mick’s blog

Willie Jones

October 20, 2020

WilliamWillieJones, Jr. (October 20, 1929 – April 1991) was a jazz drummer. He is known for playing and recording with Thelonious Monk, Elmo Hope, and Charles Mingus.

Jones was born in New York on October 20, 1929. He mainly taught himself to play the drums, and played left handed. He played and recorded with pianist Thelonious Monk in 1953,including on the album Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins. This recording, on November 13, was Jones’ first. He also appeared with Monk on the television program The Tonight Show, on June 10, 1955. Jones was sideman for another pianist’s recording in 1955 – Elmo Hope‘s Meditations; and for Randy Weston‘s The Modern Art of Jazz by Randy Weston in the following year.[3]:1491 In 1956 Jones had a two-week engagement with Monk in Philadelphia.[2]:212 Jones also played with Kenny Dorham, J. J. Johnson, Charlie Parker, and Cecil Payne in the mid-1950s.

see full post...

Jelly Roll Morton

October 20, 2020

Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe (September 20, c. 1890 – July 10, 1941), known professionally as Jelly Roll Morton, was an American ragtime and jazz pianist, bandleader, and composer. Morton was jazz’s first arranger, proving that a genre rooted in improvisation could retain its essential characteristics when notated. His composition “Jelly Roll Blues“, published in 1915, was one of the first published jazz compositions. Morton also wrote “King Porter Stomp“, “Wolverine Blues“, “Black Bottom Stomp“, and “I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say”, the last a tribute to New Orleans musicians from the turn of the 20th century.

Morton’s claim to have invented jazz in 1902 was criticized. Music critic Scott Yanow wrote, “Jelly Roll Morton did himself a lot of harm posthumously by exaggerating his worth…Morton’s accomplishments as an early innovator are so vast that he did not really need to stretch the truth.” Gunther Schuller says of Morton’s “hyperbolic assertions” that there is “no proof to the contrary” and that Morton’s “considerable accomplishments in themselves provide reasonable substantiation”. In 2013, Katy Martin published an article arguing that Alan Lomax‘s book of interviews put Morton in a negative light. Lomax disagreed that Morton was an egotist. “In being called a supreme egotist, Jelly Roll was often a victim of loose and lurid reporting. If we read the words that he himself wrote, we learn that he almost had an inferiority complex and said that he created his own style of jazz piano because ‘All my fellow musicians were much faster in manipulations, I thought than I, and I did not feel as though I was in their class.’ So he used a slower tempo to permit flexibility through the use of more notes, a pinch of Spanish to give a number of right seasoning, the avoidance of playing triple forte continuously, and many other points”. – Quoted in John Szwed, Dr. Jazz.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVUyvwtHTnw

see full post...

World Music with Tony Allen

October 20, 2020

see full post...

Daily Roots with Blue King Brown

October 20, 2020

see full post...

Surviving the Pandemic and Realizing Racial Justice

October 19, 2020

see full post...

The Cosmos with Arp 147

October 19, 2020

Arp 147 (also known as IC 298) is an interacting pair of ring galaxies. It lies 430 million to 440 million light years away in the constellation Cetus and does not appear to be part of any significant galaxy group. The system was originally discovered in 1893 by Stephane Javelle and is listed in the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies.

The system was formed when a spiral galaxy (image right) collided with an elliptical galaxy (image left). The collision produced an expanding wave of star production (shown as bright blue) traveling at an effective speed of ≳100 km s−1 and began some 40 million years ago. The most extreme period of star formation is estimated to have ended 15 million years ago and as the young, super hot stars died (as exploding supernovas) they left behind neutron stars and black holes.

see full post...

Roland Dyens

October 19, 2020

Roland Dyens (French: [ʁɔlɑ̃ djɑ̃s]) (October 19, 1955 – October 29, 2016) was a French classical guitarist, composer, and arranger. Dyens was born in Tunisia and lived most of his life in Paris. He studied with Spanish classical guitarist Alberto Ponce and with Désiré Dondeyne.

