mick laBriola

Hugh Ramapolo Masekela (4 April 1939 – 23 January 2018) was a South African trumpeter, flugelhornist, cornetist, composer and singer. He has been described as “the father of South African jazz.” Masekela was known for his jazz compositions and for writing well-known anti-apartheid songs such as “Soweto Blues” and “Bring Him Back Home“. He also had a number 1 US pop hit in 1968 with his version of “Grazing in the Grass“.

Masekela was born in KwaGuqa Township, Witbank, South Africa to Thomas Selena Masekela, who was a health inspector and sculptor and his wife, Pauline Bowers Masekela, a social worker. As a child, he began singing and playing piano and was largely raised by his grandmother, who ran an illegal bar for miners. At the age of 14, after seeing the film Young Man with a Horn (in which Kirk Douglas plays a character modelled on American jazz cornetist Bix Beiderbecke), Masekela took up playing the trumpet. His first trumpet, from Louis Armstrong, was given to him by Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, the anti-apartheid chaplain at St. Peter’s Secondary School now known as St. Martin’s School (Rosettenville)

McKinley Morganfield (April 4, 1913 – April 30, 1983), known professionally as Muddy Waters, was an American blues musician who is often cited as the “father of modern Chicago blues“.

Muddy Waters grew up on Stovall Plantation near Clarksdale, Mississippi, and by age 17 was playing the guitar and the harmonica, emulating the local blues artists Son House and Robert Johnson. He was recorded in Mississippi by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress in 1941. In 1943, he moved to Chicago to become a full-time professional musician. In 1946, he recorded his first records for Columbia Records and then for Aristocrat Records, a newly formed label run by the brothers Leonard and Phil Chess.

In the early 1950s, Muddy Waters and his band—Little Walter Jacobs on harmonica, Jimmy Rogers on guitar, Elgin Evans on drums and Otis Spannon piano—recorded several blues classics, some with the bassist and songwriter Willie Dixon. These songs included “Hoochie Coochie Man“, “I Just Want to Make Love to You” and “I’m Ready“. In 1958, he traveled to England, laying the foundations of the resurgence of interest in the blues there. His performance at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1960 was recorded and released as his first live album, At Newport 1960.

Muddy Waters’ influence was tremendous, not just on blues and rhythm and blues but on rock and roll, hard rock, folk music, jazz, and country music. His use of amplification is often cited as the link between Delta blues and rock and roll.

Muddy Waters’ birthplace and date are not conclusively known. He stated that he was born in Rolling Fork, Mississippi, in 1915, but it is believed to be more likely that he was born in Jug’s Corner, in neighboring Issaquena County, in 1913.^[7] Recent research has uncovered documentation showing that in the 1930s and 1940s, before his rise to fame, the year of his birth was reported as 1913 on his marriage license, recording notes, and musicians’ union card. A 1955 interview in the Chicago Defender is the earliest in which he stated 1915 as the year of his birth, and he continued to say this in interviews from that point onward. The 1920 census lists him as five years old as of March 6, 1920, suggesting that his birth year may have been 1914. The Social Security Death Index, relying on the Social Security card application submitted after his move to Chicago in the mid-1940s, lists him as being born April 4, 1913. His gravestone gives his birth year as 1915.

Cecil Gant (April 4, 1913 – February 4, 1951) was an American blues singer, songwriter and pianist, whose recordings of both ballads and “fiery piano rockers” were successful in the mid- and late 1940s, and influenced the early development of rock and roll. His biggest hit was the 1944 ballad, “I Wonder“.

Gant was born in Columbia, Tennessee, but was raised in Cleveland, Ohio. He returned to Nashville, Tennessee and worked there as a musician, as well as touring with his own band, from the mid-1930s until he joined the army during World War II. In 1944, after performing at a War Bondrally in Los Angeles, California, he recorded his composition “I Wonder” for the tiny black-owned Bronze record label. When it started to become locally popular, he re-recorded it for the newly established white-owned independent Gilt-Edge record label.His recording of “I Wonder” was released under the name “Pvt. Cecil Gant”, as were later releases on the label.

