mick laBriola

John Wesley Funchess (April 16, 1931 – February 1, 1994) known professionally as John (or Johnny) Littlejohn, was an American electric blues slide guitarist. He was active on the Chicago blues circuit from the 1950s to the 1980s. Born in Lake, Mississippi, Littlejohn first learned to play the blues from Henry Martin, a friend of his father’s. In 1946 he left home and traveled widely, spending time in Jackson, Mississippi; Arkansas; Rochester, New York; and Gary, Indiana. He settled in Gary in 1951, playing whenever possible in the nearby Chicago area. Through his connections in Gary, he was acquainted with Joe Jackson, the patriarch of the musical Jackson family, and Littlejohn and his band reputedly served as an occasional rehearsal band for the Jackson 5 in the mid- to late 1960s.

Littlejohn played regularly in Chicago clubs (he was filmed by drummer Sam Lay playing with Howlin’ Wolf‘s band about 1961) but did not make any studio recordings until 1968, when he cut singles for several record labels. Later that year he recorded an album for Arhoolie Records and four songs for Chess Records. The Chess tracks were not issued at the time.

Bennie Green (April 16, 1923 – March 23, 1977) was an American jazz trombonist.

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Green worked in the orchestras of Earl Hines and Charlie Ventura, and recorded as bandleader through the 1950s and 1960s. According to critic Scott Yanow of Allmusic, Green’s style straddled swing music and soul, making him one of the few trombonists of the 1950s and ’60s uninfluenced by the pioneering sound of J.J. Johnson.

Green relocated to Las Vegas where he played in hotel bands for the last decade of his career, though he made occasional appearances at jazz festivals. He died on March 23, 1977.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hIAmnOnsX8

Alton Purnell (April 16, 1911 – January 14, 1987) was an American jazz pianist. He was a longtime performer in Dixieland jazz. Purnell was born in New Orleans on April 16, 1911. He sang before playing piano professionally, beginning to do so locally in New Orleans in 1928.^[1] He played in the 1930s with Isaiah Morgan, Alphonse Picou, Big Eye Louis Nelson, Sidney Desvigne, and Cousin Joe, and with Bunk Johnson in the middle of the 1940s. Purnell joined George Lewis‘s band after Johnson’s broke up in 1946, and remained there well into the 1950s, including for international tours.

In 1957 Purnell relocated to Los Angeles. There he worked with Teddy Buckner, Young Men from New Orleans, Joe Darensbourg, Kid Ory, Barney Bigard, and Ben Pollack. He also recorded extensively as a leader, including for Warner Bros. Records, GHB, and Alligator Jazz. In the 1970s and 1980s, Purnell was a regular at the South Bay New Orleans Jazz Club in Gardina California, with or often shared the stage with Ed Garland or Buddy Johnson.

The constellation of Virgo (The Virgin) is the largest of the Zodiac constellations, and the second largest overall after Hydra (The Water Snake). Its most appealing feature, however, is the sheer number of galaxies that lie within it. In this picture, among a crowd of face- and edge-on spiral, elliptical, and irregular galaxies, lies NGC 4866, a lenticular galaxy situated about 80 million light-years from Earth. Lenticular galaxies are somewhere between spirals and ellipticals in terms of shape and properties. From the picture, we can appreciate the bright central bulge of NGC 4886, which contains primarily old stars, but no spiral arms are visible. The galaxy is seen from Earth as almost edge-on, meaning that the disc structure — a feature not present in elliptical galaxies — is clearly visible. Faint dust lanes trace across NGC 4866 in this image, obscuring part of the galaxy’s light. To the right of the galaxy is a very bright star that appears to lie within NGC 4886’s halo. However, this star actually lies much closer to us; in front of the galaxy, along our line of sight. These kinds of perspective tricks are common when observing, and can initially deceive astronomers as to the true nature and position of objects such as galaxies, stars, and clusters. This sharp image of NGC 4866 was captured by the Advanced Camera for Surveys, an instrument on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. A version was entered into the Hubble’s Hidden Treasures image processing competition by contestant Gilles Chapdelaine. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA Acknowledgement: Gilles Chapdelaine About the Object Name: ngc 4866 Type: • Local Universe : Galaxy : Type : Lenticular • Galaxies Images/Videos Distance: 80 million light years Colours & filters Band Wavelength Telescope Infrared I 814 nm Hubble Space Telescope ACS Optical B 475 nm Hubble Space Telescope ACS .

Irving Herbert Pomeroy III (April 15, 1930 – August 11, 2007) was a jazz trumpeter, teacher, and the founder of the MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble. Pomeroy began playing trumpet at an early age. In his early teens he started performing in Boston, claiming inspiration from the music of Louis Armstrong. In 1946, at the age of 16, he became a member of the Musicians Union in Gloucester after the union did not have enough members to conduct a meeting. He studied dentistry at Harvard University for a year but dropped out to pursue his jazz career.

