mick laBriola

Cyril “Midnight” Blake (22 October 1900 – 3 December 1951) was a Trinidadian jazz trumpeter. Blake moved to England about 1918, where he played in a British group called the Southern Syncopated Orchestra. He worked in Paris and London as a musician throughout the 1920s, and in the 1930s played in the bands of Leon Abbey, Happy Blake, Rudolph Dunbar, Leslie Thompson, Joe Appleton, and Lauderic Caton. In 1938 he formed his own band, which was centred on Jig’s Club in London; he recorded several times with this ensemble. In the 1940s Blake led his band behind Lord Kitchener for recordings on Parlophone Records, playing in a calypso style. Late in his life he returned to Trinidad, where he continued to lead bands. He died of an illness in 1951.

Franz Liszt (German: [ˈlɪst]; Hungarian: Liszt Ferencz, in modern usage Liszt Ferenc [ˈlist ˈfɛrɛnt͡s];^{[n 1]} 22 October 1811 – 31 July 1886) was a Hungariancomposer, virtuoso pianist, conductor, music teacher, arranger, and organist of the Romantic era. He was also a writer, a philanthropist, a Hungarian nationalist and a Franciscan tertiary.

Liszt gained renown in Europe during the early nineteenth century for his prodigious virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was a friend, musical promoter and benefactor to many composers of his time, including Frédéric Chopin, Richard Wagner, Hector Berlioz, Robert Schumann, Camille Saint-Saëns, Edvard Grieg, Ole Bull, Joachim Raff, Mikhail Glinka, and Alexander Borodin.^[1]

A prolific composer, Liszt was one of the most prominent representatives of the New German School (Neudeutsche Schule). He left behind an extensive and diverse body of work which influenced his forward-looking contemporaries and anticipated 20th-century ideas and trends. Among Liszt’s musical contributions were the symphonic poem, developing thematic transformation as part of his experiments in musical form, and radical innovations in harmony.

The irregular galaxy NGC 4485 shows all the signs of having been involved in a hit-and-run accident with a bypassing galaxy. Rather than destroying the galaxy, the chance encounter is spawning a new generation of stars, and presumably planets. The right side of the galaxy is ablaze with star formation, shown in the plethora of young blue stars and star-incubating pinkish nebulas. The left side, however, looks intact. It contains hints of the galaxy’s previous spiral structure, which, at one time, was undergoing normal galactic evolution. The larger culprit galaxy, NGC 4490, is off the bottom of the frame. The two galaxies sideswiped each other millions of years ago and are now 24,000 light-years apart. The gravitational tug-of-war between them created rippling patches of higher-density gas and dust within both galaxies. This activity triggered a flurry of star formation. This galaxy is a nearby example of the kind of cosmic bumper-car activity that was more common billions of years ago when the universe was smaller and galaxies were closer together. NGC 4485 lies 25 million light-years away in the northern constellation Canes Venatici (the Hunting Dogs).

Úrsula Hilaria Celia de la Caridad Cruz Alfonso (October 21, 1925 – July 16, 2003), known as Celia Cruz, was a Cuban singer and one of the most popular Latin artists of the 20th century. Cruz rose to fame in Cuba during the 1950s as a singer of guarachas, earning the nickname “La Guarachera de Cuba”. In the following decades, she became known internationally as the “Queen of Salsa” or “The Queen of Latin Music” due to her contributions to Latin music in the United States.

She began her career in her native Cuba, earning recognition as a vocalist of the popular musical group Sonora Matancera, a musical association that lasted fifteen years (1950-1965). Cruz mastered a wide variety of Afro-Cuban music styles including guaracha, rumba, afro, son and bolero, recording numerous singles in these styles for Seeco Records. In the early 1960s, after the Cuban Revolution caused the nationalization of the music industry, Cruz left her native country, becoming one of the symbols and spokespersons of the Cuban community in exile. Cruz continued her career, first in Mexico, and then in the United States, the country that she took as her definitive residence. In the 1960s, she collaborated with Tito Puente, recording her signature tune “Bemba colorá”. In the 1970s, she signed for Fania Records and became strongly associated with the salsa genre, releasing hits such as “Quimbara”. She often appeared live with Fania All-Stars and collaborated with Johnny Pacheco and Willie Colón. During the last years of her career, Cruz continued to release successful songs such as “La vida es un carnaval” and “La negra tiene tumbao“.

