mick’s blog

Money Johnson

February 23, 2022

HaroldMoneyJohnson (February 23, 1918 – March 28, 1978) was an American jazz trumpeter. Johnson was born in Tyler, Texas, on February 23, 1918. He first played trumpet at age 15.

He moved to Oklahoma City in 1936 and jammed with Charlie Christian and Henry Bridges before joining Nat Towles‘s band. He played with Horace Henderson and Bob Dorsey before returning to Towles’s band in 1944 in Chicago. He also played with Count Basie, Cootie Williams, Lucky Millinder, and Bull Moose Jackson in the 1940s. His associations in the 1950s included Louis Jordan (1951), Lucky Thompson (1953), Sy Oliver, Buddy Johnson, Cozy Cole, Mercer Ellington, Little Esther (1956), and Panama Francis (for performances in Uruguay in 1953).

In the 1960s Johnson played in the house band at the Apollo Theater in New York, and recorded with King Curtis in 1962. He toured the USSR with Earl Hines in 1966. From 1968 he played in the Duke Ellington Orchestra and also worked again with Hines and Oliver. He recorded with Buck Clayton in 1975. Johnson’s last performance was on the night before he died of a heart attack, which was on March 28, 1978, in New York City.

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Johnny Winter

February 23, 2022

John Dawson Winter III (February 23, 1944 – July 16, 2014) was an American singer and guitarist. Winter was known for his high-energy blues rock albums and live performances in the late 1960s and 1970s. He also produced three Grammy Award–winning albums for blues singer and guitarist Muddy Waters. After his time with Waters, Winter recorded several Grammy-nominated blues albums. In 1988, he was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame and in 2003, he was ranked 63rd in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time“.

Johnny Winter was born in Beaumont, Texas, on February 23, 1944. He and younger brother Edgar (born 1946) were nurtured at an early age by their parents in musical pursuits. Their father, Leland, Mississippi native John Dawson Winter Jr. (1909–2001), was also a musician who played saxophone and guitar and sang at churches, weddings, Kiwanis and Rotary Club gatherings. Johnny and his brother, both of whom were born with albinism, began performing at an early age. When he was ten years old, the brothers appeared on a local children’s show with Johnny playing ukulele.

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Esteban Steve Jordan

February 23, 2022

Esteban “Steve” Jordan (February 23, 1939 – August 13, 2010) was a jazz, rock, blues, conjunto and Tejano musician from the United States. He was also known as “El Parche”, “The Jimi Hendrix of the accordion“, and “the accordion wizard”. An accomplished musician, he played 35 different instruments.

Born in Elsa, Texas to migrant farm workers and partially blinded as an infant, Jordan was unable to work in the fields. Left at home, he found friendship and guidance among the elderly. At a very young age he was introduced to music, especially the accordion. At the time, the musician Valerio Longoria followed the community of migrant farm workers and played for them in the labor camps. These circumstances brought the two together and the young Esteban mastered the instrument quickly. While he remained close to his traditional conjunto roots, he never limited himself musically. More than any other accordionist, Jordan pushed the diatonic accordion to its limits, both musically and physically, playing traditional conjunto, rock, jazz, salsa, zydeco and more.

Jordan kept abreast of technological developments, using devices such as phase shifters, fuzzboxes, Echoplexes, for which he named a song, “La Polka Plex”, and synthesizers, and was one of the few conjunto musicians to weave styles such as fusion jazz and rock into his music. He had also recorded country, western and mambo numbers. Members of his family frequently backed him up, including his sons Esteban Jr., Esteban III, and Ricardo. Esteban III (guitar) and Ricardo (bass) accompanied Esteban on-stage and in studio recording. Esteban established his own record label “Jordan Records, Inc.” on his birthday Feb. 23, 2010. He released one of his nine albums named Carta Espiritual (a spiritual letter), on which he had spent over 15 years recording new music, still yet to be released on his recording label. His sons Esteban Jr., Esteban III, and Ricardo continue his musical legacy. His sons go by “El Rio Jordan de Esteban Jordan” Rio Jordan, the band name given by their father.

