musical birthdays

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Tim Buckley was born 76 years ago today
Gregory Hines, actor, singer, dancer and choreographer, was born 77 years ago today
Eric Andersen, folk singer, is 80 years old today
Maceo Parker, funk and soul jazz saxophonist, is 80 years old today
Magic Sam, Chicago bluesman, was born 86 years ago today



Murray Kaufman, professionally known as Murray the K, was born 101 years ago today.

Kaufman was an influential rock and roll impresario and disc jockey of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. During the early days of Beatlemania, he frequently referred to himself as the fifth Beatle.

Kaufman came from a show business family. His mother, Jean, played piano in vaudeville and wrote music and his aunt was a character actress on the stage and in film.

He was a child actor — an extra — in several 1930s Hollywood films. He attended a military boarding school, and later was inducted into the U.S. Army where he arranged entertainment for the troops. Following the war, he put together shows in the Catskills' "Borscht Belt," also doing warm-ups for the headline performers.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, he worked in public relations and as a song plugger, helping to promote tunes like Bob Merrill's "How Much Is That Doggie In The Window."

From there, he worked as a radio producer and co-host at WMCA (and briefly thereafter at WMGM), working with personalities such as Laraine Day on the late night interview program, "Day At Night," and with Eva Gabor.

At the same time, he was doing promotion for several baseball players, including Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays, and his radio beginnings may be attributable to his connection with the New York Giants, whose manager, Leo Durocher, was the husband of Laraine Day.

Kaufman's big break came in 1958 after he moved to WINS-AM to do the all-night show, which he titled, "The Swingin' Soiree." Shortly after his arrival, WINS's high energy star disk jockey, Alan Freed, was indicted for tax evasion and forced off the air.

Though Freed's spot was briefly occupied by Bruce Morrow, who later became known as Cousin Brucie on WABC, Kaufman soon was moved into the 7-11 PM time period and remained there for the next seven years.

He always opened his show with Sinatra and made radio history with his innovative segues, jingles, sound effects, antics and frenetic, creative programming.

Murray the K reached his peak of popularity in the mid-1960s when, as the top-rated radio host in New York City, he became an early and ardent supporter and friend of The Beatles.

When the Beatles came to New York on February 7, 1964, Murray was the first DJ they welcomed into their circle, having heard about him and his Brooklyn Fox shows from American groups such as the Ronettes (sisters Ronnie and Estelle Bennett and their first cousin, Nedra Talley).

The Ronettes met the Beatles in mid-January, 1964, just a few weeks before, when the Harlem-born trio first toured England (the Rolling Stones were the group's opening act). The Beatles and Decca Records (distributor of Philles Records, the Ronettes' U.S. label) jointly threw the Ronettes a welcome party in London.

When the band arrived in New York, Murray was invited by Brian Epstein to spend time with the group, and Murray persuaded his radio station (WINS) to let him broadcast his prime time show from the Beatles' Plaza Hotel suite.

He subsequently accompanied the band to Washington, D.C. for their first U.S. concert, was backstage at their The Ed Sullivan Show premiere and roomed with Beatles guitarist, George Harrison, in Miami, broadcasting his nightly radio shows from his hotel room there.

He came to be referred to as the "Fifth Beatle," a moniker he said he was given either by Harrison during the train ride to the Beatles' first concert in Washington D.C. or by Ringo Starr at a press conference before that concert.

He was invited to the set of A Hard Day's Night in England and made several treks to England during 1964, giving WINS listeners more Beatle exclusives.

Kaufman was often a champion of the much-maligned electric Bob Dylan. He introduced him to boos at a huge Forest Hills Tennis Stadium concert in August, 1965, saying "It's not rock, it's not folk, it's a new thing called Dylan."

Kaufman died of cancer a week after his 60th birthday on February 21, 1982.

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Melissa Manchester is 72 years old today
John Adams, composer with strong roots in minimalism, is 76 years old today
Brian Holland, songwriting member of Holland-Dozier-Holland, is 82 years old today



Gary Clark Jr. is 39 years old today.

Born in Austin, Clark has been called “The Chosen One.” He is best known for his fusion of blues, rock and soul music with elements of hip hop.

