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Gary George Peacock (May 12, 1935 – September 4, 2020) was an American jazz double bassist. He recorded a dozen albums under his own name, and also performed and recorded with major jazz figures such as avant garde saxophonist Albert Ayler, pianists Bill Evans, Paul Bley and Marilyn Crispell, and as a part of Keith Jarrett’s “Standards Trio” with drummer Jack DeJohnette. The trio existed for over thirty years, and recorded over twenty albums together. DeJohnette once stated that he admired Peacock’s “sound, choice of notes, and, above all, the buoyancy of his playing.” Marilyn Crispell called Peacock a “sensitive musician with a great harmonic sense.”
Peacock was born in Burley, Idaho, on May 12, 1935; his father worked as a business consultant for grocery stores, and his mother was a homemaker. He grew up in Yakima, Washington, where he attended Yakima Senior High School, now called A.C. Davis High School. His earliest musical experiences involved playing piano, trumpet, and drums. When he was 15, he heard live jazz for the first time, attending a Jazz at the Philharmonic concert featuring Oscar Peterson and Ray Brown. Peacock graduated in 1953; while playing for his class, he had a profound experience, stating: “I was playing the drums, and had the experience of being played rather than playing… I realized that something transformative had happened… and there was this certainty. From the bottom of my feet to the top of my head, it was totally clear: ‘Oh, this is the direction to go.
more...The Merope Nebula (also known as Tempel’s Nebula and NGC 1435) is a diffuse reflection nebulain the Pleiades star cluster, surrounding the 4th magnitude star Merope. It was discovered on October 19, 1859 by the German astronomer Wilhelm Tempel. The discovery was made using a 10.5 cm refractor. John Herschel included it as 768 in his General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars but never observed it himself.
The Merope Nebula has an apparent magnitude starting at 13 and quickly dimming by a factor of about 15, making most of the nebula dimmer than magnitude 16. It is illuminated entirely by the star Merope, which is embedded in the nebula. It contains a bright knot, IC 349, about half an arcminute wide near Merope, which was discovered by Edward Emerson Barnard in November 1890. It is naturally very bright but is almost hidden in the radiance of Merope. It appears blue in photographs because of the fine carbon dust spread throughout the cloud. Though it was once thought the Pleiades formed from this and surrounding nebulae, it is now known that the Pleiades nebulosity is caused by a chance encounter with the cloud.
Claude Hudson “Butch” Trucks (May 11, 1947 – January 24, 2017) was an American drummer. He was best known as a founding member of The Allman Brothers Band, for which he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. Trucks was born and raised in Jacksonville, Florida.
Prior to joining the Allman Brothers, Trucks played in various groups before forming the 31st of Februaryas a student at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida, in the mid-1960s. He joined the Allman Brothers Band in 1969. Their 1971 live release, At Fillmore East, represented an artistic and commercial breakthrough. The group became one of the most popular bands of the era on the strength of their live performances and several successful albums. Though the band broke up and re-formed various times, Trucks remained a constant in their 45-year career. Trucks died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on January 24, 2017.
more...Eric Victor Burdon (born 11 May 1941) is an English singer and songwriter. He was previously the lead vocalist of the R&B and rock band the Animals and the funk band War. He is regarded as one of the British Invasion‘s most distinctive singers with his deep, powerful blues-rock voice. Burdon is also known for his intense stage performances.
In 2008, he was ranked 57th in Rolling Stone‘s list of “The 100 Greatest Singers of All Time”.
more...Carla Bley (born Lovella May Borg; May 11, 1936 – October 17, 2023) was an American jazz composer, pianist, organist, and bandleader. An important figure in the free jazz movement of the 1960s, she was perhaps best known for her jazz opera Escalator over the Hill (released as a triple LP set), as well as a book of compositions that have been performed by many other artists, including Gary Burton, Jimmy Giuffre, George Russell, Art Farmer, Robert Wyatt, John Scofield, and her ex-husband Paul Bley. She was a pioneer in the development of independent artist-owned record labels, and recorded over two dozen albums between 1966 and 2019.
