.1814 ~ Adolphe Sax, Belgian instrumentalist, inventor of the saxophone and saxotromba
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.1854 ~ John Phillip Sousa, American bandmaster and composer; “The March King”
Read quotes by and about Sousa
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.1860 ~ Ignace Jan Paderewski, Composer, pianist, Polish patriot, First Premier of Poland (1919), brought white Zinfandel wine grapes to U.S. for the first time
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.1893 ~ Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Russian composer of the late-Romantic period (1812 Overture, Swan Lake), died at the age of 53
.1916 ~ Ray Conniff, American conductor, arranger and composer of popular music, trombonist
.1932 ~ Stonewall Jackson, Singer
.1936 ~ This was the day that big band icon Woody Herman played in his first recording session. He recorded Wintertime Dreams on Decca disc #1056.
.1937 ~ Eugene Pitt, Singer
.1938 ~ P.J. Proby (James Smith), Singer
.1940 ~ Guy Lombardo and the Royal Canadians recorded one of their lesser-known songs for Decca. It was The Moon Fell in the River.
.1941 ~ Doug Sahm, Singer, founded Sir Douglas Quintet
.1943 ~ Mike Clifford, Singer
.1947 ~ George Young, Guitarist with The Easybeats
.1948 ~ Glenn Frey, Songwriter, singer with The Eagles
.1965 ~ Edgard Varèse, French-born composer, died at the age of 81
.2001 ~ John Denman, a clarinetist who was most recently artistic adviser to the Tucson Symphony Orchestra’s pops division, died from complications of esophageal cancer. He was 68. Denman, a native of London, was a principal clarinetist for the orchestra for more than 20 years. Denman also played principal clarinet with the London Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. He taught music at Trinity College in England before coming to teach at the University of Arizona. He joined the Tucson Symphony Orchestra in the late 1970s. In 1984, Denman left the University of Arizona after failing to receive tenure. For the rest of his life, he focused on his performing career. He also designed a small clarinet, the Kinder-Klari, to make practicing easier for young hands. Denman performed and recorded with jazz icon Buddy DeFranco and was a member of several jazz bands.
.2002 ~ Maria Johansson, an organist who became a local legend for singing religious songs and hymns in one of Stockholm’s main squares every day for nearly three decades, died at the age of 84. The daughter of a preacher, Johansson often served homemade sandwiches to the poor during breaks in her daily performance. At one point, she went to work at a bakery to help pay for the sandwiches, her husband said.
.2016 ~ Zoltan Kocsis, Hungarian pianist and conductor, died at the age of 64
I love the new song, Now and Then, but I’m not sure of the implications of manipulating the voices of dead people. It could change history and what we know – or think we know – about people.
In the mid-’70s, long after The Beatles had officially parted ways, John Lennon recorded a series of demos straight to cassette tape in his home in New York City. After his death in 1980, his wife, Yoko Ono, passed the tapes to the remaining Beatles, and in 1995, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison began work on a trio of new Beatles songs born from Lennon’s sketches. You’ve heard a couple of them before—“Real Love” and “Free as a Bird”—but one of them never came to fruition during those sessions. “When we started ‘Now and Then,’ it was very difficult because John was sort of hidden in a way,” said Starr in a documentary about how The Beatles’ final song came together. “In John’s demo tape, the piano was a little hard to hear,” said McCartney. They put together some of the song’s building blocks, including having Harrison record guitar parts for the song. But they couldn’t properly isolate Lennon’s vocals from his piano. So “‘Now and Then’ just kind of languished in a cupboard,” McCartney said.
Fast-forward to 2022. Using machine-learning technology that director Peter Jackson’s team had developed for the 2021 Beatles documentary Get Back, engineers were able to separate Lennon’s voice from his original demo of “Now and Then,” finally allowing the remaining Beatles to finish the track. “It’s like John’s there,” said Ringo of the now-crystalline vocal track. “It’s far out.” Paul and producer Giles Martin (son of Beatles producer George Martin) were then able to assemble John’s 1970s vocals with George’s 1995 guitar lines and Paul and Ringo’s new vocal and instrumental parts, as well as a string arrangement, to complete the song.
Bearing the signatures of all four Beatles, it’s a doleful ballad and a poignant good-bye, with lyrics—“And if you go away, I’ll know you’re there”—that resonate far beyond their initial intentions. Hear The Beatles’ last song alongside their very first—1962’s “Love Me Do”—and watch the trailer for the documentary about how “Now and Then” was made.
