Jesse James born 3 October 1943

Jesse James (born October 3, 1943) is an American soul singer who had several minor US hits from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, and has continued to record since then. 

James Herbert McClelland was born in El Dorado, Arkansas, but in one interview he gave his home state as nearby Louisiana. His singing ability was recognizable at an early age where he sang alongside his mother in church. While still a toddler, his family relocated to California. After literally singing his way through school he accepted his first professional singing engagement at The Makesmo, a popular Richmond nightclub whilst in his late teens. He was given his stage name Jesse James by a compere who struggled to announce his real name. During his early years as a singer, Jesse had a job at a local chemical factory. 

                                   

Initially credited as Jessie James, he recorded several singles in the early 1960s on the Shirley label before moving to the Hit label where some of his recordings featured guitar by Sly Stewart (later Sly Stone). His first commercial success came in 1967 when one of his recordings for Hit, "Believe in Me Baby", was reissued by 20th Century Fox Records, and reached No. 42 on the Billboard R&B chart and No. 92 on the Pop chart. The song was credited to Jesse James & the Dynamic Four, was produced by Jesse Mason Jr., and was co-written by James with Sugar Pie DeSanto, Shena Demell, and Jesse Anderson. 

Later recordings for 20th Century Fox, to which he was signed by Hosea Wilson, failed to chart, but he released a self-titled LP on the label in 1968, also produced by Mason. After one single on Uni, he set up his own label, Zea, distributed by Roulette Records. His first single for the new label, the self-penned "Don't Nobody Want to Get Married", reached No. 18 on the R&B chart in 1970, and its follow-up, "I Need You Baby", reached No. 47 R&B. After Zea's distribution deal ended, he re-launched the label as Zay, and had another R&B hit (No. 25) with his version of "At Last", arranged and produced by Willie Hoskins and previously a hit for Etta James. In 1974, he returned to the 20th Century label, and the following year had a minor R&B hit (No. 73) with "If You Want a Love Affair". 

He continued to record for various labels through the 1970s and 1980s, and his final chart success came in 1987, when "I Can Do Bad By Myself", on the TTED label, reached No. 61 on the R&B chart. He released one album on TTED, It Takes One to Know One (credited as Mr. Jessie James), followed by several on Gunsmoke, for whom he signed in 1988. His first album on Gunsmoke, I Can Do Bad by Myself (1988), included a collaboration with Harvey Scales, and was followed by Looking Back (1990). 

He has continued to release albums on Gunsmoke, including Operator Please Put Me Through (1993), It Just Don't Feel the Same (1997), Versatility (1998), It's Not So Bad After All (2006), Get in Touch with Me (2009), Do Not Disturb (2012), and I Lost My Baby on Facebook (2014). Now well into his seventh decade this most resilient and enduring performer, has never been one to let the grass grow under his feet. He still performs live shows and is actively writing, producing and recording fresh new material. 

He is sometimes confused with the Philadelphia songwriter and record producer Jesse James, who wrote "Boogaloo Down Broadway" for the Fantastic Johnny C and "The Horse" for Cliff Nobles. 

(Edited from Wikipedia, Soulwalking, Doul Junction Records Soundclick)

 

George Siravo born 2 October 1916

George Siravo (October 2, 1916 - February 28, 2000, Medford, Oregon) was an American composer, arranger, conductor, saxophonist, and clarinetist. 

Cliquot Club Eskimos

Siravo was born in Staten Island, New York and began learning the clarinet at an early age, and by the early 1930s, he had begun working professionally. Once of his earliest gigs was as a member of Harry Reser's Cliquot Club Eskimos, an ersatz Dixieland band that was one of the first groups to gain fame through radio. Percussionist Harry Breuer was another Cliquot Club alumnus. 

Glenn Miller's Band 1937 

Through the 1930s and into the early 1940s, Siravo wandered from band to band, playing with Jan Savitt, Charlie Barnet, Will Hudson, and Artie Shaw. He played in Glenn Miller's first band appearing on the 1937 recording "Community Swing" and joined Gene Krupa in 1938, when Krupa left Benny Goodman. He eventually quit the road in favor of working on the staff of the radio show, "Your Hit Parade." Siravo's first exposure to Sinatra was while the two were both working on the show, and Sinatra put him on retainer for his next radio show, "Frank Sinatra in Person." 

