• 1860 ~ Gustav Mahler, Austrian composer and conductor
More information about Mahler Grammy winner
• 1911 ~ Gian Carlo Menotti, Italian composer and conductor
More information about Menotti
• 1962 ~ Mary Ford (Iris Colleen Summers), Singer with Les Paul
• 1927 ~ Doc (Carl) Severinsen, Bandleader, trumpeter, The Tonight Show Band, The Doc Severinsen Band, played with Charlie Barnet and Tommy Dorsey Orchestras, owner of a trumpet factory
• 1927 ~ Charlie Louvin (Loudermilk), Country singer, joined Grand Ole Opry in 1955
• 1940 ~ Ringo Starr, British rock drummer and singer with The Beatles
• 1944 ~ Warren Entner, Musician, guitarist and singer with The Grass Roots
• 1950 ~ David Hodo, Singer with The Village People
• 1954 ~ Cherry Boone, Singer; daughter of singer Pat Boone, sister of singer Debby Boone
• 1962 ~ Mark White, Rock Musician
• 1962 ~ Orchestra leader David Rose reached the top spot on the popular music charts. The Stripper stayed at the pinnacle of musicdom for one week. Rose’s previous musical success on the charts was in 1944 with Holiday for Strings.
• 2001 ~ Folk singer Fred Neil, who had such hits as Everybody’s Talking, and Candyman, died at the age of 64. Neil started his music career in 1955 when he moved from St. Petersburg to Memphis, Tenn. He released his first single, You Ain’t Treatin’ Me Right/Don’t Put the Blame On Me, two years later. The singer became a cult favorite in New York City’s Greenwich Village folk scene after Roy Orbison released a blues recording of Neil’s Candyman in 1960. Neil released his first solo album, Bleecker & MacDougal, in 1965. After moving back to Florida, Neil took an interest in protecting dolphins. He frequently visited Kathy, the star of the television show Flipper, and wrote a song called The Dolphins, which was released on his 1967 album Fred Neil. In 1970, Neil co-founded the Dolphin Research Project to help curb the capture and exploitation of dolphins worldwide. His last big hit came in 1969 when the film Midnight Cowboy featured singer Harry Nilsson’s version of Neil’s Everybody’s Talking.
• 2002 ~ Dorle Jarmel Soria, a writer and co-founder of the music label Angel Records, died. She was 101. Soria and her husband, Dario Soria, together founded Angel Records, which distributed some of the labels of EMI, a British company. The label released some 500 recordings, including the work of singer Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, pianist Walter Gieseking and conductor Herbert von Karajan. The company was eventually sold by EMI, and the Sorias went on to help found Gian Carlo Menotti’s Festival of Two Worlds in Italy. Before founding Angel, Soria had a career in journalism and worked for Arthur Judson, who was a concert manager for the New York Philharmonic. Soria wrote regularly for several music magazines and had a weekly column for the Carnegie Hall program in the 1960s. She also published a book about the history of the Metropolitan Opera.
• 1785 ~ Pierre Talon, Composer, died at the age of 63
• 1796 ~ Ferdinando Giorgetti, Composer
• 1860 ~ Gustave Charpentier, French composer
• 1862 ~ Vasily Georgiyevich Wrangell, Composer
• 1870 ~ Opera “Die Walküre” by Richard Wagner was produced in Munich
• 1876 ~ John Patton, Trumpeter, died at Little Bighorn
• 1878 ~ Jean Gallon, Composer
• 1884 ~ Hans Rott, Composer, died at the age of 25
• 1886 ~ Nineteen-year-old Arturo Toscanini moved from the cello section to the conductor’s stand of the Rio de Janeiro Orchestra. The maestro conducted Verdi’s opera, Aida, this day.
• 1887 ~ George Abbott, Director: Damn Yankees, The Pajama Game
• 1889 ~ Ethel Glenn Hier, Composer
• 1897 ~ Hans Barth, German pianist and composer
• 1901 ~ Adolf Brunner, Composer
• 1910 ~ The first performance of “The Firebird”, a ballet by Igor Stravinsky, took place in Paris.