Clark has shared the stage with many legends of rock and roll, including Eric Clapton, B. B. King and the Rolling Stones.

Clark began playing guitar at the age of twelve. Then he met promoter Clifford Antone, proprietor of the Austin music club Antone's. Antone's was the launch pad from which Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan redefined blues at the time.

Soon after meeting Clifford, Clark began to play with an array of musical icons, including Jimmie Vaughan. Vaughan and others in the Austin music community helped Clark along his musical path, facilitating his ascent in the Texas rock and roll scene.

Clark sang on the bonus track cover of "I Want You Back" by the Jackson 5 on Sheryl Crow's album 100 Miles from Memphis. He recorded with Alicia Keys on two different songs in New York, and co-wrote the song Fire We Make with Keys, Andrew Wansel and Warren Felder for the album Girl on Fire in 2012.

Clark starred alongside Danny Glover, Stacy Keach and Charles Dutton in John Sayles' 2007 film, Honeydripper.

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Jeff Pevar is 66 years old today
Otis Blackwell was born 92 years ago today
Bill Doggett was born 107 years ago today
Jimmy Wakely, one of the last crooning cowpokes following World War II, was born 109 years ago today


Cher and Sonny

Sonny Bono was born 88 years ago today.

Bono was a recording artist, record producer, actor and politician whose career spanned over three decades.

Born in Detroit to Italian immigrants, Bono began his music career working at Specialty Records where his song "Things You Do to Me" was recorded by Sam Cooke. He went on to work for the record producer, Phil Spector, in the early 1960s as a promotion man, percussionist and "gofer."

One of Bono’s earliest songwriting efforts was "Needles and Pins," which he co-wrote with Jack Nitzsche, another member of Spector's production team. Later in the same decade, he achieved commercial success, along with his then-wife Cher, as part of the singing duo, Sonny and Cher.

Bono wrote, arranged and produced a number of hit records with singles like "I Got You Babe" and "The Beat Goes On," although Cher received more attention as a performer. He also played a major part in Cher's early solo career with recordings such as "Bang Bang" and "You Better Sit Down Kids."

Bono also recorded as a solo artist under the name of Sonny. He had only one hit single as a solo artist, "Laugh At Me." It was released in 1965 and peaked at #10 on the Billboard Hot 100. In live concerts, Bono would sing the song with an introduction of, "I'd like to sing a medley of my hit."

His only other single as a solo artist was a follow-up release, "The Revolution Kind," which reached #70 on the Billboard Hot 100 later that same year. Bono also recorded an unsuccessful Sonny album, Inner Views, in 1967.

Bono continued to work with Cher through the early and mid-1970s starring in a popular television variety show, The Sonny and Cher Show, which ran on CBS from 1971 to 1974. From 1976 to 1977, the couple returned to performing together on The Sonny and Cher Show despite being divorced.

Their last appearance together was on Late Night with David Letterman on November 13, 1987, when they sang, "I Got You Babe."

Bono continued his acting career, doing bit roles on television shows and movies. He entered politics after experiencing great frustration with local government bureaucracy in trying to open a restaurant in Palm Springs, California.

With conservative talk radio host Marshall Gilbert as his campaign manager, Bono placed a successful bid to become the new mayor of Palm Springs. He served four years (1988 to 1992).

Bono was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1994 to represent California's 44th congressional district. He remains the only member of Congress to have scored a #1 pop single on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Author Ronald Kessler, in his book, Inside Congress, wrote that Bono was widely ridiculed and was named one of the "dimmest bulbs" in Congress by The Progressive and that The Washington Post referred to him as the "idiot savant from way beyond the Beltway."

Bono died on January 5, 1998 of injuries sustained when he hit a tree while skiing on the Nevada side of Heavenly Ski Resort near South Lake Tahoe, California. He was 62.

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Gene Pitney was born 83 years ago today


Sarah Lee Guthrie at her first public appearance in New York City, March 29, 2000.
The concert was produced by Harold Leventhal, Woody and Arlo Guthrie’s late manager.

Sarah Lee Guthrie is 44 years old today.

Guthrie is the youngest daughter of folksinger, Arlo Guthrie, and the granddaughter of Woody Guthrie. As a third generation singer/songwriter, Guthrie released her first self-titled album on the family owned and operated Rising Son Records in 2002.

