On his birthday today we miss our NYC jazz scene trumpeter/composer hero Roy Campbell Jr. I have witnessed his excellence on many, many occasions and his bright tone and world music-influenced free-jazz are greatly missed. He was most definitely one of the greats of progressive jazz trumpet, in lineage with Lee Morgan, Clifford Brown, Booker Little and Don Cherry. A native of the Big Apple, he started playing trumpet at 15 and studied with Morgan and Kenny Dorham. As a teen he played in big bands and as he turned 20 he aligned himself with the avant-garde with his group...

Born on this date in 1940, Tilahun Gèssèssè, one of the great Ethiopian singers of that "Golden Age", a time in the '60s and early '70s when things were a little more lax in the country in regards to producing records. Born to an Oromo family, he dropped out of school and moved to Addis Ababa. He joined up with the Hager Fikir Theater and then became a star with the state-sponsored Imperial Bodyguard Band, perhaps the best opportunity for a singer's career at the time. In 1960 he spent some time in jail, due to interpretation of one of...

Happy birthday to tenor saxophone hero John Gilmore. A long-time member of Sun Ra's Arkestra, a major influence on John Coltrane and an icon Blowing Out Of Chicago. Gilmore started playing clarinet at 14 and tenor sax at 17 and he played with Earl Hines before joining Sun Ra's fledgling Arkestra in '53. He stayed with Ra for over forty years, recording on every single Arkestra record until '95 (including most of the legendary Ra-produced doo-wop sides). He brought a gifted and harmonically advanced style and could play sweet to ferocious, but bop & blues was always his main language....

One of Chilé's national heroes, Víctor Jara was a martyred nueva-canción folk singer and songwriter who was victim of the bloody US-funded Pinochet coup and horrific ensuing violence. He was murdered and his body thrown into the street. This post honoring Jara on his birthday could also be considered a "fuck you" to the United States' continued program of destabilizing countries around the globe for the benefit of fat cats at the top of the stinking, rotting capitalist pile of garbage. Growing up very poor, his violent father left the family but his mother encouraged education before she died in...

Feliz anniversário para Tim Maia, the fun & lovable Brazilian soul singer and MPB star who's direct honesty appealed to his fans. Born Sebastião Rodrigues Maia from a favela of Rio, the 18th of 19 children, he started as a drummer at 14 but soon became an excellent guitarist. He was a childhood friend of Roberto Carlos, Erasmo Carlos and Jorge Ben. He was in the doo-wop group The Sputniks with Roberto Carlos before adopting the name Tim Maia and going solo. He spent the early '60s in the US and recorded there with the doo-wop group The Ideals (the...