Now and Then’s eventful journey to fruition took place over five decades and is the product of conversations and collaborations between the four Beatles that go on to this day.
The long mythologised John Lennon demo was first worked on in February 1995 by Paul, George and Ringo as part of The Beatles Anthology project but it remained unfinished, partly because of the impossible technological challenges involved in working with the vocal John had recorded on tape in the 1970s. For years it looked like the song could never be completed.
But in 2022 there was a stroke of serendipity. A software system developed by Peter Jackson and his team, used throughout the production of the documentary series Get Back, finally opened the way for the uncoupling of John’s vocal from his piano part. As a result, the original recording could be brought to life and worked on anew with contributions from all four Beatles.
This remarkable story of musical archaeology reflects The Beatles’ endless creative curiosity and shared fascination with technology. It marks the completion of the last recording that John, Paul and George and Ringo will get to make together and celebrates the legacy of the foremost and most influential band in popular music history.
.1912 ~ Roy Rogers (Leonard Slye) ‘King of the Cowboys’, singer, married to Dale Evans
.1929 ~ McKinney’s Cotton Pickers picked and fiddled their way to the Victor studios to record Plain Dirt. Among those pickin’ and grinnin’ were luminaries such as Fats Waller (on piano), Benny Carter and Coleman Hawkins.
.1931 ~ Ike Turner, American soul-rock singer, pianist and guitarist, duo with Ike and Tina Turner Revue, owner of a recording studio
.1936 ~ Billy Sherrill, Songwriter, musician: saxophone, record producer, VP/Executive Producer of CBS Nashville
.1941 ~ Art Garfunkel, American folk-rock singer, songwriter and actor, duo ~Simon and Garfunkel
.1942 ~ George M. Cohan passed away at the age of 64. Cohan was a legendary songwriter whose spirited and star~spangled tunes lit up Broadway and will be a part of Americana forever.
.1946 ~ Gram Parsons (Cecil Ingram Connor), Singer with The Byrds, songwriter
.1947 ~ Peter Noone (Peter Blair Denis Bernard Noone), Guitarist, piano, singer, Herman of Herman’s Hermits, actor
.1955 ~ The Vienna State Opera House in Austria formally opened, celebrating the end of 17 years of foreign occupation.
.1956 ~ Art Tatum [Arthur Tatum Jr], American jazz pianist and composer, died at the age of 47
.1959 ~ Bryan Adams, Singer, songwriter
.1960 ~ Johnny Horton, American country and rockabilly singer (The Battle of New Orleans), died at the age of 33
.1963 ~ Andrea McArdle, Actress, singer in Annie
.1977 ~ Guy Lombardo passed away at the age of 75. He was a musical fixture for decades, especially on New Year’s Eve. Guy Lombardo, leader of the Royal Canadians, is fondly remembered for many songs he made famous but his most popular remains Auld Lang Syne.
.1986 ~ Dick Clark registered for an initial public stock offering for his TV production company (DCP). On the registration form, he called his product ‘mind candy’.
.2000 ~ Frances Mercer, a leading model of the 1930s who went on to star in films, radio, television and on Broadway, died at the age of 85. Chosen as one of New York’s most beautiful models while still in her teens, Mercer made her film debut in 1938 playing Ginger Rogers’ rival for James Stewart’s affections in “Vivacious Lady.” In the next two years Mercer made eight more movies, including “The Mad Miss Manton” opposite Barbara Stanwyck. In theater work, she had co starring roles in the Broadway musicals “All the Things You Are” and “Something for the Boys.” Mercer also had her own New York-based radio show, “Sunday Night at Nine.” On TV, Mercer played a vituperative mother-in-law on the soap opera “For Better or Worse” and surgical nurse Ann Talbot in the 1955-1957 syndicated series, “Dr. Hudson’s Secret Journal.”
.2000 ~ Jack O’Brian, a newspaper columnist and Associated Press critic who wrote about television and Broadway gossip, died at the age of 86. O’Brian chronicled soap opera plot twists and celebrities and the quiz show scandals of the 1950s. The cultural figures who met with his approval included Bert Lahr, Perry Como and Walter Cronkite. He took a job as a cub reporter with a Buffalo newspaper and established a reputation for cantankerousness when he skewered the local orchestra’s young accordionists. He joined the AP as its drama and movie critic in 1943. Later, he wrote about television and Broadway for a string of newspapers and a nationally syndicated column. He also hosted a WOR-AM radio show.