As a child, she was involved in theater and dance. Her interest in music was sparked when she worked as her father's road manager on the 1997 Further Festival tour and saw other members of the tour group having fun at late-night hootenannies.

She picked up an acoustic guitar and started playing as a way to join in on the fun. "I always wrote poems, so it wasn't that far off for me to turn that into songs."

Guthrie said: “My dad was absolutely thrilled, of course, and would teach me stuff every day when we were on the road together. That was a really cool way to get to know my dad, because I'd never known him that way. And that's another thing that made it easy: my dad was so supportive."

Guthrie and husband, Johnny Irion, were married on October 16, 1999 and began performing together as an acoustic duo in the fall of 2000. Their music combined Irion's love of rock and blues with Guthrie's roots of folk and country.

Irion originates from a family of artists. His uncle is author Thomas Steinbeck, his great uncle is author John Steinbeck, and his grandmother, Rubilee Knight, is a classical violinist.

Irion and Guthrie met through a mutual friend (Chris Robinson of the Black Crowes) while the two were working together in Los Angeles. In 1999, Guthrie and Irion joined guitarist Tao Rodríguez-Seeger, grandson of Pete Seeger, and performed as a trio under the name RIG.

Guthrie and Irion have appeared at the Newport Folk Festival, the Philadelphia Folk Festival and Hillside Festival, as well as nationwide theatres, listening rooms, performing art centers and schools. When not performing their own shows, they tour nationally with Arlo Guthrie, opening the show, then joining him onstage in their family concert series

Jeff Tweedy produced Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion’s album, Wassaic Way, released in 2013.

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Irma Thomas is 82 years old today
David Blue was born 82 years ago today


Yoko Ono and John Lennon walk along Central Park West in New York City, April 2, 1973

Yoko Ono is 90 years old today.

A Japanese artist and peace activist, Ono is known for her marriage to John Lennon (1969–1980) and her work in avant-garde art, music and filmmaking.

Ono brought feminism to the forefront in her music (which prefigured New Wave music) and is also known for her philanthropic contributions to arts, peace and AIDS outreach programs. Lennon called her "the most famous unknown artist in the world."

Born in Tokyo in 1933, she was a descendant of an Emperor of Japan. The name "Yoko" means "ocean child.“ Two weeks before she was born, her father was transferred to San Francisco by his employer, the Yokohama Specie Bank. The rest of the family followed soon after, and Yoko met her father when she was two.

In 1940, the family moved to New York City, where Ono's father was working. In 1941, her father was transferred to Hanoi and the family returned to Japan.

Ono was then enrolled in Keimei Gakuen, an exclusive Christian primary school run by the Mitsui family. She remained in Tokyo through the great fire-bombing of March 9, 1945.

During the fire-bombing, she was sheltered with other members of her family in a special bunker in the Azabu district of Tokyo, far from the heavy bombing. After the bombing, Ono went to the Karuizawa mountain resort with members of her family.

Ono has said that she and her family were forced to beg for food while pushing their belongings in a wheelbarrow. It was during this period in her life that Ono says she developed her "aggressive" attitude and understanding of "outsider" status when children taunted her and her brother, who were once well-to-do.

Other stories have her mother bringing a large number of goods with them to the countryside which they bartered for food.

One famous anecdote has her mother bartering a German-made sewing machine for sixty kilograms of rice with which to feed the family. Her father remained in the city and, unbeknownst to them, was believed to have been eventually incarcerated in a prisoner of war camp in China.

In an interview by Democracy Now's Amy Goodman on October 16, 2007, Ono explained, "He was in French Indochina which is Vietnam actually... in Saigon. He was in a concentration camp."

By April, 1946, Gakushuin was reopened and Ono was enrolled. The school, located near the imperial palace, had not been damaged by the war, and Ono found herself a classmate of Akihito, the future emperor of Japan.

She graduated in 1951 and was accepted into the philosophy program of Gakushuin University, the first woman to enter the department. However, after two semesters, she left the school.

