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William Alexander “Sonny” Greer (December 13, c. 1895 – March 23, 1982) was an American jazz drummer and vocalist, best known for his work with Duke Ellington. Greer was born in Long Branch, New Jersey.

Greer started his career in his mid-teens when he began playing at resort hotels along the Jersey Shore with local orchestras. After a performance in the Plaza Hotel, he received an invitation to appear in Washington, D.C. with the Howard Theatre where he played for three years until he met Duke Ellington. Greer was balancing his commitments with Ellington and the Howard Theatre until the mid-1920s when he worked exclusively with Ellington.

Greer was Ellington’s first drummer, playing with his quintet, the Washingtonians, and moved with Ellington into the Cotton Club. As a result of his job as a designer with the Leedy Drum Company of Indiana, Greer was able to build up a huge drum kit worth over a then-considerable $3,000, including chimes, a gong, timpani, and vibes.

Greer was constantly on tour with the Ellington Orchestra and was there for its rise to fame in the 1930s and 1940s. Greer took the spotlight during the performances as the organization of his drum set drew the audience’s eyes. Music critic for the New York Times, John S. Wilson, wrote that Greer was “enthroned on a stand on which he was surrounded by a glittering array of paraphernalia.”Wilson continues to write that this included instruments such as chimes, tom-toms, snare drums, bass drums, and a gong that was “set up in back of him as though to form a massive halo.”

Carlos García Montoya (13 December 1903 – 3 March 1993) born in Madrid, Spain, was a prominent flamenco guitarist and a founder of the modern-day popular flamenco style of music. He was the nephew of renowned flamenco guitarist Ramón Montoya. He first learned from his mother, “la Tula”, and then from a neighboring barber, Pepe el Barbero, i.e. Pepe the Barber. After one year Montoya had completed what Pepe was able to teach him. Carlos left to learn what he could from other flamenco guitarists of the time. At fourteen he was playing in the “cafes cantantes,” in the heyday of flamenco singing and dancing, for such artists as Antonio de Bilbao, Juan el Estampío, La Macarrona and La Camisona in Madrid, Spain.

Alejandro Neciosup Acuña (born December 12, 1944), known professionally as

Alex Acuña, is a Peruvian–American jazz drummer and percussionist. He has also worked as an educator at University of California, Los Angeles, and Berklee College of Music. LAMA, Musicians Institute, USC, CSUN.

Born in Pativilca, Peru, Acuña played in local bands such as La Orquesta de los Hermanos Neciosup from the age of ten. Acuña then followed his brothers and moved to Lima as a teenager. At the age of eighteen he joined the band of Perez Prado, and in 1965 he moved to San Juan, Puerto Rico. In 1974 Acuña moved to Las Vegas, working with artists such as Elvis Presley, The Temptations, and Diana Ross, and the following year he joined the jazz-fusion group Weather Report, appearing on the albums Black Market and Heavy Weather. While in New York City, Acuña recorded several songs under RCA records. Acuña decided to leave because of the genre limitations placed on him, in which RCA records only had him play Latin music.

Forrest Richard Betts (December 12, 1943 – April 18, 2024 West Palm Beach, FL) was an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He was best known as a longtime member of the Allman Brothers Band. A co-founder of the band when it formed in 1969, he was central to the group’s greatest commercial success in the mid-1970s, and was the writer and vocalist on the Allmans’ hit single “Ramblin’ Man“. The Allman Brothers Band broke up and re-formed twice, always with Betts in the lineup, until he left the band in 2000.

Starting in 1974, Betts also fronted his own bands, performing concerts and recording records. He released albums as Dickey Betts and Great Southern, the Dickey Betts Band, and under his own name.

Emmanuel N’Djoké “Manu” Dibango (12 December 1933 – 24 March 2020) was a Cameroonianmusician and songwriter who played saxophone and vibraphone. He developed a musical style fusing jazz, funk, and traditional Cameroonian music. His father was a member of the Yabassi ethnic group, while his mother was a Duala. He was best known for his 1972 single “Soul Makossa“. The song has been referred to as the most sampled African song in addition Dibango, himself, as the most sampled African musician in history. He died from COVID-19 on 24 March 2020.

Toshiko Akiyoshi (秋吉敏子 or 穐吉敏子, Akiyoshi Toshiko, born 12 December 1929) is an American jazz pianist, composer, arranger, and bandleader.

Akiyoshi received fourteen Grammy Award nominations and was the first woman to win Best Arranger and Composer awards in Down Beat magazine’s annual Readers’ Poll. In 1984, she was the subject of the documentary Jazz Is My Native Language. In 1996, she published her autobiography, Life with Jazz, and in 2007 she was named an NEA Jazz Master by the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts.

Michael “Dodo” Marmarosa (December 12, 1925 – September 17, 2002) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger.

Originating in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Marmarosa became a professional musician in his mid-teens, and toured with several major big bands, including those led by Tommy Dorsey, Gene Krupa, and Artie Shawinto the mid-1940s. He moved to Los Angeles in 1945, where he became increasingly interested and involved in the emerging bebop scene. During his time on the West Coast, he recorded in small groups with leading bebop and swing musicians, including Howard McGhee, Charlie Parker, and Lester Young, as well as leading his own bands.

Marmarosa returned to Pittsburgh for health reasons in 1948. He began performing much less frequently, and had a presence only locally for around a decade. Friends and fellow musicians had commented from an early stage that Marmarosa was an unusual character. His mental stability was probably affected by being beaten into a coma when in his teens, by a short-lived marriage followed by permanent separation from his children, and by a traumatic period in the army. He made comeback recordings in the early 1960s, but soon retreated to Pittsburgh, where he played occasionally into the early 1970s. From then until his death three decades later, he lived with family and in veterans’ hospitals.

Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton (December 11, 1926 – July 25, 1984), was an American singer and songwriter of blues and R&B.

The Encyclopedia of Pop, Rock and Soul described Thornton saying “Her booming voice, sometimes 200-pound frame, and exuberant stage manner had audiences stomping their feet and shouting encouragement in R&B theaters from coast to coast from the early 1950s on”.

Thornton was the first to record Leiber and Stoller‘s “Hound Dog“, in 1952, which was written for her. It became Thornton’s biggest hit, selling over 500,000 copies and staying seven weeks at number one on the Billboard R&B chart in 1953. According to New York University music professor Maureen Mahon, “the song is seen as an important beginning of rock-and-roll, especially in its use of the guitar as the key instrument”.

Thornton’s other recordings include her song “Ball and Chain“, made famous in the late 1960s by Janis Joplin. Though later recordings of her songs by other artists sold millions of copies, she was denied royalties by not holding the publishing copyrights to her creativity. Thornton died of a heart attack and liver disorders, penniless in a boarding-house in Los Angeles, California, and was buried in a shared pauper’s grave. In 2024, Thornton was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the musical influence category.