Happy birthday to the lovable soul-blues icon B.B. King! A huge influence on so many electric blues guitarists & singers, soul artists as well as the rock generation, his style was immediately identifiable and his hit songs rank among the most loved in twentieth century music. From a sharecropping family in Indianola MS, he sang gospel in church and at 12 was given a guitar by his cousin Bukka White. He started his career locally in '43 and three years later moved to Memphis with White. He worked as a radio DJ and playing in clubs and recorded his early...

Julian "Cannonball" Adderley became one of the highly respected alto saxophonists of the hard bop and soul-jazz eras. Indeed, with his bluesy wail and accessible style he was one of jazz's most popular and visible artists in the late '60s and into the '70s before his death from a stroke. Originally from Tampa, he and his brother Nat, a cornetist, grew up in Tallahassee FL, both of them earning early professional experience in the early '40s backing Ray Charles in Florida. Cannon moved to Ft Lauderdale for awhile before a move to NYC in '55, the year he first recorded...

The greatest. Bassist, composer, Cuban music figure, master of the tumbao, inventor of Latin jazz, fine-tuner of the charanga, Israel López "Cachao" Valdéz was born in Old Havana, into a family of bass players. He grew up in the house that Jose Martí used to live in. He started at 8 on bongos, and was playing bass by age nine accompanying silent films. He received classical training and as a teenager joined Orquesta Filharmónica de La Habana, which included guest conductions by Stavinski & Villa-Lobos. He stayed thirty years with the orchestra. Along with his brother Orestes "Macho' López, he...

Here's a birthday nod to the late Tom Cora, improvising cellist of out-rock, free-jazz, underground experimental and avant-garde styles. He modified and prepared his cello, often playing it violently like a guitar and through loud amplification. From Richmond, Virginia, he was originally a drummer before moving to jazz guitar in the DC area. Picking up the cello in college, he studied with Karl Berger and moved to NYC in '79. He quickly joined the rising Downtown avant-garde/improv scene, touring with Eugene Chadbourne and forming Curlew with George Cartwright & Bill Laswell and others. In '82 he formed the improvising duo...

Happy birthday to that Peruvian songbird with the five-plus octave vocal range, Zoila Augusta Emperatriz Chávarri del Castillo, aka Yma Sumac. Not truly an Inca princess but her name does mean "beautiful" in Quechua and she became a '50s pop music icon. She started her singing career on the radio in '42 and made her first records the following year. After moving to NYC in the late '40s she signed to Capitol and proceeded to become one of the major stars of the "exotica" craze. In the early '50s she toured Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Australia. She worked...