August 21, 2016 ~ Today in Music History

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• 1904 ~ (William Allen) Count Basie, Bandleader, pianist
More information about Count Basie

• 1928 ~ Art Farmer, Trumpeter, flugelhorn, worked with Horace Henderson, Johnny Otis, Lionel Hampton Band; recorded be-bop classic Farmer’s Market; developed musical instrument called ‘flumpet’

OCMS   1933 ~ Dame Janet Baker, British mezzo-soprano Read quotes by and about Baker
More information about Baker

• 1938 ~ Kenny (Kenneth Donald) Rogers, Grammy and CMA Award-winning singer; groups: The Kirby Stone Four, The New Christy Minstrels, The First Edition

• 1938 ~ A classic recording was made this day when Fats Waller performed Ain’t Misbehavin.

• 1939 ~ Harold Reid, Singer with The Statler Brothers

• 1944 ~ Jackie DeShannon (Sharon Myers), Singer, songwriter

• 1947 ~ Carl Giammarese, Guitarist with The Buckinghams

• 1952 ~ Joe Strummer (John Mellors), Guitarist and singer
More information about Joe Strummer (John Mellors)

• 1957 ~ Kim Sledge, Singer with Sister Sledge

• 1976 ~ RCA Victor Records announced that sales of Elvis Presley records had passed the 400 million mark.

• 1980 ~ Linda Ronstadt debuted on Broadway in the production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s, The Pirates of Penzance.

August 20, 2016 ~ Today in Music History

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• 1561 ~ Jacopo Peri, Italian composer
More information about Peri

• 1882 ~ Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” first performed in Moscow.

• 1885 ~ The Mikado, by Gilbert and Sullivan, opened at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York City.

• 1905 ~ Weldon Leo ‘Jack’ Teagarden, Jazz musician, trombonist and singer whose relaxed, melodic instrumental style was highly influential
More information about Teagarden

• 1923 ~ Jim (James Travis) Reeves

• 1926 ~ Frank Rosolino, Musician: trombone, played with Stan Kenton, Harold Land, Bob Cooper, Clarke-Boland Big Band

• 1927 ~ Joya Sherrill, Singer

• 1931 ~ Frank Capp, Musician, drummer with the big jazz band, Capp-Pierce Juggernaut

• 1935 ~ Justin Tubb, Singer, Ernest Tubb’s son

• 1939 ~ Orrin Tucker’s orchestra recorded Oh, Johnny, Oh, Johnny, Oh!, on Columbia Records.

• 1942 ~ Issac Hayes, Grammy and Academy Award-winning American rhythm-and-blues singer, songwriter and arranger

• 1947 ~ Jim Pankow, Trombonist, song writer with Chicago

• 1948 ~ Robert Plant, British rock singer with Honeydrippers and composer

• 1951 ~ Phyl Lynott, Musician: bass, singer with Thin Lizzy

• 1952 ~ Doug Fieger, Musician, guitar, singer with The Knack

• 1952 ~ Rudy Gatlin, Singer with The Gatlin Brothers

• 1969 ~ Andy Williams received a gold record for the album Happy Heart on Columbia   Records.

• 1977 ~ Best of My Love, by the Emotions, topped the pop charts. It had a number one run of four weeks.

• 2001 ~ Frank C. “Papa” Mangione, father of jazz musicians Chuck and Gap Mangione, died  at age 91.
Mangione worked at Eastman Kodak Co., ran a grocery store for about two decades and returned to the photography company until his retirement in 1975. For the next 15 years, he sold music and merchandise on worldwide tours with his more famous son, Chuck, a flugelhorn ace.
A son of Italian immigrants, Mangione’s childhood was chronicled by his brother, Jerry, in a best-selling 1942 memoir called “Mount Allegro: A Memoir of Italian American Life.”
Three of Chuck Mangione’s songs, 60 Miles Young, 70 Miles Young and Papa Mangione, were dedicated to his father.

