mick laBriola

Paul Richard Furay (born May 9, 1944) is an American musician and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame member (with Buffalo Springfield). He is best known for forming the bands Buffalo Springfield with Stephen Stills, Neil Young, Bruce Palmer, and Dewey Martin, and Poco with Jim Messina, Timothy B. Schmit, Rusty Young, George Grantham and Randy Meisner. His best known song (originally written during his tenure in Buffalo Springfield, but eventually performed by Poco as well) was “Kind Woman,” which he wrote for his wife, Nancy. Before joining Buffalo Springfield, Furay performed with Stills in the nine-member group, the Au Go Go Singers (Furay, Roy Michaels, Rick Geiger, Jean Gurney, Michael Scott, Kathy King, Nels Gustafson, Bob Harmelink, and Stills), the house band of the Cafe Au Go Go in New York City.

Sonny Curtis (born May 9, 1937) is an American singer and songwriter. Known for his collaborations with Buddy Holly, he was a member of the Crickets and continued with the band after Holly’s death. Curtis’s best known compositions include “Walk Right Back“, a major hit in 1961 for the Everly Brothers; “I Fought the Law“, notably covered by the Bobby Fuller Four and the Clash; and “Love is All Around,” the theme song for The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Curtis was born in Meadow, Texas, United States. As a guitarist, he played on some of Buddy Holly’s earlier 1956 Decca sessions, including the minor hit “Blue Days Black Nights” and a song he wrote, “Rock Around With Ollie Vee”. In 1955 and 1956 he, along with Buddy Holly, opened concerts for rising new star Elvis Presley. Although he had gone on the road with other musicians by the time Buddy Holly put together the Crickets in 1957, Curtis joined the Crickets in late 1958, shortly before Holly’s death in 1959, and soon took over the lead vocalist role in addition to lead guitar. The Crickets’ post-Holly recordings were put on hold after Holly’s death, and Curtis was drafted in late 1959. During basic training, he was given a three-day pass and met the Crickets’ drummer, Jerry Allison, who was then playing with the Everly Brothers, in Los Angeles. Curtis played him the song “Walk Right Back“, which Allison had him immediately take to the Everlys; they recorded the song that weekend and were later rewarded with a Billboard top 10 hit. The song was also a hit in 1978 for Anne Murray.

Tania Maria (born May 9, 1948) is a Brazilian artist, singer, composer, bandleader and piano player, singing mostly in Portuguese or English. Her Brazilian-style music is mostly vocal, sometimes pop, often jazzy, and includes samba, bossa, Afro-Latin, pop and jazz fusion.

Born in São Luís, Maranhão, Brazil, Tania Maria began playing the piano at the age of seven, became a leader at the age of 13, when her band of professional musicians, organized by her father, won first prize in a local music contest and went on to play for dances, in clubs and on the radio. Her father, a metal worker and a gifted guitarist and singer, had encouraged her to study piano so that she could play in his weekend jam sessions, where she first absorbed the rhythms and melodies of samba, jazz, pop music and Brazilian chorinho. Since then, she has never worked in anyone else’s group. She has a degree in law, married early and had children.

Nole Floyd “Nokie” Edwards (May 9, 1935 – March 12, 2018) was an American musician and member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was primarily a guitarist, best known for his work with The Ventures,and was known in Japan as the ‘King of Guitars’. Edwards was also an actor, who appeared briefly on Deadwood, an American Western drama television series.

Edwards was born in Lahoma, Oklahoma, the son of Elbert Edwards and Nannie Mae Quinton Edwards,an original enrollee of the Western Cherokee. Edwards came from a family of accomplished musicians, so that by age five he began playing a variety of string instruments, including the steel guitar, banjo, mandolin, violin, and bass. His family relocated from Oklahoma to Puyallup, Washington.

During Edwards’ late teen years he joined the United States Army Reserve. After traveling to Texas and California for training, he returned home and began playing regularly for pay in numerous country bands in the area.

Dennis Milton Chambers (born May 9, 1959) is an American jazz fusion and funk drummer. He was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 2001.

Chambers was born on May 9, 1959, in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. He began drumming at the age of four years, and was gigging in Baltimore-area nightclubs by the age of six. He was recruited in 1981 by the Sugar Hill Label to be their “house drummer.” Chambers played on many Sugar Hill releases. Contrary to popular belief, he did not play on “Rapper’s Delight” which was revealed in an interview with Drumeo on August 16, 2017.

In an interview by Bonedo in 2011, Chambers was asked who some of his influences and favorite drummers were and he mentioned Clyde Stubblefield, Al Jackson Jr., Steve Gadd, Vinnie Colaiuta, Gary Husband, Jack Dejohnette, Billy Cobham, Buddy Rich, Elvin Jones, Roy Haynes, and Tony Williams.

In 1978 (at 18 years old) he joined Parliament/Funkadelic, and stayed with them until 1985. In 1986 he joined the John Scofield band. Since then he has played with most of the major figures in jazz fusion music.

Mahmoud Ahmed (Amharic: ማሕሙድ አሕመድ; born 8 May 1941) is an Ethiopian singer. He gained great popularity in Ethiopia in the 1970s and among the Ethiopian diaspora in the 1980s, before rising to international fame with African music fans in Europe and the Americas.

