mick laBriola

Daily Roots with Tommy McCook

2-27-18

NGC 4450 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices.

NGC 4450 is a member of the Virgo Cluster that, like Messier 90, shows smooth, nearly featureless spiral arms, with few star formation regions and little neutral hydrogen compared to other similar spiral galaxies, something that justifies its classification as an anemic galaxy.

Measurements with the help of the Hubble Space Telescope show the center of this galaxy has a supermassive black hole.

Guy Klucevsek (born February 26, 1947) is an American-born accordionist and composer. Klucevsek is one of relatively few accordion players active in new music, jazz and free improvisation.

Klucevsek was born in New York City, and raised outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He has released 20+ albums as a leader or co-leader, and has recorded or performed with Dave Douglas, John Zorn, Bill Frisell, Laurie Anderson and others. He is also a founding member of the international group Accordion Tribe.

In 2010 Klucevsek won a United States Artists Fellow award.

Antoine Dominique “Fats” Domino Jr. (February 26, 1928 – October 24, 2017) was an American pianist and singer-songwriter. One of the pioneers of rock and roll music, Domino sold more than 65 million records. Between 1955 and 1960, he had eleven Top 10 hits. His humility and shyness may be one reason his contribution to the genre has been overlooked.

During his career, Domino had 35 records in the U.S. Billboard Top 40, and five of his pre-1955 records sold more than a million copies, being certified gold. His musical style was based on traditional rhythm and blues, accompanied by saxophones, bass, piano, electric guitar, and drums.

His 1949 release “The Fat Man” is widely regarded as the first million-selling Rock ‘n Roll record.

Antoine Domino Jr, was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, the youngest of eight children born to Antoine Caliste Domino (1879–1964) and Marie-Donatille Gros (1886–1971). The Domino family was of French Creole background, and Louisiana Creole was his first language.

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

World Music with Arany Zoltán from Hungry

Daily Roots with Winston McAnuff and the Black Kush Band

2-26-18

Why is AE Aurigae called the flaming star? For one reason, the surrounding nebula IC 405 is named the Flaming Star Nebula because the region seems to harbor smoke, even though nothing is on fire, including interior star AE Aurigae. Fire, typically defined as the rapid molecular acquisition of oxygen, happens only when sufficient oxygen is present and is not important in such high-energy, low-oxygen environments. The material that appears as smoke is mostly interstellar hydrogen, but does contain smoke-like dark filaments of carbon-rich dust grains. The bright star AE Aurigae is visible near the nebula center and is so hot it is blue, emitting light so energetic it knocks electrons away from atoms in the surrounding gas. When an atom recaptures an electron, light is emitted creating the surrounding emission nebula. The Flaming Star nebula lies about 1,500 light years distant, spans about 5 light years, and is visible with a small telescope toward the constellation of the Charioteer (Auriga).

Ray Perry (February 25, 1915 – 1950) was an American jazz violinist and saxophonist.

Perry was born in 1915 to a musical family and began playing the violin at a young age, while his brothers Joe and Bay became a baritonist and drummer, respectively. Perry sang during his violin solos, inspiring Slam Stewart to continue the practice on bass. He performed more frequently on alto saxophone.

He worked bread and butter gigs with the best in the business, including Dean Earl (1935), Clarence Carter (1937–39, not the R&B singer), Blanche Calloway(1940), and Lionel Hampton (1940–43). Despite his short career, Ray Perry worked with many jazz artists, including:

• Shadow Wilson
• Illinois Jacquet (1946–47, 1950)
• Vernon Alley
• J. C. Heard (1946)
• Joe Newman
• Fred Beckett
• Sabby Lewis (1948)
• Sir Charles Thompson
• Irving Ashby

Ida Cox (born Ida M. Prather, February 26, 1888 or 1896 – November 10, 1967 Toccoa, GA) was an American singer and vaudeville performer, best known for her blues performances and recordings. She was billed as “The Uncrowned Queen of the Blues”

René Thomas (25 February 1927 in Liège, Belgium – 3 January 1975, Santander, Spain) was a jazz guitarist from Belgium.