He joined the staff of Columbia Records in 1947, and when Sinatra and Columbia producer Mitch Miller decided to do an entire album of uptempo numbers, Siravo was their first choice. Sinatra later said of Siravo, "He's one of the untapped arrangers, I feel. He's a very fresh style guy, he's just fine." Unfortunately, both Sinatra and Miller got cold feet about a whole album of dance tunes, particularly since Sinatra's pipes were about to go due to an unrelenting schedule of radio shows, four club sets a night, and studio work, and a number of Siravo's arrangements went unrecorded. 

Siravo attributed a lot of Sinatra's technique to the lessons he learned from jazz musicians. "Frank would hang out with the real hip instrumentalists, guys that could do anything you asked them to do. That's where Frank got it, from the trombones and trumpets and clarinets and saxophones." He also appreciated Sinatra's approach to studio work: "He was so flexible... He was the guy who could walk between raindrops without getting wet." 

                                   

He did most of the arranging for Sinatra's first album after winning the Oscar for "From Here to Eternity," but Capitol Records ended up giving the credit to Nelson Riddle. For years, Siravo nursed a grudge about being cheated of the credit, but Riddle later passed on his apologies through Tony Bennett, and told Bennett that much of what he learned about writing for a singer without getting in his way he owed to Siravo. And when Riddle did the arrangements for Sinatra's tour of Australia in 1959, he brought in Siravo to handle the orchestration. Siravo tried to keep Sinatra in perspective and "never let him mold me." 

George Siravo

He claimed that attitude led to Sinatra's dumping him around 1961. Sinatra called Siravo in New York and invited him to come join a golf tournament in Las Vegas. Siravo had a heavy schedule of studio work and told Sinatra, "You gotta be kidding, I'm busy." Sinatra replied, "I'll send my jet." Siravo told him, "You're out of your mind." "That was the last time I ever talked to him," Siravo later told a reporter. Sinatra was not the only singer to credit Siravo for a hit. Songwriter Sammy Cahn said Siravo was the reason Doris Day's 1950 single, "It's Magic," became a hit, and he helped Tony Bennett with one of his most successful albums and singles, Who Can I Turn To?. He also worked with Vic Damone, Jimmy Rosselli, Connie Boswell, and Rosemary Clooney. 

Siravo recorded under his own name only intermittently. His best-known album, Swingin' in Studio A is a fine example of big band arranging and top-notch studio engineering and is the sort of thing audio engineering legend Henry Kloss probably had in mind when he said that the best demonstration of his pioneering headphones was "a great big band album written for stereo and recorded with top studio musicians and engineers." It may not be as splashy as an Esquivel album, but in its own way, it may be more representative of space age pop as a whole. He also recorded a showcase album for Time, Seductive Strings that featured Doc Severinsen on trumpet. His personal favorite may have been an obscure album of small ensemble, chamber music-influenced jazz recorded for Kapp Records, Polite Jazz. 

Siravo and his wife retired to Oregon in 1983, picking out the town of Medford from a map. "It's close to California, how different can it be?" he later explained. He died from natural causes at his home in Medford on February 28, 2000 at the age of 83 years. 

(Edited from Spaceagepop)

Richard Harris born 1 October 1930

Richard St John Francis Harris (1 October 1930 – 25 October 2002) was an Irish actor and singer. Having studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, he rose to prominence as an icon of the British New Wave. He received numerous accolades including the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor, and a Grammy Award. In 2020 he was listed at number 3 on The Irish Times's list of Ireland's greatest film actors. 

The notion of Richard Harris as a popular singer would have seemed an absurdity to anyone who knew his work in 1967, ten years into his career. In less than a year from that time, however, Harris would be the most popular actor-singer in the history of popular music, with a gold record to his credit and radio play that rivaled the Beatles. 