.2012 ~ Elliott Carter, American composer, died at the age of 103
.1876 ~ Johannes Brahms’ 1st Symphony in c minor, Op. 68 premiered in Karlsruhe, Grand Duchy of Baden
.1922 ~ Paul Rovsing Olsen, Danish composer, ethnomusicologist and music critic
.1922 ~ Anthony Vazzana, American composer
.1938 ~ Harry Elston, Musician with Friends of Distinction
.1938 ~ You’re a Sweet Little Headache, from the movie “Paris Honeymoon”, was recorded by Bing Crosby on Decca.
.1940 ~ Delbert McClinton, Songwriter, singer
.1947 ~ Mike Smith, Musician, saxophone
.1954 ~ Florence Henderson, who was all of 20 years old, joined with Ezio Pinza and Walter Slezak in “Fanny”. The show lit up Broadway 888 times.
.1962 ~ Bob Dylan gave his first major concert outside of Greenwich Village. The Carnegie Hall solo appearance was not well attended.
.1963 ~ The Beatles played a Royal Command Performance as part of an evening of entertainment for Queen Elizabeth at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London. David Frost was the emcee.
.1984 ~ The Artist Formerly Known as Prince kicked off his fall tour in Detroit. He broke the record for sold-out performances at the 20,000-seat Joe Louis Arena. The previous record-holder was The Artist Still Known as Neil Diamond, in 1983.
.2000 ~ Vernel Fournier, who was a drummer for premier jazz acts such as Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, passed away after suffering an aneurysm. He was 72. Fournier, a New Orleans native, took lessons from a Bourbon Street drummer and as a teen played in New Orleans. He performed with jazz singers including Nancy Wilson and Billy Eckstine. He moved from New York City, where he lived for more than 30 years, to Madison County in 1998.
.2024 ~ Quincy Jones died at the age of 91.
He was an American record producer, songwriter, composer, arranger, and producer. His career spanned 70 years, with 28 Grammy Awards won out of 80 nominations, and a Grammy Legend Award in 1992.
.1587 ~ Samuel Scheidt, German organist and composer
.1801 ~ Vincenzo Bellini, Italian composer
.1911 ~ Vladimir Ussachevsky, Russian-born American composer
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.1933 ~ John Barry, Academy Award~winning composer
.1941 ~ The classic Jerry Gray arrangement of String of Pearls was recorded by the Glenn Miller Orchestra on Bluebird 78s. The recording featured the trumpet of Bobby Hackett.
.1948 ~ Lulu (Marie McDonald McLaughlin Lawrie), Singer. She changed her name to Lulu (and The Luvvers) in Scotland, early in her career. Married to singer Maurice Gibb
.1954 ~ Adam Ant (Stuart Goddard), Singer
.1956 ~ The classic MGM film, The Wizard of Oz, was first seen on television. The film cost CBS $250,000 to show. The movie was shown 18 times between 1956 and 1976, and you can probably catch it again no matter what year it is.
.1957 ~ Sam Phillips, owner of legendary Sun Records in Memphis, TN, released Great Balls of Fire, by Jerry Lee Lewis. Looking carefully at the original label, one will find credit to Lewis and “his pumping piano.”
.1960 ~ James Prime, Keyboards with Deacon Blue
.1960 ~ “The Unsinkable Molly Brown”, opened on Broadway. The play would become an American theater standard and a smashing career launch for Shirley MacLaine.
.1962 ~ Billboard magazine dropped the “Western” from its chart title. The list has been known as Hot Country Singles ever since.
.1972 ~ Singers Carly Simon and James Taylor were married in Carly’s Manhattan apartment. The couple was said to be the highest-paid couple in the world next to Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Carly and ‘Sweet Baby’ James would divorce years later, but they are still good friends.