After high school, he studied music from 1950 to 1952 at the Schillinger House in Boston. Remaining in Boston, he played with Charlie Parker for one week in 1953, then briefly with Charlie Mariano before going on tour with Lionel Hampton and Stan Kenton. Back in Boston, he played with Serge Chaloff and was hired to teach at Schillinger after it had been renamed Berklee School of Music. During the latter part of the 1950s he was the leader of a sixteen-piece band which included Mariano, Bill Berry, Jaki Byard, Joe Gordon, and Boots Mussulli. For two years after that, he led another band, which included Alan Dawson, Hal Galper, Michael Gibbs, Dusko Goykovich, and Sam Rivers. He worked in pit orchestras for Broadway shows passing through Boston. Beginning in 1963 he led bands at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He led a band until 1993, two years before retiring from Berklee.

Sir Neville Marriner, CH, CBE (15 April 1924 – 2 October 2016) was an English violinist who became “one of the world’s greatest conductors“. He founded the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, and his partnership with them is the most recorded of any orchestra and conductor. Marriner was born in Lincoln, England, the son of Herbert Marriner, a carpenter, and his wife Ethel (née Roberts). He was educated at Lincoln School (then a grammar school), where he played in a jazz band with the composer Steve Race. He initially learned the violin as well as the piano from his father, and later studied the violin with Frederick Mountney. In 1939, he went to the Royal College of Music in London, getting the opportunity to play among the second violins of the London Symphony Orchestra, then conducted by Henry Wood, because many of its members had joined up after the outbreak of the Second World War. He joined up himself in 1941, serving in a reconnaissance role in the British Army, but was invalided out in 1943 with kidney problems. He returned to the Royal College, where he continued his studies with the violinist Billy Reed. He then attended the Paris Conservatoire, where he studied with the violinist René Benedetti.

Marriner was briefly a music teacher at Eton College. In 1948, he became a professor of the Royal College of Music. In 1948 or 1949, he took up the position of second violinist of the Martin String Quartet, continuing to play with the quartet for 13 years. He had met the harpsichordist Thurston Dart while recuperating from kidney damage during the war, and they formed a duo together, which expanded to the Virtuoso String Trio with Peter Gibbs. These were the precursors to Dart’s Jacobean Ensemble, in which Marriner played from 1951. He played the violin in two London orchestras: the Philharmonia Orchestra in the early 1950s, and the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) as principal second violin (1954–69). He also played with the chamberorchestras of Reginald Jacques and Boyd Neel, as well as the London Mozart Players.

Richard Davis (born April 15, 1930) is an American jazz bassist. Among his most famous contributions to the albums of others are Eric Dolphy‘s Out to Lunch!, Andrew Hill‘s Point of Departure, and Van Morrison‘s Astral Weeks, of which critic Greil Marcus wrote (in The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll), “Richard Davis provided the greatest bass ever heard on a rock album.”Born in Chicago, Davis began his musical career with his brothers, singing bass in his family’s vocal trio.^[1] He studied double bass in high school with his music theory teacher and band director, Walter Dyett. He was a member of Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestras (then known as the Youth Orchestra of Greater Chicago) and played in the orchestra’s first performance at Chicago’s Orchestra Hall on November 14, 1947. After high school, he studied double bass with Rudolf Fahsbender of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra while attending VanderCook College of Music.

After college, Davis performed in dance bands. The connections he made led him to pianist Don Shirley. In 1954 he and Shirley moved to New York City and performed together until 1956, when Davis began playing with the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra. In 1957, he became part of Sarah Vaughan‘s rhythm section, touring and recording with her until 1960.

During the 1960s, Davis was in demand in a variety of musical circles. He worked with many of the small jazz groups of the time, including those led by Eric Dolphy, Jaki Byard, Booker Ervin, Andrew Hill, Elvin Jones, and Cal Tjader. From 1966–1972, he was a member of The Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra. He has also played with Don Sebesky, Oliver Nelson, Frank Sinatra, Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon, and Ahmad Jamal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96IUcUIy0IY

POSITIVE VIBRATIONS performing 3 weeks from today at the 45th Annual MAYDAY PARADE, CEREMONY & FESTIVAL
Sunday May 5th 6pm
Roots Reggae sensation POSITIVE VIBRATIONS will be performing in the grass at the Ceremony Site for this years Mayday following the Ceremony Performance.
Featuring Van Nixon, Todd Matheson, Larry McCabe, Paul Strickland, Onesmo Kibira, Tim Siefkes and mick “Bamboula” laBriola.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_hgqJCrtN8

BEAU KOO JACKS performing 3 weeks from today at the
45th Annual MAYDAY PARADE, CEREMONY & FESTIVAL
Sunday May 5th 5pm
New Orleans extravaganza BEAU KOO JACKS will be performing in the grass at the Ceremony Site for this years Mayday following the Ceremony Performance.
Featuring Van Nixon, Jamie Carter, Todd Matheson, Larry McCabe, Paul Strickland, Art Haynes, Tim Siefkes and mick “Bamboula” laBriola.