Cypriot band Monsieur Doumani is the number 1 album in April 2018 month at the Transglobal World Music Chart.

Ride with the Rasses

4-4-18

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVF-wsk8eus&index=49&list=PLEB3LPVcGcWZ0hsQ5_jgSMhawAnDzy1io

Located inside the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) – one of our closest galaxies – in what some describe as a frightening sight, the Tarantula nebula is worth looking at in detail. Also known as 30 Doradus or NGC 2070, the nebula owes its name to the arrangement of its bright patches that somewhat resemble the legs of a tarantula. Taking the name of one of the biggest spiders on Earth is very fitting in view of the gigantic proportions of this celestial nebula — it measures nearly 1,000 light years across ! Its proximity, the favourable inclination of the LMC, and the absence of intervening dust make this nebula one of the best laboratories to better understand the formation of massive stars. This spectacular nebula is energised by an exceptionally high concentration of massive stars, often referred to as super star clusters. This image is based on data acquired with the 1.5 m Danish telescope at the ESO La Silla Observatory in Chile, through three filters (B: 80 s, V: 60 s, R: 50 s).

Russian Hurdy-Gurdy instrumentalist

Jimmy McGriff
McGriff at Organ Summit, Toronto, 2004
Background information
Birth name	James Harrell McGriff
Born	April 3, 1936 Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Died	May 24, 2008 (aged 72) Voorhees Township, New Jersey
Genres	Jazz, blues, soul-jazz
Occupation(s)	Musician, bandleader
Instruments	Organ
Years active	1960–2007
Labels	Groove Merchant, Jell, Sue, Solid State

James Harrell McGriff (April 3, 1936 – May 24, 2008) was an American hard bop and soul-jazz organist and organ trio bandleader.

Rocco Scott LaFaro (April 3, 1936 – July 6, 1961) was an American jazz double bassist known for his work with the Bill Evans Trio.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98Ade_x0QTc&list=PLEB3LPVcGcWbB01GmOD865HHfGmHUj_y9&index=1

Harold Vick
Background information
Birth name	Harold Edward Vick
Born	April 3, 1936 Rocky Mount, North Carolina, United States
Died	November 13, 1987(aged 51) New York, New York, United States
Genres	Hard bop, Soul jazz
Instruments	Tenor saxophone, clarinet, flute
Years active	1950s–1987
Labels	Blue Note Records, RCA Victor
Associated acts	Grant Green, Jack McDuff, Jimmy McGriff, Shirley Scott

Harold Vick (April 3, 1936 – November 13, 1987) was an American hard bop and soul jazz saxophonist and flautist.

Harold Vick was born on April 3, 1936 in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. At the age of 13 he was given a clarinet by his uncle, Prince Robinson,a clarinet and tenor saxophone player who had been a member of McKinney’s Cotton Pickers. Three years later he took up the tenor saxophone, and soon began playing in R&B bands. He continued to perform, still largely with R&B bands, while studying psychology at Howard University.

Steppin’ Out!, Vick’s first album as leader, was recorded for Blue Note in 1963. After a 1965 performance at Carnegie Hall with Donald Byrd, Vick secured a contract for further albums as leader, and from 1966 to 1974 he had further recording sessions for the RCA, Muse, and Strata-East labels.

Featuring Don Drummond

4-3-18

Larry Coryell (born Lorenz Albert Van DeLinder III; April 2, 1943 – February 19, 2017) was an American jazz guitarist known as the “Godfather of Fusion”.

Larry Coryell was born in Galveston, Texas. He never knew his biological father, a musician. He was raised by his stepfather Gene, a chemical engineer, and his mother Cora, who encouraged him to learn piano when he was four years old.

In his teens he switched to guitar. After his family moved to Richland, Washington, he took lessons from a teacher who lent him albums by Les Paul, Johnny Smith, Barney Kessel, and Tal Farlow. When asked what jazz guitar albums influenced him, Coryell cited On View at the Five Spot by Kenny Burrell, Red Norvo with Strings, and The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery. He liked blues and pop music and tried to play jazz when he was eighteen. He said that hearing Wes Montgomery changed his life.

