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Composers – L

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Lamb

Joseph Lamb (1887 to 1960) was an extraordinarily gifted ragtime pianist and composer along with Scott Joplin and James Scott. He differed from them, though, because the art of improvisation completely baffled him. In response to this, Lamb viewed ragtime as an art form written on paper, instead of a spontaneous one. Though his style and approach were markedly different from his peers, he still left behind a rich legacy and remained one of the most influential ragtime composers.

Lehar

Franz Lehar, 1870 to 1948 was the son of a bandmaster serving principally in Hungary. He followed his father’s profession, before winning, in 1902, success in the theatre in Vienna, where he succeeded in the following years in reviving the operetta, providing music of greater distinction, with tenor arias written specifically for Richard Tauber.

The reputation of Franz Lehar as a composer of operetta is assured as he wrote nearly forty of them. Of these by the far the best known is Die lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow), first staged in Vienna in 1905, the favourite operetta of Adolf Hitler.

Lennon

John Lennon, 1940 to 1980,was a pop star, composer, songwriter, and recording artist. He was born in Liverpool, Merseyside, NW England, UK. and was The Beatles rhythm guitarist, keyboard player, and vocalist, and a partner in the Lennon–McCartney song-writing team. He married Japanese artist Yoko Ono in 1969. On the birth of his son, Sean (born in 1975), he retired from music to become a house-husband. Five years later he recorded (Just Like) Starting Over, but he was shot and killed by a deranged fan just before its release. His death affected millions of people, record sales soared, and he continues to be admired by new generations of fans.

Lerner and Lowe

Alan Jay Lerner,
Playwright, born August 31, 1918, New York, New York; died June 14, 1986

Frederick Loewe,
Composer, born June 10, 1904, Vienna, Austria; died February 14, 1988

Frederick Loewe, an unheralded Vienna-born composer, and Alan Jay Lerner, the lyricist-playwright son of the proprietors of an American chain of women’s clothing shops, with sketches and lyrics for two Harvard Hasty Pudding shows among his major credits, met by chance at New York’s Lambs Club in 1942. Had they not, Brigadoon would never have emerged from the mists of the Scottish Highlands to make the world feel “Almost Like Being in Love” . . . no one would have been there to “Paint Your Wagon” . . . My Fair Lady would still be a less than lyrical English girl from George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion who couldn’t sing a note. . . we might never have thought to “Thank Heaven for Little Girls” like “Gigi” . . . and Camelot would most likely have stayed within the pages of Arthurian legend.

When the two, who were destined to enrich the American musical theater with some of its most poignant, rousing, and memorable lyrics, engaging books and powerful musical scores, had that chance meeting more than 50 years ago, neither was widely known. Loewe’s Great Lady had had a brief run on Broadway in 1938. Lerner had added radio scripts to his Hasty Pudding Club show credits. But later collaborations after one brief failure, What’s Up? (1943), and the moderately successful The Day Before Spring (1945), which ran five months on Broadway, made musical history.

Alan Jay Lerner was one of three sons of Joseph J. Lerner, who founded Lerner Stores, Inc. He was educated in England and at the Choate School in Wallingford, Connecticut, before entering Harvard. He studied at the Juilliard School of Music during vacations from Harvard. After graduating in 1940 with a B.S. degree, he wrote advertising copy and radio scripts for such programs as the “Philco Hall of Fame.”

Frederick “Fritz” Loewe was the son of Edmund Loewe, an eminent operetta tenor. When he was two, Frederick accompanied his father on a tour of the United States. The youngster played piano at four and, at nine, composed the tunes for a music hall sketch in which his father toured Europe. At 15, he wrote “Katrina,” a popular song that sold 3,000,000 copies in Europe. He had begun his own concert career as soloist with some of Europe’s leading symphony orchestras at the age of 13 after having studied with the noted European musician Ferruccio Busoni and Eugene d’Albert. In 1923, young Loewe was awarded the Hollander Medal in Berlin and studied composition and orchestration with Nickolaus von Reznicek.

The following year, the younger Loewe accompanied his father to America. Since neither a concert he gave at New York’s Town Hall, nor a subsequent week’s engagement at the Rivoli Theater led to further concert engagements, he tried teaching music and playing at Greenwich Village night clubs. When music failed to earn him a living, he worked as a busboy in a cafeteria and as a riding instructor at a New Hampshire resort. He took up flyweight boxing and failed, then went West, cowpunching, gold mining, and carrying mail on horseback over the Montana mountains before returning to New York where he found work as a piano player. In 1935, Loewe’s song “Love tiptoes Through My Heart” was accepted for the musical Petticoat Fever. His own musical, Salute to Spring, was presented in St. Louis in 1937. The next year, his Great Lady reached Broadway, but ran for only 20 performances.

The first Lerner-Loewe collaboration was a musical adaptation of Barry Connor’s farce The Patsy for a Detroit stock company in 1942. They called it Life of the Party and it enjoyed a nine-week hit that encouraged them to continue with the musical comedy What’s Up? which opened on Broadway in 1943. Lerner wrote the book and lyrics with Arthur Pierson, and Loewe composed the music. It ran for 63 performances and was followed in 1945 by their The Day Before Spring.

It was when the curtain went up to the haunted strains of bagpipes on the night of March 13, 1947, and the mist-shrouded Scottish Highland village of Brigadoon first appeared, that the team of Lerner and Loewe also emerged as potentially legendary. The musical, which after its original 581 performances on Broadway, toured extensively and has been revived frequently, won the “best musical”award from the New York Drama Critics Circle the year it opened and was hailed as having “evoked magic on Broadway.”

Between Brigadoon and Paint Your Wagon, the next team effort by Lerner and Loewe, Lerner wrote Love Life, with music by Kurt Weill, which was selected as one of the best plays of the 1948-49 Broadway season, plus the story, screenplay and lyrics for the films Royal Wedding and Brigadoon and the story and screenplay for An American in Paris, for which he won an Oscar in 1951.

