George M. Duke (January 12, 1946 – August 5, 2013) was an American keyboardist, composer, singer-songwriter and record producer. He worked with numerous artists as arranger, music director, writer and co-writer, record producer and as a professor of music. He first made a name for himself with the album The Jean-Luc Ponty Experience with the George Duke Trio. He was known primarily for thirty-odd solo albums, of which A Brazilian Love Affair from 1979 was his most popular, as well as for his collaborations with other musicians, particularly Frank Zappa.

George M Duke was born in San Rafael, California on January 12, 1946 to Thadd Duke and Beatrice Burrell and raised in Marin City. At four years old he became interested in the piano. His mother took him to see Duke Ellington in concert and told him about this experience. “I don’t remember it too well, but my mother told me I went crazy. I ran around saying ‘Get me a piano, get me a piano!'” He began his formal piano studies at the age of 7 at a local Baptist church.

He attended Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley before earning a bachelor’s degree in trombone and composition with a minor in contrabass from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in 1967. He earned a master’s degree in composition from San Francisco State University in 1975.

Although Duke started playing classical music, he credited his cousin Charles Burrell for convincing him to switch to jazz. He explained that he “wanted to be free” and Burrell “more or less made the decision for me” by convincing him to “improvise and do what you want to do”. He taught a course on jazz and American culture at Merritt College in Oakland.

Duke recorded his first album in 1966. His second was with French violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, with whom he performed in San Francisco. After Frank Zappa and Cannonball Adderley heard him play, they invited him to join their bands. He spent two years with Zappa as a member of The Mothers of Invention, two years with Adderley, then returned to Zappa. Zappa played guitar solos on his album Feel (1974). He recorded I Love the Blues She Heard My Cry with Zappa’s bandmates Ruth Underwood, Tom Fowler, and Bruce Fowler and jazz guitarist Lee Ritenour.

John William “Long John” Baldry (12 January 1941 – 21 July 2005) was an English-Canadian blues singer and voice actor. In the 1960s, he was one of the first British vocalists to sing the blues in clubs and shared the stage with many British musicians including the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. Before achieving stardom, Rod Stewart and Elton John were members of bands led by Baldry. He enjoyed pop success in 1967 when “Let the Heartaches Begin” reached No. 1 in the UK, and in Australia where his duet with Kathi McDonald “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” reached No. 2 in 1980.

Baldry lived in Canada from the late 1970s until his death. He continued to make records there, and do voiceover work. Two of his best-known voice roles were as Dr. Robotnik in Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, and as KOMPLEX in Bucky O’Hare and the Toad Wars.

John Baldry was born at East Haddon Hall, East Haddon, Northamptonshire, which was serving as a makeshift wartime maternity ward, on 12 January 1941, the son of William James Baldry (1915–1990), a Metropolitan Police constable and his wife, Margaret Louisa née Parker (1915–1989); their usual address was recorded as 18 Frinton Road, East Ham. His height was noticed as a baby thus giving him his “Long” nickname during his childhood.

Ronald Shannon Jackson (January 12, 1940 – October 19, 2013) was an American jazz drummer and composer from Fort Worth, Texas. A pioneer of avant-garde jazz, free funk, and jazz fusion, he appeared on over 50 albums as a bandleader, sideman, arranger, and producer. Jackson and bassist Sirone are the only musicians to have performed and recorded with the three prime shapers of free jazz: pianist Cecil Taylor, and saxophonists Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler.

Musician, Player and Listener magazine writers David Breskin and Rafi Zabor called him “the most stately free-jazz drummer in the history of the idiom, a regal and thundering presence.” Gary Giddins wrote “Jackson is an astounding drummer, as everyone agrees…he has emerged as a kind of all-purpose new-music connoisseur who brings a profound and unshakably individual approach to every playing situation.”

In 1979, he founded his own group, the Decoding Society, playing what has been dubbed free funk: a blend of funk rhythm and free jazzimprovisation.