Her musical legacy is made up of a total of 37 studio albums, as well as numerous live albums and collaborations. Throughout her career, she was awarded numerous prizes and distinctions, including two Grammy Awards and three Latin Grammy Awards. In addition to her prolific career in music, Cruz also made several appearances as an actress in movies and telenovelas. Her catchphrase ¡Azúcar! (Sugar!) has become one of the most recognizable symbols of salsa music. Úrsula Hilaria Celia de la Caridad Cruz Alfonso was born at 47 Serrano Street in the Santos Suárez neighborhood of Havana, Cuba. Her father, Simón Cruz, was a railway stoker, and her mother, Catalina Alfonso Ramos, a housewife who took care of an extended family. Celia was one of the eldest among fourteen children, including her three siblings, Dolores, Gladys and Bárbaro, and she used to sing cradle songs to put them to sleep.According to her mother, she began singing as a child at 9 or 10 months of age, often in the middle of the night. She also sang in school during the Fridays’ actos cívicos and in her neighborhood ensemble, Botón de oro.

While growing up in Cuba’s diverse 1930s musical climate, Cruz listened to many musicians who influenced her adult career, including Fernando Collazo, Abelardo Barroso, Pablo Quevedo, Antonio Arcaño and Arsenio Rodríguez. Despite her father’s opposition and the fact that she was Catholic, as a child Cruz learned Santería songs from her neighbor who practiced Santería.Cruz also studied the words to Yoruba songs with colleague Merceditas Valdés (an akpwon, a santería singer) from Cuba and later made various recordings of this religious genre, even singing backup for other female akpwons like Candita Batista.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgtxZda3Q-E

John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie (/ɡɪˈlɛspi/; October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer, and singer. Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and improviser, building on the virtuoso style of Roy Eldridge but adding layers of harmonic and rhythmic complexity previously unheard in jazz. His combination of musicianship, showmanship, and wit made him a leading popularizer of the new music called bebop. His beret and horn-rimmed spectacles, his scat singing, his bent horn, pouched cheeks, and his light-hearted personality provided some of bebop’s most prominent symbols. In the 1940s Gillespie, with Charlie Parker, became a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz.

He taught and influenced many other musicians, including trumpeters Miles Davis, Jon Faddis, Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown, Arturo Sandoval, Lee Morgan, Chuck Mangione, and balladeer Johnny Hartman.

Scott Yanow wrote, “Dizzy Gillespie’s contributions to jazz were huge. One of the greatest jazz trumpeters of all time, Gillespie was such a complex player that his contemporaries ended up being similar to those of Miles Davis and Fats Navarro instead, and it was not until Jon Faddis‘s emergence in the 1970s that Dizzy’s style was successfully recreated [….] Arguably Gillespie is remembered, by both critics and fans alike, as one of the greatest jazz trumpeters of all time”. 

The youngest of nine children of James and Lottie Gillespie, Dizzy Gillespie was born in Cheraw, South Carolina. His father was a local bandleader, so instruments were made available to the children. Gillespie started to play the piano at the age of four. Gillespie’s father died when he was only ten years old. He taught himself how to play the trombone as well as the trumpet by the age of twelve. From the night he heard his idol, Roy Eldridge, on the radio, he dreamed of becoming a jazz musician.

Carlos Wesley “Don” Byas (October 21, 1912 – August 24, 1972) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist, most associated with bebop. He played with Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Art Blakey, and Dizzy Gillespie, among others, and also led his own band. He lived in Europe for the last 26 years of his life. Byas was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Both of Byas’ parents were musicians. His mother played the piano, and his father, the clarinet. Byas started his training in classical music, learning to play violin, clarinet and alto saxophone, which he played until the end of the 1920s.

Benny Carter, who played many instruments, was his idol at this time. Byas started playing in local orchestras at the age of 17, with Bennie Moten, Terrence Holder and Walter Page. He founded and led his own college band, Don Carlos and His Collegiate Ramblers, during 1931-32, at Langston College, Oklahoma.

In 1937, Byas moved to New York to work with the Eddie Mallory band, accompanying Mallory’s wife, the singer Ethel Waters, on tour, and at the Cotton Club. He had a brief stint with arranger Don Redman‘s band in 1938 and later in 1939-1940. He recorded his first solo record in May 1939: “Is This to Be My Souvenir?” with Timme Rosenkrantz and his Barrelhouse Barons for Victor. He played with the bands of such leaders as Lucky Millinder, Andy Kirk, Edgar Hayes and Benny Carter. He spent about a year in Andy Kirk’s band, recording with him between March 1939 and January 1940, including a short solo on “You Set Me on Fire”. In September 1940, he had an eight bar solo on “Practice Makes Perfect”, recorded by Billie Holiday. He participated in sessions with the pianist Pete Johnson, trumpeter Hot Lips Page, and singer Big Joe Turner. In 1941 at Minton’s Playhouse he played with Charlie Christian, Thelonious Monk and Kenny Clarke in after hours sessions.

