Jim Seals born 17 October 1941

James Eugene "Jim" Seals (October 17, 1942 - June 6, 2022) was an American folk musician. He was one half of the folk duo Seals and Crofts with Dash Crofts whose cluster of hits in the first half of the 1970s included the breakthrough single Summer Breeze. 

Arriving in the wake of the harmony-drenched Crosby, Stills and Nash, and part of a wave of melodious acts that included America and Bread, Seals and Crofts combined close-harmony singing with spiritually inclined lyrics and some subtle stylistic touches. 

With Seals playing guitar, saxophone and fiddle, while Darrell “Dash” Crofts multitasked on drums, mandolin and keyboards, the pair were able to introduce elements of bluegrass, country and jazz into their arrangements, adding ear-catching twists to lift their music above being mere easy-listening. 

                                   

Born in Sidney, Texas, Jim was the son of Wayland Seals and his wife, Susan (nee Taylor). Wayland worked as a pipe-fitter for the Shell oil company in the Yates oilfield. Jim grew up in Iraan in Pecos County, and was encouraged to make music by his father, a skilled guitar player who performed with Tex Collins and the Tom Cats, and the Oil Patch Boys. When Jim showed an interest in the fiddle, his father bought him one from a Sears catalogue. Jim proved a fast learner and won several competitions, including the Texas state fiddle championship. 

Wayland, Jim and Dan Seals '53

There was enough musical talent in the household to form the impromptu Seals Family Band, including Jim’s younger brother, Danny, who would later form half of the successful duo England Dan & John Ford Coley. 

Jim also learned the saxophone, which he played with Dean Beard and the Crew Cats. From 1958 to 1965 Seals released five singles as "Jimmy Seals"; his first single in 1958 was released under "Jimmy Seals and His Sax". He met Crofts when he replaced the Crew Cats’ drummer at short notice, and the pair struck up a rapport. They then both joined the Champs (best known for their hit Tequila, though Seals and Crofts didn’t play on it), with whom they moved to California. As well as working with the Champs, they wrote and performed with numerous other artists, including the Monkees and Gene Vincent, and in 1961 Seals’s song It’s Never Too Late was the B-side of Brenda Lee’s hit single You Can Depend On Me. 

In 1963 the pair joined with another ex-Champ, Glen Campbell, in Glen Campbell and the GCs, and when that band split up Seals and Crofts joined the Dawnbreakers. The band took its name from The Dawn-Breakers, a book originally written in Persian that detailed the formation of the Bahá’í faith, of which Seals and Crofts both became adherents and which would inform much of their work. By 1969 they had shed their bandmates and become a duo. 

Under a deal with TA Records they made the albums Seals & Crofts (1969) and Down Home (1970), followed by Year of Sunday (1971) for A&M, but it was not until they signed a deal with Warner Bros that they struck it rich. The Summer Breeze album reached the Top 10 of the US album chart in 1972, the title song following suit on the singles chart. They followed up with Diamond Girl, with the album reaching No 4 and the title song No 6 on the singles chart. Crofts had married Billie Lee Day in 1969 and Seals married Ruby Jean Anderson in 1970 – the track Ruby Jean and Billie Lee was written for their wives. 

However, they ran into turbulence with their album Unborn Child (1974). The title track reflected the duo’s Bahá’í -inspired belief that life begins at the moment of conception. This provoked a furious backlash from pro-abortionists and was banned by some radio stations. The album still made the US Top 20, but Seals and Crofts had reached their commercial peak. Their albums there on described a downward trajectory in the charts (though 1975’s Greatest Hits reached No 11 and registered double platinum in the US) and their final Top 10 single was Get Closer (1976), with guest vocals by Carolyn Willis. 

As the 70s drew to a close, the duo was still pulling sizeable live audiences, but became aware of “this change coming where everybody wanted dance music”, as Seals put it. They split up in 1980, having been dropped by Warner Bros, and Seals moved to Costa Rica where he ran a coffee farm and raised three children with Ruby. In 1991 he reunited with Crofts for some concert dates, then in 2004 they recorded a new album, Traces. In the 2000s Seals also toured with his brother Dan, billed as Seals & Seals. 

Seals moved to Nashville, Tennessee where he spent the rest of his life. He suffered a stroke in 2017 and retired from performing. He died at his home in Nashville on June 6, 2022 aged 79 from an unspecified chronic illness. 