Beethoven Piano Trios Opus 70 No. 2, Opus 97 “Archduke”

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Beethoven’s first published works—his Opus No.1—were three trios for piano, violin and cello and already they show a marked advance on Haydn’s trios in the comparative interdependence of the three parts. Their freedom from Haydn’s oppressive formality looks forward to the first mature trios, the pair that comprises Opus 70, displaying all sorts of harmonic twists, thematic innovations and structural idiosyncrasies, these trios make much of the piano part and contain plenty of dramatic outbursts that are typical of Beethoven’s middle period.

Even more arresting is the first of the Opus 70 trios (1808) nicknamed ”The Ghost” because of its mysterious and haunting Largo. Its sibling boasts a cheerful bombastic finale that is the most entertaining music that Beethoven composed for this combination of instruments.

The “Archduke” Trio Opus 97 (1811) was Beethoven’s last full – scale work for piano trio and is typically conclusive. The third movement is its centre of gravity, a highly moving set of variations with the cello dominating the thematic content. It opens with a hymn-like theme and progresses to a coda which magnificently sums up the movements ideas. The finale might be less powerful than that of Opus 70 No. 2, but it nevertheless has a sweeping rhythmic power. Again, it is beyond the shadow of a doubt that Beethoven defined the piano trio form that it retained throughout the 19th century by allowing the string instruments the status of genuinely equal partners in this superlative performance.

Read more at Ludwig Van Beethoven Piano Trios Opus 70 No. 2, Opus 97 “Archduke” | World Music Report.

August 19, 2016 ~ Today in Music History

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• 1881 ~ Georges Enesco, Rumanian composer, violinist and conductor

• 1918 ~ Sgt. Irving Berlin’s musical about army life in World War I opened at the Century Theatre in New York City. Yip Yip Yaphank included songs, such as Mandy and Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning.

• 1939 ~ Ginger (Peter) Baker, Trumpeter, drummer with Cream

• 1939 ~ The Dick Jurgens Orchestra recorded Day Dreams Come True at Night on Okeh Records. Eddy Howard was the vocalist on the piece. It became Jurgens’ theme song.

• 1940 ~ Johnny Nash, American pop-reggae singer, songwriter and guitarist

• 1943 ~ Billy J. Kramer (William Ashton), Singer with The Dakotas

• 1945 ~ Ian Gillan, Singer with Deep Purple

• 1947 ~ Gerard Schwarz, American trumpeter and conductor

• 1951 ~ John Deacon, Bass with Queen, score of Flash Gordon

• 1964 ~ The Beatles began their first North American concert tour. They would visit 26 cities.

• 1972 ~ NBC-TV presented The Midnight Special for the first time. John Denver was the host for the first show. Wolfman Jack was the show’s announcer. The Midnight Special proved to be a ratings success.

• 1991 ~ Richard Maltby passed away. He was an American musician, conductor, arranger and bandleader.

• 2001 ~ Singer Betty Everett, whose recording of The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss) made Billboard’s Top 10 in 1964, died Sunday. She was 61.

Everett is remembered primarily for one huge hit song in the 1960s, but she  also recorded many other songs and was recognized as one of the top soul singers of her time.

Starting at age 9, Everett played the piano and sang in church. She continued to sing in gospel choirs before moving to Chicago in 1957, where she recorded a string of hits on local record labels such as C.J. Cobra and OneDerful that included I’ll Be There and I’ve Got a Claim On You.

Everett signed a contract in the early 1960s with VeeJay, a record label that was then issuing recordings by The Beatles.
Everett recorded The Shoop Shoop Song in the spring of 1964, and it soared to Billboard’s Top 10.

The song was later recorded by Cher in the soundtrack for the 1990 movie Mermaids and more recently by Vonda Shepard of the Fox television show Ally McBeal.

Understanding What Gives a Piano its Voice

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Picture a seven-foot grand piano in a studio. The lid’s missing, so you can see all the strings. Researchers suspend a rod embedded with 32 microphones over the piano’s body.