In early 1941, after a short stay with Paul Bascomb, he had his big break when Count Basie chose him to succeed the post of Lester Young in his big band. Byas recorded “Harvard Blues” with the Basie orchestra on November 17, 1941 on Jimmy Rushing‘s vocal version of George Frazier‘s tune. He was part of a small group session on July 24, 1942 with Buck Clayton, Count Basie, and his rhythm section (Freddie Green, Walter Page, Jo Jones) recording “Royal Garden Blues” and “Sugar Blues“.

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

NGC 5090 and NGC 5091 are a set of galaxies approximately 160 million light-years (50 million parsecs) away in the constellation Centaurus.They are in the process of colliding and merging with some evidence of tidal disruption of NGC 5091.

NGC 5090 is an elliptical galaxy while NGC 5091 is a barred spiral galaxy. The radial velocity of the nucleus of NGC 5090 has been measured at 3,185 km/s (1,979 mi/s), while NGC 5091 has a radial velocity of 3,429 km/s (2,131 mi/s). NGC 5090 is associated with the strong, double radio source PKS 1318-43.

Anouar Brahem (in Tunisian Arabic أنور براهم) (born on October 20, 1957) is a Tunisian oud player and composer. He is widely acclaimed as an innovator in his field. Performing primarily for a jazz audience, he fuses Arab classical music, folk music and jazz and has been recording since at least 1991, after becoming prominent in his own country in the late 1980s.

Brahem was born in Halfaouine in the Medina of Tunis, Tunisia. He studied oud at Tunisia’s National Conservatory of Music. In 1981, he left for Paris in search of new vistas. This enabled him to meet musicians from a variety of genres. He remained there as a composer for four years, notably for Tunisian cinema and theatre. He collaborated with Maurice Béjart for his ballet Thalassa Mare Nostrum and with Gabriel Yared as lutist for Costa Gavras’ film Hanna K..

Thomas Earl Petty (October 20, 1950 – October 2, 2017) was an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer, and actor. He was the lead singer of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, formed in 1976. He previously led the band Mudcrutch. He was also a member of the late 1980s supergroup the Traveling Wilburys.

Petty recorded a number of hit singles with the Heartbreakers and as a solo artist. In his career, he sold more than 80 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. He and the Heartbreakers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002. Petty died at the age of 66, of an accidental overuse of prescription drugs, one week after the completion of the Heartbreakers’ 40th anniversary tour. Petty was born October 20, 1950, in Gainesville, Florida, the first of two sons of Kitty (Katherine) Petty, a local tax office worker, and Earl Petty, who worked in a grocery store. He had a brother, Bruce, who was seven years younger. His interest in rock and roll music began at age ten when he met Elvis Presley. In the summer of 1961, his uncle was working on the set of Presley’s film Follow That Dream, in nearby Ocala, and invited Petty to watch the shoot. He instantly became a Presley fan, and when he returned that Saturday, he was greeted by his friend Keith Harben, and soon traded his Wham-O slingshot for a collection of Elvis 45s. Of that meeting with Presley, Petty said, “Elvis glowed.” In a 2006 interview, Petty said he knew he wanted to be in a band the moment he saw the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. “The minute I saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show—and it’s true of thousands of guys—there was the way out. There was the way to do it. You get your friends and you’re a self-contained unit. And you make the music. And it looked like so much fun. It was something I identified with. I had never been hugely into sports. … I had been a big fan of Elvis. But I really saw in the Beatles that here’s something I could do. I knew I could do it. It wasn’t long before there were groups springing up in garages all over the place.” He dropped out of high school at age 17 to play bass with his newly formed band.

Eddie Harris (October 20, 1934 – November 5, 1996) was an American jazz musician, best known for playing tenor saxophone and for introducing the electrically amplified saxophone. He was also fluent on the electric piano and organ. His best-known compositions are “Freedom Jazz Dance”, recorded and popularized by Miles Davis in 1966, and “Listen Here.”Harris was born and grew up in Chicago. His father was originally from Cuba, and his mother from New Orleans. He studied music under Walter Dyettat DuSable High School, as had many other successful Chicago musicians (such as Nat King Cole, Dinah Washington, Clifford Jordan, Johnny Griffin, Gene Ammons, Julian Priester, and Bo Diddley and others). He later studied music at Roosevelt University, by which time he was proficient on piano, vibraphone, and tenor saxophone. While in college, he performed professionally with Gene Ammons.

After college, Harris was drafted into the United States Army and while serving in Europe, he was accepted into the 7th Army Band, which also included Don Ellis, Leo Wright, and Cedar Walton.

