mick laBriola

Friday April 12th 2024. 6:00 p.m. Erev Shabbat Service Celebrating the Rappaport Family, Recipients of the Gainsley Award, and Temple Israel’s Gold LEED Certification. Music with Inbal Sharett-Singer, Jayson Rodovsky, Jeff Bailey, Pete Whitman and mick laBriola.

James D. “Shakey Jake” Harris (April 12, 1921 – March 2, 1990) was an American Chicago blues singer, harmonicist and songwriter. He released five albums over a period of almost 25 years. He was often musically associated with his nephew Magic Sam.

James D. Harris was born in Earle, Arkansas, and relocated with his family to Chicago, Illinois, at the age of seven. He played in several Chicago blues ensembles in the late 1940s. He also worked as a mechanic and as a professional gambler (his nickname came from a dice players’ expression, “shake ’em”). His debut recording was the single “Call Me if You Need Me”, backed with “Roll Your Moneymaker”, released by Artistic Records in 1958, featuring Magic Sam and Syl Johnson on guitar and produced by Willie Dixon. Harris was not paid for the session, but he won $700 shooting craps with label owner Eli Toscano.

Theodore Roosevelt “Hound Dog” Taylor (April 12, 1915 – December 17, 1975) was an American Chicago blues guitarist and singer.

Taylor was born in Natchez, Mississippi, in 1915, though some sources say 1917. He first played the piano and began playing the guitar when he was 20. He moved to Chicago in 1942.

Taylor had a condition known as polydactylism, which resulted in him having six fingers on both hands. As is usual with the condition, the extra digits were rudimentary nubbins and could not be moved. One night, while drunk, he cut off the extra digit on his right hand using a straight razor.

He became a full-time musician around 1957, but remained unknown outside the Chicago area, where he played small clubs in black neighborhoods and at the open-air Maxwell Street Market. He was known for his electrified slide guitar playing (roughly styled after that of Elmore James), his cheap Japanese Teiscoguitars, and his raucous boogie beats. In 1967, Taylor toured Europe with the American Folk Blues Festival, performing with Little Walter and Koko Taylor. Taylor died of lung cancer in 1975. He was buried at Restvale Cemetery, in Alsip, Illinois.

Neville Eugenton Staple (born 11 April 1955), sometimes credited as Neville Staples, is a Jamaican-born English singer, known for his work with the 2 Tone ska band the Specials, the pop group Fun Boy Three, as well as with his own group, the Neville Staple Band. He also performed with Ranking Roger in the supergroup Special Beat.

Staple was born in Manchester, Jamaica. He left Jamaica to live in the English town of Rugby, Warwickshire at the age of five but later moved to Coventry. Neville was a regular fixture at the Locarno Ballroom in Coventry, where he met the resident DJ there, Pete Waterman. Waterman briefly managed the Specials and would later write the foreword to Staple’s 2009 biography, Original Rude Boy.

Staple’s early vocal style was mostly “toasting“—or chanting over a rhythm—a forerunner of rappingbrought to Britain in the 1960s by musicians from Jamaica. Staple honed his toasting skills in the sound system scene in Coventry during the 1970s, first on his cousin’s “Messenger Sound” and later his own system called “Jah Baddis”.

Frank Vicari (April 11, 1931 – October 20, 2006) was a New York-based jazz saxophonist.After serving in the Air Force from 1951–55, where he played in various service bands, Vicari returned to New York City and played in various bands until he joined Maynard Ferguson’s big band in 1960. When the Ferguson band was dismantled in 1965, Vicari briefly joined Buddy Rich but that same year joined Woody Herman and his Thundering Herd and remained until 1970.He died in New York City at the age of 75.

John Lee Granderson (11 April 1913, Ellendale, Tennessee, – 22 August 1979, Chicago, Illinois, was a blues guitarist and singer.

Granderson’s style was established in west Tennessee blues before World War II. He learned to play the guitar when he was nine years old. Although not a professional musician, he played mostly in the Memphis area with Sleepy John Estes, Hammie Nixon, and others. He left his parents around 1927, making his way north to Chicago in 1928.

For many years he worked as a junkman, auto mechanic and custodian. He performed around Chicago frequently, sometimes with John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson in the 30’s and 40’s.  1940s-1960s: John Lee Granderson, Avery Brady and Arvella Gray all performed on Maxwell Street. He recorded for Testament in 1962 – 1966 by himself and as part of the Chicago String band (with Johnny Young, Big John Wrencher and Carl Martin). Additional recordings were made for Adelphi. Others that  Granderson played with were Robert Nighthawk, Big Joe Williams, and Daddy Stovepipe.  He was most active in the 1960s. Granderson sang and played guitar close to the style of the Memphis musicians of his youth . For the most part he ceased performing publicly in 1975, but he continued composing lyrics until his death. He suffered a stroke in February 1979 and he died that August of pancreatic cancer in Chicago, IL 1979, at the age of 66.

Joey DeFrancesco (April 10, 1971 – August 25, 2022 Springfield, PA) was an American jazz organist, trumpeter, saxophonist, and occasional singer. He released more than 30 albums under his own name, and recorded extensively as a sideman with such leading jazz performers as trumpeter Miles Davis, saxophonist Houston Person, and guitarist John McLaughlin.

DeFrancesco signed his first record deal at the age of 16 and over the years recorded and toured internationally with David Sanborn, Arturo Sandoval, Larry Coryell, Frank Wess, Benny Golson, James Moody, Steve Gadd, Danny Gatton, Elvin Jones, Jimmy Cobb, George Benson, Pat Martino, Tony Monaco, John Scofield, Lee Ritenour, Joe Lovano, and had prominent session work with a variety of musicians, including Ray Charles, Bette Midler, Janis Siegel, Diana Krall, Jimmy Smith, and Van Morrison.

Omar Sosa (born April 10, 1965) is a jazz pianist from Cuba.

A native of Camagüey, Cuba, Sosa studied percussion at the Escuela Nacional de Musica and Instituto Superior de Arte. In the 1980s he started the band Tributo, recording albums and touring with the band.He worked with Cuban vocalist Xiomara Laugart and several Latin jazz bands. In the 1990s he moved from Cuba to Quito, Ecuador; to Palma de Mallorca, Spain; to the San Francisco Bay area, in California, United States; and finally settled in Barcelona, Spain.

Claude Bolling (10 April 1930 – 29 December 2020) was a French jazz pianist, composer,arranger, and occasional actor.

He was born in Cannes, France, and studied at the Nice Conservatory, and then in Paris. A child prodigy, by the age of 14 he was playing jazz piano professionally, with Lionel Hampton, Roy Eldridge, and Kenny Clarke. Bolling’s books on jazz technique show that he did not delve far beyond bebop into much avant-garde jazz. He was a major part of the traditional jazz revival in the late 1960s, and he became friends with Oscar Peterson.