Justin Timberlake Congratulates New Mother Jessica Alba

Jessica Alba’s The Guru co-stars Justin Timberlake and Mike Myers have congratulated her on the birth of her first child.

Alba gave birth to Honor Marie on Saturday at Los Angeles' Cedars Sinai Medical Center, her first child with husband Cash Warren.

And Timberlake was quick to express his delight at the new arrival.

He tells People: "Congratulations Jessica! She seems very patient, and I would assume that's what it takes to be a good mother, a good parent for that matter.

"Honor Marie - that's a cool name. I'm happy for them. It's beautiful."

And Hollywood funnyman Myers adds: "She'll be a great mother. She's smart, she's talented and she's one of the most down-to-earth people I've ever worked with."
Check out Jessica's baby bump gallery here.

Obituary: Jimmy McGriff

The Heath Robinsonian contraption that is the Hammond organ was invented in 1935 to give American travelling preachers a portable sound system for holy-rolling services - and was designed to mimic a church organ's sonorities. The blues and gospel music of America's black churches fuelled the repertoire of Hammond players from the 1940s, all the way up to the early 1990s acid-jazz dance boom. One of the most devotedly blues-rooted was Jimmy McGriff, who has died aged 72 of complications from multiple sclerosis.

Unlike his childhood friend - and the Hammond organ's biggest star - Jimmy Smith, McGriff rarely chose to lay a bebop-derived improvisation over the top of the expected funky swing and anthemic, riff-rooted melodies. In the early 1960s, he made the pop charts with dance floor-angled versions of Ray Charles's I Got a Woman and his own All About My Girl, and the record industry and McGriff's early fans then wanted that hit formula repeated at regular intervals.

He did not seem to mind: he was happy to be a mix of preacher and entertainer, privileged to feel that his work was about lighting up a room. "I began as a blues player, and that's what I am to this day," McGriff told the Chicago Tribune in 1991. He acknowledged Smith as the king, and the technical and imaginative liberator of the Hammond organ in jazz, but saw himself as king of organ blues. A good deal of his work was repetitious, but latterly, McGriff made some good albums on variations of the classic methods, mixing soul-jazz stars like saxophonist David "Fathead" Newman and drummer Bernard "Pretty" Purdie with rising young postboppers like tenor saxist Eric Alexander.

McGriff was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania. Encouraged by his pianist father, he learned the instrument from the age of five, and sometimes played organ in his parents' Baptist church, but by his teens was also playing vibraphone, sax and drums. Like Smith and the New Jersey organist Richard "Groove" Holmes, McGriff also played double bass. The Hammond jazz techniques developed in the 1950s depended on a grasp of the rhythmic and harmonic role of a bass part's interaction with a melody.

McGriff attended Philadelphia's Combe College of Music, but the Korean war turned him briefly toward a career in law enforcement. He was a US army military policeman, and then spent two years in the Philadelphia police force. But mid-1950s Philadelphia was boiling with bluesy music. Smith, at first a local R&B and jazz pianist, had taken up the Hammond B3 organ in 1953, and his development of an astonishing technique involving pedalled walking basslines, note-packed bebop solos, and thrilling vibrato effects using the revolving Leslie speaker and other sonic modifications made him an explosive jazz star by 1956.

That same year, McGriff heard the Smith-influenced Groove Holmes play at his sister's wedding. He promptly took up the Hammond himself, with Holmes as his teacher. McGriff familiarised himself with the Hammond B3 in six months, and took organ lessons from Smith and Milt Buckner as well as attending New York's Juilliard School.

By 1960, he was working in Philadelphia with the then tenor saxophonist - later to be a popular organist - Charles Earland, accompanying classy touring performers, including the singer Carmen McRae. But the following year was the turning point. The independent Jell Records label invited the organist to record I Got a Woman, and the McGriff version became a favourite with Philadelphia radio DJs. For another small label, Sue Records, McGriff composed his own popular classic of the organ-funk genre, All About My Girl, and released an album.