James Columbus “Jay” McShann (January 12, 1916 – December 7, 2006) was a jazz pianist, vocalist, composer, and bandleader. He led bands in Kansas City, Missouri, that included Charlie Parker, Bernard Anderson, Ben Webster, and Walter Brown.

McShann was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma, and was nicknamed Hootie. During his youth he taught himself how to play the piano through observing his sister’s piano lessons and trying to practicing tunes he heard off the radio. He was also heavily influenced by Earl Hines‘s late-night broadcasts from Chicago’s Grand Terrace Cafe: “When ‘Fatha’ (Hines) went off the air, I went to bed”. He began working as a professional musician in 1931 at the age of 15, performing around Tulsa, Oklahoma, and neighboring Arkansas.

echnique’. In the 1940s he founded the José Limón Dance Company (now the Limón Dance Company Culiacán, Mexico), and in 1968 he created the José Limón Foundation to carry on his work.

In his choreography, Limón spoke to the complexities of human life as experienced through the body. His dances feature large, visceral gestures — reaching, bending, pulling, grasping — to communicate emotion. Inspired in part by his teacher Doris Humphrey‘s theories about the importance of body weight and dynamics, his own Limón technique emphasizes the rhythms of falling and recovering balance and the importance of good breathing to maintaining flow in a dance. He also utilized the dance vocabulary developed by both Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman, which aimed at demonstrating emotion through dance in a way that was much less strict and stylized than ballet as well as used movements of the body that felt most natural and went along with gravity.

Limón’s most well-known work is The Moor’s Pavane (1949), based on Shakespeare’s Othello, which won a major award. Other works were inspired by subjects as diverse as the McCarthy hearings (The Traitor) and the life of La Malinche, who served as interpreter for Hernán Cortés. Limón generally sets his dances to music, choosing composers ranging from Ludwig van Beethoven and Frederic Chopin to Arnold Schoenberg and Heitor Villa-Lobos.

Fred McDowell (January 12, 1906 – July 3, 1972), known by his stage name Mississippi Fred McDowell, was an American hill country bluessinger and guitar player.

McDowell was born in Rossville, Tennessee. His parents were farmers, who both died while Fred was in his youth. He took up the guitar at the age of 14 and was soon playing for tips at dances around Rossville. Seeking a change from plowing fields, he moved to Memphis in 1926, where he worked in the Buck-Eye feed mill, which processed cotton into oil and other products. In 1928, he moved to Mississippi to pick cotton. He finally settled in Como, Mississippi, in 1940 or 1941 (or maybe the late 1950s), where he worked as a full-time farmer for many years while continuing to play music on weekends at dances and picnics.

After decades of playing for small local gatherings, McDowell was recorded in 1959 by roving folklore musicologist Alan Lomax and Shirley Collins on their Southern Journey field-recording trip. With interest in blues and folk music rising in the United States at the time, McDowell’s field recordings for Lomax caught the attention of blues aficionados and record producers, and within a couple of years, he had finally become a professional musician and recording artist in his own right. His LPs proved quite popular, and he performed at festivals and clubs all over the world. McDowell continued to perform blues in the north Mississippi style much as he had for decades, sometimes on electric guitar rather than acoustic guitar. He was particularly renowned for his mastery of slide guitar, a style he said he first learned using a pocketknife for a slide and later a polished beef rib bone. He ultimately settled on the clearer sound he got from a glass slide, which he wore on his ring finger. While he famously declared, “I do not play no rock and roll,” he was not averse to associating with younger rock musicians. He coached Bonnie Raitt on slide guitar technique and was reportedly flattered by The Rolling Stones‘ rather straightforward version of his “You Gotta Move” on their 1971 album Sticky Fingers.In 1965 he toured Europe with the American Folk Blues Festival, together with Big Mama Thornton, John Lee Hooker, Buddy Guy, Roosevelt Sykes and others.