.1990 ~ Mary Martin died
.2000 ~ Mary Hunter Wolf, one of the first female directors on Broadway died at the age of 95. Wolf made her Broadway debut directing the 1944 production of Horton Foote’s “Only the Heart.” The following year, she directed the first black Broadway musical, “Carib Song.” After directing a string of successful plays and musicals, Wolf was hired as an associate director for Jerome Robbins’ “Peter Pan,” starring Mary Martin. In 1947 Wolf was tapped to direct a new musical “High Button Shoes,” but was dismissed by the show’s producers before rehearsals began. Wolf sued, charging that her contract had been broken because she was a woman. Two years later the New York Supreme Court ruled in her favor. During her third year at Wellesley College, Wolf visited her aunt, author Mary Austin, in Santa Fe, N.M. where she found herself introduced into the circle of D.H Lawrence, Willa Cather and Sinclair Lewis. She soon abandoned her studies to pursue a directing career.
.Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf, Austrian composer and violinist
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.1785 ~ Frederich Kalkbrenner, German-French pianist and composer
.1937 ~ Earl ‘Speedoo’ Carroll, Singer with these groups the Carnations, the Cadillacs and the Coasters
.1938 ~ Jay Black (David Blatt), Singer with Jay and The Americans
.1941 ~ Brian Poole, Singer with Brian Poole & The Tremeloes
.1941 ~ Bruce Welch (Cripps), Guitarist with The Shadows
.1944 ~ Keith Emerson, British rock keyboardist
.1946 ~ Giuseppe Sinopoli, Italian conductor and composer
.1952 ~ Maxine Nightingale, Singer
.1955 ~ The first pop song by Julie London appeared on the charts. London’s smoky and sultry rendition of Cry Me a River stayed on the pop chart for five months, reaching as high as #9. Julie was Mrs. Jack Webb (Dragnet) and Mrs. Bobby Troup (songwriter, trumpeter).
.1958 ~ Billboard magazine introduced a new chart. It ranked the top singles in order, from number 1 to 100. Previously, only 30 records had been on the weekly hit list.
.1963 ~ After giving benefit performances for years, singer Kate Smith presented her first full concert performance to a paying crowd at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
.1968 ~ Another biggie for Stevie Wonder went on sale. For Once in My Life reached #2 on the pop charts on December 28, 1968.
.1974 ~ The first of the former Beatles to try a nationwide concert tour was in Los Angeles, appearing at the Forum. Unfortunately, only half the house was filled to see George Harrison. He stopped touring soon thereafter.
.1985 ~ On this day, for only the second time, a TV soundtrack LP topped the album charts. “Miami Vice” (title track by Jan Hammer) enjoyed a run of 11 (nonconsecutive) weeks. The only other TV soundtrack LP to chart at #1 was Henry Mancini’s “Peter Gunn” in 1959.
Daylight Saving Time 2025 ends for the year so the clock change for the fall takes place this morning at 2 a.m. Daylight Saving Time 2025 seems overdue, but it is the same time each year.
The clock changes on the first Sunday in November. Daylight Saving Time starts on the second Sunday in March each year.
.1830 ~ Frederic Chopin left Warsaw for Paris, never to return. He was presented a cup of Polish soil on this day.
.1902 ~ Eugen Jochum, German conductor
.1921 ~ Jan Tausinger, Rumanian-born Czech violist, conductor and composer
.1923 ~ Victoria de Los Angeles, Spanish soprano
.1926 ~ Lou Donaldson, Alto saxophone, singer
.1937 ~ ‘Whispering’ Bill (James) Anderson, Songwriter, singer
.1940 ~ Barry Sadler, Songwriter, singer
.1944 ~ Keith Emerson, Keyboards with Emerson, Lake & Powell as well as Emerson, Lake & Palmer
.1944 ~ Chris Morris, Guitarist with Paper Lace
.1945 ~ Rick Grech, Bassist, violinist
.1950 ~ Dan Peek, Guitarist, singer with America
.1951 ~ Ronald Bell, Saxophone with Kool & The Gang
.1957 ~ Lyle Lovett, Grammy Award-winning singer, Best Male Country Vocal in 1989
.1959 ~ Eddie MacDonald, Bass with The Alarm
.1962 ~ Rick Allen, Drummer with Def Leppard
.1962 ~ Mags Furuholmen, Keyboards, singer with a-ha
.1968 ~ George Harrison’s soundtrack LP, “Wonderwall”, was released. It was the first solo album by one of The Beatles. The album was also the first on the new Apple label.