The son of a miller, Richard Harris was educated at the Sacred Heart Jesuit College, and later studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. His stage debut took place in 1956, and he made his first film appearance in 1958 in Alive and Kicking, a British film. He appeared in key supporting roles in big-budget movies like The Guns of Navarone and Mutiny on the Bounty (where he outshone Marlon Brando's Fletcher Christian), but it was his performance in This Sporting Life (1963) which propelled him to a major international career. 

For most of the mid-'60s, Harris was among the most visible of British (or, more properly, Irish) actors in international cinema, alongside the likes of Michael Caine and Sean Connery, although he seldom played starring roles; Cromwell (1970) was such a rarity, but it was A Man Called Horse that same year that turned him into a popular culture icon, and yielded two sequels over the next 13 years. 

It was his performance as King Arthur in Warner Bros.' 1967 screen version of Lerner & Loewe's musical Camelot that made people begin to think of Harris as a singer. 

As directed by Joshua Logan, the movie was monumentally long and sluggish, but Harris proved an electrifying presence and revealed himself as a better actor-singer than Rex Harrison, who had done the role on Broadway and on the original cast album. To a great extent, Harris talked his songs in a manner similar to Harrison, but he also put a lot of an actor's performance into the material, so that one swore it was an attractive singing voice that one was hearing. The soundtrack album on Warner Bros. remained in print for decades, and was more profitable than the movie itself. 

                                   

A year later, he was approached by his friend, songwriter Jimmy Webb, with a proposed epic-length pop project, and Harris agreed to record it. The recording was eventually placed with Lou Adler's Dunhill label, and the song "MacArthur Park," clocking in at seven-and-a-half minutes, rose to number two on the American charts and shattered AM radio's established prohibition against playing singles of greater than three-and-a-half minute-length. The accompanying album A Tramp Shining was one of the great pop LPs of the '60s, a sophisticated and extraordinarily well-produced concept album (which owed a considerable debt to Sgt. Pepper's) to rival any of Sinatra's efforts in that direction. 

Harris continued working in movies  but he also found himself in demand as a recording artist. He did a second album with Webb writing and producing, The Yard Went on Forever, which may have been an even better collection of material even though it didn't sell nearly as well or yield any hits. His subsequent records included My Boy and The Richard Harris Love Album (which pulled some of the best romantic numbers from his previous records), and well into the early '70s, three years after it had been on the charts, Harris was still prevailed upon to perform "MacArthur Park" during his talk-show appearances. 

Harris' acting career remained strong right into the end of the '70s, including very well-received performances in Juggernaut (1974), Robin and Marion (1976), and The Wild Geese (1978), although these were counterbalanced by starring roles in popular junk movies like Orca (1977), sort of the equivalent of Michael Caine's work in movies like The Island and Blame It on Rio, which made a fortune but made everybody in them look more than a little foolish at the time. 

Harris' health deteriorated during this period, a result of his well-publicized heavy drinking and other fast-lane activities. He withdrew from most public activities during the early '80s, gave up drinking, and spent years recovering his health on a strict dietary regimen -- he also rediscovered religion in the process, and pursued a writing career, publishing poetry and a novel. Harris re-emerged in movies during the early '90s as the star of an acclaimed drama entitled The Field, directed by Jim Sheridan, for which he received an Academy Award nomination. Harris was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease in 2002 and died of that ailment the same year on October 25 at University College Hospital in London. 

(Edited from AllMuisc & Wikipedia) 

 

Jill Corey born 30 September 1935

Jill Corey (born Norma Jean Speranza; September 30, 1935 – April 3, 2021) was an American popular standards singer. She was discovered and signed on one day when she was 17. She went on to have her own radio shows and to star in a feature film. 

Italian-American, Corey was born in Avonmore, Pennsylvania, a coal mining community about forty miles east of Pittsburgh. Her father, Bernard Speranza, was a coal miner, and she was the youngest of five children. Her mother died when she was four years old.She was a 1953 graduate of Bell-Avon High School. Corey began singing as an imitator of Carmen Miranda at family gatherings, on amateur shows in grade school, and contralto in the local church choir. At the age of 13, she began to develop her own style. 

