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Thomas “Tommy” Benford (April 19, 1905 – March 24, 1994) was an American jazz drummer.
Tommy Benford was born in Charleston, West Virginia. He and his older brother, tuba player Bill Benford, were both orphans who studied music at the Jenkins Orphanage in Charleston, South Carolina. He went on tour with the school band, traveling with them to England in 1914.
In 1920, he was working with the Green River Minstrel Show. Benford recorded with Jelly Roll Morton in 1928 and 1930. He also played with Duke Ellington, Fats Waller and Eddie South. During the 1930s he stayed in Europe for a longer time, where he recorded with Coleman Hawkins, Bill Coleman, Joe Turner, Django Reinhardt, and Sidney Bechet.
more...Petrona Martínez was Born January 27, 1939 in San Cayetano, Colombia. She is one of the most important Afro-Colombian artists in Caribbean Colombia. She learned the bullerengue in an spontaneous manner, very early in her life.
more...Weeping Pirates
more...MACS J0416.1-2403 is a galaxy cluster at a redshift of z=0.397 with a mass 160 trillion times the mass of the Sun inside 200 kpc (650 kly). Its mass out to a radius of 950 kpc (3,100 kly) was measured as 1.15 × 1015 solar masses. The system was discovered during the Massive Cluster Survey, MACS. This cluster causes gravitational lensing of distant galaxies producing multiple images. In 2015, the galaxy cluster was announced as gravitationally lensing the most distant galaxy (z = 12).[citation needed] Based on the distribution of the multiple image copies, scientists have been able to deduce and map the distribution of dark matter.
more...Clyde Austin Stubblefield (April 18, 1943 – February 18, 2017) was an American drummer best known for his work with James Brown. A self-taught musician, he was influenced by the sound of natural rhythms around him. His drum patterns on Brown’s recordings are considered funk standards. He recorded and toured with Brown for six years and settled in Madison, Wisconsin, where he was a staple of the local music scene. Often uncredited, samples of his drum patterns were heavily used in hip-hop music. He was the recipient of an honorary doctorate in fine arts.
Born to Frank D. and Vena Stubblefield on April 18, 1943, he grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee. As a youngster his sense of rhythm was influenced by the industrial sounds of factories and trains around him. He was inspired to pursue drumming after seeing drummers for the first time in a parade. He played professionally as a teenager.[6] In early 1960s he worked with guitarist Eddie Kirkland and toured with Otis Redding.
more...Harold Galper (born April 18, 1938) is a jazz pianist, composer, arranger, bandleader, educator, and writer.
He studied classical piano as a boy, but switched to jazz which he studied at the Berklee College of Music from 1955 to 1958.[1] He hung out at Herb Pomeroy’s club, the Stable, hearing local Boston musicians such as Jaki Byard, Alan Dawson and Sam Rivers. Galper started sitting in and became the house pianist at the Stable and later on, at Connelly’s and Lenny’s on the Turnpike. He went on to work in Pomeroy’s band.
Later on he worked with Chet Baker and Stan Getz and accompanied vocalists Joe Williams, Anita O’Day, and Chris Connor.
Between 1973-1975, Galper played in the Cannonball Adderley Quintet replacing George Duke. He performed in New York and Chicago jazz clubs in the late 1970s. Around this time, Galper recorded several times with guitarist John Scofield for the Enja label.
more...Leo Parker (April 18, 1925, Washington, D.C. – February 11, 1962, New York City) was an American jazz musician who played baritone saxophone.
Parker studied alto saxophone in high school, and played this instrument on a recording with Coleman Hawkins in 1944. He switched to baritone saxophonelater that year when he joined Billy Eckstine‘s bebop band, playing there until 1946. In 1945 he was a member of the so-called “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 Jacquetin 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. He was 36.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f925V7jnZAQ
more...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—once through an arrangement and he had it memorized.
Montgomery was born in Kentwood, Louisiana, 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 4, and by age 11 he was playing at barrelhouses in Louisiana. His main musical influence was Jelly Roll Morton, who used to visit the Montgomery household.
more...Xu Ke was born in 1960 in Nanjing, China. He received his B.M. in 1982 with honor from the Department of National Music at the Central Conservatory of Beijing, where he studied under the erhu master Mr. Yusong Lan. He was the principal Erhu player of the China National Traditional Orchestra in 1983.
more...Richman Poorman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAZx3TxilnQ&index=8&list=PLEB3LPVcGcWZ0hsQ5_jgSMhawAnDzy1io.
more...