Unlike Smith, who had launched his career at jazz clubs like New York's Cafe Bohemia and at the Newport Jazz Festival, McGriff was already an organist veering toward the Hammond's increasingly popular R&B incarnation. It was not coincidental that the legendary Stax Records house rhythm section, organist Booker T and the MGs, also released a Hammond version of I Got a Woman in 1962.

McGriff recorded throughout the 1960s, with his materials broadening to include Count Basie swing hits - pianist Basie, occasionally an organist himself, was also an early McGriff influence - movie themes and pop covers. He toured extensively, moved to New Jersey and opened a supper club, the Golden Slipper, where he recorded his 1971 live album The Black Pearl.

In 1968 McGriff came close to another success with The Worm, an engaging piece of jazz-funk featuring the heated trumpet sound of Blue Mitchell, and he performed with a big band on the following year's Electric Funk. He also became an attraction in the big band led by swing drummer Buddy Rich.

The organist briefly retired in 1972, but with the rise of disco, he had discovered another dance form that could benefit from his Hammond treatment. The albums Stump Juice (1975), Red Beans (1976) and Outside Looking In (1978) represent this shift, and though the materials are often thin, the sessions are lifted by McGriff's coolly grooving lines and stalking-cat deliberation.

When he moved to the Milestone label in the 1980s, McGriff mingled more jazz with his soul sound, playing alongside Hank Crawford and "Fathead" Newman, who had also been Ray Charles's sideman.

In the 1990s he experimented with the synthesiser effects on the new Hammond XB-3, but returned to the original sound for some of his most freewheeling and engaging later recordings, like Straight Up in 1997 - which included a typically slow-burning, soul-savouring account of the Isley Brothers' It's Your Thing - and McGriff's House Party (2000) which was formidably enhanced by the presence of charismatic McGriff organ heir, Lonnie Liston Smith. The McGriff-Newman-Crawford partnership continued as the Dream Team. McGriff went on playing until 2007.

He is survived by his wife, Margaret, his two children, five grandchildren, mother, two sisters and brother.

· James Harrell McGriff, musician born April 3 1936; died May 24 2008


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Scarlett Johansson to release debut album

Hollywood star Scarlett Johansson will release her debut album 'Anywhere I Lay My Head' this summer.
The 23-year-old star of 'Match Point' and 'Lost in Translation' spent five weeks recording the album, which features 10 covers of Tom Waits songs and one original track.
Johansson recorded the album at Dockside Studios in Louisiana with producer David Sitek.
The album also features collaborations with Yeah Yeah Yeahs guitarist Nick Zimmer.
A US release date has been pencilled in for 20 May, while an Irish release date has yet to be confirmed.
This is not Johansson's first foray into music. The star has previously appeared in Justin Timberlake's video for 'What Goes Around', while last year she sang onstage with The Jesus and Mary Chain at the Coachella Festival in the US.

Doctor Who makes his debut at the Proms

Doctor Who makes his debut at the Proms

The Tardis volition ca-ca its debut at the Royal Albert Francis Charles Augustus Emmanuel Hall this summer when the BBC stages a Doctor WHO prom in an attack to draw new audiences. Roger Frank Lloyd Wright, the restrainer of BBC Radio receiver 3 and the festival's fresh manager, denied the effect represented "dumbing pour down". He said it was "very much in the Proms mildew".


The concert on 27 July, presented by Freema Agyeman, wHO played the Timelord's supporter Martha Jones, is 1 of a series designed to advance more diverse attendance. The subject for the evening is time and space, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra playing Aaron Copland's Flourish for the Green Human, "Jove" from Gustav Holst's The Planets and Richard Wagner's "Sit of the Valkyries", as well as Gilbert Murray Gold's theme from Dr. World Health Organization. In a nod to contemporary music, the evening also includes the UK premier of The Torino Ordered series by Mark Anthony Turnage.This year's season, from 18 July to 13 September, will also feature Nigel President John F. Kennedy, returning for the first time in 21 long time on 19 July. He will make for Elgar's Fiddle Concerto, the ferment that established his reputation, and will reunite with Vernon Handley, world Health Organization conducted the master copy recording.Tributes will besides be paid to Ralph Sarah Vaughan Roger Williams on the 50th day of remembrance of his death, with a concert devoted to him on 26 Aug. In a twist to the Last Night, his Sea Songs will be played rather of the Fantasia on British people Sea-Songs by the Proms flop, Sir Patrick Henry Natalie Wood.The festival will also mark the centennial of the birth of the French composer Laurence Olivier Messiaen with a series of organ recitals.

