s he presented concerts in schools.
more...John Haley “Zoot” Sims (October 29, 1925 – March 23, 1985) was an American jazz saxophonist, playing mainly tenor but also alto (and, later, soprano) saxophone. He first gained attention in the “Four Brothers” sax section of Woody Herman‘s big band, afterward enjoying a long solo career, often in partnership with fellow saxmen Gerry Mulligan and Al Cohn, and the trombonist Bob Brookmeyer. Sims was born in 1925 in Inglewood, California to vaudeville performers Kate Haley and John Sims. His father was a vaudeville hoofer, and Sims prided himself on remembering many of the steps his father taught him. Growing up in a performing family, he learned to play drums and clarinet at an early age. His brother was the trombonist Ray Sims.
Following in the footsteps of Lester Young, Sims developed into an innovative tenor saxophonist. Throughout his career, he played with big bands, starting with those of Kenny Baker and Bobby Sherwood after dropping out of high school after one year. He played with Benny Goodman‘s band in 1943 and replaced his idol Ben Webster in Sid Catlett‘s Quartet in 1944.
Sims served as a corporal in the United States Army Air Force from 1944 to 1946,[5] then returned to music in the bands of Artie Shaw, Stan Kenton, and Buddy Rich. He was one of Woody Herman‘s “Four Brothers”. He frequently led his own combos and toured with his friend Gerry Mulligan‘s sextet, and later with Mulligan’s Concert Jazz Band. Sims rejoined Goodman in 1962 for a tour of the Soviet Union.
In the 1950s and ’60s, Sims had a long, successful partnership as co-leader of a quintet with Al Cohn, which recorded under the name “Al and Zoot”. The group was a favorite at New York City’s Half Note Club. Always fond of the higher register of the tenor sax, he also played alto and late in his career added soprano saxophone to his performances, while recording a series of albums for the Pablo Records label of the impresario Norman Granz. He also played on some of Jack Kerouac‘s recording.
more...Richard Bona (born 28 October 1967 in Minta, Cameroon) is a virtuoso Cameroonian Grammy Award-winning jazz bassist.
Bona Pinder Yayumayalolo was born in Minta, Cameroon, into a family of musicians, which enabled him to start learning music from a young age. His grandfather was a griot – a West African singer of praise and storyteller – and percussionist, as his mother was a singer. When he was four years old, Bona started to play the balafon. At the age of five, he began performing at his village church. Not being wealthy, Bona made many of his own instruments: including flutes and guitars (with cords strung over an old motorcycle tank).
His talent was quickly noticed, and he was often invited to perform at festivals and ceremonies. Bona began learning to play the guitar at the age of 11, and in 1980, aged just 13, he assembled his first ensemble for a French jazz club in Douala. The owner befriended him and helped him discover jazz music, in particular that of Jaco Pastorius, which inspired Bona to switch his focus to the electric bass. Bona emigrated to Germany at the age of 22 to study music in Düsseldorf, soon relocating to France, where he furthered his studies in music.
While in France, he regularly played in various jazz clubs, sometimes with players such as Manu Dibango, Salif Keita, Jacques Higelin and Didier Lockwood.
In 1995, Bona left France and established himself in New York, where he still lives and works. In New York he played bass guitar with artists including Joe Zawinul, Larry Coryell, Michael and Randy Brecker, Mike Stern, George Benson, Branford Marsalis, Chaka Khan, Bobby McFerrin, and Steve Gadd.
In 1998, Bona was the Musical Director on Harry Belafonte‘s European Tour.
more...Glen Moore (born October 28, 1941 in Portland, Oregon) is a jazz bassist who occasionally performs on piano, flute and violin.
His performing career began at age 14 with the Young Oregonians in Portland, Oregon where he met and played with Native American saxophonist, Jim Pepper. He graduated with a degree in History and Literature from the University of Oregon. His formal bass instruction started after college with Jerome Magil in Portland, James Harnett in Seattle, Gary Karr in New York, Plough Christenson in Copenhagen, Ludwig Streicher in Vienna and Francois Rabbath in Hawaii. For the past 30 years, Glen has played a Klotz bass fiddle crafted in Tyrol circa 1715 on which he has made extensive use of a unique tuning with both a low and high C string.
Moore is a founding member of Oregon, but worked also regularly with Rabih Abou-Khalil, Vasant Rai, Nancy King and Larry Karush.
more...Charles Edward Daniels (born October 28, 1936) is an American singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist known for his contributions to Southern rock, country, and bluegrass music. He is best known for his number-one country hit “The Devil Went Down to Georgia“. Daniels has been active as a singer and musician since the 1950s. He was inducted into the Cheyenne Frontier Days Hall of Fame in 2002, the Grand Ole Opry in 2008, the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in 2009, and the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2016. Daniels was born October 28, 1936, in Wilmington, North Carolina, and raised on a musical diet that included Pentecostal gospel, local bluegrass bands, and the rhythm & blues and country music from Nashville’s 50,000-watt radio stations WLAC and WSM (AM). In 2016, he shared memories of his youth and baseball in Wilmington when he wrote the foreword for a book on the Tobacco State League. As a teenager, Daniels moved to the small town of Gulf, Chatham County, North Carolina. He graduated from high school in 1955. Already skilled on guitar, fiddle, banjo, and mandolin, he formed a rock ‘n’ roll band and hit the road. In 1964, Daniels co-wrote “It Hurts Me” (a song which Elvis Presley recorded) with his friend, producer Bob Johnston, under Bob’s wife’s name, Joy Byers. He worked as a Nashville session musician, often for Johnston, including playing guitar and electric bass on three Bob Dylan albums during 1969 and 1970, and on recordings by Leonard Cohen. Daniels recorded his first solo album, Charlie Daniels, in 1971 (see 1971 in country music). He also produced the 1969 album by the Youngbloods, Elephant Mountain.