• 1938 ~ A Tisket A Tasket by Ella Fitzgerald with Chick Webb hit #1
• 1940 ~ Clint Warwick (Eccles), Musician, bass with The Moody Blues
• 1945 ~ Carley Simon, American Grammy Award-winning singer – Best New Artist in 1971; Academy Award-winning song, Let the River Run, 1988
• 1946 ~ Allen Lanier, Musician, guitarist, keyboards with Blue Oyster Cult
• 1946 ~ Ian McDonald, Musician, instrumentalist with Foreigner
• 1952 ~ “Wish You Were Here” opened at Imperial Theater New York City for 597 performances
• 1955 ~ “Can Can” closed at Shubert Theater New York City after 892 performances
• 1961 ~ Pat Boone spent this day at number one for one last time with Moody River. Boone, a teen heart-throb in the 1950s, had previously walked his way up the music charts, wearing white buck shoes, of course, with these other hits: Ain’t That a Shame, I Almost Lost My Mind, Don’t Forbid Me, Love Letters in the Sand and April Love.
• 1963 ~ George Michael (Yorgos Panayiotou), Singer
• 1966 ~ The Beatles’Paperback Writer, single went #1 & stayed #1 for 2 weeks
• 1967 ~ 400 million watched The Beatles “Our World” TV special
• 1969 ~ The Guess Who from Canada received a gold record for their hit single, These Eyes.
• 1971 ~ Stevie Wonder released Where I’m Coming From
• 1976 ~ Johnny Mercer, American songwriter, died at the age of 66 He wrote the lyrics for a number of award-winning songs including Moon River.
• 1977 ~ Endre Szervanszky, Composer, died at the age of 65
• 1977 ~ Petko Staynov, Composer, died at the age of 80
• 1983 ~ “Evita” closed at Broadway Theater New York City after 1568 performances
• 1987 ~ Boudleaux Bryant, Songwriter for the Everly Brothers, died at the age of 67
• 1990 ~ Peggy Glanville-Hicks, Australian Composer, died at the age of 77
• 2000 ~ Andrew Lloyd Webber’sCats, the longest-running production in Broadway history, closed after 7,397 performances.
• 2000 ~ Arnold Black, a composer and violinist who started a beloved classical music program in the rural Berkshires, died at the age of 77.
• 2002 ~ Nellie Monk, wife and muse of the jazz musician Thelonious Monk, died of a cerebral hemorrhage. She was 80. Born Nellie Smith in St. Petersburg, Fla., she moved to New York with her family and met Thelonious Monk at the age of 16 at a neighborhood basketball court. Throughout their nearly four-decade relationship, Thelonious Monk, who was known as an eccentric absorbed in his work, depended on his wife for financial and emotional support. Nellie Monk worked as a seamstress during World War II, and afterward occasionally made clothes for her husband and others. While she was never her husband’s official manager, she paid musicians, collected money from promoters, and made sure band members had plane tickets. Thelonious Monk wrote a famed ballad, Crepuscule With Nellie, when she was undergoing surgery for a thyroid problem in 1957. The couple was together from about 1947 until Thelonious Monk died in 1982.
• 1920 ~ Michel-Gaston Carraud, Composer, died at the age of 55
• 1936 ~ Erroll Garner (1921) ASCAP Award-winning American jazz pianist
and composer
• 1922 ~ John Veale, Composer
• 1926 ~ Jan Carlstedt, Composer
• 1929 ~ Geoffrey Penwill Parsons, Piano accompanist
• 1929 ~ Nigel Pickering, Guitarist
• 1934 ~ Alfred Bruneau, Composer, died at the age of 77
• 1936 ~ Al Jolson and Ruby Keeler starred in Burlesque on the Lux Radio Theatre.