She won first prize at a talent contest sponsored by the Lions Club, which entitled her to sing a song on WAVL in Apollo, Pennsylvania. This got her an offer to have her own program. By the age of 14 she was working seven nights a week, earning $5-$6 a night, with a local orchestra led by Johnny Murphy. By the age of 17 she was a local celebrity talent. 

                                   

At the home of the only owner of a tape recorder in town, with trains going by in the background and no accompaniment, she made a tape recording to demonstrate her singing skills to the outside show business world. The tape came to the attention of Mitch Miller, who headed the artists & repertory section at Columbia Records. 

He normally received over 100 record demos a week, and this one, with a 17-year-old girl and its train background, would not have been likely to gain his attention. He telephoned her in Avonmore, and the next morning she flew to New York to be heard by Miller in a more normal studio setting. Miller had Life Magazine send over reporters and photographers, and had her audition with Arthur Godfrey and Dave Garroway. The Life photographers reenacted her signing a contract with Columbia, and all this happened in a single day, with her headed back to Avonmore that night. 

Both Garroway and Godfrey called her, and it was her choice to pick one; she picked Garroway, who took the name Jill Corey out of a telephone book. Within six weeks the Life article, with a cover picture and seven pages, came out. Jill Corey became the youngest star ever at the Copacabana nightclub, where she was hit on by Frank Sinatra, and had numerous hit records. 

Even so, in May 1956, Billboard described Corey as a performer who "hasn't made it big" despite the amount of publicity she received. Corey was a regular on the television variety programs Robert Q's Matinee (1950–1956) The Dave Garroway Show (1953–1954), and the 1958–1959 version of Your Hit Parade. She was co-host of Music on Ice, a variety program on NBC (1960). 

She also worked on television with Ed Sullivan. In 1956 she became a regular on Johnny Carson's CBS-network comedy-variety show from California. In addition, she had her own syndicated radio and television shows, like The Jill Corey Show hosted by the National Guard Bureau, the Jill Corey Sings radio show, and episodes of "Stop the Music" radio show. She also appeared at a Delta Gamma gathering in 1957, where she sang and greeted guests. She is known for her cover of a French song, "Let It Be Me", in 1957 for Columbia Records and her 1956 song, Egghead, which focuses on "failed masculinity" of an egghead. In 1959 she starred in a feature-length musical film for Columbia Pictures, entitled Senior Prom, which was co-produced by Moe Howard of The Three Stooges. 

Jill with Don Hoak

Corey suspended her career to marry Pittsburgh Pirates third baseman Don Hoak on December 28, 1961, in Pittsburgh. They had a daughter, Clare. Hoak died of a heart attack at age 41 after they had been married eight years. She then resumed her career in New York City. An Associated Press article published in February 1973 pointed out the difficulties that Corey faced in attempting a comeback. "Today I don't know how to audition, how to get people interested in booking me," she said. Determined to succeed, she said, "Somehow, I'm going to find a way to tell people I'm back, and that I want to sing." 

She began to star in plays on and off Broadway including Annie Get Your Gun, Sweet Charity, and played to a sold out crowd at Carnegie Hall in 1989. A two-CD compilation of her complete singles was released in June 2015 by Jasmin Records. 

Corey died on April 3, 2021, from septic shock in Shadyside Hospital, Shadyside (Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania, at age 85. 

(Edited from Wikipedia) 

 

Mike Laure born 29 September 1937

Miguel Laure Rubio (September 29, 1937 – November 19, 2000), popularly known by his stage name Mike Laure (pronounced Mikay Lau-rey) or The King of the Tropics, was a Mexican cumbia musician, singer and orchestra leader. 

Born in El Salto, Jalisco Mike always had a special affection for music, because his whole family played an instrument, although never professionally. When he was 8 years old, he was bought his first guitar and later became a good drummer. He learned to play Hawaiian guitar and bass. He began as a rock & roll musician in the late fifties. In 1957 he formed his group Mike Laure & the Comets, as a tribute to Bill Haley & His Comets, and would perform his songs every weekend in the Beer Garden in Chapala. 