As a performer, Dyens was known for improvisation. Sometimes he opened his concerts with an improvised piece, and he might improvise the program itself, without planning or announcing beforehand what he would be playing. He said that a journalist once told him he had the hands of a classical musician but the mind of a jazz musician. He played Bach suites and he played with jazz musicians at the Arvika Festival in Sweden. A heavy metal band did a version of the third movement of his Libra Sonatine.

see full post...

Peter Tosh

October 19, 2020

Peter M. Tosh, OM (born Winston Hubert McIntosh; 19 October  1944 – 11 September 1987) was a Jamaican reggae musician. Along with Bob Marley and Bunny Wailer, he was one of the core members of the band the Wailers (1963–1976), after which he established himself as a successful solo artist and a promoter of Rastafari. He was murdered in 1987 during a home invasion.

Tosh was born in Westmoreland, the westernmost parish of Jamaica. He was abandoned by his parents and “shuffled among relatives.” When McIntosh was fifteen, his aunt died and he moved to Trenchtown in Kingston, Jamaica. He first learned guitar after watching a man in the country play a song that captivated him. He watched the man play the same song for half a day, memorizing everything his fingers were doing. He then picked up the guitar and played the song back to the man. The man then asked McIntosh who had taught him to play; McIntosh told him that he had. During the early 1960s, as an aspiring musician, Tosh went to vocal teacher Joe Higgs, who gave free music lessons to young people. Through his contact with Higgs, Tosh met Robert Nesta Marley (Bob Marley) and Neville O’Reilly Livingston (Bunny Wailer).

see full post...

Piano Red

October 19, 2020

Willie Lee Perryman (October 19, 1911 – July 25, 1985), usually known professionally as Piano Red and later in life as Dr. Feelgood, was an American blues musician, the first to hit the pop music charts. He was a self-taught pianist who played in the barrelhouse blues style (a loud percussive type of blues piano suitable for noisy bars or taverns). His performing and recording careers emerged during the period of transition from completely segregated “race music” to rhythm and blues, which was marketed to both white and black audiences. Some music historians credit Perryman’s 1950 recording “Rocking With Red” for the popularization of the term rock and roll in Atlanta. His simple, hard-pounding left hand and his percussive right hand, coupled with his cheerful shout, brought him considerable success over three decades.

see full post...

Farid al-Atrash

October 19, 2020

Farid al-Atrash (Arabic: فريد الأطرش‎; October 19, 1910 – December 26, 1974), also written Farid El-Atrache, was a SyrianEgyptian composer, singer, virtuoso oud player, and actor. Having immigrated to Egypt at the age of only nine years old with his mother and siblings, he studied there under numerous respected musicians. Al-Atrash embarked on a highly successful career spanning more than four decades—recording 500 songs and starring in 31 movies. Sometimes referred to as “King of the Oud”, he is one of the most important figures of 20th century Arab music.

 

see full post...

Vinicius De Moraes

October 19, 2020

Marcus Vinícius da Cruz e Mello Moraes (19 October 1913 – 9 July 1980), also known as Vinícius de Moraes (Portuguese pronunciation: [viˈnisjuʃ dʒi moˈɾajʃ]) and nicknamed O Poetinha (“The little poet”), was a Brazilian poet, lyricist, essayist, and playwright. Along with frequent collaborator Antônio Carlos Jobim, his lyrics and compositions were part of the birth of bossa nova music. He recorded several albums and also served as a diplomat.

see full post...

World Music with Nuru Kane

October 19, 2020

see full post...

Daily Roots with Freddie McGregor

October 19, 2020

see full post...

Surviving the Pandemic and Realizing Racial Justice

October 18, 2020

 

see full post...

The Cosmos with UGC 1810

October 18, 2020

The featured galaxy is labelled UGC 1810 by itself, but together with its collisional partner is known as Arp 273. The overall shape of UGC 1810 — in particular its blue outer ring — is likely a result of wild and violent gravitational interactions. This ring’s blue color is caused by massive stars that are blue hot and have formed only in the past few million years. The inner galaxy appears older, redder, and threaded with cool filamentary dust. A few bright stars appear well in the foreground, unrelated to UGC 1810, while several galaxies are visible well in the background. Arp 273 lies about 300 million light years away toward the constellation of Andromeda. Quite likely, UGC 1810 will devour its galactic sidekickover the next billion years and settle into a classic spiral form.

see full post...

