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James “Son” Thomas (October 14, 1926 – June 26, 1993) was an American Delta blues musician, gravedigger and sculptor from Leland, Mississippi. Born in Eden, Mississippi, Thomas was known as a folk artist for his sculptures made from unfired clay, which he dug out of the banks of the Yazoo River. His most famous sculpted images…

The stars of open cluster NGC 290 glitter in a beautiful display of brightness and color. The photogenic cluster, pictured here, was captured in 2006 by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. Open clusters of stars are younger, contain few stars, and contain a much higher fraction of blue stars than do globular clusters of stars….

Paul Frederic Simon (born October 13, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter and actor. Simon’s musical career has spanned seven decades with his fame and commercial success beginning as half of the duo Simon & Garfunkel (originally known as Tom & Jerry), formed in 1956 with Art Garfunkel. Simon was responsible for writing nearly all of…

Pharoah Sanders (born Farrell Sanders, October 13, 1940) is an American jazz saxophonist. Saxophonist Ornette Coleman once described him as “probably the best tenor player in the world”. Emerging from John Coltrane‘s groups of the mid-1960s, Sanders is known for his overblowing, harmonic, and multiphonic techniques on the saxophone, as well as his use of…

Lee Konitz (born October 13, 1927) is an American composer and alto saxophonist. He has performed successfully in a wide range of jazz styles, including bebop, cool jazz, and avant-garde jazz. Konitz’s association with the cool jazz movement of the 1940s and 1950s includes participation in Miles Davis‘s Birth of the Cool sessions and his…

Raymond Matthews Brown (October 13, 1926 – July 2, 2002) was an American jazz double bassist known for extensive work with Oscar Petersonand Ella Fitzgerald. Ray Brown was born October 13, 1926 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and took piano lessons from the age of eight. After noticing how many pianists attended his high school, he thought of…

Arthur Tatum Jr. (/ˈteɪtəm/, October 13, 1909 – November 5, 1956) was an American jazz pianist. Tatum grew up in Toledo, Ohio, where he began playing professionally and had his own radio program, rebroadcast nationwide, while still in his teens. He left Toledo in 1932 and had residencies as a solo pianist at clubs in…