Manolis Chiotis (Greek: Μανώλης Χιώτης; March 21, 1921 – March 20, 1970) was a Greek rebetiko and laiko composer, singer, and bouzoukiplayer. He is considered one of the greatest bouzouki soloists of all time. He popularised the four-course bouzouki (tetrachordo) and introduced the guitar-like tuning, who found it better suited to the kind of virtuoso playing he was famous for. Chiotis had other successes. In the summer of 1961, he played for Aristotle Onassis and Maria Callas, Prince Rainier III of Monaco and Grace Kelly. Journalist Dimitris Liberopoulos, Onassis’ biographer, writes in his book that when the two couples joined one of Chiotis’ shows in Athens, they asked to meet him in person to congratulate him.
Callas told Chiotis that she had been translating the lyrics of his songs to Princess Grace all night long and the American actress loved them because “she is a woman in love.” At that moment, Kelly asked Chiotis what the difference between a bouzouki and an electric guitar is.
Chiotis’ answer was rather unexpected; “Mrs. Callas, please explain to Princess Grace that the strings of an electric guitar vibrate due to electricity, while the strings of a bouzouki vibrate through the heart.”
see full post...Edward James “Son” House Jr. (March 21, 1902 – October 19, 1988 Lyon, MS) was an American delta blues singer and guitarist, noted for his highly emotional style of singing and slide guitar playing.
After years of hostility to secular music, as a preacher and for a few years also working as a church pastor, he turned to blues performance at the age of 25. He quickly developed a unique style by applying the rhythmic drive, vocal power and emotional intensity of his preaching to the newly learned idiom. In a short career interrupted by a spell in Parchman Farm penitentiary, he developed his musicianship to the point that Charley Patton, the foremost blues artist of the Mississippi Delta region, invited him to share engagements and to accompany him to a 1930 recording session for Paramount Records.
Issued at the start of the Great Depression, the records did not sell and did not lead to national recognition. Locally, House remained popular, and in the 1930s, together with Patton’s associate Willie Brown, he was the leading musician of Coahoma County. There he was a formative influence on Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. In 1941 and 1942, House and the members of his band were recorded by Alan Lomax and John W. Work for the Library of Congress and Fisk University. The following year, he left the Delta for Rochester, New York, and gave up music.
In 1964, a group of young record collectors discovered House, whom they knew of from his records issued by Paramount and by the Library of Congress. With their encouragement, he relearned his repertoire and established a career as an entertainer, performing for young, mostly white audiences in coffeehouses, at folk festivals and on concert tours during the American folk music revival, billed as a “folk blues” singer. He recorded several albums, and some informally taped concerts have also been issued as albums. House died in 1988. In 2017, his single “Preachin’ the Blues” was inducted in to the Blues Hall of Fame.
see full post...SUPPORT UKRAINE
see full post...The Whirlpool Galaxy, also known as Messier 51a, M51a, and NGC 5194, is an interacting grand-design spiral galaxy with a Seyfert 2 active galactic nucleus. It lies in the constellation Canes Venatici, and was the first galaxy to be classified as a spiral galaxy. Its distance is 31 million light-years away from Earth.
The galaxy and its companion, NGC 5195, are easily observed by amateur astronomers, and the two galaxies may be seen with binoculars. The Whirlpool Galaxy has been extensively observed by professional astronomers, who study it to understand galaxy structure (particularly structure associated with the spiral arms) and galaxy interactions.
Lee “Scratch” Perry OD (born Rainford Hugh Perry; 20 March 1936 – 29 August 2021) was a Jamaican record producer and singer noted for his innovative studio techniques and production style. Perry was a pioneer in the 1970s development of dub music with his early adoption of remixing and studio effects to create new instrumental or vocal versions of existing reggae tracks. He worked with and produced for a wide variety of artists, including Bob Marley and the Wailers, Junior Murvin, The Congos, Max Romeo, Adrian Sherwood, Beastie Boys, Ari Up, The Clash, The Orb, and many others.