First discovered in 1798 by German-English astronomer William Hershel, NGC 613 is a galaxy which lies in the southern constellation of Sculptor  67 million light-years away.

Featured here in a new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, NGC 613 is a lovely example of a barred spiral galaxy. It is easily distinguishable as such because of its well defined central bar and long arms, which spiral loosely around its nucleus. As revealed by surveys, about two thirds of spiral galaxies, including our own Milky Way galaxy, contain a bar.

Recent studies have shown that bars are more common in galaxies now than they were in the past, which gives us important clues about galaxy formation and evolution.

Lee Mack Ritenour (born January 11, 1952) is an American jazz guitarist who has been active since the late 1960s.

Ritenour was born on January 11, 1952 in Los Angeles, California, United States. At the age of eight he started playing guitar and four years later decided on a career in music. When he was 16 he played on his first recording session with the Mamas & the Papas. He developed a love for jazz and was influenced by guitarist Wes Montgomery. At the age of 17 he worked with Lena Horne and Tony Bennett. He studied classical guitar at the University of Southern California. In 1979, he “was brought in to beef up” one of Pink Floyd’s The Wall‘s heaviest rock numbers, “Run Like Hell“. He played “uncredited rhythm guitar” on “One of My Turns“.As the 1980s began, Ritenour began to add stronger elements of pop to his music, beginning with Rit (1981). Rit became his only release to chart in Australia, peaking at number 98. “Is It You” with vocals by Eric Tagg reached No. 15 on the Billboard pop chart and No. 27 on the Soul chart. The track peaked at number fifteen on Hot Adult Contemporary chart. He continued with the pop-oriented music for Rit/2 (1982) and Banded Together (1984), while releasing a Direct-Disk instrumental album in 1983 called On the Line. He also provided rhythm guitar on Tom Browne‘s album Funkin’ for Jamaica. He recorded Harlequin (1985) with Dave Grusin and vocals by Ivan Lins. His next album, Earth Run, was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Fusion Performance. The album’s title track was also Grammy nominated in the category of Best Instrumental Composition.Portrait (GRP, 1987) included guest performances by The Yellowjackets, Djavan, and Kenny G.

Calvin “Cal” Massey (January 11, 1928 – October 25, 1972) was an American jazz trumpeter and composer. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Massey studied trumpet under Freddie Webster, and following this played in the big bands of Jay McShann, Jimmy Heath, and Billie Holiday. After that he mainly worked as a composer.

In the late 1950s he led an ensemble with Jimmy Garrison, McCoy Tyner, and Tootie Heath. On occasion, guests including John Coltrane and Donald Byrd played with Massey’s group. In the 1950s he gradually receded from active performance and concentrated on composition; his works were recorded by Coltrane, Tyner, Freddie Hubbard, Jackie McLean, Lee Morgan, Philly Joe Jones, Horace Tapscott and Archie Shepp. Massey played and toured with Shepp from 1969 until 1972. He also performed in The Romas Orchestra with Romulus Franceschini.

Massey died from a heart attack at the age of 44 in New York City, New York.^[1][3] His son, Zane Massey (born 1957), is also a jazz musician.

Wilton “Bogey” Gaynair (11 January 1927 – 13 February 1995) was a Jamaican-born jazz musician, whose primary instrument was the tenor saxophone. “Blue Bogey”, “Kingston Bypass” “Debra”, and “Wilton Mood” are among his better known songs.

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Gaynair was raised at Kingston’s Alpha Boys School, where fellow Jamaican musicians Joe Harriott, Harold McNair and Don Drummond were also pupils of a similar age.

Gaynair began his professional career playing in the clubs of Kingston, backing such visitors as George Shearing and Carmen McRae, before travelling to Europe in 1955, deciding to base himself in Germany because of the plentiful live work on offer. He recorded very seldom, only three times as a bandleader. Two of those recordings came during visits to England, 1959’s Blue Bogey (1959) on Tempo Records and Africa Calling (1960), also recorded for Tempo but unreleased until 2005 on account of that label’s demise.