Paint Your Wagon rolled in in 1951, and then, five years later, on March 15, 1956, My Fair Lady opened and became one of the most spectacular successes–artistic and financial–in the history of the American theater. Playing a record 2,717 performances on Broadway alone, it went on to break all other existing world records. This musicalization of Shaw’s classic Pygmalion was named “outstanding musical of the year” by the New York Drama Critics Circle–and by millions of theater goers.

Lerner and Loewe’s next collaboration was on the film adaptation of the Colette novel Gigi, another success filled with songs destined to become standard.

There was more collaborating to come–the film version of the Antoine de Saint-Exupery fable The Little Prince in 1972, but the 1960 Broadway hit Camelot which brought Arthurian England to life for its most shining hour, rang the curtain down on the phenomenon of Lerner and Loewe. Loewe, who had suffered a heart attack in 1958, went into retirement.

In tribute to his long time former partner, Lerner wrote, “There will never be another Fritz. . . . Writing will never again be as much fun . A collaboration as intense as ours inescapably had to be complex. But I loved him more than I understood or misunderstood him, and I know he loved me more than he understood or misunderstood me.”

Lewis

Jerry Lee Lewis (September 29, 1935 – October 28, 2022) was an American pianist, singer and songwriter. Nicknamed “The Killer”, he was described as “rock ‘n’ roll’s first great wild man”.

Liadov

Anatol Konstantinovich Liadov lived from 1855 until 1914. He was the son of a conductor at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, and was trained at the Conservatory, where he was briefly a pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov and later a member of the teaching staff. He was associated with Balakirev and subsequently became a member of Belyayev’s circle, helping, in particular, in the establishment of the publishing-house that Belyayev established for Russian composers.

He was a thoroughly competent musician, conductor and composer, but did not apply himself constantly to work. His failure to supply music for the Dyagilev ballet in Paris in 1910 allowed Stravinsky his first chance with the Ballets russes. His compositions are characteristic of the period in Russian nationalism, when nationalism was joined with technical competence inculcated at the Conservatories.

The best known orchestral compositions by Liadov are the descriptive Russian fairy-tale pieces Kikimora, Baba-Yaga and Volshebnoye ozero (The Enchanted Lake). His last orchestral work was the symphonic poem Skorbnaya pesn. All are very much in the nationalist tradition exemplified by Rimsky-Korsakov.

Liadov wrote a number of shorter piano pieces, including Fugues and a set of Canons, testimony to his contrapuntal ability. Other pieces have characteristic titles, examples of pleasing and well crafted compositions for which there was a ready market.

Liadov wrote a setting of the final scene of Schiller’s Die Braut von Messina (The Bride from Messina) for his Conservatory graduation. Of some 26 songs, eighteen are Children’s Songs.

Liberace

(Walter) (Wladziu Valentino) Liberace, American pianist and showman. Lee, as he was known, was the master of Las Vegas. Hundreds of thousands flock to his museum there (operated by his brother, George) to see Liberace’s garish suits, trademark candelabra, and learn of the myths behind this hugely successful star of television, stage and concerts the world over.

Ligeti

György Ligeti, a composer, was born in 1923 in Transylvania. He studied and later taught at the Budapest Academy of Music. After leaving Hungary in 1956, he worked at the electronics studio in Cologne, then settled in Vienna, where he developed an experimental approach to composition. His first large orchestral work, Apparitions (1958–9), made his name widely known. In Aventures (1962) he uses his own invented language of speech sounds. He has also written a choral requiem, a cello concerto, and music for harpsichord, organ, and wind and string ensembles.

Lipatti

Dinu Lipatti was born in Bucharest and lived from 1917 until 1950. He was a pianist and composer who studied in Paris with Cortot and Boulanger, and after World War 2 established an international reputation as a gifted pianist, especially in the works of Chopin. His compositions include a Symphonie concertante for two pianos and strings, and a concertino for piano and orchestra. His career was cut short when he died of a rare form of cancer.

Liszt

Franz Liszt was born in Raiding, near Doborján, October 22, 1811 and died in Bayreuth, July 31, 1886. He was a Hungarian composer and pianist who was a major influence during the romantic period. Liszt was an outstanding pianist at seven, composed at eight and made concert appearances at nine. In addition to being a piano virtuoso, he was also a critic, conductor, city music director, literary writer and transcriber of the works of other composers. He transcribed Beethoven’s Symphonies for the piano.

Franz Liszt began his career as the outstanding concert pianist of the century, who, along with the prodigious violinist Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840), created the cult of the modern instrumental virtuoso. To show off his phenomenal and unprecedented technique, Liszt composed a great deal of music designed specifically for this purpose, resulting in a vast amount of piano literature laden with dazzling scales, trills, arpeggios, leaps, and other technical marvels. In this vein, Liszt composed a series of virtuosic rhapsodies on Hungarian gypsy melodies, the best-known being the all too familiar Hungarian Rhapsody no. 2. Liszt developed the rhapsody as a form of serious music. This kind of music is worlds apart from the generally more introspective, poetic music of pianist-composer Frédéric Chopin.

Liszt was wildly handsome and hugely talented. He was extremely popular in Paris during the 1830’s. It is said that women actually fainted at his piano recitals. He was the first to position the piano so that its lid reflected the sound and the audience could see his profile as he performed.

Liszt was the first to write a tone poem, which is an extended, single-movement work for orchestra, inspired by paintings, plays, poems or other literary or visual works, and attempting to convey the ideas expressed in those media through music. Such a work is Les Pruludes, based on a poem in which life is expressed as a series of struggles, passions, and mysteries, all serving as a mere prelude to . . .what? The Romantic genre of the symphonic poem, as well as its cousin the concert overture, became very attractive to many later composers, including Saint-Saëns, Tchaikovsky, Dvořák, Sibelius, and Richard Strauss.

Lloyd Webber

British composer Andrew Lloyd Webber is one of the most successful composers of this era with hugely successful commercial hits such as Jesus Christ Superstar, Sunset Boulevard, Cats, Phantom of the Opera and Evita. Cats, the longest-running production in Broadway history, closed after 7,397 performances on June 25, 2000.

Locatelli

Pietro Antonio Locatelli lived from 1695 until 1764. He was born in Bergamo, later moving to Rome, where he might have studied with Corelli, but more probably was a pupil of Valentini. He was an Italian composer of sonatas and concerti, but he was best known as a virtuoso violinist playing mostly in Amsterdam where he settled in 1721. He won a reputation as a virtuoso, performing in Italy, in Bavaria and in Berlin. In 1729 he settled in Amsterdam, where he taught and conducted an amateur orchestra and was able to pursue his wider cultural interests.

Locatelli wrote a number of concerti grossi, following the example of Corelli. The first set, published in Amsterdam in 1720, include twelve fugues. L’arte del violino (The Art of the Violin), published in 1733, contains twelve violin concertos and 24 Caprices, precursors of Paganini’s famous set for unaccompanied violin. A further set of six concertos was published two years later and a set of six, published in 1744, is scored for four violins, two violas and basso continuo. Locatelli combines the Roman style of Corelli with, in his solo concertos, the virtuosity of Vivaldi in Venice.

In his Concerti grossi, works for string orchestra with a smaller group of soloists, Locatelli at first follows the pattern of Corelli, with one or two violas added to Corelli’s solo group of two violins, cello and harpsichord. There is also a Concerto grosso that includes a group of solo wind instruments, in addition to solo violin concertos. Some of these works have programmatic titles. His L’arte del violino (The Art of the Violin) includes 24 Caprices for unaccompanied violin, challenging works that have been regarded by some as foreshadowing the Caprices of Paganini in the following century. Locatelli also published sets of trio sonatas and solo sonatas, including a set of the latter for flute and basso continuo.

Loewe

Frederick “Fritz” Loewe lived from 1904 until 1988. He was a composer, born in Vienna, Austria and at age 13 he was the youngest pianist to solo with the Berlin Symphony. At age 15 he composed Katrina (1919), which sold two million copies of sheet music in Europe. Although he had studied with great European masters of the piano, when he came to the U.S.A. in 1924 he failed as a piano virtuoso. He took up a series of odd jobs–prospecting for gold, professional boxing–but by the mid-1930s he had launched his career as a composer for the musical theater. Not until he teamed up with lyricist Alan Jay Lerner in 1942, however, did he find his true talent; their first big success was Brigadoon (1947) and this was followed by such classic stage and film musical scores as My Fair Lady (1956), Gigi (1958), and Camelot (1960). This last led to their falling-out and they did not collaborate again until in 1973 when they made a stage version of their film musical, Gigi. Their last collaboration was The Little Prince (1974), after which Loewe retired.

If ever I would leave you from Camelot won him a Grammy Award.

Lully

Jean Baptiste Lully lived from about 1632 until 1687 and was considered to be a baroque composer. He was an Italian-born French court composer who molded Italian opera music to suit the French text. He was the first to compose French overtures, which served as model for subsequent composers, especially J. S. Bach. He changed his name from the Italian Giovanni Battista Lulli when he became a French citizen.

Lully was conducting a Te Deum to celebrate Louis XIV’s recovery from illness. He was banging loudly on the floor with a staff when he struck his foot with such force that it developed an abscess, from which the unfortunate Lully died shortly after.

Lunceford

James Melvin Lunceford was born. June 6, 1902, Fulton, Miss., U.S. and died on July 12, 1947, Seaside, Ore. He was an American jazz dance-band leader whose rhythmically appealing, well-disciplined orchestra performed arrangements by trumpeter Sy Oliver and others to popular acclaim from 1934 to 1945 and influenced both swing and post-World War II dance bands.

Lunceford, during his youth, acquired proficiency on all reed instruments, but he seldom played with his band because he preferred to conduct. He taught and organized a student orchestra in a Memphis, Tenn., high school before beginning his professional career as a bandleader in 1929. Practiced showmanship, precise ensembles, and a medium two-beat swing tempo rather than exciting soloists were the Lunceford band’s trademarks. The band’s most popular songs included Organ Grinder’s Swing (1936) and For Dancers Only (1937). The Lunceford band was considered to be on a par with bands led by Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Benny Goodman during the 1930s, and in 1940 the ensemble won a celebrated “battle of the bands” from a field of 28 groups, among them Basie’s, Goodman’s, and Glenn Miller‘s. Arranger Oliver left Lunceford in 1939, and by 1942 the band’s popularity had declined. Following Lunceford’s death while on tour, pianist Edwin Wilcox and saxophonist Joe Thomas led the band for several years.

Lutoslawski

Witold Lutoslawski lived from 1913 until 1994. He was born and studied in Warsaw, winning a distinguished international reputation particularly from the 1950s onwards, a leading composer among a group of creative artists of outstanding ability, remarkable in his handling of forms and textures of great originality.

The genius of Lutoslawski was early evident in his 1938 Symphonic Variations. The years after the war brought a return to more conventional national modes of composition, heard in his Little Suite and Concerto for Orchestra. Later works have allowed a more experimental approach on a broader palette, to be heard in his Funeral Music of 1958, his Second Symphony and the Prelude and Fugue for thirteen string instruments.

Characteristic works for voice and orchestra include Paroles tissées for tenor and chamber orchestra, and Three Poems by Henri Michaux for twenty voices and orchestra.

December 11 ~ On This Day in Music

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Christmas Countdown: Ding Dong! Merrily On High

OCMS 1803 ~ Louis-Hector Berlioz, French composer, conductor, music critic and major force in the development of musical form during the Romantic Era
More information about Berlioz

• 1876 ~ Mieczyslaw Karlowicz, Polish composer and conductor

• 1882 ~ The Bijou Theatre in Boston, MA became the first theatre to be lighted by electricity.

• 1908 ~ Elliot Cook Carter, Jr., American composer

• 1915 ~ Frank Sinatra, American singer songwriter

• 1916 ~ (Damaso) Perez Prado, Piano, organ

• 1926 ~ Willie Mae ‘Big Mama’ Thornton, Blues singer

• 1931 ~ Rita Moreno (Rosita Alverio), Dancer, Academy and Emmy Award-winning actress

• 1934 ~ Curtis Williams, Singer with The Penguins

• 1935 ~ Tom Brumley, Steel guitar with Buck Owens and the Buckaroos, Stone Canyon Band

• 1939 ~ Marlene Dietrich recorded Falling In Love Again on the Decca label.

• 1940 ~ David Gates, Guitarist, keyboard, singer with Bread

• 1944 ~ Brenda Lee (Tarpley), American singer of popular music

• 1944 ~ “The Chesterfield Supper Club” debuted on NBC radio. Perry Como, Jo Stafford and many other stars of the day shared the spotlight on the 15-minute show that aired five nights a week. The show was sponsored by Chesterfield cigarettes.

• 1952 ~ An audience of 70,000 people watched from 31 theatres as Richard Tucker starred in Carmen. The event was the first pay-TV production of an opera. Ticket prices ranged from $1.20 to $7.20.

• 1954 ~ Jermaine Jackson, Singer with The Jackson Five, brother of Michael, Janet, La Toya, Tito, Randy, Marlon and Jackie

• 1964 ~ Musician Sam Cooke died under suspicious circumstances.

• 1973 ~ Karen and Richard Carpenter received a gold record for their single, Top of the World.

• 1982 ~ Toni Basil reached the #1 one position on the pop music charts for the first time, with her single, Mickey.

• 2000 ~ Ruth Martin, a writer whose translations of both popular and obscure operas were widely used in American opera houses, died at the age of 86. Martin collaborated with her husband Thomas Martin in translating the librettos of some of the world’s most famous operas, including Mozart’s Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro, as well as Puccini’s Boheme, and Bizet’s Carmen. Martin and her husband also translated some of the rarest operas, such as Offenbach’s Grand Duchess of Gerolstein, and Dvorák’s Rusalka. The Martins’ translations were marked by their clarity and singability, and despite the increasing use of closed-captioning systems in major opera houses, their translations are still used widely. Martin contributed articles on opera for Opera News, Aria, and Theater Arts. She also served on the boards of the New York Federation of Music Clubs, the Liederkranz Foundation and the National Opera Foundation.

• 2001 ~ Erik Johns, who wrote the libretto for Aaron Copland’s only full-length opera, The Tender Land, died in a fire at his home in Fishkill, N.Y. He was 74. Born Horace Eugene Johnston in Los Angeles, Johns began his career in music as a dancer. He met Copland when he was 19 at a New Year’s Eve party in New York. In 1952 the two began collaborating on an opera based on Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, a book by writer James Agee and photographer Walker Evans that describes the lives of several Southern sharecropper families during the Depression. Copland composed the music and Johns wrote the libretto, or the words. The work was originally commissioned as a television opera by NBC but was subsequently rejected by the network. The New York City Opera performed it at its premiere at City Center in April 1954 in a short two-act version. The two later added a third act.

• 2001 ~ Jose Fajardo, a Cuban flutist who was one of the most influential bandleaders in Latin music, died an aneurysm. He was 82. The Cuban native had emigrated from Cuba in 1961, when he refused a request from the Cuban government to continue a musical tour to other communist countries. During his lengthy career, Fajardo recorded more than 40 albums and performed around the world. He was credited with expanding the audience for charanga, a Cuban musical style that backs a singer with flute, violins, piano, bass and percussion. Fajardo started his first group, Fajardo y sus Estrellas, in the 1940s. He later led three bands by the same name. After moving to the United States, he founded bands in New York and Miami and began performing in new style called pachanga, featuring a slightly more assertive rhythm. Fajardo was featured on “Cuban Masters: Los Originales,” an album of performances by leading Cuban musicians that was released November 2001.

• 2002 ~ Kay Rose, the first woman to win an Academy Award for sound editing, died. She was 80. Rose won the statuette for her work on the 1984 film The River. A native of New York, Rose was recognized in March with a career achievement award from the Cinema Audio Society. The Motion Picture Sound Editors gave her a similar lifetime achievement award in 1993. In October 2002, directors George Lucas and Steven Spielberg endowed the Kay Rose Chair in the Art of Sound and Dialogue Editing at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinema-Television. The chair is the first of its kind in the country. After studying film at Hunter College, she became a civilian film apprentice for the Army Signal Corps during World War II. There, she helped create such training films as How to Erect a Double Apron Barbed Wire Fence and the John Huston documentary Report from the Aleutians. She moved to Hollywood in 1944 and found a job as an assistant to an editor at Universal studios. In 1951, she married film editor Sherman Rose. Together, they produced the 1954 sci-fi cult classic, Target Earth. They later divorced. During her five-decade career, Rose received sound editing credits on such films as The Rose, Ordinary People, On Golden Pond, The Milagro Beanfield War, The Prince of Tides, For the Boys and Speed.

October 4 ~ On This Day in Music

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• 1812 ~ Fanny Perisiani, Italian coloratura soprano

• 1881 ~ The player piano was invented by Edward Leveaux of Sussex, England, who received a patent for it this day. There were many player piano inventions going on throughout the world during this time. Leveaux happened to be the lucky chap who received the patent England was handing out.

• 1929 ~ Leroy Van Dyke, Singer

• 1939 ~ A barber from Canonsburg (near Pittsburgh), PA, who had quite a singing voice, recorded That Old Gang of Mine with the Ted Weems Orchestra. That singer was the feature of the Weems band for many years before going solo as a radio, TV and stage star. You know him as ‘The Incomparable Mr. C.’, Perry Como. His string of hits for RCA Victor spans four decades. He was an NBC mainstay for years and years.

• 1943 ~ Is You is or is You Ain’t My Baby? was the musical question by Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five on this day on Decca Records.

• 1947 ~ James Fielder, Bass with these groups: Buffalo Springfield, Mothers of Invention and Blood, Sweat & Tears

• 1948 ~ Gordon MacRae hosted the premiere of a radio classic. The Railroad Hour debuted on ABC radio. The theme song was I’ve Been Working on the Railroad and the show was sponsored by….America’s Railroads.

• 1949 ~ John Aler, American tenor

• 1959 – Chris Lowe, Keyboards with Pet Shop Boys

• 1966 ~ It was, indeed, a Sunny Day for singer Bobby Hebb, who received a shiny gold record award for his song.

• 1967 ~ Woody (Woodrow Wilson) Guthrie passed away

 

 

• 1970 ~ Janis Joplin died from a drug overdose. She was 27. Joplin, known for her passionate, bluesy, vocal style, was the lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company. She became a superstar with hits like, Down on Me, Pearl (her nickname) and Every Little Piece of My Heart; but Me and Bobby McGee was her only certified top 40 hit. The Bette Midler movie, The Rose, was based on Joplin’s life.

• 1999 ~ Art Farmer passed away

• 2000 ~ International diplomat and Newport Music Festival director David Meredith Evans died at the age of 64.

• 2001 ~ Irmgard Farden Aluli, considered the most prolific female Hawaiian composer since Queen Liliuokalani, died after suffering complications from colon cancer surgery. She was 89. Aluli, affectionately nicknamed “Aunty”, became the first living member to be inducted into the Hawaiian Music Hall of Fame in 1998. In August, the Prince Kuhio Hawaiian Civic Club honored her as a cultural living treasure. She wrote more than 200 songs, including Boy from Laupahoehoe and E maliu Mai. Aluli began performing publicly after graduating from St. Andrew’s Priory in 1929. She was a member of the Annie Kerr Trio in the 1930s. In the late 1960s, Aluli, her daughters and a niece formed the group Puamana.

• 2001 ~ Jazz guitarist John Collins, who played with Nat King Cole for over a decade, died at the age of 83. Collins was born in Montgomery, Ala., and grew up in Chicago. His mother, Georgia Gorham, was a pianist and bandleader. Collins briefly played clarinet before switching to guitar and moving to New York, where he played with prominent jazzmen such as pianist Art Tatum. Collins accompanied singer Billie Holiday and saxophonist Lester Young in the 1940s and played in bands led by Benny Carter and Fletcher Henderson. He served in the Army during World War II, and played in Army bands. Esquire magazine gave Collins its New Star award as best guitarist of 1947, his lone jazz poll honor. Collins’ 14-year association with Cole began in 1951, when he replaced guitarist Oscar Moore. Collins played with Cole until the latter’s death in 1965. Collins went on to tour Europe with his own group. He played occasionally around Southern California in the 1990s but worked mainly as a private teacher.

October 3 ~ On This Day in Music

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• 1912 ~ Gabriel Julian, original pianist of the Bobby Byrne Orchestra, arranger for Glenn Miller and founder of the Alabama Cavaliers Jazz Ensemble

• 1901 ~ The Victor Talking Machine Company was incorporated on this day. After a merger with Radio Corporation of America, RCA-Victor became the leader in phonographs and many of the records played on them. The famous Victrola phonograph logo, with Nipper the dog, and the words “His Master’s Voice”, appeared on all RCA-Victor phonographs and record labels.

• 1938 ~ Eddie (Ray Edward) Cochran, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer in 1987, singer

• 1940 ~ Alan O’Day, Songwriter, singer

• 1941 ~ Chubby Checker (Ernest Evans), American rock-and-roll singer

• 1941 ~ Ruggero Raimondi, Italian bass

• 1945 ~ Stan Kenton and his orchestra recorded Painted Rhythm for Capitol Records.

• 1946 ~ Dennis Day started his own radio show on NBC. Dennis, a popular tenor featured on The Jack Benny Show, played the same naive young bachelor he played on the Benny show. A Day in the Life of Dennis Day aired for five years.

• 1949 ~ Lindsey Buckingham, Guitarist with Fleetwood Mac

• 1954 ~ Stevie Ray Vaughan, Grammy Award-winning blues guitarist with brother Jimmie

• 1962 ~ The play, Stop the World, I Want to Get Off!, opened. Broadway welcomed Anthony Newley to the stage with many standing ovations.

• 1980 ~ ‘The Boss’, Bruce Springsteen, forgot some of the words to Born to Run before an enthusiastic opening night crowd in Ann Arbor, MI.

• 2000 ~ Benjamin Orr, the bass player of the popular 1980s group The Cars who also sang some of the band’s most popular songs, died of pancreatic cancer. He was 53. Orr, born Benjamin Orzechowski in Cleveland, formed The Cars in Boston in 1976 with fellow Ohio native Ric Ocasek. Orr sang lead vocals on several of the band’s hits, including Drive and Just What I Needed. After the band dissolved in 1986, Orr recorded a solo album, “The Lace,” which produced the hit, Stay the Night. Orr had toured with the band Orr, as well as The Voices of Classic Rock and Atlanta-based group Big People. Orr had also reunited with his former Cars mates for a documentary titled, “The Cars Live.” Rhino Home Video plans to release the production in November with part of the proceeds going to the National Pancreas Foundation.

• 2001 ~ Ed K. Smith, a Harrisburg radio icon who founded several stations and worked with entertainers from Bob Hope to Frankie Avalon, died at age 87. Smith founded AM radio station WCMB and WSFM “Sunny 99” in Pennsylvania, and eventually expanded his small radio network to stations as far away as Madison, Wis. Smith was perhaps best-known as the creator of “Junior Town”, a wildly popular variety show at Harrisburg’s Rio Theater. Those appearing on the show included singing cowboys Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, and crooner Frankie Avalon. Smith’s radio career spanned five decades. He began broadcasting while he was still in high school for WHP radio in Harrisburg. During the early 1930s he worked as an actor for serial radio programs broadcast from New York. During World War II, Smith served as a producer for armed services radio and worked with stars including Mickey Rooney, Donald O’Connor and Bob Hope.

October 2 ~ On This Day in Music

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• 1875 ~ Henri Févier, French composer

• 1877 ~ Michel Dimitri Calvocoressi, French music writer

• 1928 ~ This was a busy day at Victor Records Studios in Nashville, TN. DeFord Bailey cut eight masters. Three songs were issued, marking the first studio recording sessions in the place now known as Music City, USA.

• 1935 ~ Peter Frankl, Hungarian-born British pianist

• 1939 ~ Flying Home was recorded by Benny Goodman and his six-man-band for Columbia Records. A chap named Fletcher Henderson tickled the ivories on this classic. It later became a big hit and a signature song for Lionel Hampton, who also played on this original version of the tune.

• 1945 ~ Don McLean, Songwriter, singer

• 1949 ~ Richard Hell (Myers), Musician, bass

• 1950 ~ Michael Rutherford, Guitarist with Mike & The Mechanics

• 1950 ~ Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the rest of the Peanuts Gang

• 1951 ~ Sting (Gordon Sumner), Singer, songwriter with The Police, (1983 UK & US No.1 single ‘Every Breath You Take’, plus 4 other UK No.1 singles). Solo, (1990 UK No.15 single ‘Englishman In New York’ plus over 15 other UK Top 40 singles). As a solo musician and a member of the Police, he received 16 Grammy Awards and has sold over 100 million records.

• 1955 ~ Philip Oakey, Singer with The Human League

• 1955 ~ “Good Eeeeeeevening.” The master of mystery movies, Alfred Hitchcock, presented his brand of suspense to millions of viewers on CBS. The man who put the thrill in thriller would visit viewers each week for ten years with Alfred Hitchcock Presents. And who could forget that theme song (The Funeral March of a Marionette)?

• 1956 ~ Freddie Jackson, Singer, songwriter

• 1971 ~ Tiffany (Tiffany Darwisch), Singer

• 1998 ~ Gene Autry passed away

• 2002 ~ Ruth “Mundy” Schoenfeld Blethen Clayburgh, an arts philanthropist who helped establish the Joffrey Ballet, died at age 92. Clayburgh was one of three benefactors who founded the local arts foundation Patrons of Northwest Civic, Cultural and Charitable Organizations, widely known as PONCHO. She also was instrumental in starting a chapter of Achievement Rewards for College Scientists, a scholarship fund. She was born in Chicago, moved to Seattle in 1930 when she married L. Kenneth Schoenfeld, scion of a furniture store family, and outlived him and two other husbands – William K. Blethen, publisher of The Seattle Times, and John Clayburgh of Los Angeles. She began her arts patronage after marrying Blethen in 1956. That year she helped launch the Joffrey Ballet, which became one of the nation’s leading dance companies and is now based in Chicago. In the company’s early years, she solicited donations of fabric from local shops to be sewn into costumes. On her 90th birthday, Joffrey co-founder Gerald Arpino created a ballet in her honor.

• 2002 ~ Three-time state fiddling champion Tex Grimsley died at the age of 85. Grimsley began playing the fiddle when he was 7 and built his first fiddle at age 14. Despite his later acclaim, Grimsley kept a day job as a safety and claims officer until he retired. Grimsley – whose first name was Marcel – was recognized as the Louisiana State Fiddling Champion in 1977, 1980 and 1982, and was also inducted into the Hall of Master Folk Artists at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches. He continued to perform and teach technique with his wife, also a master fiddler, into the early 1990s. In 1949, Grimsley co-wrote the tune I’m Walking the Dog with his brother Cliff Grimsley, a guitarist. The tune became a hit for country music great Webb Pierce.

• 2016 ~ Neville Marriner, English conductor and violinist (Academy of St Martin in the Fields), died at the age of 92

• 2017 ~ Tom Petty, American classic rock singer (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers), died of an accidental overdose at the age of 66

October 1 ~ On This Day in Music

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•  1865 ~ Paul Dukas, French composer and music critic Paul Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice was featured in the Walt Disney movie Fantasia and Fantasia 2000. More information about Dukas

• 1880 ~ A new director of the United States Marine Corps Band was named. It was fitting that John Philip Sousa have that position. He composed the Marine Corps hymn, Semper Fidelis.

• 1904 ~ Vladimir Horowitz, Russian-born American concert pianist
More information about Horowitz

• 1926 ~ Max Morath, Ragtime pianist

• 1926 ~ Roger Williams (Louis Weertz), Pianist

• 1928 ~ Duke Ellington recorded The Mooche on the Okeh label.

• 1928 ~ Forever, by Ben Pollack and his band, was recorded on Victor Records. In Pollack’s band were two talented young musicians: Benny Goodman and Jack Teagarden.

• 1932 ~ Albert Collins, Grammy Award-winning musician, blues guitarist, songwriter, Blues Hall of Fame in 1989

• 1933 ~ Richard Harris, Actor, singer

• 1935 ~ Julie Andrews, British singer and actress.

• 1943 ~ Herb Fame (Feemster), Singer – Herb of Peaches & Herb

• 1944 ~ Scott McKenzie (Phillip Blondheim), Singer, songwriter

• 1945 ~ Donny Hathaway, Singer, sang with Roberta Flack

• 1956 ~ Albert Von Tilzer, died
More information about Von Tilzer

• 1966 ~ I Love My Dog was released by Cat Stevens. He was 19 years old. Five years later, he recorded such hits as Wild World, Morning Has Broken, Peace Train and Oh Very Young. By 1979, Cat Stevens (born Steven Demitri Georgiou), disenchanted with the music business, converted to the Islamic religion and changed his name to Yusef Islam. He may not have liked the music biz anymore but Cat still loves his dog.

• 2000 ~ Robert Allen, who composed songs performed by Tony Bennett, Johnny Mathis and Billie Holiday, died at the age of 73. Allen wrote his biggest hits with lyricist Al Stillman. The two collaborated on “Chances Are”, and “It’s Not for Me to Say”, which were major hits for Mathis, as well as a series of hits for the group The Four Lads in the mid-1950s. They also wrote “Home for the Holidays”, which has been recorded by dozens of performers, such as Garth Brooks and Andy Williams. On his own, Allen wrote the fight song for Auburn University and soundtrack music for the movies “Lizzie”, ” Enchanted Island”, and “Happy Anniversary.” In 1963, he wrote the music for and produced “Three Billion Millionaires”, a benefit album for the United Nations by Bing Crosby, Judy Garland, Danny Kaye, Sammy Davis, Jr., Jack Benny and Carol Burnett.

• 2018 ~ Charles Aznavour, French singing star, died at the age of 94

September 23: On This Day in Music

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today

• 1870 ~ John Lomax, American folk-song collector and founder of the American Folklore Society at the Library of Congress

• 1923 ~ Jan Savitt and his orchestra recorded 720 in the Books on Decca Records.

• 1926 ~ John (William) Coltrane, American jazz tenor and soprano sax, composer

OCMS 1930 ~ Ray Charles, American soul singer, pianist and songwriter
More information about Charles

• 1935 ~ Les McCann, Singer

• 1940 ~ Paul Williams, Academy Award-winning songwriter

• 1943 ~ Steve Boone, Bass, singer with The Lovin’ Spoonful

• 1943 ~ Julio Iglesias, Singer, Guinness Book of Records for sales of more than 100 million copies of 60 LPs in five languages

• 1945 ~ Ronald Bushy, Drummer with Iron Butterfly

• 1949 ~ Bruce Springsteen ‘The Boss’, American rock singer and songwriter, inducted
into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 15, 1999

• 1959 ~ Lita Ford, Guitarist with The Runaways

• 1967 ~ The Box Tops from Memphis hit #1 with The Letter. Though the song was #1 for four weeks and remained on the charts for 13 weeks. The Box Tops reorganized right after that first hit and never made it to #1 again.

• 1969 ~ The London Daily Mirror became a rumormonger. It printed a story saying that Beatle Paul McCartney was dead. It was the first, but not the last, time that rumor would make the rounds.

• 1971 ~ The Honey Cone scored their second gold record with Stick-Up on the Hot Wax label. It was a follow~up to their #1 smash, Want Ads on June 12, 1971.

• 1987 ~ Bob Fosse passed away. He was an American dancer, musical theatre choreographer, director, screenwriter, film director and actor.

• 2003 ~ Rex Robbins, a Broadway actor who traveled nationally with “Gypsy,” “Hello Dolly!” and “Into the Woods,” died of a subdural aneurysm while visiting relatives. He was 68. Robbins, who lived in Manhattan, had roles in 18 Broadway shows between 1963 and 2000, including Herbie in the 1974 revival of “Gypsy” with Angela Lansbury and Buckingham in “Richard II” with Al Pacino in 1979. He also appeared in films including the original “Shaft,” “The Royal Tenenbaums” and “1776,” and was in more than 300 television commercials.

• 2006 ~ Sir Malcolm Arnold, English composer and professional trumpeter died. His output of works features music in many genres, including a cycle of nine symphonies, numerous concertos, concert works, chamber music, choral music and music for brass band and wind band. He wrote extensively for the theatre, with five ballets specially commissioned by the Royal Ballet, as well as two operas and a musical. He also produced scores for more than a hundred films, among these The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), for which he won an Oscar.

September 21: On This Day in Music

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today

 

• 1737 ~ Francis Hopkinson, American statesman, signer of the Declaration of Independence, first native-born American composer and writer

OCMS 1874 ~ Gustav (Theodore) Holst, British composer and conductor
Read quotes by and about Holst
More information about Holst

• 1912 ~ György Sándor, Hungarian pianist

• 1934 ~ Leonard Cohen, Canadian folk singer, songwriter and poet

• 1941 ~ Dickey Lee (Lipscomb), Singer, songwriter

• 1947 ~ Donald Felder, Guitarist, singer with The Eagles

• 1953 ~ Roger Quilter, British composer, died at the age of 75

• 1956 ~ Robert Mills Delaney, American composer, died at the age of 53

• 1987 ~ Jaco Pastorius, American jazz musician and bass guitarist (Weather Report), died at the age of 35

• 2007 ~ Alice Ghostley, American singer and actress (Bewitched, Designing Women), died at the age of 84

• 2016 ~ John D. Loudermilk, American country singer and songwriter (Tobacco Road), died at the age of 82

September 16: On This Day in Music

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today

• 1685 ~ John Gay, English librettist

OCMS 1887 ~ Nadia Boulanger, French composition teacher
More information about Boulanger

• 1915 ~ Cy Walter, pianist (3’s Company)

• 1920 ~ Enrico Caruso made his last recording for Victor Records in Camden, NJ.

• 1925 ~ Charlie Byrd, Guitarist, played with Stan Getz

• 1925 ~ “B. B.” (Riley B.) King, American blues singer and guitarist, Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987

• 1934 ~ George Chakiris, Academy Award-winning actor, dancer in West Side Story (1961)

• 1938 ~ Tommy Dorsey and his orchestra recorded the swing classic Boogie Woogie for Victor Records.

• 1941 ~ CBS radio debuted The Arkansas Traveler. The program was later renamed The Bob Burns Show. Burns played a very strange musical instrument called the ‘bazooka’. The U.S. Army chose the name to identify its rocket launcher because it looked so much like Burns’ bazooka.

• 1943 ~ Bernie Calvert, Bass with The Hollies and also The Dolphins

• 1944 ~ Betty Kelly, Singer with Martha and the Vandellas

• 1948 ~ Kenny Jones, Drummer with Small Faces, Faces and also The Who

• 1950 ~ David Bellamy, Singer with a duo called The Bellamy Brothers, songwriter

• 1963 – Richard Marx, Singer, songwriter

• 1963 ~ She Loves You was recorded by The Beatles the Swan label. It was the first record recorded by The Beatles; but the second single by the ‘Fab Four’ to hit #1. I Want to Hold Your Hand, was the group’s first #1 song and million seller (on Capitol). It beat She Loves You to the top spot by just a few weeks. Other Beatles hits were also recorded on Capitol (Capitol had rejected She Loves You) and Swan labels; but the Beatles liked variety, so add these record companies to the Beatles list of recording labels: Vee-Jay, MGM, Tollie, United Artists, Atco, E.M.I., Parlaphone and Apple.

• 1964 ~ Shindig premiered on ABC-TV. The program had go-go girls and the biggest rock bands of the day in a dance party environment. Regulars were Jimmie O’Neill and the Shindig Dancers. The first show featured Sam Cooke, The Everly Brothers, The Righteous Brothers, The Wellingtons, Bobby Sherman and comic Alan Sues.

• 1965 ~ San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral became the site of the first concert of sacred music presented by Duke Ellington.

• 1965 ~ The Dean Martin Show debuted on NBC~TV. It was a weekly variety show that continued on the network for nine years. Regulars over the years were The Goldiggers, Ken Lane, The Ding-a-Ling Sisters, Tom Bosley, Dom DeLuise, Nipsey Russell, Rodney Dangerfield and Les Brown and His Band. The theme song? Everybody Loves Somebody.

• 1994 ~ Bernie Lazaroff Leighton, pianist, died at the age of 73

• 2000 ~ Israeli conductor David Shallon died in Tokyo after suffering an asthma attack at the age of 49. Shallon was born in Tel Aviv and studied violin, viola and horn.

• 2000 ~ Valeriu Stelian, a folk singer who inspired anti-communist protesters a decade ago, died of cancer at the age of 47. Shortly after the 1989 anti-communist uprising, Stelian began singing at University Square in downtown Bucharest for students who protesting the presence of former communists in government. Six weeks after the uprising, coal miners descended on Bucharest at the behest of the government and beat up the students. Six people died in the melee and the protest harmed Romania’s image to such a degree that many young Romanians emigrated, believing democracy would never come to the Balkan country. “Oh God, come here to see what has become of people”, went the lyrics of one of Stelian’s songs composed in 1973 and played to film footage of people who had died during the uprising. During his career, Stelian toured the former Soviet Union, Norway, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, France, England and the United States. He also set up some recording studios in Romania.

September 12: On This Day in Music

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today

1789 ~ Franz Xaver Richter died.  He was an Austro-Moravian singer, violinist, composer, conductor and music theoretician who spent most of his life first in Austria and later in Mannheim and in Strasbourg, where he was music director of the cathedral.

• 1888 ~ Maurice (Auguste) Chevalier, French chanteur and actor

• 1891 ~ Adolph Weiss, American composer and bassoonist

• 1924 ~ Ella Mae Morse, Singer, first artist to record for Capitol Records

• 1931 ~ George Jones, ‘The Possum’, singer

• 1940 ~ Tony Bellamy, Guitarist with The Tornados

• 1940 ~ Johnny Long’s orchestra recorded the classic A Shanty in Old Shanty Town for Decca Records.

• 1943 ~ Maria Muldaur (d’Amato), Singer

• 1944 ~ Booker T. Jones, American rock-and-roll musician

• 1944 ~ Barry White, Singer, played piano on Jesse Belvin’s Goodnight My Love in 1955

• 1952 ~ Gerry Beckley, Singer in the Grammy Award-winning (1972) group, America

• 1952 ~ Neil Peart, Drummer with Rush

• 1966 ~ “Hey, hey we’re the Monkees — and we don’t monkey around…” The theme song from the NBC-TV show, The Monkees, kicked off a fun-filled weekly series on this day in 1966. Some 400 aspiring actors had auditioned for the Columbia television series by producer Don Kirschner. Davy Jones, a former English horse racing jockey; Michael Nesmith, a session guitarist; Peter Tork of the Phoenix Singers; and Micky Dolenz, who had appeared in the TV series Circus Boy were picked to be America’s answer to The Beatles. The four were picked to become the fabricated music group – not because they could sing, act or play musical instruments – but because they looked the parts. Dolenz and Jones were actors, Tork and Nesmith had some musical experience. The Monkees were the first made-for-TV rock group. Ironically – or maybe not – The Monkees TV show won an Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series of 1967.

• 1966 ~ The Beatles received a gold record this day for Yellow Submarine.

• 1970 ~ James Taylor’s first single, Fire and Rain, was released. Taylor scored 14 hits on the music charts in the 1970s and 1980s.

• 1980 ~ An in-depth report on the death of Elvis Presley aired on ABC-TV’s 20/20. It raised so many unanswered questions that the official case concerning Elvis’ death was reopened.

• 1993 ~ Herman Nieland, organist/pianist/composer, died at the age of 82

• 2000 ~ Stanley Turrentine, a jazz saxophonist whose hit “Sugar” established him in the popular mainstream and influenced musicians in many other genres, died after suffering a stroke. He was 66. Turrentine played tenor saxophone, and mixed jazz with blues, rock, pop and rhythm and blues. He lived in Fort Washington, Md., outside Washington, D.C. “His impact on jazz was just astonishing,” said his agent, Robin Burgess. “He had a large impact on fusion, electric jazz and organ trio music.” Turrentine grew up in Pittsburgh, surrounded by music. His brother Tommy played trumpet, and the two played together in Pittsburgh while they were still in high school. Turrentine started his professional career playing with Ray Charles and Max Roach. He went solo in the 1960s and scored his biggest hit in 1970 with “Sugar,” which became something of a jazz standard. His blues-influenced riffs brought him commercial success with albums including “Stan ‘The Man’ Turrentine,” “Up at Minton’s,” and “Never Let Me Go.”

• 2003 ~ Johnny Cash, “The Man in Black”, died at the age of 71.
More information about Cash