Laure, a singer with a very melodious and rhythmic voice, tried to excel in his native state, Jalisco, without fully succeeding. He changed his name to "Mike" when he performed in Laredo, Texas, as a Cha cha chá singer. After having ventured into Rock and roll and then in Twist, and not having the expected success he decided to change to the tropical rhythm, being the Cumbia. In the city of Jalisco he was discovered by executives of the Musart record company, who helped him find his true musical style; thus he changed his rebellious and rock and roll life for tropical music with which he would triumph. 

                                    

In the early 1960s he experimented with a new tropical rhythm, cumbia, and by the early 1960s he was already known in the industry for fusing tropical rhythms with rock and roll. His first hit was the song "Tiburón a la vista". His song "La banda borracha" topped the music popularity charts in Mexico for a few weeks around 1966, where his pieces "Mazatlán" and "Cero 39" would also appear.  His popularity earned him the nickname "The King of the Tropics". 

Laure combined several of the instruments typical of Afro-Caribbean and Colombian orchestras, to achieve, within his tropical themes an innovative mix. Thus, around 1962 and 1963 he used the accordion and clarinet of the Colombian cumbia, the saxophone very common in various folklore of the as well as the Puerto Rican güiro and the conga of the rumba, guaracha and son, combining it with the rock and roll, the electric guitar as accompaniment and requinto, and acoustic drums. This last instrument was part of the definitive seal of Mexican cumbia, as it was the first time that cumbia was performed, creating the basis of the rhythm with the bass drums, toms and cymbals of the drums, a definitive sign characteristic of the tropical groups of the 70s and later of the 90s in technocumbia. 

The result was a fusion of great popularity in tropical music, although he was not the one who introduced cumbia in Mexico, since some recordings of Cumbia had arrived in the country from Colombia years before, however he was the first musician to record a fusion of cumbia in Mexico with Mexican musicians, with the peculiarity that he would also implicitly become one of the fathers of Mexican cumbia, next to the immortal Carmen Rivero. Most of the songs performed by Laure remained at the top of the charts, but especially during the seventies and eighties there was not a single dance in which hits were played in Mike's voice. 

Laure recorded dozens of albums and maintained a hectic schedule of concerts and television appearances, guided by his good-time spirit. Despite a few more hits during the1970s, Mike Laure's popularity had waned by the 1980s. He was debilitated by a 1990 stroke, though he returned to live performance on a limited basis but his health began to deteriorate  so his wife decided to transfer him to Mexico City where he died on February 29, 2000 at the age of 64.

(Edited from Wikipedia, La Jornada & Estroncio90) 

Ray Warleigh born 28 September 1938

Ray Warleigh (28 September 1938 – 21 September 2015) was an Australian alto saxophonist and flautist. 

Raymond "Ray" Kenneth Warleigh was born in Sydney and migrated to England in 1960, where he quickly established himself as an in-demand session musician. He played and recorded with major figures and bands of the UK jazz and blues scene, including Alexis Korner, Tubby Hayes, Humphrey Lyttelton, Terry Smith, Ronnie Scott, Long John Baldry, John Mayall, Keef Hartley, Allan Holdsworth, Soft Machine, Georgie Fame, Mike Westbrook, Dick Morrissey and Kenny Wheeler, as well as Mike Oldfield, Nick Drake, and Charlie Watts. 

He accompanied visiting artists such as Champion Jack Dupree. According to John Fordham in The Guardian wrote: "Ray Warleigh brought a unique touch to every venture he played on from the 60s on, and had a successful 30-year career that partnered him with Dusty Springfield, Marianne Faithfull, Scott Walker and Stevie Wonder, among others." 

                                     

Warleigh's first album, in 1968, was produced by Scott Walker. During this same period a few years later, in 1971 he appeared on Nick Drake's second album, Bryter Layter, playing a beautifully memorable flute part on the final track "Sunday". His evocative performance, displaying both classical and jazz sensibilities, was in stark contrast to the percussive, unorthodox flute heard on contemporary albums such as Aqualung from the likes of Jethro Tull. 