Except for the rings of Saturn, the Ring Nebula (M57) is probably the most famous celestial band. Its classic appearance is understood to be due to our own perspective, though. The recent mapping of theexpanding nebula’s 3-D structure, based in part on this clear Hubble image,indicates that the nebula is a relatively dense, donut-like ring wrapped around the middle of a (American) football-shaped cloud of glowing gas. The view from planet Earth looks down the long axis of the football, face-on to the ring. Of course, in this well-studied example of a planetary nebula, the glowing material does not come from planets. Instead, the gaseous shroud represents outer layers expelled from the dying, once sun-like star, now a tiny pinprick of light seen at the nebula’s center. Intense ultraviolet light from the hot central star ionizes atoms in the gas. The Ring Nebulais about one light-year across and 2,000 light-years away.
more...Jan Hammer (Czech pronunciation: [ˈjan ˈɦamɛr]) (born 17 April 1948) is a Czech-born American musician, composer and record producer. He first gained his most visible audience while playing keyboards with the Mahavishnu Orchestra in the early 1970s, as well as his film scores for television and film including “Miami Vice Theme” and “Crockett’s Theme“, from the popular 1980s program, Miami Vice. He has continued to work as both a musical performer and producer, expanding to producing film later in his career.
Hammer has collaborated with some of the era’s most influential jazz and rock musicians such as John McLaughlin, Jeff Beck, Al Di Meola, Mick Jagger, Carlos Santana, Stanley Clarke, Tommy Bolin, Neal Schon, Steve Lukather, and Elvin Jones among many others. 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 popular British television series Chancer.
more...Charles Anthony “Buster” Williams (born April 17, 1942 in Camden, New Jersey) is an American jazz bassist. Williams is known for his membership in pianist Herbie Hancock‘s early 1970s group, working with guitarist Larry Coryell from the 1980s to present, working in 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. Just after graduating high school in 1960, Williams had the opportunity to play with Gene Ammons and Sonny Stitt when Nelson Boyd reached out to Charles, Sr. to cover for him. Charles, Sr. was also unable to make the gig, and sent Buster in his stead. After the first set on a Friday night, Ammons and Stitt asked Williams to join the band on tour, starting in Chicago, after playing through the weekend in Philadelphia. Williams toured with them for about a year, from 1960 into 1961, until the group got stranded in Kansas City and was abandoned by Ammons, who fled without paying the band. The rhythm section managed to work with Al Hibbler for one week in order to earn enough for train fare to return home. Williams made his first two recordings with the Ammons/Stitt group in August 1961, Dig Him! for Argo Records and Boss Tenors for Verve, both recorded in Chicago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml4gj5ebqtw
more...Colombian musical prodigy Edmar Castañeda was born March 31, 1978 in Bogotá, Colombia. He began playing the difficult and exotic Colombian harp at the early age of 13.
more...In this picture, taken with the help of the NASA / European Space Agency Hubble, a massive cluster of galaxies glittering brightly in the silent darkness of outer space is presented. Despite all its splendor, this cluster of galaxies is not at all the poetic name of PLCK G308.3-20.2. Clusters of galaxies can contain thousands of galaxies connected by gravity. Earlier, clusters of galaxies were considered to be the largest structures of the universe – superclusters of galaxies, until this title was not taken away from them in the 1980s. These massive formations usually consist of several dozen clusters and groups of galaxies and span hundreds of millions of light years. However, clusters of galaxies have one important property, which is absent in superclusters – the supercluster of galaxies are not connected by gravity, so clusters of galaxies remain the largest structures of the universe, connected by gravity.
Read more at: https://upcosmos.com/hubble-watches-a-massive-cluster-of-galaxies/
more...Herbert Jay Solomon (April 16, 1930 – July 1, 2003), known by his stage name Herbie Mann, was an American jazz flutist 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 “Hijack“, 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 Undergroundor Push Push, because the “rhythm section locked all in one perception.”
Herbie Mann was born in Brooklyn, 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. He attended Lincoln High School in Brighton Beach. His first professional performance was playing the Catskills resorts at age 15. In the 1950s Mann was primarily a bop flutist, playing in combos with artists such as Phil Woods, occasionally playing bass clarinet, tenor saxophone and solo flute.
more...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.
more...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. 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.
more...Indian classical flautist, who plays the bansuri, an Indian bamboo flute, in the Hindustani classical tradition.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmzD8SOnoKg&index=1&list=PL6DD514408E1C2067
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