• 1937 ~ Rolf Riehm, Composer
• 1937 ~ Waylon Jennings, American country music singer, songwriter and guitarist, won the Country Music Association Award in 1974
• 1938 ~ Jean-Claude Eloy, French Composer
• 1940 ~ Willem Frederik Bon, Dutch Composer
• 1941 ~ Harry (Edward) Nilsson III, Singer
• 1944 ~ Terri Gibbs, Singer
• 1945 ~ Rod Argent, English keyboardist for the Zombies
• 1946 ~ Janet Lennon, Singer with the Lennon Sisters
. 1946 ~ Artemios “Demis” Ventouris Roussos (June 15 1946-January 25, 2015) was a Greek singer and performer who had international hit records as a solo performer in the 1970s after having been a member of Aphrodite’s Child, a progressive rock group that also included Vangelis. He has sold over 60 million albums worldwide.
• 1956 ~ Sixteen-year-old John Lennon of the music group, The Quarrymen, met 14-year-old Paul McCartney and invited him to join the group. In a few years, the group became The Beatles.
• 1957 ~ “Ziegfeld Follies of 1957″ closed at Winter Garden NYC after 123 performances
• 1962 ~ Alfred Cortot, French pianist, died at the age of 84
• 1963 ~ Kyu Sakamoto from Kawasaki, Japan, reached the number one spot on the pop music charts with Sukiyaki. The popular song captivated American music buyers and was at the top of the Billboard pop chart for three weeks. In Japan, where Sakamoto was enormously popular, Sukiyaki was known as Ue O Muite Aruko (I Look Up When I Walk). The entertainer met an untimely fate in 1985. Kyu (cue) Sakamoto was one of 520 people who perished in the crash of a Japan Air Lines flight near Tokyo. He was 43 years old.
• 1963 ~ “Sound of Music” closed at Lunt Fontanne Theater NYC after 1443 performances
• 1965 ~ Bob Dylan recorded Like a Rolling Stone
• 1968 ~ Wes Montgomery, Jazz guitarist, died of a heart attack at 48
• 1982 ~ Art (Arthur E) Pepper, American alto saxophonist, died at the age of 56
• 1864 ~ Richard Strauss, German composer and conductor. Strauss wrote in nearly every genre but is best known for his tone poems and operas.
Read quotes by and about Strauss
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• 1874 ~ Richard Stohr, Composer
• 1896 ~ Friedrich Gottlieb Schwencke, Composer, died at the age of 72
• 1899 ~ George Frederick McKay, Composer
• 1900 ~ Charles Swinnerton Heap, Composer, died at the age of 53
• 1904 ~ Emil Frantisek Burian, Composer
• 1904 ~ Clarence “Pinetop” Smith, Jazz pianist and singer of Boogie Woogie Piano
• 1910 ~ Carmine Coppola, Composer and conductor
• 1912 ~ Mukhtar Ashrafi, Composer
• 1913 ~ Risë Stevens (Steenberg), American mezzo-soprano at the New York Metropolitan Opera
• 1924 ~ Théodore Dubois, French organist and composer, died at the age of 86
• 1926 ~ Carlisle Floyd, American opera composer
• 1927 ~ Josef Anton Reidl, Composer
• 1928 ~ King Oliver and his band recorded Tin Roof Blues for Vocalion Records.
• 1939 ~ Wilma Burgess, Country singer
• 1940 ~ Joey Dee (Joseph DiNicola), Singer with Joey Dee and The Starliters
• 1940 ~ The Ink Spots recorded Maybe on Decca Records. By September 1940, the song had climbed to the number two position on the nation’s pop music charts.
• 1946 ~ John Lawton, Singer
• 1949 ~ Hank Williams sang a show-stopper on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. He sang the classic Lovesick Blues, one of his most beloved songs.