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George Frideric Handel

February 23, 2022

George Frideric (or Frederick) Handel (/ˈhændəl/; baptised Georg Friederich Händel, German: [ˈɡeːɔʁk ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈhɛndl̩] (audio speaker iconlisten); 23 February 1685 – 14 April 1759) was a German-British Baroque composer well known for his operas, oratorios, anthems, concerti grossi, and organ concertos. Handel received his training in Halle and worked as a composer in Hamburg and Italy before settling in London in 1712, where he spent the bulk of his career and became a naturalised British subject in 1727. He was strongly influenced both by the middle-German polyphonic choral tradition and by composers of the Italian Baroque. In turn, Handel’s music forms one of the peaks of the “high baroque” style, bringing Italian opera to its highest development, creating the genres of English oratorio and organ concerto, and introducing a new style into English church music. He is consistently recognized as one of the greatest composers of his age.

Handel started three commercial opera companies to supply the English nobility with Italian opera. In 1737, he had a physical breakdown, changed direction creatively, and addressed the middle class and made a transition to English choral works. After his success with Messiah (1742), he never composed an Italian opera again. His orchestral Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks remain steadfastly popular. One of his four coronation anthems, Zadok the Priest, has been performed at every British coronation since 1727. Almost blind, he died in 1759, a respected and rich man, and was given a state funeral at Westminster Abbey.

Handel composed more than forty opera serias over a period of more than thirty years. Since the late 1960s, interest in Handel’s music has grown. The musicologist Winton Dean wrote that “Handel was not only a great composer; he was a dramatic genius of the first order.” His music was admired by Classical-era composers, especially Mozart and Beethoven.

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World Music with Mamak Khadem

February 23, 2022

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Daily Roots with Don Carlos

February 23, 2022

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Cosmos NGC 6217

February 22, 2022

Even our own Milky Way Galaxy is thought to have a modest central bar. Prominently barred spiral galaxy NGC 6217, featured here, was captured in spectacular detail in this image taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys on the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope in 2009. Visible are dark filamentary dust lanes, young clusters of bright blue stars, red emission nebulasof glowing hydrogen gas, a long bar of stars across the center, and a bright active nucleus that likely houses a supermassive black hole. Light takes about 60 million years to reach us from NGC 6217, which spans about 30,000 light years across and can be found toward the constellation of the Little Bear (Ursa Minor). This is the first image of a celestial object taken with the newly repaired Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). The camera was restored to operation during the STS-125 Servicing Mission to upgrade the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The barred spiral galaxy NGC 6217 was photographed on 13 June and 8 July 2009, as part of the initial testing and calibration of Hubble’s ACS. The galaxy lies up to 90 million light-years away in the north circumpolar constellation Ursa Major.

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Ernie K Doe

February 22, 2022

Ernest Kador Jr. (February 22, 1933 – July 5, 2001), known by the stage name Ernie K-Doe, was an American rhythm-and-blues singer best known for his 1961 hit single “Mother-in-Law“, which went to number 1 on the Billboard pop chart in the U.S.

Born in New Orleans, K-Doe recorded as a member of the group the Blue Diamonds in 1954 before making his first solo recordings the following year. “Mother-in-Law“, written by Allen Toussaint, was his first hit, reaching number 1 on both the Billboard pop chart and the Billboard R&B chart. K-Doe never had another top-40 pop hit, but “Te-Ta-Te-Ta-Ta” (number 21, 1961) and “Later for Tomorrow” (number 37, 1967) reached the R&B top 40.

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Joe LaBarbera

February 22, 2022

Joseph James LaBarbera (born February 22, 1948) is an American jazz drummer and composer. He is best known for his recordings and live performances with the trio of pianist Bill Evans in the final years of Evans’s career. His older brothers are saxophonist Pat LaBarbera and trumpeter John LaBarbera.

He grew up in Mount Morris, New York. His first drum teacher was his father. For two years in the late 1960s he attended Berklee College of Music, then went on tour with singer Frankie Randall. After Berklee he spent two years with the US Army band at Fort Dix, New Jersey. He began his professional career playing with Woody Herman and the Thundering Herd.

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Joe Wilder

February 22, 2022

Joseph Benjamin Wilder (February 22, 1922 – May 9, 2014) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer.

Wilder was awarded the Temple University Jazz Master’s Hall of Fame Award in 2006. The National Endowment for the Arts honored him with its highest honor in jazz, the NEA Jazz Masters Award for 2008.