“We played this middle C at a very soft level, a medium level, and a very loud level,” says Agnieszka Roginska, a professor in NYU’s music technology program. She says using a pianist to play middle C over and over wouldn’t be scientific. So they’re using a disklavier, a fancy player piano triggered by electronics. “So we could hit the same note, with the same velocity, thousands of times,” she says.

They’d record the piano in one spot. Then move the microphones eight inches. Record the note. Move the mics again. Record the note. Over and over and over, until they reach the back of the piano. At the end, they get “what is basically a very dense acoustical scan of the radiation pattern of the grand piano,” Roginska says.

Read the entire article here: http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-08-10/science-tries-understand-what-gives-piano-its-voice

August 18, 2016 ~ Today in Music History

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• 1750 ~ Antonio Salieri, Italian composer and conductor
More information about Salieri

• 1873 ~ Leo Slezak, Austrian tenor

• 1907 ~ Howard Swanson, American composer

• 1937 ~ The first FM radio construction permit was issued. It went to W1X0J (later to become WGTR) in Boston, MA. The station went on the air two years later.

• 1939 ~ Johnny Preston, Singer

• 1944 ~ Carl Wayne, Singer with The Move

• 1949 ~ Ralph Flanagan and his orchestra recorded their first tune on wax, You’reBreaking My Heart.

• 1950 ~ Dennis Elliott, Drummer with Foreigner

• 1957 ~ Ron Strykert, Guitarist with Men at Work

• 1958 ~ Perez Prado, the ‘Mambo King’, received one of the first gold records awarded by the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA). The single, Patricia, was certified as having sold over one million copies.

• 1973 ~ Jazz drummer Gene Krupa played for the final time with members of the original Benny Goodman Quartet. Krupa, a jazz and big band legend, died on October 6, 1973.

• 1981 ~ Robert Russell Bennett passed away

• 1981 ~ Rex Harrison brought the award-winning My Fair Lady back to Broadway as he recreated the role of Henry Higgins. The play had originally opened in 1956.

• 2001 ~ Jack Elliott, a composer and conductor who worked on numerous hit television shows and movies, died of a brain tumor. He was 74.
Elliott came to Los Angeles in the early 1960s to work as a musical arranger on Judy Garland’s television show.
He gained a reputation as one of the top composers and arrangers in Hollywood. If a television show was popular in the 1970s, it most likely had the music of Elliott and his frequent collaborator Allyn Ferguson. They worked on such shows as: “Police Story,” “Barney Miller,” “Starsky and Hutch,” “Charlie’s Angels” and “The Love Boat.”
He also worked in films and teamed with director Carl Reiner on several projects, including: “The Comic,” “The Jerk” and “Oh God.”
Elliott served as music director for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, writing the music for the opening and closing ceremonies as well as conducting the orchestra.

• 2003 ~ Tony Jackson, bass player for The Searchers, a Liverpool band best known for the 1964 song “Needles and Pins,” died at the age of 63.
Jackson sang and played bass for The Searchers, a Liverpool band that briefly rivaled The Beatles for popularity in the early 1960s. “Needles and Pins” made the top 20 in the United States after it was released in 1964.
Jackson was lead singer on the band’s first two British hits, “Sweets for My Sweet” and “Sugar and Spice,” but played bass only on the enduring “Needles and Pins” and “Don’t Throw Your Love Away.”
Feeling sidelined, Jackson quit the group in 1964. His follow-up band, Tony Jackson and the Vibrations, failed to score a hit and he drifted out of the music business.

August 17, 2016 ~ Today in Music History

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1686 ~ Nicola Porpora, Italian composer

• 1838 ~ A total of 138 singing teachers traveled to Boston, MA to attend the first music convention.

• 1903 ~ Abram Chasins, American pianist, composer, writer and educator

• 1909 ~ Larry Clinton, Bandleader, composer

• 1920 ~ Georgia Gibbs (Fredda Lipson or Gibson), ‘Her Nibs’, Singer

• 1932 ~ Duke Pearson, Composer, band leader, pianist

• 1947 ~ Gary Talley, Guitarist with Big Star as well as The Box Tops

• 1948 ~ John Cheek, American bass-baritone

• 1953 ~ Kevin Rowland, Guitarist, singer with Dexy’s Midnight Runners

• 1954 ~ The Newport Jazz Festival opened at the Newport Casino in Rhode Island. It featured jazz legends Dizzy Gillespie, Gerry Mulligan and Ella Fitzgerald.