(Edited from Adam Sweeting obit @ The Guardian & Wikipedia)

 

Emile Ford born 16 October 1937

Michael Emile Telford Miller (16 October 1937 – 11 April 2016), known professionally as Emile Ford, was a musician and singer born in Saint Lucia, British Windward Islands. He was popular in the United Kingdom in the late 1950s and early 1960s as the leader of Emile Ford & the Checkmates, who had a number one hit in late 1959 with "What Do You Want to Make Those Eyes at Me For?” which was the Christmas number one that year. He was also a pioneering sound engineer. 

Emile Ford was born in Castries, Saint Lucia, in the West Indies. He was the son of Barbadian politician, Frederick Edward Miller, and Madge Murray, a singer and musical theatre director whose father had founded and conducted the St. Lucia Philharmonic Band. His mother married again, taking the name of Sweetnam; some sources erroneously give Emile Ford's birth name as Sweetnam or Sweetman. He was educated at St Mary’s College, Castries. He moved to London with his mother and family in the mid-1950s, partly motivated by his desire to explore improved sound reproduction technology, and studied at the Paddington Technical College in London. 

It was during this time that he taught himself to play a number of musical instruments, including guitar, piano, violin, bass guitar and drums. Using an abbreviated form of his name, as Emile Ford, he first entered show business at the age of 20, and made his first public performance at The Buttery, Kensington. His first appearance with a backing group was at the Athenaeum Ballroom in Muswell Hill. His TV appearances in 1958 included outings on The Music Shop, the Pearl Carr & Teddy Johnson Show, Oh Boy! and Six-Five Special. 

He teamed up in January 1959 with his half-brother, bassist George Sweetnam-Ford (born 1 January 1940, Castries, St. Lucia, British West Indies), electric lead guitarist Ken Street (27 June 1942 – 2 June 1990), sax player Dave Sweetnam-Ford (b. David Sweetnam-Ford, 1939, Castries, St. Lucia, British West Indies) and drummer John Cuffley (born 1939) to form Emile Ford & the Checkmates. The band appeared on the TV programme Sunday Serenade, which ran for six weeks. They won the Soho Fair talent contest in July 1959, but turned down a recording contract with EMI because the company would not allow Ford to produce their records, and instead agreed to a deal with Pye Records. 

                                   

Their first self-produced recording, "What Do You Want to Make Those Eyes at Me For?", a song originally recorded by Ada Jones and Billy Murray in 1917, went to number one in the UK Singles Chart at the end of 1959 and stayed there for six weeks. Ford was the first Black British artist to sell one million copies of a single. 

In January 1960, Ford signed a two-year employment management contract with Leslie Grade. He had several more hits in the UK, and also scored a number one EP in 1960. The readers of the British music magazine New Musical Express voted Emile Ford & the Checkmates as the "Best New Act" in 1960. Ford's debut album was made up of covers. He made several albums, but his last studio recordings were in 1963. His half-brothers George and Dave Sweetnam-Ford were later members of the Ferris Wheel. 

The female singers that backed him were originally called The Fordettes. They consisted of Margot Quantrell, Eleanor Russell, Vicki Haseman and Betty Prescott. They spent a year on the road with Ford in 1960, playing one-nighters. Back in London they left Ford to sing backup for Joe Brown who Vicki Haseman was engaged to. They were then known as The Breakaways. 

Ford, like Jimi Hendrix, had synaesthesia, a condition where the person who can associate certain colours, or even see certain colours in relation to the sound they are hearing. An article about Emile Ford appears in the November 2004 issue of the UK Synaesthesia Association Newsletter. He once said that he was gifted with the ability to see and hear sound differently from others and that gift allowed him to make first-class recordings. 

As a sound engineer, Ford was responsible for creating a backing track system for stage shows, first used in 1960, which provided a basis for what became known as karaoke. In 1969, he set up a recording studio in Barbados with the help of his father, before moving to Sweden. 

While there, he further developed a new open-air playback system for stage shows, patented as the Liveoteque Sound Frequency Feedback Injection System. Emile Ford died in London on 11 April 2016.   (Edited from Wikipedia)

 

Victoria Spivey born 15 October 1906

Victoria Spivey (October 15, 1906 – October 3, 1976),  was an American blues singer, songwriter, and record company founder. During a recording career that spanned 40 years, from 1926 to the mid-1960s, she worked with Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Clarence Williams, Luis Russell, Lonnie Johnson, and Bob Dylan. 