Rainford Hugh Perry was born on 20 March 1936 in Kendal, Jamaica, in the parish of Hanover, the third child of Ina Davis and Henry Perry. His mother had strong African traditions originating from her Yoruba ancestry that she passed on to her son. His parents were both laborers, but his father later became a professional dancer.
Lee left school at age 15 and lived in Hanover where he did not have much regard for working, and preferred to play dominoes and live according to his own desires. He eventually wound up in Clarendon where he got into the dance and music scene and earned the nickname “The Neat Little Thing”. Lee later moved to Kingston after experiencing a mystical connection to stones (“When the stones clash, I hear like the thunder clash… and I hear words… These words send me to Kingston. Kingston means King’s Stone, the Son of the King… the stone that I was throwing in Negril send me to King Stone for my graduation.”) where he apprenticed at Studio One.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y651C7aNXRc
see full post...Sister Rosetta Tharpe (March 20, 1915 – October 9, 1973, AK) was an American singer and guitarist. She attained popularity in the 1930s and 1940s with her gospel recordings, characterized by a unique mixture of spiritual lyrics and electric guitar that was extremely important to the origins of rock and roll. She was the first great recording star of gospel music and among the first gospel musicians to appeal to rhythm-and-blues and rock-and-roll audiences, later being referred to as “the original soul sister” and “the Godmother of rock and roll”. She influenced early rock-and-roll musicians, including Little Richard, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis.
Tharpe was a pioneer in her guitar technique; she was among the first popular recording artists to use heavy distortion on her electric guitar, presaging the rise of electric blues. Her guitar playing technique had a profound influence on the development of British blues in the 1960s; in particular a European tour with Muddy Waters in 1964 with a stop in Manchester on 7 May is cited by prominent British guitarists such as Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Keith Richards.
Willing to cross the line between sacred and secular by performing her music of “light” in the “darkness” of nightclubs and concert halls with big bandsbehind her, Tharpe pushed spiritual music into the mainstream and helped pioneer the rise of pop-gospel, beginning in 1938 with the recording “Rock Me” and with her 1939 hit “This Train“. Her unique music left a lasting mark on more conventional gospel artists such as Ira Tucker, Sr., of the Dixie Hummingbirds. While she offended some conservative churchgoers with her forays into the pop world, she never left gospel music.
Tharpe’s 1944 release “Down by the Riverside” was selected for the National Recording Registry of the U.S. Library of Congress in 2004, which noted that it “captures her spirited guitar playing and unique vocal style, demonstrating clearly her influence on early rhythm-and-blues performers” and cited her influence on “many gospel, jazz, and rock artists”. (“Down by the Riverside” was recorded by Tharpe on December 2, 1948, in New York City, and issued as Decca single 48106.) Her 1945 hit “Strange Things Happening Every Day“, recorded in late 1944, featured Tharpe’s vocals and electric guitar, with Sammy Price (piano), bass and drums. It was the first gospel record to cross over, hitting no. 2 on the Billboard “race records” chart, the term then used for what later became the R&B chart, in April 1945. The recording has been cited as a precursor of rock and roll, and alternatively has been called the first rock and roll record. In May 2018, Tharpe was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an Early Influence.
see full post...Harold Mabern Jr. (March 20, 1936 – September 17, 2019) was an American jazz pianist and composer, principally in the hard bop, post-bop, and soul jazz fields. He is described in The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings as “one of the great post-bop pianists”.
Mabern was born in Memphis, Tennessee on March 20, 1936. He initially started learning drums before switching to learning piano. He had access to a piano from his teens, after his father, who worked in a lumber yard, saved to buy him one. Mabern learned by watching and emulating pianists Charles Thomas and Phineas Newborn Jr. Mabern attended Douglass High School, before transferring to Manassas High School; he played with saxophonists Frank Strozier, George Coleman and trumpeter Booker Little at this time, but was most influenced by Newborn, Jr. In 1954, after graduating, Mabern moved to Chicago, intending to attend the American Conservatory of Music. He was unable to afford to attend music college because of a change in his parents’ financial circumstances, but had private lessons there for six months and developed his reading ability by playing with trombonist Morris Ellis’ big band. He also developed by listening to Ahmad Jamal and others in clubs, and “playing and practicing 12 hours a day” for the next five years, but he remained self-taught as a pianist. Mabern went on to play with Walter Perkins‘ MJT + 3 and others in Chicago.
