• 1591 ~ Dirk Janszoon Sweelinck, Composer

• 1773 ~ Hans Georg Nageli, Composer

• 1782 ~ Joseph Drechsler, Composer

• 1832 ~ François-Louis Perne, Composer, died at the age of 59

• 1846 ~ Arthur Coquard, Composer

• 1853 ~ Monroe A Althouse, Composer

• 1856 ~ George Templeton Strong, Composer

• 1866 ~ Al Jolson, The first performer to sing in a sound movie ( The Jazz Singer)

• 1871 ~ Aime Maillart, Composer, died at the age of 54

• 1873 ~ August Conradi, Composer, died at the age of 51

• 1880 ~ John Curwen, Composer, died at the age of 63

• 1891 ~ Frederick Bowen Jewson, Composer, died at the age of 67.

• 1898 ~ Ernst Bacon, Composer

• 1898 ~ Gerard Bertouille, Composer

• 1905 ~ Hans Holewa, Composer

• 1912 ~ Jan Blockx, Belgian opera composer, died at the age of 61

• 1920 ~ Peggy Lee, American singer of popular music
More about Peggy Lee

• 1924 ~ Johann Heinrich Beck, Composer, died at the age of 67

• 1926 ~ Maria de Lourdes Martins, Composer

• 1933 ~ Jimmie (James Charles) Rodgers passed away

• 1937 ~ Yehuda Yannay, Composer

• 1937 ~ Lionel Hampton and his band recorded the classic, Flying Home, for Decca Records.

• 1938 ~ William Bolcom, American pianist, composer and writer
More information about Bolcom

• 1941 ~ Imants Kalnins, Composer

• 1942 ~ Lenny Kravitz, Musician

• 1942 ~ Ray Ennis, Musician, guitar, singer with The Swinging Blue Jeans

• 1943 ~ Levon Helm, Drummer

• 1944 ~ Verden Allen, Keyboards

• 1948 ~ Stevie Nicks, Singer and songwriter

• 1949 ~ Hank Williams, Jr, Singer

• 1949 ~ Teresa Stratas, Canadian soprano

• 1950 ~ Antonina Neshdanova, Russian soprano (Bolshoi Theater), died

• 1954 ~ Liberace presented a three-hour, one-man concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City. 13,000 women and 3,000 men attended. The performance nearly broke the box office mark of 18,000 set by pianist Ignace Jan Paderewski.

• 1967 ~ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, by The Beatles, was released. It took the Fab Four only 12 hours to record their first album, “Please, Please Me”. It took them 700 hours to complete “Sgt. Pepper’s”.

• 1973 ~ Tippett’s 3rd Piano sonata, premiered

• 1993 ~ Cor de Great, Pianist, conductor and composer, died at the age of 78

• 1994 ~ Michael Jackson (35) and Elvis and Pricilla Presley’s daughter Lisa Marie (26)

• 1995 ~ Ron Weatherburn, Jazz pianist, died at the age of 61

• 1996 ~ Matima Kinuani Mpiosso, Musician, died at the age of 45

• 2002 ~ Oscar Florentino Tellez, one of San Antonio’s best known bajo sexto players who was a regular with the Grammy-winning Texas Tornados, died in a one-vehicle traffic accident near Cotulla. He was 56. Tellez, a native of Laredo, taught himself to play music as a small boy. By his teens, he had learned to play the bass, drums, accordion, the keyboard and the bajo sexto, a Mexican bass guitar that resembles a 12-string guitar. In Europe, Tellez was affectionately called the ‘Frito Bandito.’

• 2003 ~ Almir Chediak, a music producer who dedicated his life to preserving the memory of Brazilian popular music, was shot to death. He was 52. Chediak was best known for transcribing the music of Brazil’s top musicians such as Caetano Veloso and Antonio Carlos Jobim and publishing them in the form of song books. He was also a music professor who taught some of Brazil’s top stars, including Gal Costa, Tim Maia, Cazuza and Morares Moreira, and in recent years he had gone on teach a new generation of Brazilian musicians. He also wrote two music text books that took harmonic theory out of the conservatory and made it more accessible for popular musicians. His publishing company, Lumiar, also produced CDs of important Brazilian musicians.