Victoria Regina Spivey (known as Queen, Vicky or Victoria, and Jane Lucas), blues singer and songwriter, daughter of Grant and Addie (Smith) Spivey, was born in Houston, Texas, she was the daughter of Grant and Addie Spivey. Her father was a part-time musician and a flagman for the railroad; her mother was a nurse. She had three sisters, all three of whom also sang professionally: Leona, Elton "Za Zu", and Addie "Sweet Peas" (or "Sweet Pease") Spivey,  who recorded for several major record labels between 1929 and 1937. She married four times; her husbands included Ruben Floyd, Billy Adams, and Len Kunstadt, with whom she co-founded Spivey Records in 1961. 

Spivey's first professional experience was in a family string band led by her father in Houston. After he died, the seven-year-old Victoria played on her own at local parties. In 1918, she was hired to accompany films at the Lincoln Theater in Dallas. As a teenager, she worked in local bars, nightclubs, and buffet flats, mostly alone, but occasionally with singer-guitarists, including Blind Lemon Jefferson. In 1926 she moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where she was signed by Okeh Records. Her first recording, "Black Snake Blues" (1926), sold well, and her association with the label continued. She recorded numerous sides for Okeh in New York City until 1929, when she switched to the Victor label. 

                                    

The Depression did not put an end to Spivey's musical career. She found a new outlet for her talent in 1929, when the film director King Vidor cast her to play Missy Rose in his first sound film, Hallelujah! Between 1931 and 1937, more recordings followed for Vocalion Records and Decca Records, and, working out of New York, she maintained an active performance schedule. She recorded or performed withKing Oliver, Charles Avery, Louis Armstrong, Henry Red Allen, Lee Collins, Lonnie Johnson, Memphis Minnie (Minnie Douglas Lawless), Bessie Smith, and Tampa Red (Hudson Whittaker). Through the 1930s and 1940s Spivey continued to work in musical films and stage shows, including the hit musical Hellzapoppin (1938), often with her husband, the vaudeville dancer Billy Adams. 

From 1952 to about 1960, she performed only occasionally and largely dropped out of the music scene and settled down at her home in Brooklyn, where she worked as a church administrator and devoted time to her church choir. She returned to secular music in 1961, when she was reunited with an old singing partner, Lonnie Johnson, to appear on four tracks on his Prestige Bluesville album Idle Hours. The folk music revival of the 1960s gave her further opportunities to make a comeback. She recorded again for Prestige Bluesville, sharing an album, Songs We Taught Your Mother, with fellow veterans Alberta Hunter and Lucille Hegamin, and began making personal appearances at festivals and clubs, including the 1963 European tour of the American Folk Blues Festival. 

In 1961, Spivey and the jazz and blues historian Len Kunstadt launched Spivey Records, a low-budget label dedicated to blues, jazz, and related music, prolifically recording established artists, including Sippie Wallace, Lucille Hegamin, Otis Rush, Otis Spann, Willie Dixon, Roosevelt Sykes, Big Joe Turner, Buddy Tate, and Hannah Sylvester, and also newer artists, including Luther Johnson, Brenda Bell, Washboard Doc, Bill Dicey, Robert Ross, Sugar Blue, Paul Oscher, Danny Russo, and Larry Johnson. 

Dylan & Spivey

The 1960s, however, brought a folk and blues revival. With jazz author Len Kunstadt, Spivey started her own label, Spivey Records, in 1961 to produce her own recordings and those of other blues artists. One of her earliest releases was Three Kings and the Queen (1962), which included a young Bob Dylan on blues harmonica and backing vocals. From 1963 to 1966 she contributed articles to Record Research and Sounds and Fury. In 1964, Spivey made her only recording with an all-white band, the Connecticut-based Easy Riders Jazz Band, led by the trombonist Big Bill Bissonnette. It was released first on an LP and later re-released on compact disc. 

In 1970 BMI awarded her the Commendation of Excellence "for long and outstanding contribution to the many worlds of music." Vicky Spivey died at New York on October 3, 1976, , at the age of 69, from an internal hemorrhage  and was buried in Greenfield Cemetery, Hempstead, New York. She was survived by two daughters. She is honored in the Houston Institute for Culture’s Texas Music Hall of Fame. Spivey Records was relaunched in 2007 and offered remastered rare recordings from the label. 

