Charles Kynard (20 February 1933 – 8 July 1979) was an American soul jazz/acid jazz organist born in St. Louis, Missouri.

Kynard first played piano then switched to organ and led a trio in Kansas City including Tex Johnson (flute, sax) and Leroy Anderson (drums). In 1963, he settled to Los Angeles and his band featured guitarists Cal Green and Ray Crawford, drummer Johnny Kirkwood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWk6bJRx1AQ&list=PLEB3LPVcGcWZ0hsQ5_jgSMhawAnDzy1io&index=2

William “Smokey” Robinson Jr. (born February 19, 1940) is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and former record executive director. Robinson was the founder and front man of the Motown vocal group the Miracles, for which he was also chief songwriter and producer. He led the group from its 1955 origins as “the Five Chimes” until 1972, when he announced his retirement from the group to focus on his role as Motown’s vice president. However, Robinson returned to the music industry as a solo artist the following year. After the sale of Motown Records in 1988, Robinson left the company in 1990.

Robinson was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, and was awarded the 2016 Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for his lifetime contributions to popular music.

William Robinson Jr. was born to an African-American father and a mother of African-American and French ancestry into a poor family in the North End area of Detroit, Michigan, United States. His ancestry is part Nigerian, Scandinavian, Portuguese, and Cherokee. His uncle Claude gave him the nickname “Smokey Joe” when he was a child.

Louis “Kid Shots” Madison (19 February 1899, New Orleans – September 1948, New Orleans) was an American jazz cornetist.

Madison was born in New Orleans on 19 February 1899. He studied cornet under David Jones, Louis Dumaine, and Joe Howard. In 1915, he was the drummer in the Colored Waif’s Home band with Louis Armstrong. In 1923, he played second cornet with the Tuxedo Brass Band. During the 1930s, he played with the WPA brass band. In the 1940s, he played with the New Orleans Eureka Brass Band. In January 1948, Madison suffered from a stroke and died eight months later.

Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford; February 18, 1931 – August 5, 2019), known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed Song of Solomon (1977) brought her national attention and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1988, Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved (1987); she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.

Born and raised in Lorain, Ohio, Morrison graduated from Howard University in 1953 with a B.A. in English. She earned a master’s degree in American Literature from Cornell University in 1955. In 1957 she returned to Howard University, was married, and had two children before divorcing in 1964. Morrison became the first black female editor in fiction at Random House in New York City in the late 1960s. She developed her own reputation as an author in the 1970s and ’80s. Her work Beloved was made into a film in 1998. Morrison’s works are praised for addressing the harsh consequences of racism in the United States.

The National Endowment for the Humanities selected Morrison for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government’s highest honor for achievement in the humanities, in 1996. She was honored with the National Book Foundation‘s Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters the same year. President Barack Obama presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom on May 29, 2012. She received the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction in 2016. Morrison was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 2020.

Irma Thomas (born February 18, 1941) is an American singer from New Orleans.  She is known as the “Soul Queen of New Orleans”.

Thomas is a contemporary of Aretha Franklin and Etta James, but never experienced their level of commercial success. In 2007, she won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album for After the Rain, her first Grammy in a career spanning over 50 years.

Born Irma Lee, in Ponchatoula, Louisiana, United States, as a teenager she sang with a Baptist church choir. She auditioned for Specialty Recordsat the age of 13. By the time she was 19, she had been married twice and had four children. Keeping her second ex-husband’s surname, she worked as a waitress in New Orleans, occasionally singing with bandleader Tommy Ridgley, who helped her land a record deal with the local Ron label. Her first single, “Don’t Mess with My Man”, was released in late 1959, and reached number 22 on the US Billboard R&B chart.