Ono's family moved to Scarsdale, New York, after the war. She left Japan to rejoin the family and enrolled in nearby Sarah Lawrence College. While her parents approved of her college choice, they were dismayed at her lifestyle, and, according to Ono, chastised her for befriending people they considered to be "beneath" her.

In spite of this, Ono loved meeting artists, poets and others who represented the "bohemian" freedom she longed for herself. Visiting galleries and art "happenings" in the city whetted her desire to publicly display her own artistic endeavors.

La Monte Young, her first important contact in the New York art world, helped Ono start her career by using her Chambers Street loft in Tribeca as a performance space. At one performance, Ono set a painting on fire. Fortunately, John Cage had advised her to treat the paper with flame retardant.

On March 20, 1969, Ono married John Lennon. Two versions exist of how Lennon met Ono.

According to the first, on Nov. 9, 1966, Lennon went to the Indica Gallery in London, where Ono was preparing her conceptual art exhibit, and they were introduced by gallery owner, John Dunbar. Lennon was intrigued by Ono's "Hammer A Nail.” Patrons hammered a nail into a wooden board, creating the art piece.

Although the exhibition had not yet begun, Lennon wanted to hammer a nail into the clean board, but Ono stopped him. Dunbar asked her, "Don't you know who this is? He's a millionaire! He might buy it."

Ono had supposedly not heard of The Beatles, but relented on condition that Lennon pay her five shillings, to which Lennon replied, "I'll give you an imaginary five shillings and hammer an imaginary nail in."

The second version, told by McCartney, is that in late 1965, Ono was in London compiling original musical scores for a book John Cage was working on called Notations.

McCartney declined to give her any of his own manuscripts, but suggested that Lennon might oblige. When asked, Lennon gave Ono the original handwritten lyrics to "The Word."

Ono began telephoning and calling at Lennon's home, and when his wife asked for an explanation, he explained that Ono was only trying to obtain money for her "avant-garde bullshit."

In May, 1968, while his wife Cynthia was on holiday in Greece, Lennon invited Ono to visit. They spent the night recording what would become the Two Virgins album, after which, he said, they "made love at dawn." When Lennon's wife returned home, she found Ono wearing her bathrobe and drinking tea with Lennon who simply said, "Oh, hi."

Ono became pregnant in 1968 and miscarried a male child they named John Ono Lennon II on November 21, 1968, a few weeks after Lennon's divorce from Cynthia was granted.

During Lennon's last two years in The Beatles, he and Ono began public protests against the Vietnam War. They were married in Gibraltar on March 20, 1969, and spent their honeymoon in Amsterdam campaigning with a week-long Bed-In for peace.

The couple planned another Bed-In in the United States, but were denied entry, so held one instead at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, where they recorded, "Give Peace a Chance." They often combined advocacy with performance art, as in their "Bagism," first introduced during a Vienna press conference. Lennon detailed this period in The Beatles' song, "The Ballad of John and Yoko."

Ono and Lennon collaborated on many albums, beginning in 1968 when Lennon was still a Beatle, with Unfinished Music No.1: Two Virgins, an album of experimental electronic music. That same year, the couple contributed an experimental piece to The White Album called "Revolution 9."

Ono also contributed backing vocals (on "Birthday"), and one line of lead vocals (on "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill") to The White Album.

Many of the couple's later albums were released under the name the Plastic Ono Band. The couple also appeared together at concerts. When Lennon was invited to play with Frank Zappa at the Fillmore on June 5, 1971, Ono joined in, as well.

In 1969, the Plastic Ono Band's first album, Live Peace in Toronto 1969, was recorded during the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival Festival. In addition to Lennon and Ono, this first incarnation of the group consisted of guitarist, Eric Clapton, bass player, Klaus Voormann, and drummer, Alan White.

Both the press and the public were critical of Ono. She was blamed for the breakup of The Beatles and repeatedly criticized for her influence over Lennon and his music. Her experimental art was not popularly understood. After the Beatles disbanded, Lennon and Ono cohabited in London and then in New York.

Their relationship was strained by the threat of deportation Lennon faced (due to drug charges filed in Britain), and Ono's separation from her daughter.

The couple separated in 1973 and the two began living separate lives, Ono pursuing her career in New York and Lennon living in Los Angeles with personal assistant, May Pang, in a period commonly referred to as his "lost weekend."