Esperanza Spaulding

October 18, 2020

Esperanza Emily Spalding (born October 18, 1984 Portland.OR) is an American jazz bassist, singer, songwriter, and composer. Her accolades include four Grammy Awards, a Boston Music Award, and a Soul Train Music Award.

A native of Portland, Oregon, Spalding began playing music professionally in her childhood, performing as a violinist in the Chamber Music Society of Oregon at age five. She was later both self-taught and trained on a number of instruments, including guitar and bass. Her proficiency earned her academic scholarships to Portland State University and the Berklee College of Music, both of which she attended, studying music.

Spalding released her first album, Junjo, in 2006 on the Spanish label Avya Musica, after which she signed with the independent American label Heads Up, who released her 2007 self-titled album. Her third studio album, Chamber Music Society (2010), was a commercial success, charting at number 34 on the Billboard 200, and resulting in Spalding winning her first Grammy Award for Best New Artist; Spalding was the first jazz artist to win in this category.[2] She saw further acclaim for her fourth release, Radio Music Society (2012), which earned the Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Album, as well as the track “City of Roses” winning for Best Arrangement, Instrument and Vocals.

After spending the following several years performing as a supporting band player, Spalding released her fifth studio album, a funk rock-inspired concept album titled Emily’s D+Evolution, co-produced by Tony Visconti, on Concord Records. The following year, she released the album Exposure, which was limited to 7,777 copies. Her subsequent sixth studio record, 12 Little Spells, was released in 2019, and peaked at number one on Billboard’s Top Jazz Albums. The album also saw Spalding nominated for two Grammy Awards, winning in the Best Jazz Vocal Album category.

In addition to writing and performing music, Spalding has also worked as an instructor, first at the Berklee College of Music, beginning at age 20. In 2017, Spalding was appointed professor of the Practice of Music at Harvard University. In 2018, Spalding received an honorary doctorate of music from her alma mater, Berklee College of Music, and served as commencement speaker at the ceremony.

see full post...

Laura Nyro

October 18, 2020

Laura Nyro (/ˈnɪər/ NEER-oh; born Laura Nigro, October 18, 1947 – April 8, 1997 NY, NY) was an American songwriter, singer, and pianist. She achieved critical acclaim with her own recordings, particularly the albums Eli and the Thirteenth Confession (1968) and New York Tendaberry(1969), and had commercial success with artists such as Barbra Streisand and The 5th Dimension recording her songs. Her style was a hybrid of Brill Building-style New York pop, jazz, rhythm and blues, show tunes, rock, and soul. She was praised for her strong emotive vocal style and 3-octave mezzo-soprano vocal range.

Between 1968 and 1970, a number of artists had hits with her songs: The 5th Dimension with “Blowing Away“, “Wedding Bell Blues“, “Stoned Soul Picnic“, “Sweet Blindness“, and “Save the Country“; Blood, Sweat & Tears and Peter, Paul and Mary, with “And When I Die“; Three Dog Night and Maynard Ferguson, with “Eli’s Comin’“; and Barbra Streisand with “Stoney End“, “Time and Love”, and “Hands off the Man (Flim Flam Man)”. Nyro’s best-selling single was her recording of Carole King‘s and Gerry Goffin‘s “Up on the Roof“. She died of ovarian cancer in Danbury, Connecticut, on April 8, 1997, at 49, the same age at which her mother died. Her ashes were scattered beneath a maple tree on the grounds of her house in Danbury

Nyro was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2010, and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012.

see full post...

Wynton Marsalis

October 18, 2020

Wynton Learson Marsalis (born October 18, 1961) is an American trumpeter, composer, teacher, and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. He has promoted classical and jazz music, often to young audiences. Marsalis has won at least nine Grammy Awards, and his Blood on the Fields was the first jazz composition to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. He is the only musician to win a Grammy Award in jazz and classical during the same year.