In 1973 he joined Latin fusion band Paz, led by vibist and composer Dick Crouch. He featured with the band for eight years playing a weekly Sunday residency at the Kensington pub in Holland Park, recording albums including 'Kandeen Love Song', 'Paz Are Back' (Spotlite Records), 'Paz Live at Chichester Festival' (Magnus Records) and 'Look Inside' (Paladin Records). Other members of the band were Dick Crouch leader and vibes, Ed Speight on guitar, Geoff Castle on keyboards, Ron Mathewson on bass guitar, Dave Sheen on drums and Chris Fletcher on percussion. 

Warleigh's last album, 'Rue Victor Massé' (2009), is an improvisation with free-jazz drummer Tony Marsh, has received critical acclaim. According to Jazz Review: "The duo’s synergy and common goals resound mightily here, featuring Warleigh’s lyrically resplendent sax and flute lines, in concert with a crystalline audio sound, the musicians flex some muscle amid buoyant underpinnings." 

In his leisure time Warleigh was an accomplished yachtsman, completing many voyages with his long-standing friend, Dr Gillian Ross, with whom he co-owned several boats, before serious illness struck in 2011. He died of cancer on 21 September 2015.

Don Nix born 27 September 1941

Donald Nix (September 27, 1941 – December 31, 2024) was an American musician, songwriter, and producer. Nix, who was best known for his song "Going Down," was described by AllMusic as "one of the more obscure figures in Southern soul and rock."

The Mar-Keys

William Donald Nix was born into a musical family in Memphis, Tennessee. He attended Messick High School with Donald "Duck" Dunn and Steve Cropper of the famed Stax house band Booker T. & the MG's. After graduation, Nix spent a short stint in the Army before returning to Memphis, where he joined Dunn and Cropper, along with Wayne Jackson, Packy Axton, Terry Johnson, and Smoochy Smith, as a saxophonist in the Mar-Keys. The group scored a smash hit with the instrumental "Last Night" on the Satellite label (later Stax/Volt).After the success of "Last Night" fizzled, Nix returned to Memphis and spent the next several years as a horn for hire, occasionally playing gigs with a re-formed version of the Mar-Keys or backing Stax stars such as William Bell and Carla Thomas. 

He relocated to Los Angeles in the mid-1960s to visit Leon Russell and Carle Radle, friends he'd met through touring. The friendship with Russell, a big producer at the time, landed Nix a position in Dick Clark's Caravan of Stars backing one of Russell's acts, Gary Lewis & the Playboys. Their friendship also provided Nix the opportunity to see how a session was put together, and he began engineering and producing at studios around Memphis such as Stax and Ardent. 

Nix's best known composition, "Going Down," was originally released by the band Moloch on their eponymous album in 1969, and has become a blues-rock standard, having been covered by Freddie King, J.J.Cale the Jeff Beck Group, the Who, and the Rolling Stones. 

                                    

Nix spent the next several years writing and producing for artists such as Freddie King, Albert King, Sid Selvidge, and Charlie Musselwhite. In 1970, he signed a recording deal with Shelter Records (co-owned by his old friend Leon Russell) and released a solo album, In God We Trust and followed it a year later with Living by the Days. Neither album sold very well, and after a few more attempts, Nix returned to recording other artists, producing records for John Mayall and the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section. In 1971, Nix made the acquaintance of George Harrison, leading to Nix organizing the backup vocalists for the Concert for Bangladesh. 

George Harrison and Tom Nix

After having been absent from record industry throughout most of the '80s, Nix relocated to Nashville and began writing and producing again. He published a book about his experiences titled Road Stories & Recipes, and re-recorded many of his classic tracks with musicians such as Brian May and Steve Cropper for 2002's nostalgic Going Down. He followed this with I Don't Want No Trouble in 2006, and Passing Through -- both on his Section Eight Productions label -- and in 2009, he released Hobos, Heroes and Street Corner Clowns for Concord's revitalized Stax imprint. In 2013, Real Gone Music reissued Living by the Days.

Nix had been suffering from the effects of macular degeneration and had lost his sight in recent years. He died in his sleep at his home in Germantown, Tennessee, on December 31, 2024, at the age of 83. 

(Edited from AllMuisc & Wikipedia)