In 1975, the couple reconciled. Their son, Sean, was born on Lennon's 35th birthday, October 9, 1975. After Sean's birth, the couple lived in relative seclusion at the Dakota in New York. Sean has since followed in his parents' footsteps with a musical career, doing solo work and also forming a band, The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger.

John Lennon retired from music to become a househusband caring for their child, until shortly before his murder in December, 1980, which Ono witnessed at close range. Ono funded the construction and maintenance of the Strawberry Fields memorial in New York City's Central Park, across from where they lived and Lennon died.

It was officially dedicated on October 9, 1985, what would have been his 45th birthday.

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Lou Christie is 80 years old today


Smokey Robinson and the Miracles at Leo's Casino, Cleveland, Ohio, circa 1970s

Smokey Robinson is 83 years old today.

An R&B singer-songwriter, record producer and former record executive, Robinson was the founder and front man of the popular Motown vocal group, The Miracles, for which he also served as the group's chief songwriter and producer.

Robinson led the group from its 1955 origins as The Five Chimes until 1972, when he announced his retirement from the stage to focus on his role as Motown's vice president.

However, Robinson returned to the music industry as a solo artist the following year, later having solo hits such as "Baby That's Backatcha," "A Quiet Storm," "The Agony and the Ecstasy," "Cruisin'," "Being With You" and "Just to See Her."

Following the sale of Motown Records in 1988, Robinson left the label in 1990.

Born in Detroit and raised in the city's North End section, at one point Robinson and Diana Ross were next-door neighbors. He said he has known Ross since she was eight years old. His interest in music started after hearing the groups, Nolan Strong & The Diablos and Billy Ward and His Dominoes, on the radio as a child. Robinson later listed Strong, a Detroit native, as a powerful vocal influence during an interview.

In 1955, he formed the first lineup of what became The Miracles with childhood friend, Ronald White, and classmate, Pete Moore. Two years later, in 1957, they were renamed The Matadors and included Bobby Rogers. Another member, Emerson Rogers, was replaced by Bobby's cousin, Claudette Rogers.

The group's guitarist, Marv Tarplin, joined them sometime in 1958. The Matadors began touring Detroit venues around this time. They later changed their name to the Miracles, taking inspiration from the name, "Miracletones."

In August, 1957, Robinson and The Miracles met songwriter Berry Gordy after a failed audition for Brunswick Records. Gordy was impressed with Robinson's vocals and even more impressed with Robinson's ambitious songwriting. With Gordy’s help, the Miracles released their first single, "Got a Job," an answer song to the Silhouettes' hit single, "Get a Job," on End Records.

During this time, Robinson attended college, starting classes in January, 1959, studying electrical engineering. However, after the Miracles released their first record, Robinson dropped out after only two months.

After a number of failures and difficulties with money, Robinson suggested to Gordy to start his own label, which Gordy agreed. Following the forming of Tamla Records, later reincorporated as Motown, the Miracles became one of the first acts signed to the label.

In late 1960, the group recorded their first hit single, "Shop Around," which became Motown's first million-selling single. Between 1960 and 1970, Robinson would produce 26 Top 40 hits with the Miracles as lead singer, chief songwriter and producer.

They included several Top 10 hits such as "You've Really Got a Hold on Me," "Mickey's Monkey," "I Second That Emotion," "Baby Baby Don't Cry" and the group's only #1 hit during their Robinson years, "Tears of a Clown."

Other notable hits such as "Ooo Baby Baby," "Going to a Go-Go," "The Tracks of My Tears," "(Come Round Here) I'm The One You Need," "The Love I Saw in You Was Just a Mirage" and "More Love" peaked in the Top 20.

In 1965, the Miracles was the first Motown group to adapt a name change when they were listed as Smokey Robinson & The Miracles on the cover of their 1965 album, also titled, Going to a Go-Go. Their name change would be confirmed on singles after 1966.

Between 1962 and 1966, Robinson would also be one of the in-demand songwriters and producers for Motown. He penned hits including "The One Who Really Loves You," "You Beat Me to the Punch" and "My Guy" for Mary Wells; "The Way You Do The Things You Do," "My Girl," "Since I Lost My Baby" and "Get Ready" for The Temptations.

