1583 ~ Girolamo Frescobaldi, Italian organist and composer
More information about Frescobaldi

• 1846 ~ This was the day when Richard Wagner began work on his opera Lohengrin. It remains an opera hit and “Here Comes the Bride”, based on the “Wedding March” from this opera.

• 1872 ~ Edward Burlingame Hill, American composer

• 1941 ~ Otis Redding, American rhythm-and-blues singer and songwriter

• 1942 ~ Inez Foxx, Singer with brother, Charlie

• 1942 ~ Luther Simmons, Singer with Main Ingredient

• 1945 ~ Dee Dee Sharp (Dione LaRue), Singer with Chubby Checker

• 1946 ~ Billy Preston, Musician, songwriter, singer with The Beatles, Syreeta, played with Little Richard’s Band

• 1947 ~ Freddy Weller, Musician, guitar with Paul Revere and The Raiders (1969), solo, songwriter

• 1952 ~ David Stewart, Guitarist, keyboard with Eurythmics

• 1956 ~ On this Sunday night, 54,000,000 viewers (82.6 percent of the U.S. television audience) turned their TV dials to CBS as Ed Sullivan introduced 21-year-old singer Elvis ‘The Pelvis’ Presley. Elvis sang Hound Dog and Love Me Tender. Ed Sullivan, watching out for the moral safety of the viewing public (plus a live audience of screaming Elvis fans in the show’s New York theatre) demanded that the CBS cameras not venture lower than Elvis’ waist! Sullivan felt that Presley’s wild gyrations of his pelvis would lead the nation’s females into a frenzy of untold proportions. One female Elvis fan described him as, “One big hunk of forbidden fruit.” Elvis got the largest fee to that date for appearing on Ed Sullivan’s Toast of the Town: $50,000.

• 1993 ~ Helen O’Connell passed away.  She was an American singer, actress, and hostess, sometimes described as “the quintessential big band singer of the 1940s”.

• 1996 ~ Bill Monroe passed away.  He was an American mandolinist, singer, and songwriter who created the style of music known as bluegrass. The genre takes its name from his band, the Blue Grass Boys, named for Monroe’s home state of Kentucky.

• 2003 ~ Warren Zevon, who wrote and sang the rock hit “Werewolves of London” and was among the wittiest and most original of a broad circle of singer-songwriters to emerge from Los Angeles in the 1970s, died at the age of 56. Zevon moved to Los Angeles in the 1960s, making a living writing jingles for television commercials. He also composed the song “She Quit Me Man” for the movie “Midnight Cowboy.” He was just out of his teens when he went to work for the Everly Brothers, first as a pianist and later as their band leader.