(Edited from Wikipedia & the Texas State Historical Association) 

Brian Knight born 14 October 1939

Brian Knight (October 14, 1939 - September 25, 2001) was a wonderful guitarist, blues singer and harmonica player  who came from that late-1950s repertory company of musicians who provided the cast for the 60s British rhythm and blues boom, but achieved little fame - or money - from it. 

Brian was working class, born in north-west London. In the early 1950s, a radio era dominated by crooners, what impressed him was the black American blues singer Josh White, and interest had been sparked. In the mid-1950s, he got his first job as a panel beater in a London garage. Also employed there was the pioneer British blues harmonica player, Cyril Davies. 

Davies invited Brian to visit the Wardour Street Roundhouse pub - the venue for Davies and Korner's London Skiffle Club and the London Blues and Barrelhouse Club. It was there that Brian heard Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, and Muddy Waters. In those days, aficionados of American music headed to its source by the cheapest route, by signing up on a merchant ship. So, like the jazzman Ken Colyer, a New Orleans enthusiast, Brian headed west. He spent two years in the US coastal trade, from the Gulf of Mexico to Maine, learning guitar and absorbing the music, visiting black clubs and gospel halls. 

Brian Jones

Back home in 1957 he played his first gig, at the White Hart in Southall. He turned down an invitation from Korner to join Blues Incorporated, as a vocalist. But then at the beginning of the 60s, he met Brian Jones at an Ealing r 'n' b club. Jones was forming a band, and Brian became its vocalist; but Brian was a devotee of Muddy Waters, while Jones favoured Chuck Berry, and down such sectarian divisions the band plunged. Jones departed for what became the Rolling Stones while Brian created Blues By Six. 

Electric blues was supplanting the "trad" jazz craze, and in clubs Blues By Six, featuring drummer Charlie Watts, became immensely popular, and also backed touring American bluesmen. They gained prestigious London residencies at the Marquee and 100 Club, often supported by The Rollin' Stones Group. Overworked Watts, still holding down a day job, moved on, to Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated.

                Here’s “Movin’ Down Country” from above album.

                                   

The times did not treat Brian kindly. In 1964 Cyril Davies died of leukaemia. Two years later an exhausted Brian quit the music business and bought a garage. In 1967 he married Davies's widow, Marie. It wasn’t until the early 70's that Brian, itching to play again, was reunited with Geoff Bradford in a band simply called The Bradford - Knight Blues Band. 

As a blues star, Brian continued to shine, and from the 70's - 90's he performed with Fairport Convention's Bruce Rowland, Ian Stewart (the sixth Stone), Charlie Watts, Peter Green, Dana Gillespie, Paul Jones, Ronnie Lane, Georgie Fame, Zoot Money, Chris Farlowe, Micky Moody, Ronnie Wood, Eric Clapton - the list is endless. 

And then there was Terry and McGhee. Brian had the habit of showing up on their tours - and at their after-show jam sessions. One night, at the Half Moon pub in Putney in 1975, the two Americans were playing when in walked Brian. McGhee put down his guitar, and switched to piano. “He was not playing,” he announced, when "there was a proper guitarist" around. 

After two successful decades of touring and performing, he finally got to record his debut in 1976 on the Freedom label. From 1981 he was to record five more albums. In his later years he played acoustic guitar and harmonica in East Anglian pubs, inviting local musicians to join him on stage. Brian was an outstanding musician, and if his life history was closer to those of the black Americans who were his inspiration than those of the rock stars who admired him, well, that is perhaps the way he would have preferred it. 

Brian Knight died of cancer aged 61on September 25, 2001. 

(Edited from a John Pilgrim obit @ The Guardian & Amazon notes)

Lee Konitz born 13 October1927

Leon "Lee" Konitz (October 13, 1927 – April 15, 2020) was an American jazz alto saxophonist and composer. 

Leon Konitz was born October 13, 1927 in Chicago, the third of three sons to Jewish immigrants from Austria (his father Aaron, a laundry owner) and Russia (his mother Anna). At 11, fascinated by fellow Chicagoan Benny Goodman, Konitz began playing clarinet. A year later, he was inspired anew by Lester Young and switched first to tenor, then alto saxophone. (He would also eventually learn to play the soprano sax.) 