Wilder was born into a musical family led by his father Curtis, a bassist and bandleader in Philadelphia. Wilder’s first performances took place on the radio program “Parisian Tailor’s Colored Kiddies of the Air”. He and the other young musicians were backed up by such illustrious bands as Duke Ellington‘s and Louis Armstrong‘s that were also then playing at the Lincoln Theater. Wilder studied at the Mastbaum School of Music in Philadelphia, but turned to jazz when he felt that there was little future for an African-American classical musician. At the age of 19, Wilder joined his first touring big band, Les Hite’s band.

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Rex Stewart

February 22, 2022

Rex William Stewart Jr. (February 22, 1907 – September 7, 1967) was an American jazz cornetist who was a member of the Duke Ellingtonorchestra.

As a boy he studied piano and violin; most of his career was spent on cornet. Stewart dropped out of high school to become a member of the Ragtime Clowns led by Ollie Blackwell. He was with the Musical Spillers led by Willie Lewis in the early 1920s, then with Elmer Snowden, Horace Henderson, Fletcher Henderson, Fess Williams, and McKinney’s Cotton Pickers. In 1933 he led a big band at the Empire Ballroom in New York City. Beginning in 1934, he spent eleven years with the Duke Ellington band. Stewart co-wrote “Boy Meets Horn” and “Morning Glory” and supervised recording sessions by members of the Ellington band. He left Ellington to lead “little swing bands that were a perfect setting for his solo playing.” He toured in Europe and Australia with Jazz at the Philharmonic from 1947 to 1951.

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Buddy Tate

February 22, 2022

George HolmesBuddyTate (February 22, 1913 – February 10, 2001) was an American jazz saxophonist and clarinetist.

Tate was born in Sherman, Texas, United States, and first played the alto saxophone. According to the website All About Jazz, “Tate was performing in public as early as 1925 in a band called McCloud’s Night Owls.” Tate’s 2001 New York Times obituary stated that “he began his career in the late 1920s, playing around the Southwest with bands led by Terrence Holder, Andy Kirk and Nat Towles.

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World Music with Black String

February 22, 2022

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Daily Roots with Bobby Melody

February 22, 2022

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Presidents Day 2022

February 21, 2022

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Cosmos Arp 298

February 21, 2022

This striking image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope showcases Arp 298, a stunning pair of interacting galaxies. Arp 298 — which comprises the two galaxies NGC 7469 and IC 5283 — lies roughly 200 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus. The larger of the two galaxies pictured here is the barred spiral galaxy NGC 7469, and IC 5283 is its diminutive companion. NGC 7469 is also host to an active, supermassive black hole and a bright ring of star clusters. The “Arp” in this galaxy pair’s name signifies that they are listed in the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies compiled by the astronomer Halton Arp. The Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies is a rogues’ gallery of weird and wonderful galaxies containing peculiar structures, featuring galaxies exhibiting everything from segmented spiral arms to concentric rings. This interacting galaxy pair is a familiar sight for Hubble — a portrait of the merging galaxies in Arp 298 was published in 2008. This image of Arp 298 contains data from three separate Hubble proposals. By combining observations from three proposals, Arp 298 is captured in glorious detail in seven different filters from two of Hubble’s instruments — the Wide Field Camera 3 and the Advanced Camera for Surveys. The process of planning Hubble observations starts with a proposal — a detailed plan of what an astronomer intends to observe and their scientific motivation for doing so. Once a year, these proposals are gathered and judged in a gruelling review process which assess their scientific merit and feasibility. Fewer than 20% of the proposed observations in any given year will make it through this process and be approved, which makes observing time with Hubble highly prized indeed. This system will be one of the first galaxies observed with the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope as part of the Director’s Discretionary Early Release Science Programs in Summer 2022.

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Corey Harris

February 21, 2022

Corey Harris (born February 21, 1969, in Denver, Colorado, United States) is an American blues and reggae musician, currently residing in Charlottesville, Virginia. Along with Keb’ Mo’ and Alvin Youngblood Hart, he raised the flag of acoustic guitar blues in the mid-1990s. He was featured on the 2003 PBS television mini-series, The Blues, in an episode directed by Martin Scorsese.