• 1951 ~ Bonnie Pointer, Grammy Award-winning singer (with sister Anita) in the Pointer Sisters
• 1955 ~ Marcel Louis Auguste Samuel-Rousseau, Composer, died at the age of 72
• 1961 ~ Roy Orbison was wrapping up a week at number one on the Billboard record chart with Running Scared, his first number one hit. Orbison recorded 23 hits for the pop charts, but only one other song made it to number one: Oh Pretty Woman in 1964. He came close with a number two effort, Crying, number four with Dream Baby and number five with Mean Woman Blues. Orbison was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987 but suffered a fatal heart attack just one year later.
• 1964 ~ The group, Manfred Mann, recorded Do Wah Diddy Diddy
• 1966 ~ Janis Joplin made her first onstage appearance — at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco. She began her professional career at the age of 23 with Big Brother and The Holding Company. The group was a sensation at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. Piece of My Heart was the only hit to chart for the group in 1968. Big Brother and The Holding Company disbanded in 1972, though Joplin continued in a solo career with hits such as Down on Me and Me and Bobby McGee. Janis ‘Pearl’ Joplin died of a heroin overdose in Hollywood in October 1970. The movie The Rose, starring Bette Midler, was inspired by the life of the rock star.
• 1966 ~ (I’m A) Road Runner by Jr Walker & The All-Stars peaked at #20
• 1966 ~ I Am A Rock by Simon and Garfunkel peaked at #3
• 1966 ~ “On A Clear Day You…” closed at Mark Hellinger NYC after 280 performances
• 1966 ~ Paint It, Black by The Rolling Stones peaked at #1
• 1966 ~ “Skyscraper” closed at Lunt Fontanne Theater NYC after 248 performances
• 1966 ~ Sloop John B by The Beach Boys hit #1 in the United Kingdom
• 1969 ~ “The Ballad Of John & Yoko” by The Beatles hit #1 in the United Kingdom
• 1969 ~ David Bowie released Space Oddity
• 1975 ~ Floro Manuel Ugarte, Composer, died at the age of 90
• 1976 ~ Australian band AC/DC began their first headline tour of Britain
• 1976 ~ The Beatles “Rock & Roll Music” LP was released in America
• 1977 ~ Dance & Shake Your Tambourine by Universal Robot Band peaked at #93
• 1977 ~ I Need A Man by Grace Jones peaked at #83
• 1977 ~ I’m Your Boogie Man by KC & Sunshine Band peaked at #1
• 1977 ~ Lonely Boy by Andrew Gold peaked at #7
• 1977 ~ The Pretender by Jackson Browne peaked at #58
• 1990 ~ Clyde McCoy, Jazz trumpeter, died at the age of 86
• 1995 ~ Lovelace Watkins, Singer, died at the age of 58
• 2001 ~ Amalia Mendoza, one of Mexico’s most famous singers of mariachi and ranchera music, died at the age of 78. She was famous for songs such as Echame a mi la Culpa (Put the Blame on Me) and Amarga Navidad (Bitter Christmas). Born in the Michoacan town of San Juan Huetamo in 1923, she was part of a family of noted musicians. Ranchera music is a kind of Mexican country music that overlaps with Mariachi music.
• 2001 ~ Ponn Yinn, a flutist of traditional Cambodian music and dance who survived the Khmer Rouge purge and helped preserve his country’s culture, died of a stroke at the age of 82. Yinn was working under Prince Norodom Sihanouk, then Gen. Lon Nol, for the Classical Symphony of the Army for the Royal Ballet, when the Khmer Rouge overthrew Cambodia’s government in 1975. Khmer Rouge forces found Yinn during their campaign to uncover and eliminate Cambodia’s intellectuals and artists. He begged for his life and claimed to be a steelworker who enjoyed playing the flute. He was allowed to live but was forced to play a makeshift flute nightly into loudspeakers to drown out the screams of people being slaughtered in fields nearby. In 1979, Yinn crossed through minefields and escaped to Thailand. In a border refugee camp, Yinn headed the Khmer Classical Dance Troupe. At a time when Cambodian culture was believed to have been almost eradicated – a result of the Khmer Rouge’s genocide of 1 million to 2 million people, the troupe was discovered by Western visitors. Yinn settled in Long Beach in 1984, where he taught music for more than 20 years and continued to perform.
