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Happy birthday to the harmolodic genius Ornette Coleman! His saxophone crying and unique compositional style were as groundbreaking on the avant-garde jazz front as John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor & Sunny Murray, Sun Ra and Albert Ayler were in that new freedom era that started in the late '50s and caused an avalanche of free-jazz in the '60s. In fact, it was Coleman's "double-quartet" album, Free Jazz -from '60, which gave name to a whole genre to follow. The musical revolutionary grew up poor in Fort Worth TX and learned to sight-read and started teaching himself alto sax at 14, right...

The Burkinabé singer Amadou Balaké had a long and varied career, recording Mandé music, soul, afro-cuban, salsa, highlife, afrobeat/funk and various West African regional styles. He was among the artists who explicitly bridged Afro-Cuban sounds with contemporary African music in the '60s & '70s into the 2000s. He was a taxi driver in Mali before joining Harmonie Voltaiqüe and scoring big with the tune he changed his name to ("Balaké"). He joined Super Volta before launching his solo career in the mid-'70s. He also sang in Les 5 Consuls. He went to NYC in the late '70s to cut a...

Here's a birthday shout-out to the groovy guitarist Gábor Szabó, who infused jazz with the folk music of his native Hungary, Indian & Middle Eastern musics, gypsy styles and pop. He used feedback as part of his music, and he worked well with vocalists. He cut a bunch of excellent '60s albums on Impulse!, as well as the Skye label (which he ran with Cal Tjader and Gary McFarland). He worked with Chico Hamilton, Charles Lloyd, Lena Horne, Bobby Womack, Coke Escovedo, Paul Desmond, Gary McFarland, Chick Corea and others. Santana recorded his "Gypsy Queen" (the instrumental part of "Black...

The Memphis-born Arthur Lee heard and played jazz, R&B and surf music before forming a psychedelic folk-rock band in 1965 called Love, and they became one of the most popular bands on the L.A. club scene and remain a cult favorite to this day. Love's music was not just folk-rock, as the music sounded flamenco, garage, pop, blues, hard rock and funk elements as well, and Lee himself collaborated with several singers and musicians including Jimi Hendrix, Billy Preston and Ornette Coleman and is considered a proto-punk figure. He was born as Arthur Taylor, his early years were spent in...

Some may say it's not "cool" to like honky music but those hipster blowhards may be missing out on the godfather of country swing. This fiddlin' bandleader Bob Wills helped set the template for jazzy licks in hillbilly music and his bands burned up dances of up to 10,000 people a night around Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, the West Coast and the South. He originally came from a musical family in Texas and played mostly with young black musicians before hoboing and train-hopping. He married, became a barber and hit the stage as a comic/musician and cut his first records...