Leon Russell (born Claude Russell Bridges; April 2, 1942 – November 13, 2016) was an American musician and songwriter who was involved with numerous bestselling pop music records over the course of his 60-year career. His genres included pop, rock, blues, country, bluegrass, standards, gospel and surf records. He was awarded six gold records.

His collaborations rank as some of the most successful in music history, and as a touring musician he performed with hundreds of notable artists. He recorded 33 albums and at least 430 songs. He wrote “Delta Lady“, recorded by Joe Cocker, and organized and performed with Cocker’s “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” tour in 1970. His “A Song for You“, included in the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2018, has been recorded by more than 200 artists, and his “This Masquerade” by more than 75.

As a pianist, he played in his early years on albums by the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean. On his first album, Leon Russell, in 1970, the musicians included Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr and George Harrison. One of his biggest early fans, Elton John said Russell was a “mentor” and “inspiration”. They recorded their album The Union in 2010, which earned them a Grammy nomination.

Russell produced and played in recording sessions for Bob Dylan, Frank Sinatra, Ike & Tina Turner, the Rolling Stones, and others. He wrote and recorded the hits “Tight Rope” and “Lady Blue“. He performed at the Concert for Bangladesh in 1971 along with Harrison, Dylan and Eric Clapton. In 2011, he was inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Marvin Gaye (/ɡeɪ/;born Marvin Pentz Gay Jr.; April 2, 1939 – April 1, 1984 Washington DC) was an American singer, songwriter and record producer. Gaye helped to shape the sound of Motown in the 1960s, first as an in-house session player and later as a solo artist with a string of hits, including “Ain’t That Peculiar“, “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)” and “I Heard It Through the Grapevine“, and duet recordings with Mary Wells, Kim Weston, Diana Ross and Tammi Terrell, later earning the titles “Prince of Motown” and “Prince of Soul”.

During the 1970s, he recorded the albums What’s Going On and Let’s Get It On and became one of the first artists in Motown (joint with Stevie Wonder) to break away from the reins of a production company. His later recordings influenced several contemporary R&B subgenres, such as quiet storm and neo soul. Following a period in Europe as a tax exile in the early 1980s, be released the 1982 Grammy Award-winning hit “Sexual Healing” and its parent album Midnight Love.

On April 1, 1984, Gaye’s father, Marvin Gay Sr., fatally shot him at their house in the West Adams district of Los Angeles. Since his death, many institutions have posthumously bestowed Gaye with awards and other honors—including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, the Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame, the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Booker Little, Jr. (April 2, 1938 – October 5, 1961) was an American jazz trumpeter and composer. He appeared on a number of recordings, both as side-man and as leader. Little was closely associated with Max Roach, but also performed with John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy and was strongly influenced by Sonny Rollins and Clifford Brown. He died at age 23.

Little was born in Memphis, Tennessee. He was the fourth child of Booker, a Pullman porter (who was also a trombonist) and his wife, Ophelia (who played piano). Little graduated from Manassas High School. He studied trumpet at the Chicago Conservatory with Joseph Summerhill from 1956 to 1958 and it was during this time that he worked with leading local musicians such as Johnny Griffin. Later, after moving to New York, while he lived with Sonny Rollins, Little became associated with drummer Max Roach and multi-instrumentalist Eric Dolphy, recording with them both as a sideman and a leader.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfBSceRC7j8

Violin Duet Featured at the Delhi Springtime Indian Music Festival this April 8th.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0D44yfPUkX0

Inna De Yard

4-2-18

IC2177, also called the Seagull Nebula, imaged in several narrowband filters that highlight the true-color green glow of doubly ionized oxygen.

IC 2177 is a region of nebulosity that lies along the border between the constellations Monoceros and Canis Major. It is a roughly circular H II regioncentered on the Be star HD 53367. This nebula was discovered by Welsh amateur astronomer Isaac Roberts and was described by him as “pretty bright, extremely large, irregularly round, very diffuse.”

The name Seagull Nebula is sometimes applied by amateur astronomers to this emission region, although it more properly includes the neighboring regions of star clusters, dust clouds and reflection nebulae. This latter region includes the open clusters NGC 2335 and NGC 2343.