• 2015 ~ Ornette Coleman died at the age of 85. He was an American jazz saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter and composer. He was one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s.
• 2015 Ron Moody [Ronald Moodnick], British composer, singer and actor (12 Chairs, Oliver!), died at the age of 91
• 1937 ~ Archie Shepp, African-American tenor saxophonist, one of the first improvisers and composers in free jazz, and one of its most eloquent spokesmen.
• 1938 ~ Art Kassel’s orchestra recorded a song for Bluebird Records that may not have been a smash hit, but had a great title: So You Left Me for the Leader of a Swing Band.
• 1941 ~ Bob Dylan, America folk and rock singer, songwriter and guitarist. He moved from folk to rock music in the 1960s, infusing the lyrics of rock and roll, previously concerned mostly with boy-girl romantic innuendo, with the intellectualism of classic literature and poetry. Hailed as the Shakespeare of his generation, Dylan sold more than 58 million albums.
• 1941 ~ Brian Dennis, Composer
• 1941 ~ Konrad Boehmer, Composer
• 1942 ~ Derek Quinn, Guitarist with Freddie and the Dreamers
• 1943 ~ James Levine, British conductor
• 1944 ~ Patti LaBelle (Holt), American soul-rock singer
• 1945 ~ Priscilla Presley, American actress and was wife of Elvis Presley
• 1996 ~ Jacob R Druckman, Composer, died at the age of 67
• 2002 ~ BBC News Online Conductor Colin Davis and The London Symphony were recognized for their successful partnership on the orchestra’s new record label and popular tenor Russell Watson was the big winner at the third Classical Brit awards Thursday, BBC News reports. Davis won the award for Best Male Artist, his recording of Berlioz’s Les Troyens received the Critics’ Choice award and the London Symphony Orchestra’s recording of Vaughan Williams’ “London” Symphony under Richard Hickox was named Best Ensemble/Orchestral Album at the ceremony, which took place in the Royal Albert Hall. In the only award voted for by radio listeners, Best Album, Watson beat Italian opera singer Cecilia Bartoli with his Encore disc. It was the second time Watson won Best Album. He also picked up an award for the biggest selling classical album in the UK. Bartoli won for Female Artist of the Year. The Contemporary Music award was won by Tan Dun, composer of the score for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The Best Male Artist award recognizes Davis’ highly successful Berlioz CD series on the LSO Live label. During 2001, his interpretations of Symphonie Fantastique, La damnation de Faust and Les Troyenswere released to excellent reviews. Les Troyens won Grammys earlier this year for Best Opera and Best Overall Classical Recording. The LSO’s disc of Vaughan Williams’s Symphony No. 2 “A London Symphony” on Chandos was the first recording of the score in its original version.
• 2015 ~ Marcus Belgrave, jazz trumpeter, died. He recorded with a variety of famous musicians, bandleaders, and record labels since the 1950s.
• 1660 ~ Alessandro Scarlatti, Italian composer
More information about Alessandro Scarlatti
• 1895 ~ Lorenz Hart, American lyricist and librettist
More information about Hart
• 1901 ~ Bing Crosby, American actor and singer of popular music
• 1924 ~ Theodore Bikel, Entertainer, singer, actor
• 1938 ~ Ella Fitzgerald recorded one of her biggest hits, A-Tisket, A-Tasket, with Chick Webb’s band. Following Webb’s death, Fitzgerald took over the band for some three years.
• 1960 ~ Harry Belafonte presented his second Carnegie Hall concert in New York City.