Bley was born in Oakland, California, in 1936, to Swedish parents. Her father, Emil Borg, a piano teacher and church choirmaster, encouraged her to sing and to learn to play the piano; her mother, Arline Anderson, died of a heart attack when Bley was eight years old. After giving up church to immerse herself in roller skating at the age of fourteen, she moved to New York City at seventeen and became a cigarette girl at Birdland, where she met jazz pianist Paul Bley, who encouraged her to start composing.She toured with him under the name Karen Borg before changing her name in 1957 to Carla Borg. She married Bley and took his name the same year, later divorcing. She kept the surname professionally thereafter.
more...Friday May 10th 2024 6:00 p.m. Erev Shabbat Service Commemorating Yom HaZikaron and Yom HaAtzmaut.
Music with Inbal Sharett-Singer, Jayson Rodvsky, Jeff Bailey, Pete Whitman and mick LaBriola. Erev Shabbat honoring and celebrating 76 years since Israel’s founding. Cantor Sharett-Singer will be joined by two local Israeli musicians, Ben Bitton and Ilan Zeroni, who will showcase a sermon-in-song filled with the duality of our Jewish nation that moves from sadness to joy.
more...Serpens South is a relatively dense star cluster of about 7 x 10 light-years in diameter, located approximately 848 light-years away from Earth in the southern portion of the Serpens cloud, a star-forming molecular cloud in the constellation of Serpens (the Snake), which also hosts the famous and massive Serpens star cluster.
Human families may be bonded by blood, but stellar families are united by gravity. A family of stars, or star cluster, can contain hundreds or thousands of members. The Serpens South star cluster contains some 50 young stars – “siblings” – 35 of which are protostars, or stellar infants, that are just beginning to form. This star cluster was uncovered by infrared observations of the Spitzer Space Telescope. At visible wavelengths the stars are completely obscured by interstellar dust in the Serpens cloud.
The discovery of Serpens South is a direct result of the Gould’s Belt Legacy project, which aims to study all prominent star-forming regions within about 1,600 light-years of Earth. These regions together form a ring of molecular clouds and associated young stars known as the Gould’s Belt. The discovery will lead astronomers to more clues about how these cosmic families, which contain hundreds of gravitationally bound stars, form and interact.
In this image, the Serpens South stars are shown as green, yellow, and orange specks, sitting atop a black line that runs through the middle of the image. The “line” is a long, dense patch of cosmic dust and gas, which is currently condensing to form stars. Stars form when thick cosmic clouds collapse. Tints of green represent hot hydrogen gas. Spitzer can see this hydrogen gas “fingerprint” when the high-speed jets shooting out of the young stars violently collide with cool gas in the surrounding cloud. Wisps of red in the background are organic molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). On Earth, PAHs are found on charred barbeque grills and in sooty automobile exhaust.
This picture is composed of three images taken on August 8, 2007 with the Spitzer Space telescope’s Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) at 3.6 (blue), 4.5 (green), and 5.8 (red) microns. North is up.
Lowell Fillmore “Sly” Dunbar (born 10 May 1952, Kingston, Jamaica) is a Jamaican drummer, best known as one half of the prolific Jamaican rhythm section and reggae production duo Sly and Robbie.
Dunbar began playing at 15 in a band called The Yardbrooms. His first appearance on a recording was on the Dave and Ansell Collins album Double Barrel. Dunbar joined a band Ansell Collins called Skin, Flesh and Bones.
Speaking on his influences, Sly explains “My mentor was the drummer for the Skatalites, Lloyd Knibb. And I used to listen a lot to the drummer for Booker T. & the M.G.’s, Al Jackson Jr., and a lot of Philadelphia. And there are other drummers in Jamaica, like Santa and Carly from the Wailers Band, Winston Bennett, Paul Douglas, Mikey Boo. I respect all these drummers and have learnt a lot from them. From them, I listened and created my own style. They played some things I copied, other things I recreated.”