Feist is winner of Shortlist Prize

Feist is winner of Shortlist Prize

Canadian singer-songwriter Feist has won the 2007 Shortlist Pillage in the US for her album 'The Reminder'.
Hoarding reports that the judgement control panel for the prestigious award included Nose candy Patrol's Gary Lightbody and the Killers' Ronnie Vannucci.
Cat Power's 'The Greatest' was the victor last yr; previous winners include TV on the Radio, Damien Rice, NERD and Sigur Ros.
Show the review of 'The Reminder' here.

My Robot Friend

   
Artist: My Robot Friend

   Genre(s): 
Electronic
   

---

Discography:


   
 Dial 0

   Year: 2006   
Tracks: 14


   
 Hot Action and Remixes

   Year:    
Tracks: 22

---

 

Steppenwolf

   
Artist: Steppenwolf

   Genre(s): 
Rock: Hard-Rock
   Rock
   Other
   Trance: Psychedelic
   

---

Discography:


   
 Born to Be Wild: A Retrospective (CD 2)

   Year: 1991   
Tracks: 17


   
 Born to Be Wild: A Retrospective (CD 1)

   Year: 1991   
Tracks: 17


   
 16 Greatest Hits

   Year: 1990   
Tracks: 16


   
 Skullduggery

   Year: 1976   
Tracks: 8


   
 Hour Of The Wolf

   Year: 1975   
Tracks: 8


   
 For Ladies Only

   Year: 1971   
Tracks: 10


   
 Steppenwolf Seven

   Year: 1970   
Tracks: 9


   
 Steppenwolf 7

   Year: 1970   
Tracks: 9


   
 Live

   Year: 1970   
Tracks: 13


   
 Monster

   Year: 1969   
Tracks: 7


   
 Early Steppenwolf

   Year: 1969   
Tracks: 6


   
 At Your Birthday Party

   Year: 1969   
Tracks: 13


   
 The Second

   Year: 1968   
Tracks: 12


   
 Steppenwolf

   Year: 1968   
Tracks: 11

---

Light-emitting diode by St. John the Apostle Kay (natural Joseph Joachim Krauledat, Apr 12, 1944), Steppenwolf's blatant biker hymn "Max Born to Be Wild" roared come out of the closet of speakers everyplace in the fiery summertime of 1968, Lav Kay's letting down rasping sounding a soporific telephone in to coat of arms to the counterculture bm speedily sprouting up nationwide. German immigrant Kay got his master set out in a bluesy Toronto band called Hedge sparrow, transcription for Capital of South Carolina in 1966. After True sparrow disbanded, Kay resettled to the Westward Glide and formed Steppenwolf, named later on the Woody Herman Hesse novel. "Max Born to Be Wilderness," their third 1 on ABC-Dunhill, was immortalized on the soundtrack of Dennis Hopper's tube cinema classic Well-heeled Rider. The song's mention to "heavy metal thunder" last gave an assignable call to an rebellion genre. Steppenwolf's second giant slay that year, the psychedelic "Deception Carpet Drive," and the follow-ups "Isidor Feinstein Stone Me," "Move Over," and "Hey Lawdy Ma" further effected the band's credibility on the hard-rock racing circuit. By the betimes '70s, Steppenwolf ran out of steam and disbanded. Kay continued to platter solo, as other members plaza together ersatz versions of the streak for touring purposes. During the mid 80s Kay re-formed his own version of Steppenwolf, scrape extinct his hits (and approximately new songs) at oldies shows. All the same, they'll be remembered for generations to hail for creating one of the ultimate gas'n'go rock anthems of whole time.