• 1965 ~ Ed Sullivan had said he would not have this British rock group on his CBS- TV Sunday night show again. This night, however, Ed softened up — and allowed Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones to make a second appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.
• 1985 ~ Larry Clinton passed away. He was a trumpeter who became a prominent American bandleader and arranger.
• 2001 ~ Robert McKinley “Uncle Bob” Douglas, a renowned mountain fiddler who debuted at the Grand Ole Opry at age 100 last year, died of pneumonia. He was 101. He was scheduled to receive the state’s highest arts award, the Governor’s Folklife Heritage Award, on May 15 at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium. Douglas, a retired steamfitter who never pursued a lucrative commercial career, won the Smithsonian Institution’s national fiddling contest in 1975 and performed at the 1982 World’s Fair in Knoxville.
• 2003 ~ George Wyle, 87, who wrote the theme song to “Gilligan’s Island,” the Christmas classic “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year” and more than 400 other songs, died. “The Ballad of Gilligan’s Island,” which he wrote with the show’s creator and producer, Sherwood Schwartz, became one of the most popular television theme songs. The show debuted on CBS in 1964 and ran until 1967, and its reruns have remained popular. The New York native moved to Los Angeles in 1946 to write and conduct music for “The Alan Young Radio Show.” He went on to work as choral director for television shows including “The Dinah Shore Show,” “The Jerry Lewis Show” and “The Andy Williams Show.” He also handled music for specials by magician David Copperfield and Carol Channing and for the People’s Choice Awards presentations.
. 1452 ~ Leonardo da Vinci, Italian musician, painter, sculptor, engineer, mathematician, scientist and what-not
. 1651 ~ Domenico Gabrieli, Italian composer and cellist
. 1891 ~ Stephen Albert Emery, American composer and pianist, died at the age of 49
1894 ~ Bessie Smith, American blues, jazz and vaudeville singer
More information about Smith
. 1920 ~ Jim Timmens, Grammy Award-winning composer: Aren’t You Glad You’re You in 1995, Best Recording For Children, jazz musician, musical director of New York’s Radio City Music Hall
. 1923 ~ Dr. Lee DeForest’s Phonofilm, the first sound-on-sound film, motion picture, was demonstrated for a by-invitation-only audience at the Rivoli Theatre in New York City. The guests saw The Gavotte, a man and woman dancing to old-time music and The Serenade, four musicians who played on wind, percussion and string instruments.
. 1927 ~ Serge Koussevitsky directed the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the first performance of Frederick Converse’s symphony, Flivver Ten Million, a salute to the ‘Tin Lizzie’ automobile.
. 1930 ~ Herb Pomeroy, Musician: trumpet, teacher at Berklee in Boston, bandleader, directed radio Malaysia Orchestra
. 1933 ~ Roy Clark, Musician, guitar, banjo, CMA Entertainer of the Year in 1973, country singer, Comedian of the Year in 1970, 1971 and 1972
. 1972 ~ Roberta Flack started a six week run at No.1 on the US singles chart with ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’. Written in 1957 by political singer/songwriter Ewan MacColl for Peggy Seeger, who was later to become his wife. At the time the couple were lovers, although MacColl was married to someone else. MacColl is the father of singer/songwriter Kirsty MacColl. The song was featured in the Clint Eastwood film ‘Play Misty For Me.’
. 1732 ~ Franz Joseph Haydn, Austrian composer
Listen to Haydn’s music
More information about Haydn
. 1872 ~ Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev. He was a Russian art critic, patron, ballet impresario and founder of the Ballets Russes.
. 1880 ~ Henryk Wieniawski, Polish violist/composer, died at the age of 44
. 1901 ~ John Stainer died. He was an English composer and organist whose music, though not generally much performed today, was very popular during his lifetime.