In 1972, Dunbar met and became friends with Robbie Shakespeare, who was then bass guitarist for the Hippy Boys. Shakespeare recommended Dunbar to Bunny Lee as a possible session drummer for the Aggrovators. Dunbar and Shakespeare decided to continue performing together. They worked with Peter Tosh and his band until 1981, recording five albums.
Dunbar noted about the Mighty Diamonds‘ song “Right Time”: “When that tune first come out, because of that double tap on the rim nobody believe it was me on the drums, they thought it was some sort of sound effect we was using. Then when it go to number 1 and stay there, everybody started trying for that style and it soon become established.” According to The Independent, the entire album Right Time was “revolutionary”, the breakthrough album of “masters of groove and propulsion” Dunbar and Shakespeare, with “Sly’s radical drumming matching the singers’ insurrectionary lyrics blow-for-blow.”
Dunbar and Shakespeare formed their Taxi Records label in 1980. It has seen releases from many international successful artists, including Black Uhuru, Chaka Demus and Pliers, Ini Kamoze, Beenie Man and Red Dragon.
more...Donovan Phillips Leitch (born 10 May 1946), known mononymously as Donovan, is a Scottish musician, songwriter and record producer. He emerged from the British folk scene in early 1965, and subsequently scored multiple international hit singles and albums during the late 1960s. His work became emblematic of the flower power era with its blend of folk, pop, psychedelic rock, and jazz stylings.
Donovan first achieved recognition with live performances on the pop TV series Ready Steady Go! in 1965. Having signed with Pye Records that year, he recorded singles and two albums in the folk vein for Hickory Records, scoring three UK hit singles: “Catch the Wind“, “Colours” and “Universal Soldier“, the last written by Buffy Sainte-Marie. He then signed to CBS/Epic in the US and became more successful internationally, beginning a long collaboration with British record producer Mickie Most. In September 1966, “Sunshine Superman” topped America’s Billboard Hot 100 chart for one week and went to No. 2 in Britain, followed by “Mellow Yellow” at US No. 2 in December 1966, then 1968’s “Hurdy Gurdy Man” in the top 5 in both countries, and then “Atlantis“, which reached US No. 7 in May 1969. The compilation Donovan’s Greatest Hits was released in March 1969 and peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard 200.
Donovan became a friend of other prominent musicians such as Joan Baez, Brian Jones, and the Beatles. He taught John Lennon a finger-picking guitar style in 1968 that Lennon employed in “Dear Prudence“, “Julia“, “Happiness Is a Warm Gun“, and other songs. His backing musicians included the Jeff Beck Group, and John Bonham, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones, who later rose to fame as members of Led Zeppelin. Donovan’s commercial fortunes waned after parting with Most in 1969, and he left the industry for a time.
Donovan continued to perform and record intermittently in the 1970s and 1980s. His musical style and hippie image were scorned by critics, especially after the rise of punk rock. His performing and recording became sporadic until a revival in the 1990s with the emergence of Britain’s rave scene and in 1994, he moved permanently to Ireland where he still lives.[3] In 1996 he recorded the album Sutras with producer Rick Rubin and in 2004 made the album Beat Cafe. Donovan was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012 and the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2014.
more...Jimmy Ponder (May 10, 1946 – September 16, 2013) was an American jazz guitarist.
When Ponder’s brother entered the military, he left his guitar, and Ponder picked it up. In his early teens he received lessons from the guitarist in a band for which he sang doo-wop. He was drawn to the jazz guitar he heard on the radio. While playing in a rhythm and blues band, he occasionally inserted a jazz solo. He considered hearing guitarist Thornel Schwartz an important part of his life, when Schwartz was playing with organist Jimmy McGriff. He was impressed by Pat Martino when he saw Martino in the Jack McDuff band. He also cited as influences George Benson, Kenny Burrell, and Rene Thomas, though none surpassed the impact of seeing Wes Montgomery
more...Melvin Sokoloff (May 10, 1929 – February 2, 1990), known professionally as Mel Lewis, was an American jazz drummer, session musician, professor, and author. He received fourteen Grammy Awardnominations.