Mabern learned orchestration techniques from bassist Bill Lee, and comping and chord voicing from pianists Chris Anderson and Billy Wallace.
see full post...Margaret Marian McPartland OBE (née Turner; 20 March 1918 – 20 August 2013), was an English-American jazz pianist, composer and writer. She was the host of Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz on National Public Radio from 1978 to 2011.
After her marriage to trumpeter Jimmy McPartland in February 1945, she resided in the United States when not travelling throughout the world to perform. In 1969, she founded Halcyon Records, a recording company that issued albums for 10 years. In 2000, she was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master. In 2004, she was given a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement. In 2007, she was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame. Although known mostly for jazz, she composed other types of music as well, performing her own symphonic work A Portrait of Rachel Carson with the University of South Carolina Symphony Orchestra in 2007. In 2010, she was named a member of the Order of the British Empire.
see full post...STOP WAR IN UKRAINE
see full post...This region in Monoceros constellation has become one of my favorites. Therefore, this year I decided to give it a go and make it as deep as reasonably possible.
In it, intricate Ha structures can be seen, known as the Cone Nebula and the Foxfur Nebula, as well as other smooth structures around it. Also, a young open cluster called Christmas Tree Cluster can be see, between the Foxfur and Cone nebulas. And permeating all this, an hazy cloud of blue oxygen 3 gas completes the scenario.
The nearby Orion constellation draws most of the attention of astrophotographers but this nearby constellation also has a lot of give.
This photo was taken at Barcarena, Portugal (Bortle 7-8) from 18th to 24th January, 2022. It is an HOO composition with RGB stars.
see full post...
Dillon “Curley” Russell (19 March 1917 – 3 July 1986) was an American jazz musician, who played bass on many bebop recordings. He was born in New York, United States.
A member of the Tadd Dameron Sextet, he was in demand for his ability to play at the rapid tempos typical of bebop, and appears on several key recordings of the period. He left the music business in the late 1950s.
On May 1, 1951, Russell played in the recording session for “Un Poco Loco“, composed by American jazz pianist Bud Powell, with Max Roach on drums. Literary critic Harold Bloom included this performance on his short list of the greatest works of twentieth-century American art.
According to jazz historian Phil Schaap, the classic bebop tune “Donna Lee“, a contrafact on “Back Home Again in Indiana“, was named after Curley’s daughter. In 2002, she donated her father’s bass to the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University. He died of emphysema at Queens General Hospital at the age of 69 in 1986.
see full post...Clarence Henry II (born March 19, 1937), known as Clarence “Frogman” Henry, is an American rhythm and blues singer and pianist, best known for his hits “Ain’t Got No Home” (1956) and “(I Don’t Know Why) But I Do” (1961).
Clarence Henry was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, in 1937, moving to the Algiers neighborhood in 1948. He started learning piano as a child, with Fats Domino and Professor Longhair being his main influences. When Henry played in talent shows, he dressed like Longhair and wore a wig with braids on both sides. He joined Bobby Mitchell & the Toppers in 1952, playing piano and trombone, before leaving when he graduated in 1955 to join saxophonist Eddie Smith’s band.
He used his trademark croak to improvise the song “Ain’t Got No Home” one night in 1955. Chess Records‘ A&R man Paul Gayten heard the song, and had Henry record it in Cosimo Matassa‘s studio in September 1956. Initially promoted by local DJ Poppa Stoppa, the song eventually rose to number 3 on the national R&B chart and number 20 on the US pop chart. The gimmick earned Henry his nickname of ‘Frogman’ and jump-started a career that endures to this day.
He toured nationally with a six-piece band until 1958, and continued to record. A cover of Bobby Charles‘ hit “(I Don’t Know Why) But I Do“, and “You Always Hurt the One You Love“, both from 1961, were his other big hits.
see full post...Michael Josef Longo (March 19, 1937 – March 22, 2020) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and author.