Beginning his career in 1945 with a brief stint in Teddy Powell’s big band, he then worked for two years with Jerry Wald. In 1947 he joined Claude Thornhill’s orchestra. It was with Thornhill where he first gained attention, particularly with his daring solo on the band’s recording of Charlie Parker’s “Yardbird Suite.” 

It was also, fatefully, where he met the orchestra’s staff arrangers Gil Evans and Gerry Mulligan. It was Mulligan who recommended Konitz in 1948 to Miles Davis, who was forming a nonet to explore some classical-influenced concepts with Evans and Mulligan. Davis hired Konitz after hearing his lighter but nonetheless chance-taking tone and noting the rarity of an alto saxophonist at the time who didn’t attempt to sound like Parker. Their work together was documented on the 1949-50 sessions for Capitol Records that became known as Birth of the Cool. (Konitz recalled being surprised at Davis’ billing on the record; he had always thought it was Mulligan’s band.) 

Miles Davis, Lee Konitz & Gerry Mulligan

Also in 1949, Konitz appeared on what is generally regarded as cool jazz’s other foundational text: Lennie Tristano’s Crosscurrents sessions. Konitz had first met and worked with Tristano in 1946, and over the next several years he thoroughly absorbed the pianist’s theories about harmony, rhythm, and “pure improvisation.” They would continue to define his music for decades to come. Cool jazz quickly became associated with the U.S. West Coast, and accordingly Konitz moved to Los Angeles in 1952 to join Stan Kenton’s band. After two years, he returned to New York, where he resumed working with Tristano and his associates, particularly pianist Sal Mosca and tenor saxophonist Warne Marsh. However, he soon found the Tristano sphere to be restrictive, and worked to expand his horizons—becoming a prolific leader in his own right. 

                                   

Although Konitz had been leading recording sessions since 1949, he began doing so with newfound determination on the 1956 quartet album Inside Hi-Fi. Thenceforth, he would lead hundreds of sessions—with duets, trios, quartets, big bands, and string sections, almost none of which lasted long enough to be considered working groups. He took a sabbatical from the jazz scene from 1961-64, during which he taught in California, and spent much of 1965-66 in Europe. When he returned to New York in 1967, he made an intriguing and often remarked-upon series of duet recordings with such musicians as violinist Ray Nance, guitarist Jim Hall, and valve trombonist Marshall Brown, who would become a longtime (if intermittent) collaborator. 

Konitz enjoyed a restless 1970s and ’80s, during which he worked as regularly in Europe as in the United States; the latter half of the ’70s found him in one of his rare working groups, a quintet that reunited him with Warne Marsh, as well as with pickup bands, a nonet, and a newly regular series of duets. He also began experimenting in the avant garde, collaborating with Andrew Hill, Anthony Braxton, Ornette Coleman, and Derek Bailey. Duo projects became increasingly common in the 1990s, as Konitz worked with a diverse swath of players from drummer Paul Motian to pianist Marian McPartland to trumpeter Clark Terry. He was awarded the Jazzpar Prize, a Danish award that was the self-described “Oscar of jazz,” in 1992. 

He continued his exploits into the 21st century, playing and recording with everyone who would have him. If anything, his bookings increased: He worked intermittently in a quartet with Motian, pianist Brad Mehldau, and bassist Charlie Haden (as well as in a trio without Motian), and with pianist Ethan Iverson and saxophonist Mark Turner. In the late 2000s, the Europe-based trio Minsarah invited him to play with them, and that collaboration lasted for several years. 

In his last dozen years, Konitz was most frequently in the creative company of pianist Dan Tepfer. The two worked in duo settings as well as with small and large bands and in orchestras. An appearance at the 2013 Winter Jazzfest in New York found Konitz and Tepfer performing with the Harlem String Quartet. Konitz had no interest in retirement. Despite health issues, including a massive stroke that he suffered in Australia in 2011, he carried on intrepidly, celebrating his 90th birthday with a gala concert at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Noting that his old age found him busy as ever, Konitz remarked, “They all want to get me now, while I’m still around.” 

He died at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City on April 15, 2020, as a result of pneumonia brought on by COVID-19 during the pandemic in New York City. 