.1969 ~ Warner Brothers Records added Faces, to its roster. They fared OK, but even better when lead singer Rod Stewart stepped out to become a superstar on his own. The group’s former label, Mercury, capitalized on the fact by releasing Maggie Mae and three other Faces tunes before Stewart went solo for Warner exclusively.
.1969 ~ The last album of The Beatles reached #1 on the album chart. “Abbey Road” was the top LP for eleven nonconsecutive weeks. The final studio recordings from the group featured two songs; ‘Something’ & ‘Here Comes The Sun’. The cover supposedly contained clues adding to the ‘Paul Is Dead’ phenomenon: Paul is barefoot and the car number plate ‘LMW 281F’ supposedly referred to the fact that McCartney would be 28 if he was still alive. ‘LMW’ was said to stand for ‘Linda McCartney Weeps.’
.1975 ~ Elton John’sIsland Girl hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The song parked itself at the top of the hit heap for 3 weeks.
.1979 ~ Andrew Lloyd Webber & Tim Rice’s musical “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” premiered
Halloween (All Hallow’s Eve) is an ancient celebration dating back to the sixth or seventh centuries. This holiday combines the Druid autumn festival and the Christian celebration of Hallowtide, long associated with witches, ghosts, devils, spirits, magic … and all scary things that go bump in the night.
• 1896 ~ Ethel Waters, American blues and jazz singer
• 1906 ~ Louise Talma, American composer
• 1912 ~ Dale Evans (Frances Butts), Singer, songwriter of Happy Trails to You, actress, wife of ‘King of the Cowboys’ Roy Rogers
• 1922 ~ Illinois (Battiste) Jacquet, Tenor saxophone, played with Lionel Hampton, Cab Calloway, Count Basie
• 1927 ~ Anita Kerr, Pianist, singer, record producer, The Anita Kerr Singers, composer
• 1930 ~ In a rare recording, William ‘Count’ Basie sang with Bennie Moten’s orchestra, Somebody Stole My Gal, on Victor.
• 1934 ~ Tom Paxton, American folk singer, guitarist and songwriter
• 1947 ~ Russ Ballard, Singer, songwriter, guitar with Argent
• 1952 ~ Bernard Edwards, Bass with Chic
• 1953 ~ NBC televised “Carmen” on Opera Theatre in living color. It was the first major opera televised in anything other than black and white.
• 1956 ~ Tony Bowers, Bass with Simply Red
• 1961 ~ Larry Mullen, Grammy Award-winning drummer, with U2
• 1963 ~ Johnny Marr, Guitarist with The Smiths
• 1972 ~ Curtis Mayfield received a gold record for Freddie’s Dead from the movie, Superfly.
• 1984 ~ Caribbean Queen became a gold record for Billy Ocean. It was Ocean’s second hit song and the only one of his 11 hits to become a million-seller. He would have two other #1 songs and a pair of #2 hits, but none as big as Caribbean Queen (No More Love on the Run). Billy’s from Trinidad, and his real name is Leslie Sebastian Charles.
• 1894 ~ Peter Warlock, British composer and writer
• 1939 ~ Grace Slick (Wing), American rock singer and songwriter with Jefferson Airplane
• 1939 ~ Eddie Holland, Songwriter in the writing team of Holland-Dozier-Holland. They were inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990, singer
• 1941 ~ Otis Williams, Singer with The Temptations
• 1941 ~ The song that would become the theme of bandleader Tony Pastor was recorded. It was Blossoms on the Bluebird label. If you don’t remember Blossoms, maybe you remember this one by Pastor: Dance with a Dolly (With a Hole in Her Stocking).
• 1947 ~ Timothy B. Schmit, Bass guitarist, singer with Poco, who joined The Eagles, in 1977, (1977 US No.1 & UK No.8 single ‘Hotel California’, plus 5 US No.1 albums. ‘Greatest Hits 1971-1975’ is the second biggest selling album in the world with sales over 30m).
• 1964 ~ Roy Orbison went gold with his hit single, Oh, Pretty Woman.
• 1971 ~ Pink Floyd released their sixth studio album Meddle in the US. The album features ‘One Of These Days’ and the 23-minute track ‘Echoes’ which took up all of side 2 on the vinyl record. The cover image was photographed by Bob Dowling. The image represents an ear, underwater, collecting waves of sound, represented by ripples in the water.