Longo was born in Cincinnati, Ohio to parents who had a musical background. His father played bass, his mother played organ at church, and his music training began at a young age. Mike recalled seeing Sugar Chile Robinson playing boogie woogie piano: “The first time I saw him, man, he knocked me out. I must have been three or four years old. He played after the Count Basieshow, so I went home and started picking out boogie woogie bass lines.” His parents took him for formal lessons at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music at four. He moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida soon after. At the age of 12, he won a local talent contest.
Longo’s career began in his father’s band, but later Cannonball Adderley helped him get gigs of his own. Their working relationship pre-dated Adderley’s emergence as a band leader. Adderley approached the teenaged Longo because he needed a pianist at his church. At this time the town was largely segregated, so the white Longo playing at a black church was unusual. When this led to recordings with Adderley in the mid-1950s, Longo was too young to go to clubs with him. Longo played at Porky’s, which was later portrayed in the movie. He would go on to receive his Bachelor of Music degree from Western Kentucky University
see full post...The sharp telescopic frame spans over 1 degree on the sky toward the faint but fanciful constellation Monoceros, the Unicorn. Seen within the Monoceros R1 cloud complex some 2,500 light-years away, bluish IC 447 is on the left, joined by a long dark filament of dust to IC 446 at lower right. Embedded in IC 447 are young, massive blue stars much hotter than the Sun, whose light is reflected by the cosmic cloud of star stuff. Observations reveal that IC 446 also contains a young stellar object, a massive star still in an early stage of evolution. The dark filament of dust and molecular gas joining the two star-forming regions is over 15 light-years long.
Andy Narell (born March 18, 1954) is an American jazz steel pannist, composer and producer.
Narell took up the steelpan at a young age in Queens, New York. His father, who was a social worker, had started a program of steelpan playing for at-risk youth at the Jewish philanthropic Education Alliance in Lower East Side Manhattan using two sets of pans made by Rupert Sterling, a native of Antigua. Beginning in 1962, Andy, his brother Jeff, and three others boys played on a third set of Sterling-made pans in the basement of the Narell house in the Whitestone neighborhood of Queens, calling themselves the Steel Bandits. The band was a novelty steelpan act that played concerts and appeared on television shows, including I’ve Got a Secret in 1963.
The band played Carnegie Hall and at the National Music Festival of Trinidad. Murray Narell invited Ellie Mannette in 1964 to expand steelpan activities in New York City and convinced him to come in 1967. Mannette taught the Narell boys more technique, and they played on improved pans tuned by Mannette.
Narell studied music at the University of California, Berkeley and played piano with the University of California Jazz Ensembles under the direction of David W. Tucker. He graduated in 1973.
He started the record label Hip Pocket and released his first solo album, Hidden Treasures, in 1979. With an interest in Caribbean music, Latin jazz, and rhythm and blues, he joined the Caribbean Jazz Project in 1995 with Dave Samuels and Paquito D’Rivera.
see full post...William Richard Frisell (born March 18, 1951) is an American jazz guitarist, composer and arranger. Frisell first came to prominence at ECM Records in the 1980s, as both a session player and a leader. He went on to work in a variety of contexts, notably as a participant in the Downtown Scene in New York City where he formed a long working relationship with composer and saxophonist John Zorn. He was also a longtime member of veteran drummer Paul Motian‘s groups from the early 1980s until 2011 (upon Motian’s death). Since the late 1990’s, Frisell’s output as a bandleader has also integrated prominent elements of folk, country, rock ‘n’ roll and Americana.
Frisell was born in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, but spent most of his youth in the Denver, Colorado, area. He studied clarinet with Richard Joiner of the Denver Symphony Orchestra as a youth, but by his teens was more interested in guitar. He graduated from Denver East High School, and went to the University of Northern Colorado to study music. There he studied with guitarist Johnny Smith, though Frisell later reported the class effectively became private lessons from Smith because “it was too much for everyone else–they didn’t want to be learning scales and inversions.”
His original guitar teacher in the Denver-Aurora metropolitan area was Dale Bruning, with whom Frisell released the 2000 duo album Reunion. After graduating from Northern Colorado, Frisell went to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he studied with Jon Damian and Jim Hall.
see full post...