Harris was born and raised near Denver, Colorado. He graduated from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine with a bachelor’s degree in 1991, and was awarded an honorary doctorate in 2007. Harris received a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship for language studies in Cameroon in his early twenties, before taking a teaching post in Napoleonville, Louisiana under the Teach For America program.[2][3] His debut solo album Between Midnight and Day(1995) was produced by Grammy nominee/composer/producer Larry Hoffman, who discovered him in 1994 in Helena, Arkansas. The record included covers of Sleepy John Estes, Fred McDowell, Charlie Patton, Muddy Waters, and Booker White. His second recording with Hoffman, Fish Ain’t Bitin’, was the recipient of the 1997 W.C. Handy Award for Best Acoustic Blues Album of the Year. Recorded in New Orleans, it featured Harris’ original songs, vocal, and guitar backed on certain tracks by a trio of tuba and two trombones arranged by producer Hoffman. In 2002, Harris collaborated with Ali Farka Toure on his album Mississippi to Mali, fusing blues and Toure’s music from northern Mali. In 2003, he contributed to the Northern Bluesrelease Johnny’s Blues: A Tribute To Johnny Cash.

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Eddie Higgins

February 21, 2022

Edward Haydn Higgins (February 21, 1932 – August 31, 2009) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and orchestrator.

Born and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, Higgins initially studied privately with his mother. He started his professional career in Chicago, Illinois, while studying at the Northwestern University School of Music.

For more than two decades Higgins worked at some of Chicago’s most prestigious jazz clubs, including the Brass Rail, Preview Lounge, Blue Note, Cloister Inn and Jazz, Ltd. His longest and most memorable tenure was at the long-gone London House, where he led his jazz trio from the late 1950s to the late 1960s, playing opposite jazz stars of this period, including Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans, Erroll Garner, Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie, Wes Montgomery, Oscar Peterson and George Shearing, among others. Later, Higgins said the opportunities to play jazz music with Coleman Hawkins and Oscar Peterson were unforgettable moments. Higgins spent his time at the London House Restaurant with bassist Richard Evans and drummer Marshall Thompson. Higgins also worked for Chess Records as a producer.

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Ranking Roger

February 21, 2022

Roger Charlery (21 February 1963 – 26 March 2019), known professionally as Ranking Roger, was a British musician. He was a vocalist in the 1980s two-tone band the Beat (known in North America as the English Beat) and later General Public. He subsequently headed up a reformed Beat lineup.

The “Ranking” moniker is short for “top-ranking” or “high-ranking”, and was a titular boast common amongst reggae music MCs.

Roger Charlery was born in Birmingham, England, and grew up in the Small Heath area of the city. The son of Jean Baptiste Charlery and his wife Anne Marie, he was of West Indian descent; his mother and father were from Saint Lucia. He attended Archbishop Williams school, and while still at school began deejaying with reggae sound systems before becoming a drummer with the Dum Dum Boys in 1978. Roger became a punk rock fan as a teenager and was the drummer in the Dum Dum Boys before joining ska revival pioneers the Beat in the late 1970s. The Dum Dum Boys’ first gig was with the Beat and his burgeoning friendship with them meant he began to gatecrash their gigs, take the mic, and start toasting. In January 2019, it was announced that Roger had undergone surgery for two brain tumours, and was undergoing treatment for lung cancer. He died at his home in Birmingham on 26 March 2019 at the age of 56.

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Nina Simone

February 21, 2022

Eunice Kathleen Waymon (February 21, 1933 – April 21, 2003 Tyon, NC), known professionally as Nina Simone, was an American singer, songwriter, musician, arranger, and civil rights activist. Her music spanned styles including classical, jazz, blues, folk, R&B, gospel and pop.

The sixth of eight children born to a poor family in Tryon, North Carolina, Simone initially aspired to be a concert pianist. With the help of a few supporters in her hometown, she enrolled in the Juilliard School of Music in New York City. She then applied for a scholarship to study at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where she was denied admission despite a well received audition, which she attributed to racism. In 2003, just days before her death, the Institute awarded her an honorary degree.

To make a living, Simone started playing piano at a nightclub in Atlantic City. She changed her name to “Nina Simone” to disguise herself from family members, having chosen to play “the devil’s music” or so-called “cocktail piano”. She was told in the nightclub that she would have to sing to her own accompaniment, which effectively launched her career as a jazz vocalist. She went on to record more than 40 albums between 1958 and 1974, making her debut with Little Girl Blue. She had a hit single in the United States in 1958 with “I Loves You, Porgy“. Her musical style fused gospel and pop with classical music, in particular Johann Sebastian Bach, and accompanied expressive, jazz-like singing in her contralto voice.

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