• 1955 ~ Kevin Moulding, Songwriter, singer, bass with XTC

• 1958 ~ Belinda Carlisle, Guitarist, singer with The Go-Go’s

• 1965 ~ Steve Gorman, Drummer with The Black Crowes

• 1970 ~ Donnie Wahlberg, Singer with New Kids on the Block and brother of Marky Mark

• 1983 ~ Ira Gershwin, U.S. lyricist and elder brother of George, died in Beverly Hills at the age of 86.

• 1984 ~ On this, the first night of his Breaking Hearts Tour, Elton John announced that he was retiring from touring.

• 1990 ~ Pearl Mae Bailey passed away. She had entertained two generations with her stage and record performances.

August 16, 2016 ~ Today in Music History

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• 1795 ~ Heinrich Marschner, German opera composer

• 1863 ~ Gabriel Pierné, French composer, conductor and organist

• 1929 ~ Bill Evans, American jazz pianist and composer

• 1932 ~ Eydie Gorme (Edith Gormezano), Grammy Award-winning singer, married since 1957 to Steve Lawrence.

• 1938 ~ Robert Johnson passed away

• 1939 ~ The famous vaudeville house, Hippodrome, in New York City, was used for the last time. There were several places called the Hippodrome around the country. They weren’t, generally, theatres, nor true nightclubs. Hippodromes were designed for the wide variety of vaudeville acts available at the time … dancing, music, comedy and skits.

• 1940 ~ Marching Along Together, by Frankie Masters and his orchestra, was recorded for Okeh Records.

• 1942 ~ Barbara George, Singer

• 1945 ~ Suzanne Farrell (Ficker), Ballerina

• 1953 ~ James ‘J.T.’ Taylor, Singer with Kool and The Gang

• 1958 ~ Madonna (Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone), Singer

• 1962 ~ Brian Epstein, manager of The Beatles, handed drummer Pete Best his walking papers. Best had been with the group for 2-1/2 years. Ringo Starr (Richard Starkey) was picked to take his place. One month later, the group recorded, Love Me Do.

• 1977 ~ Elvis Presley was rushed from Graceland to Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Doctors’ efforts to revive him were fruitless and he was pronounced dead (coronary arrhythmia) at 3:30 p.m. He was 42 years old.

• 1984 ~ Prince was pictured on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. He was shown with his left armpit exposed.

• 1984 ~ Though it didn’t make the pop music charts, a new single by Elvis Presley was released by RCA Victor Records. The song was originally recorded in 1956 at the Tupelo (MS) Fairgrounds. It was called, Baby, Let’s Play House.

• 2000 ~ Sally Amato, who founded the Amato Opera Theater with her husband, Anthony Amato, in 1948, died at the age of 82.
Amato, who performed under her maiden name, Serafina Bellantone, was born in Little Italy in 1917. As a child she appeared in vaudeville skits in local movie theaters.
She met her husband when they were both appearing in an operetta at New Jersey’s Paper Mill Playhouse, and they founded the Amato Opera Theater to provide young singers with a chance to perform.

• 2000 ~ Alan Caddy died

Pianists Hands

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Redditor NeokratosRed  had an idea: depict the hands of great composers and pianists, according to the characteristics of their music. He shared it on the social media site, and also punted for suggestions of more. It has since received over 300,000 images views, and lots of further suggestions from fellow Redditors and piano geeks.

Whisks for Chopin’s elegant pianistic souffles, feather dusters for the gentle impressionism of Debussy, instruments of trade for the composer of the thunderous Hammerklavier sonata.

Piano, and the internet – top marks to the both of you.

via This infographic of composers’ hands is painfully (and hilariously) accurate | Classic FM.