He began recording in 1943 with Hubert Simplisse et Son Ensemble. After World War II, he was a member of the Bop Shots with Jacques Pelzer and Bobby Jaspar, who remained a llifelong friend.

In the early 1950s, he moved to Paris and became part of the modern jazz scene, playing in the style of Jimmy Raney that was popular at the time. In 1954 and 1956, he recorded albums for Barclay Records and Polydor Records. His reputation as a virtuoso guitarist spread rapidly in the jazz world, though fame eluded him.

In 1956, he moved to Canada, where he played regularly for the Montreal Jazz Society and met Sonny Rollins. Rollins invited him to a concert in Philadelphia and to record the album Sonny Rollins and the Big Brass Trio.

While in the U.S., he played with Toshiko Akiyoshi and Bobby Jaspar and recorded with her on her 1958 album United Notions. In 1960, he made his American debut as a leader with the album Guitar Groove.

Returning to Europe in 1962, he toured and recorded with Chet Baker, Bobby Jaspar, Kenny Clarke, Eddy Louiss, Stan Getz, Lucky Thompson, Sonny Criss, Jacques Pelzer, Lou Bennett, Charles “Lolo” Bellonzi and Ingfried Hoffmann.

In 1971, Stan Getz saw him and his group at the Blue Note in Paris and picked the three of them up, Thomas, organist Eddy Louiss and drummer Bernard Lubat, for a quartet date at Ronnie Scott’s in London. Recordings from three days of their sessions were captured by Beatles’ producer George Martin for the album Dynasty.

Thomas died of a heart attack in Santander, Spain at the age of 47 on 3 January 1975

World Music with Sivuca from Brazil

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra8IbQ7-vcc

Daily Roots with Prince Far I Dub

2-25-18

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xb94YIMwL2A&list=PLEB3LPVcGcWZ0hsQ5_jgSMhawAnDzy1io&index=1&t=0s

Performing at the Mt Zion Shabbat Service
at the Mussar for Everyone Shabbat Retreat
Saturday February 24th 10am
at Camp Butwin in Egan
Performing this Mumford & Sons song

From our vantage point in the Milky Way Galaxy, we see NGC 6946 face-on. The big, beautiful spiral galaxy is located just 10 million light-years away, behind a veil of foreground dust and stars in the high and far-off constellation of Cepheus. From the core outward, the galaxy’s colors change from the yellowish light of old stars in the center to young blue star clusters and reddish star forming regions along the loose, fragmented spiral arms. NGC 6946 is also bright in infrared light and rich in gas and dust, exhibiting a high star birth and death rate. In fact, since the early 20th century at least nine supernovae, the death explosions of massive stars, were discovered in NGC 6946. Nearly 40,000 light-years across, NGC 6946 is also known as the Fireworks Galaxy. This remarkable portrait of NGC 6946 is a composite that includes image data from the 8.2 meter Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea.

George Harrison MBE (25 February 1943 – 29 November 2001) was an English guitarist, singer-songwriter, and producer who achieved international fame as the lead guitarist of the Beatles. Often referred to as “the quiet Beatle”, Harrison embraced Indian culture and helped broaden the scope of popular music through his incorporation of Indian instrumentation and Hindu-aligned spirituality in the Beatles’ work. Although the majority of the band’s songs were written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, most Beatles albums from 1965 onwards contained at least two Harrison compositions. His songs for the group included “Taxman“, “Within You Without You“, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps“, “Here Comes the Sun” and “Something“, the last of which became the Beatles’ second-mostcovered song.

Harrison’s earliest musical influences included George Formby and Django Reinhardt; Carl Perkins, Chet Atkins and Chuck Berry were subsequent influences. By 1965, he had begun to lead the Beatles into folk rock through his interest in the Byrds and Bob Dylan, and towards Indian classical music through his use of thesitar on “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)“. Having initiated the band’s embracing of Transcendental Meditation in 1967, he subsequently developed an association with the Hare Krishna movement. After the band’s break-up in 1970, Harrison released the triple album All Things Must Pass, a critically acclaimed work that produced his most successful hit single, “My Sweet Lord“, and introduced his signature sound as a solo artist, the slide guitar. He also organised the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh with Indian musician Ravi Shankar, a precursor for later benefit concerts such as Live Aid. In his role as a music and film producer, Harrison produced acts signed to the Beatles’ Apple record label before founding Dark Horse Records in 1974 and co-founding HandMade Films in 1978.