Also "When I'm Gone" and "Operator" for Brenda Holloway; "Don't Mess With Bill," "The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game" and "My Baby Must Be a Magician" for The Marvelettes; and "I'll Be Doggone" and "Ain't That Peculiar" for Marvin Gaye.

In December, 2006, Robinson was one of five Kennedy Center honorees, along with Dolly Parton, Zubin Mehta, Steven Spielberg and Andrew Lloyd Webber.

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J. Geils was born 77 years ago today
Buffy Sainte-Marie is 82 years old today
Nancy Wilson was born 86 years ago today



Walter Becker, member of Steely Dan, was born 73 years ago today.

A musician, songwriter and record producer, Becker was the co-founder, guitarist, bassist and co-songwriter in Steely Dan. He met his future songwriting partner, Donald Fagen, while studying at Bard College.

After a brief period of activity in New York, the two relocated to California in 1971 and formed the nucleus of Steely Dan, who enjoyed a critically and commercially successful ten-year career. Following the group's disbanding, Becker relocated to Hawaii and reduced his musical activity, working primarily as a record producer.

Becker and Fagen reformed Steely Dan in 1993 and remained active until the end of Becker’s life. Notable was their 2000 album, Two Against Nature.

Becker also released two solo albums, 1994's, 11 Tracks of Whack, and 2008's, Circus Money.

Born in Queens, New York City, Becker grew up in Westchester County and Forest Hills, Queens. He graduated from Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan in the class of 1967. After starting out on saxophone, he switched to guitar and received instruction in blues technique from neighbor, Randy Wolfe.

While at Bard, Becker and Fagen formed and played in a number of groups, including The Leather Canary, which also included their fellow student, Chevy Chase, on drums. At the time, Chase called the group "a bad jazz band."

Becker left the school in 1969 prior to completing his degree and moved with Fagen to Brooklyn, where the two began to build a career as a songwriting duo.

This period included a stint with Jay and the Americans under pseudonyms and the composition of the soundtrack to You've Got to Walk It Like You Talk It or You'll Lose That Beat, a Richard Pryor film released in 1971.

Later in 1971, the duo moved to California and formed Steely Dan. Their initial lineup included guitarists Denny Dias, Jeff "Skunk" Baxter and drummer Jim Hodder, all of whom the two had met prior to their relocation.

With Becker acting initially as bassist, the group spent the following three years touring and recording before becoming a studio-centered project anchored around Becker and Fagen's songwriting in 1974.

In addition to co-writing all of the band's material, Becker played bass and/or guitar on many of the band's tracks, as well as providing occasional backing vocals and arrangements. Despite the group's success, particularly surrounding Aja in 1977, Becker suffered from numerous personal setbacks during this period, including addiction to drugs.

After the duo returned to New York in 1978, Becker's girlfriend, Karen Stanley, died of a drug overdose, resulting in a large wrongful death suit volleyed against him. Not long after, Becker was hit by a Manhattan taxi while crossing the street and forced to walk with crutches.

His personal exhaustion was exacerbated by commercial pressures and the complicated recording process surrounding the final release of Steely Dan's Gaucho in 1980. This led to the duo suspending their partnership in June, 1981.

Following Steely Dan's breakup, Becker moved to the Hawaiian island of Maui and ceased using drugs. Shortly thereafter, he began a career as a record producer, overseeing records by Rickie Lee Jones, Michael Franks, and Fra Lippo Lippi, including the latter's 1987 Norwegian single, "Angel."

Their partnership resumed in 1993 when they undertook a new tour as Steely Dan, their first in 19 years. Becker also produced Fagen's album, Kamakiriad, in 1993. In turn, Fagen co-produced Becker's belated solo debut album, 11 Tracks of Whack, in 1994.

Steely Dan continued touring, and their work on new material resulted in their first studio album in two decades, Two Against Nature, released in 2000. Becker’s second solo album, Circus Money, was released on June 10, 2008, fourteen years after its predecessor.