Soon after recording these sessions, he returned to Germany, where he remained based for the rest of his life. He concentrated on live performance with such bands as the Kurt Edelhagen Radio Orchestra – including playing at the opening ceremony of the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, also being involved in extensive session work. He was a guest artist on Alfred Haurand‘s Third Eye(LP 1977) but only recorded one more jazz album under his own name, Alpharian (1982). Among the many artists he played performed with include Gil Evans, Freddie Hubbard, Shirley Bassey, Manhattan Transfer, Horace Parlan, Bob Brookmeyer, and Mel Lewis.

Slim Harpo (born James Isaac Moore, January 11, 1924 – January 31, 1970), was an American blues musician, a leading exponent of the swamp blues style, and “one of the most commercially successful blues artists of his day”. His most successful and influential recordings included “I’m a King Bee” (1957), “Rainin’ in My Heart” (1961), and “Baby Scratch My Back” (1966) which reached number one on Billboard‘s R&B chart and number 16 on its broader Hot 100 singles chart. He was a master of the blues harmonica, known in blues circles as a “harp”. Moore was born in Lobdell, Louisiana, the eldest child in his family. After his parents died he worked as a longshoreman and construction worker in New Orleans in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Influenced in style by Jimmy Reed, he began performing in Baton Rouge bars using the name “Harmonica Slim”, and also accompanied his brother-in-law Lightnin’ Slim in live performances.

He started his recording career in March 1957, working with the A&R man and record producer J. D. “Jay” Miller in Crowley, Louisiana. To differentiate himself from another performer called Harmonica Slim he took his wife’s suggestion and adopted the name Slim Harpo. His first solo release, for Excello Records, based in Nashville, Tennessee, was “I’m a King Bee“, backed with “I Got Love If You Want It” in 1957. Harpo played guitar in his live shows, but he usually used other guitarists when recording. The record was a regional hit, but failed to make the national charts. He followed up with several more singles for Excello before having his first chart hit, “Rainin’ in My Heart”, in early 1961. The record reached number 17 on Billboard‘s R&B chart and number 34 on its Hot 100, and it was followed soon after with an album of the same name and additional singles. Many of his songs were co-written with his wife, Lovelle Moore, although she never received credit.

In the center of nearby star-forming region lies a huge cluster containing some of the largest, hottest, and most massive stars known. These stars, known collectively as star cluster R136, part of the Tarantula Nebula, were captured in the featured image in visible light in 2009 through the Hubble Space Telescope. Gas and dust clouds in the Tarantula Nebula, have been sculpted into elongated shapes by powerful winds andultraviolet radiation from these hot cluster stars. The Tarantula Nebula lies within a neighboring galaxy known as the Large Magellanic Cloud and is located a mere 170,000 light-years away.

Sir Roderick David Stewart CBE (born 10 January 1945) is a British rock and pop singer, songwriter and record producer. With his distinctive raspy singing voice, Stewart is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold over 250 million records worldwide. He has had ten number-one albums and 31 top ten singles in the UK, six of which reached number one. Stewart has had 16 top ten singles in the US, with four reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100. He was knighted in the 2016 Birthday Honours for services to music and charity.

Stewart’s music career began in 1962 when he took up busking with a harmonica. In October 1963, he joined The Dimensions as harmonica player and vocalist. In 1964, Stewart joined Long John Baldry and the All Stars before joining The Jeff Beck Group in 1967. Becoming the singer for the Faces in 1969, he also maintained a solo career releasing his debut solo album that same year. Stewart’s early albums were a fusion of rock, folk music, soul music, and R&B. His third solo album, 1971’s Every Picture Tells a Story was his breakthrough, topping the charts in the UK, US, Canada and Australia. The ballad “Maggie May” off of it went to number one for multiple weeks in those same countries. His 1972 follow-up album, Never a Dull Moment, was another UK and Australian chart-topper while reaching the top three in the US and Canada. Its lead single, “You Wear It Well“, also topped the chart in the UK while being a moderate hit elsewhere.