Lewis was born in Buffalo, New York, to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents Samuel and Mildred Sokoloff. He started playing professionally as a teen, eventually joining Stan Kenton in 1954. His musical career brought him to Los Angeles in 1957 and New York City in 1963.
In 1966 in New York, he teamed up with Thad Jones to lead the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra. The group started as informal jam sessions with the top studio and jazz musicians of the city, but eventually began performing regularly on Monday nights at the famed venue, the Village Vanguard. In 1979, the band won a Grammy for their album Live in Munich.[2] Like all of the musicians in the band, it was only a sideline. In 1976, he released an album titled Mel Lewis and Friends that featured him leading a smaller sextet that allowed freedom and improvisation.
When Jones moved to Denmark in 1978, the band became known as Mel Lewis and the Jazz Orchestra. Lewis continued to lead the band, recording and performing every Monday night at the Village Vanguard until shortly before his death from cancer at age 60. The band still performs on most Monday nights at the club. Today, it is known as the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra and has released several CDs
more...“Seguiriya” is one of the oldest flamenco styles. It is one of the most important with the “bulería” and “soleá”. Etymologically, its name is supposed to derive from the “seguidilla”. A phonetic corruption has deformed it in different terms: “seguiriya”, “siguiriya”, “seguirilla” or “siguerilla”. The oldest evidence of this flamenco style is found in the late 18th century, even though its origin is still uncertain. “Seguiriya” derived from primitive “tonás”, being created between Seville and Cadiz, los Puertos, Jerez and Triana neighborhood. “Livianas” and “serranas” belong to the same group as this style. Both styles follow “segiriya” rhythm. Another variety is the “cabales”, which are very similar to “seguiriyas” but in a higher tone. As singing, it has a tragic and gloomy character, enclosing main values of what is known as “cante hondo”. Lyrics are painful, tragic, about human relationships, love and death. “Seguiriya” has few lyrics and many “quejíos”. Musical aesthetic of “seguiriya” is taken from styles such “malagueñas” or a capella (without guitar). The term “Seguiriya” appears in many literary works. Furthermore, music in some “tonadillas”appear as “seguidilla gitana”, which doesn’t match with “seguidilla flamenca”.
It is known today that its metric is based on an order inversion of the “soleá” rhythm (3 × 4 + 6 × 8). Oldest forms of this style were interpreted in the same way as “tonás”, without music accompaniment. Currently, it is accompanied by guitar. In addition, continuous tone changes and nuances make this singing as one of the most difficult to perform. Dance was introduced for the first time thanks to Vicente Escudero in 1940. It is a slow, solemn, ceremonious, unornamented dance, whose structure is composed by four hexasyllabic verses, unless the third which is hendecasyllabic. This syllabic model is related with “jarchas”. The second line rhymes to the fourth, both consonant and assonance. In this flamenco style feeling is more important than structure. It is not strange to find “seguiriya” with other metrics. There are different types of “seguiriyas” which are associated to a particular singer. In Cadiz, El Planeta; in Jerez, La Niña de los Peines; in Triana el de Frasco el Colorao; etc.
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Heart of the Carina Nebula. The Carina Nebula or Eta Carinae Nebula (catalogued as NGC 3372; also known as the Great Carina Nebula) is a large, complex area of bright and dark nebulosity in the constellation Carina, located in the Carina–Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way galaxy. The nebula is approximately 8,500 light-years (2,600 pc) from Earth.
The nebula has within its boundaries the large Carina OB1 association and several related open clusters, including numerous O-type stars and several Wolf–Rayet stars. Carina OB1 encompasses the star clusters Trumpler 14 and Trumpler 16. Trumpler 14 is one of the youngest known star clusters at half a million years old and contains stars like the O2 supergiant HD 93129A. Trumpler 16is the home of many extremely luminous stars, such as WR 25 and the Eta Carinae star system. Trumpler 15, Collinder 228, Collinder 232, NGC 3324, and NGC 3293 are also considered members of the association. NGC 3293 is the oldest and furthest from Trumpler 14, indicating sequential and ongoing star formation.
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.
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