The album prominently featured Becker's bass playing, performances by much of the Steely Dan backing band, and work by producer Larry Klein, who received co-composition credits on all but one song. The songs were heavily inspired by reggae and other Jamaican music.

On September 3, 2017, Becker died of esophageal cancer at his home in New York City.

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Mary Chapin Carpenter is 65 years old today
Larry Campbell, multi-instrumentalist, is 68 years old today



Nina Simone was born 90 years ago today.

A singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger and civil rights activist widely associated with jazz, Simone became a classical pianist while working in a broad range of styles including classical, jazz, blues, folk, R&B, gospel and pop.

Born the sixth child of a preacher's family in North Carolina, Simone aspired to be a concert pianist. Her musical path changed direction after she was denied a scholarship to the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, despite a well-received audition.

Simone was later told by someone working at Curtis that she was rejected because she was black. When she began playing in a small club in Philadelphia to fund her continuing musical education and become a classical pianist she was required to sing as well.

She was approached for a recording by Bethlehem Records, and her rendering of "I Loves You Porgy" was a hit in the United States in 1958. Over the length of her career, Simone recorded more than 40 albums, mostly between 1958 — when she made her debut with Little Girl Blue — and 1974.

Her musical style arose from a fusion of gospel and pop songs with classical music, in particular with influences from her first inspiration, Johann Sebastian Bach, and accompanied with her expressive jazz-like singing in her characteristic contralto.

She injected as much of her classical background into her music as possible to give it more depth and quality, as she felt that pop music was inferior to classical.

Her intuitive grasp on the audience–performer relationship was gained from a unique background of playing piano accompaniment for church revivals and sermons regularly from the early age of six years old.

After 20 years of performing, she became involved in the civil rights movement and the direction of her life shifted once again. Simone's music was highly influential in the fight for equal rights in the U.S.

In later years, she lived abroad, finally settling in France in 1992. Simone died in April, 2003 at age 70.

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Bobby Hendricks was born 85 years ago today
Ernie K-Doe as born 90 years ago today



William Oliver Swofford — better known as Oliver — was born 78 years ago today.

Born in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, Swofford began singing as an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the early 1960s. He was a member of two music groups — The Virginians and, later, The Good Earth — and was then known as Bill Swofford.

His clean-cut good looks and soaring baritone voice were the perfect vehicle for the uptempo single entitled, "Good Morning Starshine," from the pop/rock musical "Hair," which reached #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in July, 1969 and sold over a million copies.

Later that fall, a softer, ballad single entitled "Jean" (the theme from the Oscar-winning film, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie) bested his previous effort by one, reaching #2 on the Hot 100 and #1 on the Billboard Easy Listening chart.

Written by poet Rod McKuen, "Jean" also sold over a million copies, garnering Oliver his second gold disc in as many months. Performing both hits on a number of TV variety shows and specials in the late 1960s, including The Ed Sullivan Show, helped both songs.

Oliver had more modest commercial success, however, with the cover of "Sunday Mornin'," which peaked at #35 in December, 1969, and "Angelica," which stalled at #97 four months later.

In addition, his cover of "I Can Remember," the 1968 James and Bobby Purify hit, missed the Hot 100, but climbed into the Top 25 of the Billboard Easy Listening chart in the mid summer of 1970.

Despite his vocal talents, Swofford was unable to sustain further success on the charts, and in 1983, People magazine ran a feature article on Swofford, describing him as a happily married father who kept his distance from the music industry, selling real estate.

Several years later, it was reported that he was engaged as a business manager in Shreveport, LA, for a major American pharmaceutical company.

In the late 1990s, Swofford was diagnosed with cancer and died at the age of 54 in Shreveport, Louisiana.

[Verle]

Gene Pitney was born 83 years ago today


Sarah Lee Guthrie at her first public appearance in New York City, March 29, 2000.
The concert was produced by Harold Leventhal, Woody and Arlo Guthrie’s late manager.

Sarah Lee Guthrie is 44 years old today.

Guthrie is the youngest daughter of folksinger, Arlo Guthrie, and the granddaughter of Woody Guthrie. As a third generation singer/songwriter, Guthrie released her first self-titled album on the family owned and operated Rising Son Records in 2002.