The California Nebula (NGC 1499) is an emission nebula located in the constellation Perseus. It is so named because it appears to resemble the outline of the US State of California on long exposure photographs. It is almost 2.5° long on the sky and, because of its very low surface brightness, it is extremely difficult to observe visually. It can be observed with a Hβ filter (isolates the Hβ line at 486 nm) in a rich-field telescope under dark skies. It lies at a distance of about 1,000 light years from Earth. Its fluorescence is due to excitation of the Hβ line in the nebula by the nearby prodigiously energetic O7 star, xi Persei

The California Nebula was discovered by E. E. Barnard in 1884.

Sporting over 8 hours total exposure, the California Nebula picture above uses the popular “Hubble Palette” of colors (Red = SII, G = Ha, B = O3).  Equipment: SBIG ST-8300 CCD camera with the FW8-8300 filter wheel, Astrodon narrowband 36mm filters, the Takahashi FSQ-85 telescope with reducer,  AP 900GTO mount.  I used MaximDL to acquire and process flat and dark frames, Registar to align, Photoshop CS5 with a little HDR toning to process from there.  Other narrowband pictures with this combination, and more info, are at this link.  Other astronomy pictures from the Fall 2011 trip are here.

The narrowband pictures are composed of 27*5 unbinned Ha Frames, 37*5 minute O3 frames (2x bin), and 39*4 (2xbin) Si2 frames.

Eugene “Jug” Ammons (April 14, 1925 – August 6, 1974), also known as “The Boss”, was an American jazz tenor saxophonist.The son of boogie-woogie pianist Albert Ammons, Gene Ammons is remembered for his accessible music, steeped in soul and R&B. Born in Chicago, Illinois, Ammons studied music with instructor Walter Dyett at DuSable High School. Ammons began to gain recognition while still at high school when in 1943, at the age of 18, he went on the road with trumpeter King Kolax‘s band. In 1944 he joined the band of Billy Eckstine (who bestowed on him the nickname “Jug” when straw hats ordered for the band did not fit), playing alongside Charlie Parker and later Dexter Gordon. Notable performances from this period include “Blowin’ the Blues Away,” featuring a saxophone duel between Ammons and Gordon. After 1947, when Eckstine became a solo performer, Ammons then led a group, including Miles Davis and Sonny Stitt, that performed at Chicago’s Jumptown Club. In 1949 Ammons replaced Stan Getz as a member of Woody Herman‘s Second Herd, and then in 1950 formed a duet with Sonny Stitt.

NGC 5395 and 5394, together known as Arp 84 or the Heron Galaxy, are two interacting galaxies located just over 160 million light-years away from Earth in the small northern constellation of Canes Venatici (the Hunting Dogs). It takes little imagination to see a blue heron’s body, complete with neck, head and a beak reaching out to a nearby fish.

The larger, NGC 5395, is a somewhat elongated, nearly face-on spiral galaxy of about 140 thousand light-years across, located about 162 million light-years away from Earth, while it receding from us at approximately 3511 kilometers per second. NGC 5394, also face-on galaxy, is a barred spiral of about 90 thousand light-years across, located 161 million light-years away, while it is receding from us at approximately 3448 kilometers per second.

The main disk of NGC 5395, with a bright, elongated central region, is asymmetric and distorted due to interaction with its nearby companion NGC 5294. The dominant spiral arm of this two-armed spiral galaxy forms a large ring somewhat off center with respect to the nucleus. Obscuring dust lanes can be seen throughout the galaxy.

The smaller galaxy, NGC 5394, has an oval disk, two long, fairly symmetric, open tidal arms, and very bright inner spiral arms, disjoint from the outer tidal arms. Most of the gas in NGC 5394 is concentrated around the center, so is suitable for fueling the ongoing starburst in its center. Despite the presence of hydrogen gas, two of the three inner spiral arms of NGC 5394 show no evidence of ongoing star formation.

On June 25, 2000 the Type Ic supernova SN 2000cr was discovered in NGC 5395, northeast of the nucleus.

Types Ic (and Ib) supernovae are caused by the core collapse of massive stars and are usually referred to as stripped core-collapse supernovae. These stars have shed (or been stripped of) their outer envelope of hydrogen, and lack the absorption line of silicon. Compared to Type Ib, Type Ic supernovae have lost more of their initial envelope, including most of their helium.