Marsalis was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on October 18, 1961 and grew up in the suburb of Kenner. He is the second of six sons born to Dolores Ferdinand Marsalis and Ellis Marsalis Jr., a pianist and music teacher. He was named for jazz pianist Wynton Kelly. Branford Marsalis is his older brother and Jason Marsalis and Delfeayo Marsalis are younger. All three are jazz musicians. While sitting at a table with trumpeters Al Hirt, Miles Davis, and Clark Terry, his father jokingly suggested that he might as well get Wynton a trumpet, too. Hirt volunteered to give him one, so at the age of six Marsalis received his first trumpet.

Although he owned a trumpet when he was six, he didn’t practice much until he was 12. He attended Benjamin Franklin High School and the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. He studied classical music at school and jazz at home with his father. He played in funk bands and a marching band led by Danny Barker. He performed on trumpet publicly as the only black musician in the New Orleans Civic Orchestra. After winning a music contest at fourteen, he performed a trumpet concerto by Joseph Haydn with the New Orleans Philharmonic. Two years later he performed Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F Major by Bach. At seventeen, he was the youngest musician admitted to Tanglewood Music Center.

see full post...

Chuck Berry

October 18, 2020

Charles Edward Anderson Berry (October 18, 1926 – March 18, 2017 St Louis. MO) was an American singer and songwriter, and one of the pioneers of rock and roll music. Nicknamed the “Father of Rock and Roll“, Berry refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive with songs such as “Maybellene” (1955), “Roll Over Beethoven” (1956), “Rock and Roll Music” (1957) and “Johnny B. Goode” (1958).Writing lyrics that focused on teen life and consumerism, and developing a music style that included guitar solos and showmanship, Berry was a major influence on subsequent rock music.

Born into a middle-class African-American family in St. Louis, Missouri, Berry had an interest in music from an early age and gave his first public performance at Sumner High School. While still a high school student he was convicted of armed robbery and was sent to a reformatory, where he was held from 1944 to 1947. After his release, Berry settled into married life and worked at an automobile assembly plant. By early 1953, influenced by the guitar riffs and showmanship techniques of the blues musician T-Bone Walker, Berry began performing with the Johnnie Johnson Trio. His break came when he traveled to Chicago in May 1955 and met Muddy Waters, who suggested he contact Leonard Chess, of Chess Records. With Chess, he recorded “Maybellene”—Berry’s adaptation of the country song “Ida Red“—which sold over a million copies, reaching number one on Billboard magazine’s rhythm and blues chart.

By the end of the 1950s, Berry was an established star, with several hit records and film appearances and a lucrative touring career. He had also established his own St. Louis nightclub, Berry’s Club Bandstand. He was sentenced to three years in prison in January 1962 for offenses under the Mann Act—he had transported a 14-year-old girl across state lines. After his release in 1963, Berry had several more hits, including “No Particular Place to Go“, “You Never Can Tell“, and “Nadine“. But these did not achieve the same success, or lasting impact, of his 1950s songs, and by the 1970s he was more in demand as a nostalgic performer, playing his past hits with local backup bands of variable quality. In 1972 he reached a new level of achievement when a rendition of “My Ding-a-Ling” became his only record to top the charts. His insistence on being paid in cash led in 1979 to a four-month jail sentence and community service, for tax evasion.

Berry was among the first musicians to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on its opening in 1986; he was cited for having “laid the groundwork for not only a rock and roll sound but a rock and roll stance.” Berry is included in several of Rolling Stone magazine’s “greatest of all time” lists; he was ranked fifth on its 2004 and 2011 lists of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll includes three of Berry’s: “Johnny B. Goode”, “Maybellene”, and “Rock and Roll Music”. Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” is the only rock-and-roll song included on the Voyager Golden Record.

see full post...

World Music with Trio Tekke

October 18, 2020

see full post...

Interviews