• 1972 ~ A command performance was given for the Queen of England by Elton John.
• 1976 ~ The group, Chicago, started its second (and final) week at number one on the pop singles charts with If You Leave Me Now. The hottest LP was Stevie Wonder’s “Songs in the Key of Life”. The album was number one for a total of 14 weeks.
• 1984 ~ Barry Manilow opened at Radio City Music Hall, New York. His concerts sold out to the tune of $1.9 million, besting (by $100,000) the record set by Diana Ross.
• 1984 ~ Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi, aka The Blues Brothers (Jake and Elwood), hit the two-million-dollar sales mark with their LP, Briefcase Full of Blues.
• 2000 ~ Steve Allen, the bespectacled, droll comedian who pioneered late-night television with the original “Tonight Show” and wrote more than 4,000 songs and 40 books, passed away. He died at the age of 78 of an apparent heart attack. In addition to starting the “Tonight Show,” Allen starred as the King of Swing in the 1956 movie “The Benny Goodman Story.” He appeared in Broadway shows, on soap operas, wrote newspaper columns, commented on wrestling broadcasts, made 40 record albums, and wrote plays and a television series that featured “guest appearances” by Sigmund Freud, Clarence Darrow and Aristotle. “I’ve known him for almost 60 years. … He is one of the great renaissance figures of today,” comic Art Linkletter said. Said entertainer Dick Clark: “He had a magnificent mind. He was a kind, gentle, warm man. He would be embarrassed for me now, because I can’t put into words the way I felt about this man. I loved him.” His ad-libbing skills became apparent in his early career as a disc jockey. He once interrupted the music to announce: “Sports fans, I have the final score for you on the big game between Harvard and William & Mary. It is: Harvard 14, William 12, Mary 6.” Allen’s most enduring achievement came with the introduction of “The Tonight Show” in 1953. The show began as “Tonight” on the New York NBC station WNBT, then moved to the network on Sept. 27, 1954. Amid the formality of early TV, “Tonight” was a breath of fresh air. The show began with Allen noodling at the piano, playing some of his compositions and commenting wittily on events of the day. “It was tremendous fun to sit there night after night reading questions from the audience and trying to think up funny answers to them; reading angry letters to the editor; introducing the greats of comedy, jazz, Broadway and Hollywood; welcoming new comedians like Shelley Berman, Jonathan Winters, Mort Sahl and Don Adams,” he once said. Allen’s popularity led NBC in 1956 to schedule “The Steve Allen Show” on Sunday evenings opposite “The Ed Sullivan Show” on CBS. A variation of “Tonight,” the prime-time show was notable for its “Man in the Street Interview” featuring new comics Louis Nye (“Hi-ho, Steverino”), Don Knotts, Tom Poston, Pat Harrington and Bill Dana. The show lasted through 1961, the last year was on ABC. Among his TV routines: parodying juvenile rock ‘n’ roll lyrics by reading them as if they were sublime poetry, and “The Question Man,” in which someone would give him an answer and he would guess the question – forerunner to Johnny Carson’s “Karnac.” He wrote great quantities of songs, and several were recorded by pop vocalists. His most popular song was This May Be the Start of Something Big. His books ranged from autobiography (“Hi-Ho, Steverino: My Adventures in the Wonderful Wacky World of TV”), to philosophy (“Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion and Morality,” to murder mystery (“Die Laughing.”) Steve Allen came by his humor naturally; both his parents, Billy Allen and Belle Montrose, were vaudeville comedians. Steve was 18 months old when his father died, and his mother continued touring the circuits as a single.
• 2003 ~ Franco Corelli, a dashing Italian tenor who once starred alongside Maria Callas, died at the age of 82. Corelli rose to operatic stardom in the 1950s and remained there well into the 1970s. “He was the most viscerally thrilling and handsome tenor of the post Second World War generation,” the late Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan once said of Corelli. Born in 1921, Corelli grew up a keen singer but his opera career did not really take off until 1951. He made his debut that year singing Don Jose in Bizet’s “Carmen.” Three years later he appeared alongside Maria Callas in Gaspare Spontini’s “La Vestale” in Milan. The Italian’s fame spread and before long his career took him to Paris, Vienna, London and New York. His versatile voice and good looks made him a popular choice for romantic lead roles.
Happy Halloween 
MaryO'Studio 