mick’s blog

Otis Blackwell

February 16, 2022

Otis Blackwell (February 16, 1931 – May 6, 2002) was an American songwriter, singer, and pianist, whose work influenced rock and roll. His compositions include “Fever“, recorded by Little Willie John; “Great Balls of Fire” and “Breathless“, recorded by Jerry Lee Lewis; “Don’t Be Cruel“, “All Shook Up” and “Return to Sender” (with Winfield Scott), recorded by Elvis Presley; and “Handy Man“, recorded by Jimmy Jones.

Blackwell was born in Brooklyn, New York. He learned to play the piano as a child and grew up listening to both R&B and country music.

His first success was winning a local talent contest (“Amateur Night”) at the Apollo Theater, in Harlem, in 1952. This led to a recording contract with RCA and then with Jay-Dee. His first release was his own composition “Daddy Rolling Stone“, which became a favorite in Jamaica, where it was recorded by Derek Martin.

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Carlos Paredes

February 16, 2022

Carlos Paredes ComSE (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈkaɾluʃ pɐˈɾedɨʃ]; 16 February 1925 – 23 July 2004) was a virtuoso Portuguese guitar player and composer. He is regarded as one of the greatest players of Portuguese guitar of all-time.

Born in Coimbra, Portugal, in a family with a long tradition of guitar playing, he was taught to play the Portuguese guitar by his father, Artur Paredes. He composed numerous soundtracks for cinema and theatre, such as the soundtrack for the Portuguese film Os Verdes Anos (1963), which contains his famous piece “Canção Verde Anos”. He released several recordings as a solo artist and performed in numerous countries worldwide.

Besides his music career, Paredes also worked in the public service for most of his life. In 1958, during Portugal’s dictatorial Estado Novo regime, he was imprisoned for 18 months for joining the Portuguese Communist Party, at the time an illegal organization.

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Bill Doggett

February 16, 2022

William Ballard Doggett (February 16, 1916 – November 13, 1996) was an American jazz and rhythm and blues pianist and organist. Best known for his instrumental rock compositions “Honky Tonk” and “Hippy Dippy”, he worked with the Ink Spots, Johnny Otis, Wynonie Harris, Ella Fitzgerald, and Louis Jordan.

Doggett was born in Philadelphia. During the 1930s and early 1940s he worked for Lucky Millinder, Frank Fairfax and arranger Jimmy Mundy. In 1942 he was hired as the Ink Spots‘ pianist and arranger.

In 1951, Doggett organized his own trio and began recording for King Records. His best known recording is “Honky Tonk“, a rhythm and blues hit of 1956, which sold four million copies (reaching No. 1 R&B and No. 2 Pop), and which he co-wrote with Billy Butler. The track topped the US Billboard R&B chart for over two months. He also arranged for many bandleaders and performers, including Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, and Lionel Hampton.

He continued to play and arrange until he died, aged 80, of a heart attack in New York City.

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Machito

February 16, 2022

Machito (born Francisco Raúl Gutiérrez Grillo, December 3, 1909 – April 15, 1984) was a Latin jazz musician who helped refine Afro-Cuban jazzand create both Cubop and salsa music. He was raised in Havana with the singer Graciela, his foster sister.

In New York City, Machito formed the Afro-Cubans in 1940, and with Mario Bauzá as musical director, brought together Cuban rhythms and big bandarrangements in one group. He made numerous recordings from the 1940s to the 1980s, many with Graciela as singer. Machito changed to a smaller ensemble format in 1975, touring Europe extensively. He brought his son and daughter into the band, and received a Grammy Award in 1983, one year before he died.

Machito’s music had an effect on the careers of many musicians who played in the Afro-Cubans over the years, and on those who were attracted to Latin jazz after hearing him. George Shearing, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Stan Kenton credited Machito as an influence. An intersection in East Harlem is named “Machito Square” in his honor.

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World Music with Choduraa Tumat

February 16, 2022

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Daily Roots with Soweto

February 16, 2022

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Cosmos IC 2431

February 15, 2022

The mass of dust and bright swirls of stars in this image are the distant galaxy merger IC 2431, which lies 681 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Cancer. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured what appears to be a triple galaxy merger in progress, as well as a tumultuous mixture of star formation and tidal distortions caused by the gravitational interactions of this galactic trio. The centre of this image is obscured by a thick cloud of dust — though light from a background galaxy can be seen piercing its outer extremities.   This image is from a series of Hubble observations investigating weird and wonderful galaxies found by the Galaxy Zoo citizen science project. Using Hubble’s powerful Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), astronomers took a closer look at some of the more unusual galaxies that volunteers had identified. The original Galaxy Zoo project was the largest galaxy census ever carried out, and relied on crowdsourcing time from more than 100 000 volunteers to classify 900 000 unexamined galaxies. The project achieved what would have been years of work for a professional astronomer in only 175 days, and has led to a steady stream of similar astronomical citizen science projects. Later Galaxy Zoo projects have included the largest ever studies of galaxy mergers and tidal dwarf galaxies, as well as the discovery of entirely new types of compact star-forming galaxies.