. 1922 ~ Richard Kiley, American actor and singer (Kismet, Man of La Mancha, Endless Love)
. 1928 ~ Lefty (William Orville) Frizzell, Country Music Hall of Famer
. 1934 ~ Shirley Jones, Singer, actress
. 1935 ~ Herb Alpert, American trumpeter, bandleader (Tijuana Brass), composer, record company executive: the “A” of A&M Records
. 1937 ~ Phil Harris recorded one of his best-known songs in Los Angeles, CA. That’s What I Like About the South was recorded on a 78 RPM disk. Harris would move to TV stardom and continue as a popular vocalist during the 1950s with such hit songs as The Thing.
. 1943 ~ The show, Away We Go, was renamed. The show opened at the St. James Theatre in New York City and, thanks to the talents of stars like Alfred Drake, Joan Roberts and Howard DeSilva, it became an instant hit. The show ran for 2,248 performances, until 1948. The musical, which has grossed millions of dollars on stage and as a blockbuster movie was initially produced for the sum of $75,000. It is still legendary among musical productions – especially after it was retitled Oklahoma!
. 1944 ~ Rod Allen (Rodney Bainbridge), Bass, singer with The Fortunes
. 1944 ~ Mick Ralphs, Guitarist
. 1945 ~ Al Nichol, Guitarist, keyboards with The Turtles
. 1953 ~ Sean Hopper, Keyboards with Clover and Huey Lewis and The News
. 1959 ~ Angus Young, Guitarist with AC/DC
. 1967 ~ Jimi Hendrix burned his guitar for the first time in a public performance at Finsbury Park in London.
. 1985 ~ Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, long a favorite of country music stars, closed its doors in Nashville, TN.
.1897 ~ First performance of Ludwig van Beethoven‘s Symphony No. 4 in B-flat major, Op. 60. It is a symphony in four movements.
. 1835 ~ Eduard Strauss, Austrian composer who, together with brothers Johann Strauss II and Josef Strauss made up the Strauss musical dynasty. He was the son of Johann Strauss I and Maria Anna Streim.
. 1873 ~ Lee Shubert, Broadway producer. Theaters in NY and LA named after him. He died in 1953
. 1907 ~ Jimmy McPartland, Jazz musician: cornetist; played for the Wolverine Orchestra, Embassy Four; bandleader; played at Newport Jazz Festival with wife, Marian
. 1916 ~ Harry James, American jazz trumpeter and bandleader, married to Betty Grable (second of four wives)
. 1918 ~ Lili Boulanger, composer, died at the age of 24
More about Boulanger
. 1933 ~ Cecil Taylor, American jazz pianist and composer
. 1944 ~ Sly Stone, American soul-rock singer and instrumentalist
. 1956 ~ “My Fair Lady” opened at the Mark Hellinger Theater in New York City for 2,715 performances
. 1959 ~ The musical, No Strings, opened on Broadway at the 54th Street Theatre. Richard Kiley and Diahann Carroll starred in the show. Also featured was the show’s composer in an acting role, singing his own lyrics. The composer was Richard Rodgers.
. 1968 ~ LIFE magazine called Jimi Hendrix, “the most spectacular guitarist in the world.”
. 1987 ~ Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Starlight Express” opened on Broadway. This was the first ever roller-skating musical.
. 1964 ~ My Fair Lady, by Lerner and Loewe, opened on Broadway. It ran for 6-1/2 years before 2,717 audiences. It became, thanks to Rex Harrison and an outstanding cast, the longest-running musical to that time.
. 1970 ~ The musical, Purlie, opened a run of 680 continuous performances on Broadway.
. 2001 ~ Ann Sothern died at the age of 92. She was an actress who starred as the saucy, liberated showgirl in MGM’s “Masie” movies during the 1940s and played single working women on TV in “Private Secretary” and “The Ann Southern Show.”
