Eurreal Wilford “Little Brother” Montgomery (April 18, 1906 – September 6, 1985) was an American jazz, boogie-woogie and blues pianist and singer.

Largely self-taught, Montgomery was an important blues pianist with an original style. He was also versatile, working in jazz bands, including larger ensembles that used written arrangements. He did not read music but learned band routines by ear.

Montgomery was born in Kentwood, Louisiana, United States, a sawmill town near the Mississippi border, across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans, where he spent much of his childhood. Both his parents were of African-American and Creek Indian ancestry. As a child he looked like his father, Harper Montgomery, and was called Little Brother Harper. The name evolved into Little Brother Montgomery, and the nickname stuck. He started playing piano at the age of four, and by age 11 he left home for four years and played at barrelhouses in Louisiana. His main musical influence was Jelly Roll Morton, who used to visit the Montgomery household.

Leo Parker (April 18, 1925 – February 11, 1962)  was an American jazz musician, who primarily played baritone saxophone. Parker was the earliest baritone saxophonist to play bebop. Born in Washington, D.C., Parker studied alto saxophone in high school and played this instrument on a recording with Coleman Hawkins in 1944.

Parker switched to baritone saxophone in 1944 when he joined Billy Eckstine‘s bebop band, playing there until 1946. In 1945, he was a member of the “Unholy Four” of saxophonists, with Dexter Gordon, Sonny Stitt and Gene Ammons. He played on 52nd Street in New York with Dizzy Gillespie in 1946 and Illinois Jacquet in 1947-48, and later recorded with Fats Navarro, J.J. Johnson, Teddy Edwards, Wardell Gray and Charles Thompson. He and Thompson had a hit with their Apollo Records release, “Mad Lad”. In the 1950s, Parker had problems with drug abuse, which interfered with his recording career. He made two comeback records for Blue Note in 1961, but the following year he died of a heart attack in New York City. He was 36.

Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown (April 18, 1924 – September 10, 2005) was an American singer and multi-instrumentalist from Louisiana. He won a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album in 1983 for his album, Alright Again!.

Brown was born in Vinton, Louisiana, and raised near Orange, Texas. His father was a railroad worker and local musician who taught him several musical instruments, including fiddle by age 5; as well as piano and guitar. He had at least one brother.

Brown was performing guitar by age ten. He also played drums in swing bands as a teenager.

Jan Hammer  (born 17 April 1948) is a Czech-American musician, composer, and record producer.^[1] He rose to prominence while playing keyboards with the Mahavishnu Orchestra during the early 1970s, as well as with his film scores for television and film including “Miami Vice Theme” and “Crockett’s Theme“, from the 1980s television program Miami Vice. He has continued to work as both a musical performer and producer.

Hammer has collaborated with some of the era’s most influential jazz and rock musicians such as John McLaughlin, Jeff Beck, Billy Cobham, Al Di Meola, Mick Jagger, Carlos Santana, Stanley Clarke, Tommy Bolin, Neal Schon, Steve Lukather, John Abercrombie and Elvin Jones. He has composed and produced at least 14 original motion picture soundtracks, the music for 90 episodes of Miami Vice and 20 episodes of the television series Chancer.

His compositions have won him several Grammy Awards.

Charles Anthony “Buster” Williams (born April 17, 1942) is an American jazz bassist. Williams is known for his membership in pianist Herbie Hancock‘s early 1970s group, as well as working with guitarist Larry Coryell, the Thelonious Monk repertory band Sphere and as the accompanist of choice for many singers, including Nancy Wilson.

Williams’ father, Charles Anthony Williams Sr., was a musician who played bass, drums, and piano, and had band rehearsals in the family home in Camden, New Jersey, exposing Williams to jazz at an early age. Williams was particularly inspired to focus on bass after hearing his father’s record of Star Dust, performed by Oscar Pettiford, and started playing in his early teens.