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Ali Campbell

February 15, 2022

Alistair Ian Campbell (born 15 February 1959) is an English singer and songwriter who was the lead singer and a member of the British reggae band UB40. As part of UB40, Campbell sold over 70 million records worldwide and toured the globe for 30 years. In 2008, Campbell left UB40 due to a dispute with band management and embarked on a solo career. In 2012, Campbell was announced as one of the three judges on the judging panel of the TV show, New Zealand’s Got Talent. In August 2014, Campbell announced that he had reunited with former UB40 band mates Astro and Mickey to record a new album, Silhouette, released on 6 October 2014.

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Melissa Manchester

February 15, 2022

Melissa Manchester (born February 15, 1951) is an American singer, songwriter and actress. Since the 1970s, her songs have been carried by adult contemporary radio stations. She has also appeared on television, in films, and on stage.

Manchester was born in the Bronx, a borough of New York City, to a musical family. Her father was a bassoonist for the New York Metropolitan Opera for three decades. Her mother was one of the first women to design and found her own clothing firm, Ruth Manchester Ltd. The Manchesters are of Jewish origin. Manchester started a singing career at an early age. She learned the piano and harpsichord at the Manhattan School of Music, began singing commercial jingles at age 15, and became a staff writer at age 17 for Chappell Music while attending Manhattan’s High School of Performing Arts.

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Henry Threadgill

February 15, 2022

Henry Threadgill (born February 15, 1944) is an American composer, saxophonist and flautist. He came to prominence in the 1970s leading ensembles rooted in jazz but with unusual instrumentation and often incorporating other genres of music. He has performed and recorded with several ensembles: Air, Aggregation Orb, Make a Move, the seven-piece Henry Threadgill Sextett, the twenty-piece Society Situation Dance Band, Very Very Circus, X-75, and Zooid.

He was awarded the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his album In for a Penny, In for a Pound, which premiered at Roulette Intermedium on December 4, 2014.

Threadgill performed as a percussionist in his high-school marching band before taking up baritone saxophone, alto saxophone, and flute. He studied at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago, majoring in piano, flute, and composition. He studied piano with Gail Quillman and composition with Stella Roberts. He was an original member of the Experimental Band,a precursor to the AACM in his hometown of Chicago, and worked under the guidance of Muhal Richard Abrams, before leaving to tour with a gospel band. In 1967, he enlisted in the U.S. Army, playing with a rock band in Vietnam during the Vietnam War in 1967 and 1968. He was discharged in 1969.

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Kirk Lightsey

February 15, 2022

KirklandKirkLightsey (born February 15, 1937, Detroit, Michigan) is an American jazz pianist.

Lightsey had piano instruction from the age of five and studied piano and clarinet through high school. After service in the Army, Lightsey worked in Detroit and California in the 1960s as an accompanist to singers. He also worked with jazz musicians such as Yusef Lateef, Betty Carter, Pharoah Sanders, Bobby Hutcherson, Sonny Stitt, Chet Baker, and Kenny Burrell. From 1979 to 1983 he toured with Dexter Gordon and was a member of The Leaders in the late 1980s. During the 1980s he led several sessions of his own, including duets with pianist Harold Danko. In the 1980s and since he has worked with Jimmy Raney, Clifford Jordan, Woody Shaw, David Murray, Joe Lee Wilson, Louis Stewart, Adam Taubitz, Harold Land and Gregory Porter.

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Harold Arlen

February 15, 2022

Harold Arlen (born Hyman Arluck; February 15, 1905 – April 23, 1986) was an American composer of popular music, who composed over 500 songs, a number of which have become known worldwide. In addition to composing the songs for the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz (lyrics by Yip Harburg), including “Over the Rainbow“, Arlen is a highly regarded contributor to the Great American Songbook. “Over the Rainbow” was voted the 20th century’s No. 1 song by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).

Arlen was born in Buffalo, New York, the child of a Jewish cantor. His twin brother died the next day. He learned to play the piano as a youth, and formed a band as a young man. He achieved some local success as a pianist and singer before moving to New York City in his early twenties, where he worked as an accompanist in vaudeville and changed his name to Harold Arlen. Between 1926 and about 1934, Arlen appeared occasionally as a band vocalist on records by The Buffalodians, Red Nichols, Joe Venuti, Leo Reisman, and Eddie Duchin, usually singing his own compositions.

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World Music with Eryn Rae

February 15, 2022

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Daily Roots with George Nooks

February 15, 2022

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Happy Valentines Day 2022

February 14, 2022

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Cosmos IC 1805

February 14, 2022

The large emission nebula dubbed IC 1805 looks, in whole, like a human heart. Its shape perhaps fitting of the Valentine’s Day, this heart glows brightly in red light emitted by its most prominent element: excited hydrogen. The red glow and the larger shape are all created by a small group of stars near the nebula’s center. In the heart of the Heart Nebula are young stars from the open star cluster Melotte 15 that are eroding away several picturesque dust pillars with their energetic light and winds. The open cluster of stars contains a few bright stars nearly 50 times the mass of our Sun, many dim stars only a fraction of the mass of our Sun, and an absent microquasar that was expelled millions of years ago. The Heart Nebula is located about 7,500 light years away toward the constellation of the mythological Queen of Aethiopia (Cassiopeia).