(Edited mainly from a Michael J. West obit @ Jazz Times)

 

Sam Moore born 12 October 1935

Samuel David Moore (October 12, 1935 – January 10, 2025) was an American singer who was best known as a member of the soul and R&B duo Sam & Dave from 1961 to 1981. He was a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the Grammy Hall of Fame (for "Soul Man"), the Vocal Group Hall of Fame, and the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame. 

Born in Miami, Florida, in 1935, Moore cut his musical teeth singing gospel before he began making a name for himself on Florida's R&B circuit. While playing a Miami club called the King of Hearts in 1961, he met another struggling soul singer, Dave Prater; the two discovered they worked well together on-stage when Moore helped Prater through a shaky version of Jackie Wilson's "Dogging Around," and they formed an act called Sam & Dave. 

After an unsuccessful string of singles for Roulette Records, Sam & Dave hit pay dirt when Jerry Wexler signed them to Atlantic Records in 1965 and sent them to Memphis to work with the Stax Records production crew. At Stax, Sam & Dave scored a long string of hits, including "Soul Man," "Hold On, I'm Coming," and "I Thank You’," At their peak, they had their own airplane, toured with a 16-piece band and an entourage of 35, and averaged 280 shows a year. But while they were a dynamite combination on-stage, Moore and Prater did not get along off-stage, and in 1970 the duo split up. Moore moved to New York's music scene where he was introduced to heroin and cocaine, beginning fifteen years of addiction. 

                                    

Moore began his solo career after breaking up with Prater in June 1970. He formed a new act called "Sam's Soul Together 1970 Review" featuring singer Brenda Jo Harris and a 16-piece orchestra, and released three singles on Atlantic Records in 1970 and 1971. These singles, along with other recordings made during that period featuring Aretha Franklin on piano, were to be released on an album produced by King Curtis, but in August 1971.

Curtis was stabbed to death outside his apartment in Harlem and the project was shelved, to be released 30 years later. The album “Plenty Good Lovin”', was not released until 2002. Moore and Prater reunited as Sam & Dave a number of times in the 1970s and '80s, but their relationship remained strained, and Prater died in 1988 in a car wreck. 

Moore toured with other soul artists, including Wilson Pickett in Europe in the spring of 1982. In 1982, he married Joyce McRae in Europe, and she became his manager and ordered him into rehabilitation. McRae helped Moore to overcome his lengthy battle with drug addiction, which the couple later described in Moore's book Sam & Dave – An Oral History, co-written with Dave Marsh. After going public with his addiction in 1983, Moore became a strong antidrug advocate and worked as a volunteer for antidrug programs. McRae became his business manager and worked with Sam to advocate for artist's rights, royalties, and pension payments. 

Throughout this period, Moore continued to play live shows and record when the opportunities arose: he recorded a new version of "Soul Man" with Lou Reed for the 1986 movie of the same name, appeared in the 1988 comedy Tapeheads as part of a famous soul duo alongside co-star Junior Walker, teamed up with Conway Twitty for a cover of "Rainy Night in Georgia" on the all-star artists album Rhythm Country and Blues, and contributed backing vocals to Bruce Springsteen's 1992 album Human Touch. 

In 1992, Moore was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for his work with Sam & Dave, but he had trouble finding a record label that wanted to sign him until Rhino Records took him into the studio to record Overnight Sensational in 2005. Released the following year, the album was produced by Randy Jackson and included guest appearances from Bruce Springsteen, Steve Winwood, Jon Bon Jovi, Sting, Paul Rodgers, Eric Clapton, and many more. 

Moore continued to tour and work regularly over the next decade, but he didn't release a new album until 2017, when he put out a collection of patriotic covers aptly called An American Patriot. Springsteen once again called on Moore's talents when he recorded 2022's Only the Strong Survive; the album was an homage to vintage soul music, and Moore was a guest vocalist on "I Forgot to Be Your Lover" and "Soul Days." On April 25, 2023, Moore joined a large cast of country performers honoring George Jones at the Still Playin' Possum concert at the Von Braun Center in Huntsville, Alabama, where he sang "The Blues Man." 

Moore died following surgery at a hospital in Coral Gables, Florida, on January 10, 2025, at the age of 89. 