After a handful more UK top ten hits, Stewart announced the breakup of the Faces in 1975. His next few singles were ballads with “Sailing“, off the 1975 UK and Australian number-one album, Atlantic Crossing, becoming a hit in the UK and the Netherlands (number one), Germany (number four) and other countries, but barely charting in North America. A Night on the Town (1976), his fifth straight chart-topper in the UK, began a three-album run of going number one or top three in North America, the UK and Australia with each release. That album’s “Tonight’s the Night (Gonna Be Alright)” spent almost two months at number one in the US and Canada, and made the top five in other countries. Foot Loose & Fancy Free (1977) featured the major hit “You’re In My Heart (The Final Acclaim) as well as the rocker “Hot Legs”. Blondes Have More Fun (1978) and its disco-tinged “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy” both went to number one in Canada, Australia and the US with “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy” also hitting number one in the UK and the top ten in other countries. Stewart’s albums regularly hit the upper rungs of the charts in the Netherlands throughout the 70s and in Sweden from 1975 onward.

After a disco and new wave period in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Stewart’s music turned to a soft rock/middle-of-the-road style, with most of his albums reaching the top ten in the UK, Germany and Sweden, but faring less well in the US. The single “Rhythm of My Heart” was a top five hit in the UK, US and other countries, with its source album, 1990’s Vagabond Heart, becoming, at number ten in the US and number two in the UK, his highest charting album in a decade. In 1993, he collaborated with Bryan Adams and Sting on the power ballad “All for Love“, which went number one in many countries. In the early 2000s, he released a series of successful albums interpreting the Great American Songbook.

In 2008, Billboard magazine ranked him the 17th most successful artist on the “Billboard Hot 100 All-Time Top Artists”. A Grammy and Brit Awardrecipient, he was voted at No. 33 in Q Magazine‘s list of the Top 100 Greatest Singers of all time As a solo artist, Stewart was inducted into the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2006, and he was inducted a second time into the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012 as a member of Faces.

James Joseph Croce (/ˈkroʊtʃi/; January 10, 1943 – September 20, 1973 Philadelphia. PA) was an American folk and rock singer-songwriter. Between 1966 and 1973, Croce released five studio albums and numerous singles.

His first two albums were commercially unsuccessful, failing to chart or produce any hit singles. During this period, Croce took a series of odd jobs to pay bills while he continued to write, record, and perform concerts. After forming a partnership with songwriter and guitarist Maury Muehleisen his fortunes turned in the early 1970s. His breakthrough came in 1972; his third album You Don’t Mess Around with Jim produced three charting singles, including “Time in a Bottle“, which reached No. 1 after his death. The follow-up album, Life and Times, contained the song “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown“, which was the only No. 1 hit he had during his lifetime.

On September 20, 1973, the day before the lead single to his fifth album, I Got a Name, was released, Croce, along with five others, was killed in a plane crash, at the height of his popularity. Croce’s music continued to chart throughout the 1970s following his death. His wife, Ingrid Croce, was his early songwriting partner and she continued to write and record after his death, and his son A. J. Croce himself became a singer-songwriter in the 1990s. On Thursday night, September 20, 1973, during Croce’s Life and Times tour and the day before his ABC single “I Got a Name” was released, Croce and all five others on board were killed when their chartered Beechcraft E18S crashed into a tree during takeoff from the Natchitoches Regional Airport in Natchitoches, Louisiana. Croce was 30 years old. Others killed in the crash were pilot Robert N. Elliott, Croce’s bandmate Maury Muehleisen, comedian George Stevens, manager and booking agent Kenneth D. Cortese, and road manager Dennis Rast.