| 1885 | Achille Baquet, Traditional jazz clarinetist from New Orleans, Louisiana. He played with the Reliance Brass Band and members of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. He was also a member of the New Orleans Jazz Band, which was stationed in New York with Jimmy Durante on piano. As with many musicians in the early days of New Orleans, he was one of a family of musicians as his father, Theogene was a cornetist and his brother, George was a clarinetist. Achille died in November of 1955 in his hometown of New Orleans.
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| 1905 | Sady D. Courville, A cajun fiddler and a native of Chataignier, Louisiana. He was the son of Eraste Courville who was also a fiddler. In his early teens he bought his first fiddle and started learning from his father and Dennis McGee. By the time he was 16, he was playing dances with Amédé Ardoin around Chataignier and Faiquitaique. He is noted for his extensive collaboration with Dennis McGee. In 1929, Courville and McGee recorded in New Orleans. He passed away on January 3, 1988 at 82. (120) |
| 1920 | Jerome Richardson, A hard bop multi-insturmanetalist who plays tenor sax, flute and clarinet. During his career, he worked with Lionel Hampton, Earl Hine and Dizzy Gillespie just to name a few. He died June 23, 2000.
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| 1925 | Seldon Powel, A veteran tenor saxophonist and flutist, Seldon Powell is flexible enough to play anything from swing to hard bop and in between. Powell was classically trained in New York, then worked briefly with Tab Smith in 1949 before joining Lucky Millinder and recording with him in 1950. In 1950 and 1951, he was in the military, then he became a studio musician in New York. He worked and recorded with Louis Bellson, Neal Hefti, Friedrich Gulda, Johnny Richards and Billy Ver Planck in the mid and late-'50s. Powell also played with Sy Oliver and Erskine Hawkins, and studied at Juilliard. He traveled to Europe with Benny Goodman's band in 1958, and worked briefly with Woody Herman. Powell was a staff player for ABC television in the '60s, and also played and recorded with Buddy Rich, Bellson, Clark Terry and Ahmed Abdul-Malik. He died in 1997.
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| 1928 | C.W. McCall, Singer - "Convoy". Essentially a character created by advertising executive William Fries, C.W. McCall was the instrumental figure behind the truck-driving craze that swept America in the mid-'70s.
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| 1932 | Petula Clark, Grammy Award winning singer - "Downtown". She was the most commercially successful female singer in British chart history.
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| 1933 | Clyde McPhatter, Singer solo, Dominoes and the Drifters - "Sixty Minute Man". He was one of the most influential RB singers of the '50s and early '60s. In his own time, his name and voice loomed so much larger than that of the group the Drifters, which he founded, that it took five years for them to recover from his departure. He died June 13, 1972 in New Jersey.
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| 1937 | Little Willie John, He's never received the accolades given to the likes of Sam Cooke, Clyde McPhatter, and James Brown, but Little Willie John ranks as one of RB's most influential performers. His muscular high timbre and enormous technical and emotional range belied his young age (his first hit came when he was 18), but his mid-'50s work for Syd Nathan's King label would play a great part in the way soul music would sound. Everyone from Cooke, McPhatter, and Brown to Jackie Wilson, B.B. King, and Al Green has acknowledged his debt to this most overlooked of rock and soul pioneers. He died at a young age on May 26, 1968.
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| 1942 | Daniel Barenboim, Pianist and Conductor for the English Chamber Orchestra
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| 1945 | Frida Lyngtad, Singer for the mega-popular group that sold millions of albums called "ABBA".
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| 1946 | Janet Lennon, Singer with the popular group called "The Lennon Sisters".
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| 1957 | Kevin Eubanks, Composer and guitarist in the Jazz genre. Probably most known as the bandleader on the tonight show with Jay Leno.
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| 1967 | Mari Fernandez, Singer for the group, Sweet Sensation.
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| 1968 | Roland Guerin, Bassist and native of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He began with jazz educator Alvin Batiste’s Band, The Jazztronauts. He later began to tour the world as a member of jazz guitarist Mark Whitfield's band and has performed with George Benson, Jimmy Scott, Frank Morgan, Vernel Fournier, and Gerry Mulligan, Ellis Marsalis, Marcus Roberts, Allen Toussaint and others.
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