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Latifa

February 14, 2022

Latifa Bint Alaya El Arfaoui (Arabic: لطيفة بنت عليه العرفاوي  pronunciation: [ɫɑˈt̪ˤiːfæ bɪnt ʕælɛi̯jæ (e)l.ʕɑrˤˈfɛːwi]; born February 14, 1961), better known as Latifa (Arabic: لطيفة), is a Tunisian pop singer and former actress.

Latifa Bint Alaya El Arfaoui was born in Manouba, Tunisia.

In 1983, shortly after her father died, Latifa and her family took a trip to Egypt to rest and mourn. While there, she met composer Baligh Hamdi, who advised her to move to Egypt to benefit her career. However Latifa wanted to concentrate on her education, and returned to Tunisia to finish her high school final exams. For financial reasons, she was unable to return to Egypt, so attended college in Tunisia, studying Dutch literature for a year and a half. Her family decided to pay for her to go to Egypt, so she quit college in Tunisia and joined the Arab Academy of Music in Egypt, where she completed her bachelor degree. She is preparing for her master’s degree.

While at the Academy, she was discovered by composer Mohammed Abdel Wahab, who had heard her on the radio. At the time she was primarily performing long Tarab songs, but soon began a change of direction working with composer Ammar El Sherei and poet Abdulwahab Muhammed, who she met during her first visit to Egypt.

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Tim Buckley

February 14, 2022

Timothy Charles Buckley III (February 14, 1947 – June 29, 1975) was an American guitarist, singer, songwriter, and producer. His music and style changed considerably through the years. Buckley began his career based in folk music, but his subsequent albums experimented with jazz, psychedelia, funk, soul, the avant-garde, and an evolving voice-as-instrument sound. He died at the age of 28 from a heroin and morphineoverdose, leaving behind sons Taylor and Jeff.

Tim Buckley was born in Washington, D.C. on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 1947, to Elaine (née Scalia), an Italian American, and Timothy Charles Buckley Jr., a decorated World War II veteran and son of Irish immigrants from Cork. He spent his early childhood in Amsterdam, New York, an industrial city about 40 miles (64 km) northwest of Albany. At five years old, Buckley began listening to his mother’s progressive jazz recordings, particularly Miles Davis.

On June 28, 1975, Buckley completed a short tour with a show in Dallas, playing to a sold-out crowd of 1,800 people. He celebrated the end of the tour with a weekend of drinking with his band and friends. On the night of June 29, he accompanied longtime friend Richard Keeling to his house. At some point, Keeling produced a bag of heroin, some of which Buckley snorted.

Buckley’s friends took him home and, seeing his inebriated state, his wife Judy lay him on the living-room floor and questioned his friends as to what had happened. She moved Buckley into bed. When she checked on him later, she found that he was not breathing and had turned blue. Attempts by friends and paramedics to revive him were unsuccessful, and he was pronounced dead on arrival.

The coroner‘s report stated that Buckley died at 9:42 p.m. on June 29, 1975, from “acute heroin/morphine and ethanol intoxication due to inhalation and ingestion of overdose”.

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Merl Saunders

February 14, 2022

Merl Saunders (February 14, 1934 – October 24, 2008) was an American multi-genre musician who played piano and keyboards, favoring the Hammond B-3 console organ. Born in San Mateo, California, United States, Saunders attended Polytechnic High School in San Francisco. In his first band in high school was singer Johnny Mathis. He served in the U.S. Air Force from 1953 to 1957. He worked as musical director of the Billy Williams Revue and served in a similar capacity in Oscar Brown Jr.‘s off-Broadway show, Big Time Buck White.

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Dwike Mitchell

February 14, 2022

Dwike Mitchell (born Ivory Mitchell Jr.; February 14, 1930 – April 7, 2013) was an American piano player and teacher. He began his career as pianist for the Lionel Hampton Orchestra before joining Willie Ruff to form The Mitchell-Ruff Duo jazz group.

Mitchell was born and raised in Dunedin, Florida. He began playing piano around the age of three after his father, who had a job driving a garbage truck, brought home an old piano discarded by its owner. With the help of his mother, who made him play exercises and scales, and a cousin, who had been taking piano lessons herself, Mitchell soon displayed an exceptional aptitude for the instrument. He began performing in public at the age of five. His mother, a soloist in her church choir, needed an accompanist and gave the job to her young son. Before long he was playing for the entire Sunday morning service, a role he would continue to perform through the age of seventeen. He attended Pinellas High School.

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Interviews