Andrew W. Bey (born October 28, 1939 in Newark, New Jersey) is an American jazz singer and pianist. Bey has a wide vocal range, with a four-octave baritone voice.
He worked on the 1959/1960 television show Startime with Connie Francis, and sang for Louis Jordan. At age 17, he formed a trio with his siblings Salome Bey and Geraldine Bey (de Haas) called Andy and the Bey Sisters. The trio went on a 16-month tour of Europe. The jazz trumpeter Chet Baker 1988 documentary Let’s Get Lost includes footage of Bey and his sisters delighting a Parisian audience. The trio recorded three albums (one for RCA Victor in 1961 and two for Prestige in 1964 and 1965) before breaking up in 1967. Bey also worked with Horace Silver and Gary Bartz.
In 1973, Bey and Dee Dee Bridgewater were the featured vocalists on Stanley Clarke‘s album Children of Forever. Later, Bey recorded the album Experience and Judgment (1974), which was influenced by Indian music.[1] He then returned to hard bop, and recorded covers of music by non-jazz musicians, such as Nick Drake.
In 1976, Bey performed in a theatre production of Adrienne Kennedy‘s A Rat’s Mass directed by Cecil Taylor at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in the East Village of Manhattan. Musicians Rashid Bakr, Jimmy Lyons, Karen Borca, David S. Ware, and Raphe Malik also performed in the production. Taylor’s production combined the original script with a chorus of orchestrated voices used as instruments.
more...While braving the cold to watch the skies above northern Canada in the Northwest Territories early one morning in 2013, a most unusual aurora appeared. The aurora definitely appeared to be shaped like something , but what? Two ghostly possibilities recorded by the astrophotographer were “witch” and “goddess of dawn”, but please feel free to suggest your own Halloween-enhanced impressions. Regardless of fantastical pareidolic interpretations, the pictured aurora had a typical green color and was surely caused by the scientifically commonplace action of high energy particles from space interacting with oxygen in Earth’s upper atmosphere. In the image foreground, at the bottom, is a frozen Alexandra Falls, while evergreen trees cross the middle.
more...Philip Catherine was born in London to an English mother and Belgian father and was raised in Brussels. His grandfather played violin in the London Symphony Orchestra. Catherine started on guitar in his teens, and by seventeen he was performing professionally at local venues.
He released his debut album, Stream, in 1972. During the next few years, he studied at Berklee College of Music in Boston and with Mick Goodrickand George Russell. In 1976, he and guitarist Larry Coryell recorded and toured as an acoustic duo. The following year he recorded with Charles Mingus, who dubbed him “Young Django”. In the early 1980s, he toured briefly with Benny Goodman. He was in trio with Didier Lockwood and Christian Escoudé, then in a trio with Chet Baker. During the 1990s, he recorded three albums with trumpeter Tom Harrell.
Catherine has also worked with Lou Bennett, Kenny Drew, Dexter Gordon, Stéphane Grappelli, Karin Krog, Paul Kuhn, Sylvain Luc, Michael Mantler, Charlie Mariano, Palle Mikkelborg, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, Enrico Rava, Toots Thielemans, and Miroslav Vitous.
more...Babs Gonzales (October 27, 1919 – January 23, 1980), born Lee Brown, was an American bebop vocalist, poet, and self-published author. His books portrayed the jazz world that many black musicians struggled in, portraying disk jockeys, club owners, liquor, drugs, and racism. “There are jazz people whose influence can be described as minor,” wrote Val Wilmer, “yet who are well-known to musicians and listeners alike … You’d have to be hard-pressed to ignore the wealth of legend that surrounds Babs Gonzales.” Jazz writer Jack Cooke explained that Gonzales “assumed the role of spokesman for the whole hipster world… [becoming] something more than just a good and original jazz entertainer: the incarnation of a whole social group.”
Gonzales was born Lee Brown in Newark, New Jersey. He was raised solely by his mother Lottie Brown alongside two brothers. Of his nickname, Gonzales explained, “my brothers are basketball players… there was a basketball star in America named Big Babbiad, and so they were called Big Babs, Middle Babs, and I’m Little Babs.” As a young man, Gonzales worked as band boy for swing bandleader Jimmie Lunceford, after which he relocated to Los Angeles. To circumvent racial segregation, Gonzales wore a turban and used the pseudonym Ram Singh, passing as an Indian national. Using this identity, Gonzales worked at the Los Angeles Country Club until becoming a private chauffeur to movie star Errol Flynn. Whilst hospitalized for appendicitis in 1944, he assumed the Spanish surname Gonzales as he “didn’t want to be treated as a Negro,” later explaining that “they was Jim Crowing me in ofay hotels and so I said if it’s just simple enough to change my last name, why not?” After the outbreak of World War II, Gonzales was forced to return home to Newark to report for military duty, but was declared unfit for service after arriving to his inspection dressed as a woman.
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