He had his first professional gig while he was still a junior high school student, filling in for Charles Sr., who had double booked himself one evening. Williams later spent his days practicing with Sam Dockery, who was playing in Jimmy Heath‘s band in Philadelphia on a regular double bill with Sam Reed. Charles Sr. hosted a jam session at a club called Rip’s and gave Williams the opportunity to put his own group together for a Monday night show in 1959, and in an effort to work his way into Heath’s band, Williams hired Sam Reed. The plan worked, as two days later Reed contacted Williams about playing in his band that coming Saturday, which demonstrated Williams’ talent to Heath, who in turn hired Williams the following week.

Donald Christopher Barber OBE (17 April 1930 – 2 March 2021) was an English jazz musician, best known as a bandleader and trombonist. He helped many musicians with their careers and had a UK top twenty trad jazz hit with “Petite Fleur” in 1959. These musicians included the bluessinger Ottilie Patterson, who was at one time his wife, and Lonnie Donegan, whose appearances with Barber triggered the skiffle craze of the mid-1950s and who had his first transatlantic hit, “Rock Island Line“, while with Barber’s band. He provided an audience for Donegan and, later, Alexis Korner, and sponsored African-American blues musicians to visit Britain, making Barber a significant figure in launching the British rhythm and blues and “beat boom” of the 1960s.

Johnny St. Cyr (April 17, 1890 – June 17, 1966) was an American jazz banjoist and guitarist. For banjo his by far most used type in records at least was the six string one. On a famous “action photo” with Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers he is holding a four string banjo, a Paramount Style A. There is, however, no verified information if he ever used such an instrument on records.

St. Cyr was born in New Orleans, Louisiana and raised Catholic. He played for several leading New Orleans bands before moving to Chicago in 1923. He is best remembered as a member of Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven bands. He also played with Jelly Roll Morton‘s Red Hot Peppers. He composed the standard “Oriental Strut”, known for its adventurous chord sequence.

During the 1950s, he performed and led a group named Johnny St. Cyr and His Hot Five and recorded with Paul Barbarin and George Lewis. From 1961 until his death in 1966, at the age of 76, St. Cyr was the bandleader of the Young Men from New Orleans, who performed at Disneyland. He died in Los Angeles, California, and is buried in Evergreen Cemetery, in Los Angeles.

The explosion is over, but the consequences continue. About eleven thousand years ago, a star in the constellation of Vela could be seen to explode, creating a strange point of light briefly visible to humans living near the beginning of recorded history. The outer layers of the star crashed into the interstellar medium, driving a shock wave that is still visible today. The featured image captures some of that filamentary and gigantic shock in visible light. As gas flies away from the detonated star, it decays and reacts with the interstellar medium, producing light in many different colors and energy bands. Remaining at the center of the Vela Supernova Remnant is a pulsar, a star as dense as nuclear matter that spins around more than ten times in a single second.

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 1966, 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.

He recorded a few singles for small local labels but did not record another album until 1985, when Rooster Blues issued So-Called Friends. Soon after, he fell into ill health. He died of renal failure in Chicago, on February 1, 1994, at the age of 62.

Herbert Jay Solomon (April 16, 1930 – July 1, 2003), known by his stage name Herbie Mann, was an American jazz flute player and important early practitioner of world music. Early in his career, he also played tenor saxophone and clarinet (including bass clarinet), but Mann was among the first jazz musicians to specialize on the flute. His most popular single was “Hi-Jack“, which was a Billboard No. 1 dance hit for three weeks in 1975.

Mann emphasized the groove approach in his music. Mann felt that from his repertoire, the “epitome of a groove record” was Memphis Underground or Push Push, because the “rhythm section locked all in one perception.”

Herbie Mann was born in Brooklyn, New York, New York, to Jewish parents Harry C. Solomon (May 30, 1902 – May 31, 1980), who was of Russian descent, and Ruth Rose Solomon (née Brecher) (July 4, 1905 – November 11, 2004), of Romanian descent who was born in Bukovina, Austria-Hungary but immigrated to the United States with her family at the age of 6. Both of his parents were dancers and singers, as well as dance instructors later in life.