Harrison released several best-selling singles and albums as a solo performer. In 1988, he co-founded the platinum-selling supergroup the Traveling Wilburys. A prolific recording artist, he was featured as a guest guitarist on tracks by Badfinger, Ronnie Wood and Billy Preston, and collaborated on songs and music with Dylan, Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr and Tom Petty, among others. Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 11 in their list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time”. He is a two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee – as a member of the Beatles in 1988, and posthumously for his solo career in 2004.^[4]

Harrison’s first marriage, to model Pattie Boyd in 1966, ended in divorce in 1977. The following year he married Olivia Arias, with whom he had a son, Dhani. Harrison died in 2001, aged 58, from lung cancer that was attributed to years of cigarette smoking. His remains were cremated and the ashes were scattered according to Hindu tradition in a private ceremony in the Ganges and Yamuna rivers in India. He left an estate of almost £100 million.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TVF-tAcocs&t=77s

David “Fathead” Newman (February 24, 1933 – January 20, 2009) was an American jazz and rhythm-and-blues saxophonist who made numerous recordings as a session musician and leader, but is best known for his work as a sideman on seminal 1950s and early 1960s recordings by singer-pianist Ray Charles.

The All Music Guide to Jazz wrote that “there have not been many saxophonists and flutists more naturally soulful than David “Fathead” Newman,” and that “one of jazz’s and popular music’s great pleasures is to hear, during a vocalist’s break, the gorgeous, huge Newman tones filling the space . . . .” Newman is sometimes cited as a leading exponent of the so-called “Texas Tenor” saxophone style, which refers to the many big-toned, bluesy jazz tenor players from that state.

Newman was born in Corsicana, Texas, on February 24, 1933, but grew up in Dallas, where he studied first the piano and then the saxophone. According to one account, he got his nickname “Fathead” in school when “an outraged music instructor used it as an epithet after catching Mr. Newman playing a Sousa march from memory rather than from reading the sheet music, which rested upside down on the stand.

Clyde Hart (1910 – March 19, 1945) was an American jazz pianist and arranger. He was an important figure in the transition from swing to bebop.

Hart was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1910. He started his career as a professional jazz pianist in 1929 when he joined Gene Coy‘s ensemble. He was also part of Jap Allen‘s band from 1929 to 1931.Hart played piano in Blanche Calloway‘s big band from 1931 to 1935 and was based in New York City from 1936.

In the late 1930s he played with Lionel Hampton and Chu Berry. In the first half of the 1940s he played with John Kirby, Roy Eldridge and Hot Lips Page, among others. In the last few months before his death Hart collaborated with some of the most important figures of the bebop era, such as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Don Byas, and led recording three sessions. He died of tuberculosis in March 1945, at the age of 35

World Music with Camara Aboubacar from Guinea

Daily Roots with Sly Dunbar

2-24-18

The Flame Nebula, designated as NGC 2024 and Sh2-277, is an emission nebula in the constellation Orion. It is about 900 to 1,500 light-years away.

The bright star Alnitak (ζ Ori), the easternmost star in the Belt of Orion, shines energetic ultraviolet light into the Flame and this knocks electrons away from the great clouds of hydrogen gas that reside there. Much of the glow results when the electrons and ionized hydrogen recombine. Additional dark gas and dust lies in front of the bright part of the nebula and this is what causes the dark network that appears in the center of the glowing gas. The Flame Nebula is part of the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex, a star-forming region that includes the famous Horsehead Nebula.

At the center of the Flame Nebula is a cluster of newly formed stars, 86% of which have circumstellar disks.X-ray observations by the Chandra X-ray Observatory show several hundred young stars, out of an estimated population of 800 stars. X-ray and infrared images indicate that the youngest stars are concentrated near the center of the cluster.