Born in Addis Ababa, Mercato district, Mahmoud was enthralled with the music he heard on Ethiopian radio from an early age. Having poorly learned in school, he worked as a shoeshiner before becoming a handyman at the Arizona Club, which was the after hours hangout of Emperor Haile Selassie I‘s Imperial Bodyguard Band. One night in 1962 when the band’s singer didn’t show up, Mahmoud asked to sing a few songs. He soon became part of the band’s regular lineup, where he remained until 1974.

Keith Jarrett (born May 8, 1945) is an American pianist and composer. Jarrett started his career with Art Blakey and later moved on to play with Charles Lloyd and Miles Davis. Since the early 1970s, he has also been a group leader and solo performer in jazz, jazz fusion, and classical music. His improvisations draw from the traditions of jazz and other genres, including Western classical music, gospel, blues, and ethnic folk music.

His album, The Köln Concert, released in 1975, is the best-selling piano recording in history. In 2008, he was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame in the magazine’s 73rd Annual Readers’ Poll.

In 2003, Jarrett received the Polar Music Prize and was the first recipient to be recognized with prizes for both contemporary and classical music. In 2004, he received the Léonie Sonning Music Prize.

In February 2018, Jarrett suffered a stroke and has been unable to perform since. A second stroke in May 2018 left him partially paralyzed and unable to play with his left hand.

Jarrett was born on May 8, 1945, in Allentown, Pennsylvania, to a mother of Slovenian descent. Jarrett’s grandmother was born in Segovci, near Apače in Slovenia. Jarrett’s father was of mostly Germandescent. He grew up in suburban Allentown with significant early exposure to music.

William Kreutzmann Jr.  born May 7, 1946) is an American drummer and founding member of the rock band Grateful Dead. He played with the band for its entire thirty-year career, usually alongside fellow drummer Mickey Hart, and has continued to perform with former members of the Grateful Dead in various lineups, and with his own bands BK3, 7 Walkers and Billy & the Kids.

Kreutzmann was born in Palo Alto, California, the son of Janice Beryl (née Shaughnessy) and William Kreutzmann Sr. His father was of German descent. His maternal grandfather was football coach and innovator Clark Shaughnessy.

Kreutzmann started playing drums at the age of 13. At first he practiced on a Slingerland drum kit lent to him. As a teenager, he was practicing drums alone in a large building at his high school when Aldous Huxley and another man walked in. Huxley told Bill he’d never heard anything like it, and encouraged him in his drumming – despite the fact Bill had been told by his sixth grade music teacher that he could not keep a beat. Kreutzmann continued to practice a great deal. His earliest enthusiasm was for the music of Ray Charles and other R&B musicians. He has explained that later he learned some advanced technique or tricks from Mickey Hart.

Kreutzmann listened to jazz groups in clubs when he found an opportunity for an under-age guy to get in. After joining the Warlocks (later called the Grateful Dead), bassist Phil Lesh introduced him the work of one of the top jazz drummers of the time, Elvin Jones. Kreutzmann became an enthusiast, also, for the funkmusic of The Meters.

Jimmy Lee Ruffin (May 7, 1936 – November 17, 2014) was an American soul singer, and the older brother of David Ruffin, the lead singer of the Temptations. He had several hit records between the 1960s and 1980s, the most successful being the Top 10 hits “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted” and “Hold On (To My Love)“.

Jimmy Ruffin was born in 1936 in Collinsville, Mississippi, to Eli, a sharecropper, and Ophelia Ruffin. He was approaching his fifth birthday when his younger brother David was born. As children, the brothers began singing with a gospel group, the Dixie Nightingales.

In 1961, Jimmy became a singer as part of the Motown stable, mostly on sessions but also recording singles for its subsidiary Miracle label, but was then drafted for national service. After leaving the Army in 1964, he returned to Motown, where he was offered the opportunity to join the Temptations to replace Elbridge Bryant. However, after hearing his brother David, they hired him for the job instead so Jimmy decided to resume his solo career. Ruffin recorded for Motown’s subsidiary Soul label, but with little success.

Nexhmije Pagarusha (Albanian pronunciation: [neˈd͡ʒmijɛ pagaˈɾuʃa]; 7 May 1933 – 7 February 2020) was a Kosovo-Albanian singer and actress, often referred to as the Queen of Albanian music. Pagarusha gained acclaim as a recording artist in Kosova and neighbouring countries for her distinct soprano vocal range, which she displayed performing various Kosovan folk songs during her career, which spanned 36 years, from 1948, in her debut in Radio Prishtina, to 1984, in her final concert in Sarajevo. Her music style was not limited just to Albanian music, as she performed rock, pop, funk, opera/classical, and many more.

Johannes Brahms ; 7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer, pianist, and conductor of the mid-Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, he spent much of his professional life in Vienna. He is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the “Three Bs” of music, a comment originally made by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von Bülow.

Brahms composed for symphony orchestra, chamber ensembles, piano, organ, voice, and chorus. A virtuoso pianist, he premiered many of his own works. He worked with leading performers of his time, including the pianist Clara Schumann and the violinist Joseph Joachim (the three were close friends). Many of his works have become staples of the modern concert repertoire.

Brahms has been considered both a traditionalist and an innovator, by his contemporaries and by later writers. His music is rooted in the structures and compositional techniques of the Classical masters. Embedded within those structures are deeply Romantic motifs. While some contemporaries found his music to be overly academic, his contribution and craftsmanship were admired by subsequent figures as diverse as Arnold Schoenberg and Edward Elgar. The detailed construction of Brahms’s works was a starting point and an inspiration for a generation of composers.