She then began recording on the Minit label, working with songwriter and producer Allen Toussaint on songs including “It’s Raining” and “Ruler of My Heart”, which was later reinterpreted by Otis Redding as “Pain in My Heart”. Imperial Records acquired Minit in 1963, and a string of successful releases followed. These included “Wish Someone Would Care”, her biggest national hit; its B-side “Breakaway“, written by Jackie DeShannon and Sharon Sheely (later covered by Tracey Ullman, among others).

Frank Butler (February 18, 1928 – July 24, 1984) was an American jazz drummer.

Butler was born in Kansas City, Missouri, but later moved west and was associated in large part with the West Coast school. He played the drums in multiple high school bands (including one in Omaha, Nebraska), in local jazz combos, and in USO shows during World War II.

Butler never became well known, but was highly regarded by fellow musicians (in 1958, veteran drummer Jo Jones proclaimed him “the greatest drummer in the world”) and performed with numerous jazz notables. Early in his career he played with the Dave Brubeck combo at a 1950 engagement in San Francisco, before Brubeck’s group gained a national following in the mid-1950s. He went on to perform and record with Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Ben Webster, Harold Land, Hampton Hawes and Art Pepper in the 1950s and 1960s. He performed on several television series, including Stars of Jazz with bassist Curtis Counce. The Contemporary label noticed Butler and Counce, and, from 1956 through 1958, captured them together on several Curtis Counce Quintet albums. Sidelined for many years by an addiction to heroin, Butler did not record albums under his own name until the 1970s, when he released two highly regarded albums titled Wheelin’ and Dealin’ and The Stepper. Butler died in Ventura, California after a short battle with lung cancer at the age of 56.

Badal Roy (Bengali: বাদল রায়; born Amarendra Roy Chowdhury; 16 October 1939 – 18 January 2022) was an Indian tabla player, percussionist, and recording artist known for his work in jazz, world music, and experimental music.

Indian tabla maestro Badal Roy passed away on January 18, 2022. Badal Roy was a pioneer who introduced tabla into jazz and improvisational music over several decades. An innovative percussionist, he performed with many of the leading names in jazz, including Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, John McLaughlin, Dave Liebman, Pharoah Sanders, Herbie Hancock and Herbie Mann. He also recorded with Yoko Ono and Richie Havens, and gave presentations around the world.

Born in what is now Bangladesh, Badal Roy arrived in New York in 1968 with only a few dollars in his pocket. He had studied accounting in India and he came to America to further his studies and secure a new future in America.

To make ends meet as he became settled, he worked as a kitchen assistant at the automated food restaurant Horn & Hardart, and as a waiter at an Indian restaurant. One evening, when the tabla player failed to show up at the restaurant, Badal mentioned to the manager that he also played tabla. The manager asked him to stop waiting tables for the evening, and to sit in with the sitar player instead, and that is how his performance career began. He later went on to play at many Indian restaurants in Manhattan, including Raga, Nirvana, and Taste of India.

According to Badal, one evening an African American man approached the stage as he was leaving the restaurant. In a raspy voice, he invited Badal to a paid recording session, and asked him to call by telephone the following day. He left his business card, and as the man left the restaurant, Badal turned to the other musician and asked: “Who is Miles Davis?”

Badal went on to record on Miles’ classic “On the Corner,” and on other albums, as well as live concerts. On another occasion, a man with a British accent approached the stage and asked if he could sit in and play guitar with Badal for a few numbers. It was John McLaughlin, who later asked him to record on the album “My Goal’s Beyond.”

Robert Browning began to feature Badal in concerts of Indian music and fusion at the Alternative Center for International Arts, which later became the World Music Institute. Robert and his wife Helene presented Badal in concert over 30 times beginning in the mid-70s, in collaboration with jazz, world music and fusion artists such as Steve Gorn, Don Cherry, Dave Liebman, Nana Vasconcelos, Arooj Lazewal, Perry Robinson, Purna Das Baul, Adam Rudolph, Amit Chatterjee, Pharoah Sanders, Mike Richmond, Glen Velez, and many others.