(Edited from AllMusic & Wikipedia)

 

Billy Higgins born 11 October 1936

Billy Higgins (October 11, 1936 – May 3, 2001) was reportedly the most recorded American jazz drummer in history, and certainly one of the most beloved. He played mainly free jazz and hard bop and remains one of the most important and controversial drummers in music history. Known among musicians and fans as "Smiling Billy," he was an uncommonly versatile and intuitive player, his nimble rhythmic patterns achieved a perfect balance between function and form. 

Born in Los Angeles, Higgins he began playing drums at the age of 12. Early in his career he began playing R&B, supporting headliners including Bo Diddley, Amos Milburn, and Jimmy Witherspoon. In 1953 he joined high school friend and trumpeter Don Cherry in the Jazz Messiahs, a group also featuring saxophonist James Clay; three years later, he began his session career, in the months to follow appearing on recording dates led by saxophonist Lucky Thompson and bassist Red Mitchell. Around this time, Higgins and Cherry met Coleman through mutual friend Clay. 

Both Higgins and Cherry soon joined Coleman's rehearsal group, which spent years woodshedding before finally securing its first live gigs in 1958, opening for Paul Bley at L.A.'s Hilcrest Club. Audiences were either angered or simply baffled by Coleman's radical sensibility, which he later dubbed "harmolodics," and with the 1958 release of his debut LP, Something Else!!!! The Music of Ornette Coleman, the controversy spread throughout the jazz populace, dividing musicians, critics, and fans alike. 

Higgins followed Coleman when he relocated the group to New York City in 1959 to begin a residency at the Five Spot Café. Love it or hate it, their music was the talk of the town, and with the addition of new bassist Charlie Haden, Coleman finally began to make concrete the sounds and structures he'd pursued for years. His 1959 Atlantic Records debut, The Shape of Jazz to Come, remains a watershed album by any definition and a schism-creating turning point in the history of the avant-garde. The accolades now heaped on Coleman also launched his collaborators to prominence, and Higgins soon emerged as one of the most sought-after drummers in contemporary jazz, proving a master of both the hard bop sensibility still dominant throughout the jazz community as well as the more fluid and abstract approach of the new generation. 

                                   

When a 1961 drug bust stripped Higgins of his cabaret card, prompting his exit from Coleman's band, he focused on studio work, becoming the unofficial house drummer at Blue Note Records during the label's creative zenith. In the decade to come, Higgins appeared on seminal dates including Dexter Gordon's Go!, Jackie McLean's A Fickle Sonance, and Lee Morgan's The Sidewinder, proving time and again his consummate skill and flexibility. 

Even after Liberty Records acquired Blue Note in 1967, he remained much in-demand, maintaining his position as the premier drummer of the avant-garde with contributions to landmark efforts including Archie Shepp's 1971 LP Attica Blues and Coleman's comeback effort, Science Fiction. Higgins was also a frequent collaborator of pianist Cedar Walton, and with bassist Bill Lee and trumpeter Bill Hardman led the big-band ensemble the Brass Company for several years during the early '70s. 

After close to two decades on tour and in New York, Higgins settled back in Los Angeles in 1978. The following year he recorded his first-ever session as a leader, the Red label LP Soweto. Higgins recorded a few more headlining sessions in the years to follow but seemed to value most his role as a sideman, supporting saxophonist Joe Henderson and trombonist Slide Hampton during the first half of the 1980s. After appearing behind star and longtime collaborator Dexter Gordon in filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier's 1986 love letter to jazz, 'Round Midnight, Higgins reunited with Coleman, Cherry, and Haden for a 1987 tour that culminated in a new studio album, In All Languages. 

In 1988 Higgins teamed with poet Kamau Daaood to found the World Stage, a storefront enclave that hosted creative workshops, community activities, and live performances. He regularly tapped his extensive professional network to lure many of the biggest names in jazz to the World Stage site both as performers and as tutors, and ultimately Higgins turned his attention to teaching in a formal setting as well, serving on the jazz faculty at UCLA. 

Higgins spent much of the remainder of his life battling liver disease, a manifestation of the hepatitis he contracted decades earlier. In March 1996, he underwent a liver transplant and when his body rejected the new organ, he was forced to submit to a second procedure just 24 hours later. Higgins nevertheless returned to music a few months later, traveling to New York to renew his collaboration with Coleman. However his new liver began to fail, and while waiting to find a donor, he died on May 3, 2001 at a hospital in Inglewood, California from liver and kidney failure. Higgins was just 64 years old at the time of his death.

(Edited mainly from AllMusic)