William “Willie” Jones, Jr. (October 20, 1929 – April 1991) was a jazz drummer. He is known for playing and recording with Thelonious Monk, Elmo Hope, and Charles Mingus.

Jones was born in New York on October 20, 1929. He mainly taught himself to play the drums, and played left handed. He played and recorded with pianist Thelonious Monk in 1953,including on the album Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins. This recording, on November 13, was Jones’ first. He also appeared with Monk on the television program The Tonight Show, on June 10, 1955.^[2]:187 Jones was sideman for another pianist’s recording in 1955 – Elmo Hope‘s Meditations; and for Randy Weston‘s The Modern Art of Jazz by Randy Weston in the following year. In 1956 Jones had a two-week engagement with Monk in Philadelphia. Jones also played with Kenny Dorham, J. J. Johnson, Charlie Parker, and Cecil Payne in the mid-1950s.

In 1955–56 Jones was part of Charles Mingus‘ Jazz Workshop, and was the drummer in the bassist’s band that recorded Pithecanthropus Erectus, which helped develop a freer form of group improvisation. Jones was tenor saxophonist Lester Young‘s drummer from late 1956 to early 1959. In 1961, Jones played on Sun Ra‘s The Futuristic Sounds of Sun Ra. After this, nothing is known about Jones, and his date of death was taken from social security records. These associations – with the traditional Young and the avant-garde Sun Ra – illustrated Jones’ versatility.

Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe (October 20, 1890 – July 10, 1941), known professionally as Jelly Roll Morton, was an American ragtime and early jazz pianist, bandleader and composer who started his career in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Widely recognized as a pivotal figure in early jazz, Morton was jazz’s first arranger, proving that a genre rooted in improvisation could retain its essential spirit and characteristics when notated. His composition “Jelly Roll Blues“, published in 1915, was the first published jazz composition. Morton also wrote the standards “King Porter Stomp“, “Wolverine Blues“, “Black Bottom Stomp“, and “I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say”, the last a tribute to New Orleans musicians from the turn of the 20th century.

Morton’s claim to have invented jazz in 1902 aroused resentment. The jazz historian, musician, and composer Gunther Schuller says of Morton’s “hyperbolic assertions” that there is “no proof to the contrary” and that Morton’s “considerable accomplishments in themselves provide reasonable substantiation”. Morton was born into the inward-looking Creole community in the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood of downtown New Orleans, Louisiana, c. 1890. Both parents could trace their Creole ancestry back four generations to the 18th century. Morton’s exact date and year of birth are uncertain, owing to the fact that in common with the majority of babies born in 19th-century New Orleans, no birth certificate was ever issued for him. The law requiring birth certificates for citizens was not enforced until 1914. His parents were Edward Joseph (Martin) Lamothe, a bricklayer by trade, and Louise Hermance Monette, a domestic worker. His father left his mother when Morton was three (they were never married) and when his mother married William Mouton in 1894, Ferdinand adopted his stepfather’s surname: anglicizing it to Morton. He showed musical talent at an early age. At the age of 12, he had depression; he suffered for a month before getting help.

NGC 5713 is a peculiar, asymmetric galaxy in the constellation Virgo. Although classified as a spiral galaxy by most galaxy catalogs, NGC 5713 galaxy is very different from most normal spiral galaxies. While most spiral galaxies either have either two well-defined spiral arms or a filamentary spiral-like structure, this spiral galaxy has only one visible spiral arm in its disk.This makes it a galaxy of the Magellanic type. Gravitational interactions with the nearby spiral galaxy NGC 5719 may be responsible for producing the disturbed, asymmetric structure including the single spiral arm.

NGC 5713 is at the center of a small group of spiral galaxies that also includes NGC 5691, NGC 5705, and NGC 5719.

Paul Blake (19 October 1965 – 18 May 2017), better known as Frankie Paul, was a Jamaican dancehall reggae artist. Born blind, he has been dubbed by some ‘The Jamaican Stevie Wonder’. Born in Jamaica in 1965, Blake was born blind but as a child had his sight partially restored by an operation on a hospital ship.He sang for, and impressed Stevie Wonder when Wonder visited the school that Blake attended, prompting him to pursue a singing career.

Adopting the stage name Frankie Paul, he first found fame in the early 1980s, and he recorded prolifically throughout the decade. He recorded for virtually every producer/studio in Jamaica at some time, and was known to release several albums a year.

Notable works of Frankie Paul include the popular “Sara” and “Worries in the Dance”.

Paul resided in The Gambia from 1994. In January 2016 he underwent surgery to amputate a foot and part of his leg.

Frankie Paul died on 18 May 2017 at the University Hospital of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica.