Eugene Bertram “Gene” Krupa lived from January 15, 1909 to October 16, 1973. He was an American jazz and big band drummer, actor and composer, known for his highly energetic and flamboyant style.
One of my all-time favorite non-piano songs is Sing Sing Sing. Krupa joined Benny Goodman’s band in 1934, where his featured drum work made him a national celebrity. His tom-tom interludes on their hit “Sing, Sing, Sing” were the first extended drum solos to be recorded commercially.
The Benny Goodman big band playing Sing Sing Sing, featuring Gene Krupa at the end. We get the added benefit of hearing Mr. Harry James play a trumpet solo.
. 1787 ~ Franz Gruber, composer of Silent Night. The song was first performed on Christmas Eve 1818 at St Nicholas parish church in Oberndorf, a village in present-day Austria. A young priest, Father Joseph Mohr, had come to Oberndorf the year before. He had written the lyrics of the song “Stille Nacht” in 1816.
The melody was composed by Franz Xaver Gruber, schoolmaster and organist in the nearby village of Arnsdorf. Before Christmas Eve, Mohr brought the words to Gruber and asked him to compose a melody and guitar accompaniment for the Christmas Eve mass. It is unknown what inspired Mohr to write the lyrics, or what prompted him to create a new carol.
. 1896 ~ Virgil Thomson, American composer, conductor and music critic
Read quotes by and about Thomson
More information about Thomson
. 1924 ~ Paul Desmond, was an American jazz alto saxophonist and composer, best known for the work he did in the Dave Brubeck Quartet and for composing that group’s greatest hit, “Take Five”.
. 1925 ~ Derroll Adams, Country singer, played with Jack Elliott
. 1931 ~ Nat Adderley, Musician, cornet, mellophone, French horn, trumpet, brother of Cannonball Adderley
. 1941 ~ Percy Sledge, Singer
. 1949 ~ Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, by Johnnie Marks, appeared on the music charts and became THE musical hit of the Christmas season. Although Gene Autry’s rendition is the most popular, 80 different versions of the song have been recorded, with nearly 20,000,000 copies sold.
. 1955 ~ Following a summer at the top of the American pop charts, Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley and His Comets became the #1 song in Great Britain.
“Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” is a jazz standard written by composer Duke Ellington. The song was originally entitled “Never No Lament” and was first recorded by Duke Ellington and his orchestra on May 4, 1940.
The Morpheus Chamber Players are Alisha Coleman (clarinet, Gwen Jones (flute), Jeff Kahan (oboe), Wendy Chinn (French horn) and Lisa Eckstein (bassoon). AJ Rios sat in as guest percussionist.
The Pender Concert Supporting Ukraine on April 23 featured Liz Sellers on piano, Brian on harp, and local professional musicians, including woodwind quintet, drums, organ, guitar, flute, penny whistle, singing and violin.
Concert repertoire included: Harp arrangements by Debussy, Piano trio of Jazz/Baroque, Flute Concertino by Chaminade, Woodwind Quintet with music of Duke Ellington, The Widor Toccata Organ Symphony Movement V and an Irish session!
There was no charge for this concert but there was a free will offering taken to support Ukraine through Advance #982450, UMCOR International Disaster Response and Recovery. This fund provides direct assistance to those in Ukraine as well as assistance to Ukrainians fleeing to neighboring countries.
One hundred percent of all Advance contributions go to the designated cause. (The independent charity watchdog, “Charity Watch,” gives UMCOR an “A+” ranking, and includes the UM organization on a highly selective list of charities it recommends when considering how to support the Ukrainian people. Read more)
The United Methodist community in Ukraine, though quite small, is actively engaged in assisting neighbors in need. Global Ministries is in touch with the church’s leadership as well as with church leaders in countries welcoming those who are fleeing from violence in Ukraine.
Click this link and choose UMCOR to send direct aid. In the memo line, put Advance #982450, UMCOR International Disaster Response and Recovery.
Concert repertoire will include:
Harp arrangements by Debussy
Piano trio of Jazz/Baroque
Flute Concertino by Chaminade
Woodwind Quintet with music of Duke Ellington
The Widor Toccata Organ Symphony Movement V
and an Irish session!
• 1863 ~ Opera “The Pearl Fishers” (Les Pêcheurs de Perles) by Bizet was first produced at the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris
• 1907 ~ (Orvon) Gene Autry, ‘The Singing Cowboy’, actor in over 100 cowboy westerns, singer, CMA Hall of Fame and the only person to have 5 Hollywood Walk of Fame stars. They were for film, radio, TV, stage and records.
• 1930 ~ Richard Bonynge, Australian conductor
• 1930 ~ “Ba, ba, ba, boo. I will, ba ba ba boo … marry you!” ‘Der Bingle’, better known as Bing Crosby, America’s premier crooner for decades, married Dixie Lee.
1935 ~ Jerry Lee Lewis, American rock-and-roll singer and pianist
More information about Lewis
• 1947 ~ Dizzy Gillespie presented his first Carnegie Hall concert in New York, adding a sophisticated jazz touch to the famous concert emporium. Diz would become one of the jazz greats of all time. His trademark: Two cheeks pushed out until it looked like his face would explode. But, as the hepcats said, “Man, that guy can blow!”
• 1948 ~ Mark Farner, Guitar: singer with Grand Funk Railroad
• 1953 ~ Danny Thomas, who many now remember as Marlo’s dad and Phil Donahue’s father-in-law, is also remembered for many things that influenced television. At the suggestion of his friend, Desi Arnaz, Thomas negotiated a deal that would allow him to retain ownership rights to his programs, like Make Room for Daddy, which debuted this day on ABC-TV. Later, in 1957, the show would move to CBS under the Desilu/Danny Thomas Productions banner. The rest is, literally, TV history. His success allowed him to give something back to the world, in the form of his philanthropic efforts to build St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital in Memphis. “All I prayed for was a break,” he once told an interviewer, “and I said I would do anything, anything, to pay back the prayer if it could be answered. All I needed was a sign of what to do and I would do it.” And so it was.
• 1962 ~ My Fair Lady closed on this day after a run of 6½ years. At the time, the show held the Broadway record for longest-running musical of all time. 3,750,000 people watched the wonderful show and heard tunes like Wouldn’t it Be Loverly, Show Me, Get Me to the Church on Time, I’m an Ordinary Man, I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face and the Vic Damone/Robert Goulet standard, On the Street Where You Live. The team of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe turned George Bernard Shaw’s play, Pygmalion, into a colorful, musical production. They gave a new life to the rough-around-the-edges, cockney, flower girl; the subject of a bet between Professor Higgins (Just You Wait, ’Enry ’Iggins) and a colleague. The Professor bet that he could turn Eliza Doolittle into a proper lady (The Rain in Spain). With a Little Bit of Luck he did it. Eliza, looking and acting very much like a princess, sang I Could Have Danced All Night. After its Broadway success, My Fair Lady was made into a motion picture (1964) and won seven Academy Awards including Best Picture.
• 1983 ~ On the Great White Way, A Chorus Line became the longest-running show on Broadway, with performance number 3,389. Grease, the rock ’n’ roll production, had been the previous box-office champ since 1980.
• 2001 ~ Dan Cushman, a prolific fiction writer whose 1953 novel “Stay Away, Joe” was made into a movie starring Elvis Presley, died of heart failure. He was 92. The former New York Times book critic wrote dozens of books and was best known for “Stay Away, Joe.” The book’s portrayal of American Indians stirred controversy in Montana, and Indian novelist James Welch vetoed an excerpt for inclusion in “The Last Best Place,” a Montana anthology. In 1998 Cushman received the H.G. Merriam Award for Distinguished Contributions to Montana Literature, joining such notables as Richard Hugo, A.B. Guthrie Jr. and Norman Maclean. Cushman was first paid for his writing when he received $5 a week for reporting news for a newspaper in Big Sandy, Mont. “It was in Big Sandy where I learned all the trouble you can cause by printing all the news of a small town,” Cushman said. He wrote books set in the South Pacific, the Congo and the Yukon, and drew on his colorful life for much of his fiction. Cushman worked as a cowboy, printer, prospector, geologist’s assistant, advertising writer and radio announcer.
• 1834 ~ Hermann Mendel, German music lexicographer
• 1909 ~ Karl Ulrich Schnabel, German pianist and composer
• 1912 ~ Marina Koshetz, who followed her famous Russian diva mother Nina to the opera and concert stage and into the movies, was born. Koshetz was born in Moscow, trained in France and came to the United States as a teenager. She made her debut substituting for her mother Nina Koshetz on radio’s “Kraft Music Hall.” Using her father’s surname, she began appearing in films in the early 1930s as Marina Schubert. Among her early films were “Little Women,” “All the King’s Horses” and “British Agent.”
Marina concentrated more on her voice in the 1940s. Adopting the professional name Marina Koshetz, she went on to sing with the New York Metropolitan Opera and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Koshetz made her Los Angeles recital debut at the old Philharmonic Auditorium in 1947.
• 1921 ~ Buddy (William) Collette, Musician. reeds, piano and composer
• 1939 ~ After becoming a success with Ben Bernie on network radio, Dinah Shore started her own show on the NBC Blue radio network. Dinah sang every Sunday evening. Dinah also had a successful TV career spanning over two decades.
• 1940 ~ Columbia Records cut the prices of its 12-inch classical records. The records were priced to sell at $1. Within two weeks, RCA Victor did the same and ended a record-buying slump brought on by disinterested consumers.
• 1958 ~ Randy DeBarge, Musician, bass, vocals with DeBarge
• 1973 ~ Stevie Wonder came close to losing his life, following a freak auto accident. Wonder, one of Motown’s most popular recording artists, was in a coma for 10 days. Miraculously, he recovered and was back in the recording studio in less than eight weeks.
• 1981 ~ Stevie Nicks’ first solo album, Bella Donna, was released. The lead singer for Fleetwood Mac scored a top-three hit with Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around from the album. Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers were featured on the track. Nicks went on to record a total of 11 hits for the pop-rock charts through 1988.
• 2012 ~ Marvin Hamlisch, American composer and conductor, died at the age of 68
• 2016 ~ Pete Fountain, the famed New Orleans jazz clarinetist whose 60-year career was marked by performances for presidents and a pope, making him an international ambassador for the music and culture of his hometown, died at the age of 86.
• 1789 ~Bastille Day (France) This was the day the French Revolution began — at the fall of the Bastille. It is still celebrated in many countries throughout the world and is a public holiday in France; generally called Bastille Day or Fete National. It is considered the day freedom was born in France.
• 1682 ~ Henry Purcell appointed organist of Chapel Royal, London
More information about Purcell
• 1707 ~ Jacques-Philippe Lamoninary, Composer
• 1788 ~ Johann Gottfried Muthel, Composer, died at the age of 60
• 1803 ~ Esteban Salas y Castro, Composer, died
• 1839 ~ Edward Sydney Smith, Composer
• 1844 ~ Oscar Beringer, Pianist
• 1854 ~ Alexander Alexandrovich Kopilov, Composer
• 1855 ~ Richard Samuel Hughes, Composer
• 1873 ~ Ferdinand David, Dutch violinist and composer, died at the age of 63
• 1883 ~ Alexandru Zirra, Composer
• 1895 ~ Alexander Ewing, Composer, died at the age of 65
• 1901 ~ Gerald Raphael Finzi, British composer
• 1906 ~ Arthur James Bramwell Hutchings, Composer
• 1908 ~ William Mason, Composer, died at the age of 79
• 1910 ~ Peter Stadlen, Pianist, critic
• 1912 ~ Woody (Woodrow Wilson) Guthrie born. He was the ‘father of modern American folk music’, American folk singer, songwriter of more than 1,000 original songs and author and father of folk singer Arlo Guthrie
• 1917 ~ Arthur Leavins, Violinist
• 1922 ~ Peter Andrew Tranchell, Composer
• 1923 ~ Louis Ganne, Composer, died at the age of 61
• 1925 ~ Luis Antonio Escobar, Composer
• 1926 ~ Jan Krenz, Composer
• 1927 ~ Alexander Popov, Bulgarian composer
• 1928 ~ Ole Schmidt, Composer
• 1929 ~ George Alan Dawson, Jazz drummer, teacher
• 1930 ~ Eric Norman Stokes, Composer
• 1930 ~ Polly Bergen, Pop Singer
• 1933 ~ Del (Franklin Delano) Reeves, Singer, guitarist
• 1942 ~ Helen O’Connell and Bob Eberly sang their last duet together as they recorded the famous Brazil with the Jimmy Dorsey band.
• 1945 ~ Peter James Leonard Klatzow, Composer
• 1951 ~ “Courtin’ Time” closed at National Theater New York City after 37 performances
• 1951 ~ “Make a Wish” closed at Winter Garden Theater New York City after 102 performances
• 1952 ~ George Louis Francis Lewis, Composer
• 1956 ~ Jaroslav Ridky, Composer, died at the age of 58
• 1962 ~ Bobby Vinton’s Roses are Red became the top song in the U.S. The song stayed at the top for four weeks and was the first of four #1 hits for Vinton. The others were: Blue Velvet, There! I’ve Said It Again and Mr. Lonely. Roses are Red was also Vinton’s first million-seller. He had two others: I Love How You Love Me (#9 in 1968) and My Melody of Love (#3 in 1974.)
• 1996 ~ “How To Succeed Business…” closed at Richard Rodgers New York City after 548 performances
• 1996 ~ “Thousand Clowns” opened at Criterion Theater New York City for 32 performances
• 2001 ~ Norman Singer, a teacher and director of several music organizations in New York City, died at the age of 80. Singer began his career in the arts in 1948 as a psychology and sociology teacher at the Juilliard School. Dance played a major role in programming when Singer served as executive director of the City Center of Music and Drama from 1968 to 1975. He was the executive director of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center from 1975 until his retirement in 1981.
• 1895 ~ Carl Orff, German composer
More information about Orff
Didn’t quite understand those words?
• 1900 ~ Elsie Evelyn Laye, English singer and actress
• 1900 ~ One of the most famous trademarks in the world, ‘His Master’s Voice’, was registered with the U.S. Patent Office. The logo of the Victor Recording Company, and later, RCA Victor, shows the dog, Nipper, looking into the horn of a gramophone machine.
• 1916 ~ Dick Cary, Jazz musician: trumpet, arranger, first pianist in Louis Armstrong’s All-Stars, 1947 to 1948
• 1919 ~ Rusty Gill, American singer
• 1930 ~ Jacques Klein, Brazilian pianist
• 1933 ~ Jerry Herman, Composer, lyricist for such shows as Hello, Dolly!, La Cage aux Folles, Mame, Dear World, Mack and Mabel
• 1936 ~ Jan Wincenty Hawel, Composer
• 1936 ~ Billie Holiday recorded Billie’s Blues for Okeh Records in New York. Bunny Berigan, Artie Shaw and Cozy Cole supported Holiday, instrumentally, on the track.
• 1937 ~ Sandy Stewart (Galitz), Singer
• 1937 ~ Attilio Brugnoli, Composer, died at the age of 56
• 1980 ~ Jessica Simpson, Pop singer who released her debut hit album “Sweet Kisses” in 1999 in Texas.
• 1982 ~ Maria Jeritza (Jedlicka) Austrian and American singer at the Metropolitan Opera, died
• 1983 ~ Werner Egk, German composer, died at the age of 82
• 2001 ~ James “Chuck” Cuminale, a musician whose quirky rock band Colorblind James Experience won acclaim in England in the late 1980s, was died at the age of 49. Although Cuminale’s band never achieved commercial success, it picked up a cult following in parts of Europe after John Peel, an influential radio personality in London, began playing its music in 1987.
• 2002 ~ Alan Shulman, a professional cellist who composed scores for orchestras and chamber groups, died at the age of 86. Shulman composed A Laurentian Overture, which premiered with the New York Philharmonic in 1952, as well as Cello Concerto and Neo-Classical Theme and Variations for Viola and Piano. Born in Baltimore, Shulman studied at the Peabody Conservatory and trained at the Juilliard School with cellist Felix Salmond and composer Bernard Wagenaar. He was a founding member of the NBC Symphony Orchestra, which was formed in 1937. Shulman performed with the orchestra until 1942, when he joined the United States Maritime Service. He returned to the NBC Symphony in 1948, and continued to perform with the orchestra and its successor until 1957. Shulman formed the Stuyvesant String Quartet with his brother, violist Slyvan Shulman, in 1938, and played with several other chamber ensembles.
• 1651 ~ Marsilio Casentini, Composer, died at the age of 74
• 1637 ~ Giovanni Paulo Colonna, Composer
• 1752 ~ Meingosus Gaelle, Composer
• 1804 ~ Johann Adam Hiller, Composer, died at the age of 75
• 1808 ~ Georg Wenzel Ritter, Composer, died at the age of 60
• 1813 ~ Otto Jahn, German philologist and musicographer
• 1831 ~ Joseph Ignaz Schnabel, Composer, died at the age of 64
• 1837 ~ Valentino Fioravanti, Composer, died at the age of 72
• 1843 ~ David Popper, Composer
• 1843 ~ Jan Malat, Composer
• 1853 ~ Johan Gustaf Emil Sjogren, Composer
• 1858 ~ Eugene Ysaye, Composer
• 1863 ~ Paul Antonin Vidal, Composer
• 1879 ~ Gilbert and Sullivan’s “HMS Pinafore” debuted at Bowery Theater New York City
And from StarTrek: Picard and Worf sing HMS Pinafore in an effort to control a renegade Data.
• 1899 ~ Helen Traubel, Opera singer at the St. Louis Symphony and New York Metropolitan Opera (“The Met’s premier Wagnerian soprano.”)
• 1890 ~ A glittering program of music and ballet, featuring composer Edward Strause, opened the first Madison Square Garden in New York City.
• 1901 ~ Conrad Beck, Composer
• 1903 ~ Huldreich Georg Fruh, Composer
• 1909 ~ Willi Boskovsky, Austrian violinist and conductor
• 1910 ~ Wendelin Weissheimer, Composer, died at the age of 72
• 1916 ~ Francis Lopez, Composer
• 1928 ~ Sergiu Comissiona, Rumanian-born American conductor
• 1929 ~ James Kirtland Randall, Composer
• 1931 ~ Ivo Petric, Composer
• 1934 ~ Lucia Dlugoszewski, Composer
• 1938 ~ Mickie Finn, TV hostess and banjo player
• 1939 ~ Billy ‘Crash’ Craddock, Country singer
• 1940 ~ Vitezslava Kapralova, Composer, died at the age of 25
• 1941 ~ Lamont Dozier, Songwriter
• 1942 ~ Eddie Levert, Singer
• 1945 ~ Ian Matthews (McDonald), Musician, guitarist and singer with Fairport Convention
• 1946 ~ Miloje Milojevic, Composer, died at the age of 61
• 1946 ~ “Annie Get Your Gun” opened at Imperial Theater NYC for 1147 performances
• 1950 ~ James Smith, American singer with the Stylistics
• 1952 ~ Gino Vannelli, Singer, songwriter
• 1956 ~ Be-Bop-A-Lula, by Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps, was released on Capitol Records. Vincent was called Capitol’s answer to Elvis Presley. The tune became Vincent Eugene Craddock’s biggest hit of three (Lotta Lovin’, Dance to the Bop) to make the pop music charts. Vincent died in 1971.
• 1958 ~ Jose Pablo Moncayo Garcia, Composer, died at the age of 45
• 1962 ~ Paula Abdul, Singer
• 1967 ~ The Monterey Pop Festival got underway at the Monterey Fairgrounds in Northern California. Fifty thousand spectators migrated to the site that featured Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Mamas and the Papas and The Who.
• 1969 ~ Karl Hubert Rudolf Schiske, Composer, died at the age of 53
• 1970 ~ Heino Eller, Composer, died at the age of 83
• 1972 ~ The only museum devoted exclusively to jazz music opened. The New York Jazz Museum welcomed visitors for the first time.
• 1978 ~ The film adaptation of Grease, a success on the Broadway stage, premiered in New York City. John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. Several hit songs came out of the motion picture: Grease, by Frankie Valli, You’re the One That I Want and Summer Nights (both sung by Travolta and Newton-John). The first two songs were platinum 2,000,000+ sellers, while the third was a million-seller.
• 1979 ~ Ben Weber, American composer and winner of the Thorne Music Award in 1965, died at the age of 62
• 1980 ~ The movie The Blues Brothers opened in Chicago, IL. John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd, formerly of NBC’s Saturday Night Live, starred. The pair played Jake and Elwood Blues. James Brown, Ray Charles, and Aretha Franklin performed. Cab Calloway also appeared with a rendition of his classic Minnie the Moocher.
• 1990 ~ Eva Turner, British soprano, died
• 1991 ~ Vicky Brown, American singer (Power of Love), died
• 1991 ~ “Fiddler on the Roof” closed at Gershwin Theater NYC after 241 performances
• 1994 ~ Boris Alexandrov, Conductor of the Red Army Song/Dance Ensemble, died at the age of 88
• 1997 ~ Thirtyfirst Music City News Country Awards: Alan Jackson & LeAnn Rimes
• 2000 ~ Richard Dufallo, a conductor known for his energetic performances of contemporary music, died at age 67 of stomach cancer. Dufallo, who lived in Denton, conducted more than 80 major orchestras and festivals in the United States, Canada, and Europe, premiering numerous works by American and European composers, including Karlheinz Stockhausen, Jacob Druckman, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and Krzystof Penderecki. He was a former assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic and worked closely with Leonard Bernstein from 1965 to 1975. He also served as associate conductor of the Buffalo Philharmonic and as artistic director of contemporary music at the Aspen Festival in Colorado. He was married to pianist Pamela Mia Paul.
• 2001 ~ Joe Darion, the lyricist for “Man of La Mancha,” died at the age of 90. “Man of La Mancha” opened in New York in 1965 and ran for 2,328 performances. It won Darion and his composing partner Mitch Leigh a Tony Award for best score. Inspired by Cervantes’s “Don Quixote,” the musical went on to become the third-longest-running Broadway musical of the 1960s. Its music included the popular song The Impossible Dream. In the early 1950s, Darion had three top 10 hits: the Patti Page ballad “Changing Partners,” the Teresa Brewer novelty song Ricochet and Red Buttons’s comedy hit The Ho Ho Song. At the time of his death, Darion was working on a show titled “Oswego.”
• 2017 ~ Jacques Charpentier, French composer, died at the age of 83
• 2019 ~ Franco Zeffirelli, Italian film and opera director (Romeo & Juliet), died at the age of 96
1935 ~ Jerry Lee Lewis, American rock-and-roll singer and pianist
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