. 1681 ~ Georg Philipp Telemann, German composer. One of the leading composers of the German Baroque, Georg Philipp Telemann was immensely prolific and highly influential. He wrote an opera at age 12, produced it at school, and sang the lead. His mother put all his instruments away and forbade further music. However, he continued to study and write in secret. He led a remarkably busy life in Hamburg, teaching, composing two cantatas for each Sunday, leading a collegium, and writing immense amounts of additional music. For two centuries musical scholars tended to look down on him by comparison with Bach, but from the midpoint of the twentieth century his reputation soared as musicologists began cataloguing his immense output, uncovering masterpiece after masterpiece.
More information about Telemann
. 1727 ~ Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, German virtuoso harpsichordist, organist, and composer of the late Baroque and early Classical period
. 1804 ~ Johann Strauss, Sr., Austrian composer; “The Father of the Waltz”
Read quotes by and about Strauss
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. 1864 ~ (John Luther) Casey Jones, railroad engineer, subject of The Ballad of Casey Jones, killed in train crash Apr 30, 1900
. 1879 ~ Albert Einstein, Mathematician and enthusiastic amateur violinist
Read quotes by and about Einstein
. 1885 ~ “The Mikado,’ the comic operetta by Gilbert and Sullivan, premiered at the Savoy Theater, London.
. 1912 ~ Les Brown, Bandleader, Les Brown and His Band of Renown
. 1922 ~ Les Baxter, Bandleader
. 1931 ~ Phil Phillips (Baptiste), Singer
. 1933 ~ Quincy Delight Jones, Jr., American jazz composer, trumpeter, bandleader and pianist. He composed film scores, TV show themes; record producer; arranger; 25 Grammys, Grammy’s Trustees Award in 1989, Grammy’s Legends Award in 1990; Musical Director for Mercury Records, then VP; established Qwest Records
. 1934 ~ Shirley Scott, Swinging, blues-oriented organist, recorded mostly with former husband Stanley Turrentine
. 1941 ~ Years before Desi Arnaz would make the song Babalu popular on the I Love Lucy TV show, Xavier Cugat and his orchestra recorded it with Miguelito Valdes doing the vocal. The song was on Columbia Records, as was the Arnaz version years later.
. 1945 ~ Walter Parazaider, Reeds with Chicago
. 1955 ~ Boon Gould, Guitarist with Level 42
. 1958 ~ The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified the first gold record. It was Perry Como’s Catch A Falling Star on RCA Victor Records. The tune became the first to win million-seller certification, though other songs dating as far back as the 1920s may have sold a million records or more. Due to lack of a certification organization like the RIAA, they weren’t awarded the golden platter. The next three gold records that were certified after Perry Como’s million seller were the 45 rpm recordings of He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands by Laurie London, Patricia, an instrumental by the ‘Mambo King’, Perez Prado and Hard Headed Woman by Elvis Presley. The first gold-album certification went to the soundtrack of the motion picture, Oklahoma!, featuring Gordon MacRae. Is there really a gold record inside the wooden frame presented to winners? Those who know say, “No.” Its a gold-leaf veneer of maybe 18 kt. gold and/or it is a record painted gold. Yes, the song earning the award is supposed to be the one making up the gold record, but this is not always the case, according to several artists who have tried to play theirs.
. 1959 ~ Elvis Presley made the album charts, but no one would have known by the title of the disk. For LP Fans Only was the first LP ever issued without the artist’s name to be found anywhere on the cover — front or back.
. 1976 ~ Busby Berkeley, U.S. director and choreographer, died. He was best known for his lavish mass choreography in the films “42nd Street,” “Gold Diggers of 1933” and “Roman Scandals.”
. 1985 ~ Bill Cosby captured four People’s Choice Awards for The Cosby Show. The awards were earned from results of a nationwide Gallup Poll. Barbara Mandrell stunned the audience by announcing that she was pregnant while accepting her second award on the show. Bob Hope won the award as All-Time Entertainer beating Clint Eastwood and Frank Sinatra for the honor.
. 2016 ~ Sir Peter Maxwell Davies died. He was an English composer and conductor.
Grammy winner
1894 ~ Bessie Smith, American blues, 
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