As a child, she was involved in theater and dance. Her interest in music was sparked when she worked as her father's road manager on the 1997 Further Festival tour and saw other members of the tour group having fun at late-night hootenannies.

She picked up an acoustic guitar and started playing as a way to join in on the fun. "I always wrote poems, so it wasn't that far off for me to turn that into songs."

Guthrie said: “My dad was absolutely thrilled, of course, and would teach me stuff every day when we were on the road together. That was a really cool way to get to know my dad, because I'd never known him that way. And that's another thing that made it easy: my dad was so supportive."

Guthrie and husband, Johnny Irion, were married on October 16, 1999 and began performing together as an acoustic duo in the fall of 2000. Their music combined Irion's love of rock and blues with Guthrie's roots of folk and country.

Irion originates from a family of artists. His uncle is author Thomas Steinbeck, his great uncle is author John Steinbeck, and his grandmother, Rubilee Knight, is a classical violinist.

Irion and Guthrie met through a mutual friend (Chris Robinson of the Black Crowes) while the two were working together in Los Angeles. In 1999, Guthrie and Irion joined guitarist Tao Rodríguez-Seeger, grandson of Pete Seeger, and performed as a trio under the name RIG.

Guthrie and Irion have appeared at the Newport Folk Festival, the Philadelphia Folk Festival and Hillside Festival, as well as nationwide theatres, listening rooms, performing art centers and schools. When not performing their own shows, they tour nationally with Arlo Guthrie, opening the show, then joining him onstage in their family concert series

Jeff Tweedy produced Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion’s album, Wassaic Way, released in 2013.

Gene Pitney had a twin brother named Aram.

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George Frideric Handel, Baroque composer, was born 338 years ago today



Johnny Winter was born 79 years ago today.

Winter was a blues guitarist, singer and producer best known for his late 1960s and 1970s high-energy blues-rock albums and live performances. He also produced albums for the blues legend, Muddy Waters. Since his time with Waters, Winter recorded several blues albums and toured until his death on July 16, 2014.

Johnny Winter, along with his brother, Edgar Winter, were nurtured at an early age by their parents in musical pursuits. Both he and his brother, who were born with albinism, began performing at an early age.

When he was ten years old, Winter appeared on a local children's show, playing ukulele and singing Everly Brothers songs with his brother. His recording career began at the age of fifteen, when his band Johnny and the Jammers released "School Day Blues" on a Houston record label.

During this same period, he was able to see performances by classic blues artists such as Muddy Waters, B.B. King and Bobby Bland. In the early days, Winter would sometimes sit in with Roy Head and the Traits when they performed in the Beaumont, Texas area.

In 1967, Winter recorded a single with the Traits: "Tramp" backed with "Parchman Farm" (Universal Records 30496). In 1968, he released his first album, The Progressive Blues Experiment, on Austin's Sonobeat Records.

Winter caught his biggest break in December, 1968, when Mike Bloomfield, whom he met and jammed with in Chicago, invited him to sing and play a song during a Bloomfield and Al Kooper concert at the Fillmore East in New York.

As it happened, representatives of Columbia Records (which had released the Top Ten Bloomfield/Kooper/Stills Super Session album) were at the concert.

Winter played and sang B.B. King's "It's My Own Fault" to loud applause and, within a few days, was signed to reportedly what was then the largest advance in the history of the recording industry — $600,000.

Winter's first Columbia album, Johnny Winter, was recorded and released in 1969. It featured the same backing musicians with whom he had recorded The Progressive Blues Experiment. They included bassist Tommy Shannon and drummer Uncle John Turner, Edgar Winter on keyboards and saxophone, and (for his "Mean Mistreater") blues legends Willie Dixon on upright bass and Big Walter Horton on harmonica.

The album featured a few selections that became Winter signature songs, including his composition "Dallas" (an acoustic blues, on which Winter played a steel-bodied, resonator guitar), John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson's "Good Morning Little School Girl" and B.B. King's "Be Careful With A Fool."

The album's success coincided with Imperial Records picking up The Progressive Blues Experiment for wider release. The same year, the Winter trio toured and performed at several rock festivals, including Woodstock. With brother, Edgar, added as a full member of the group, Winter also recorded his second album, Second Winter, in Nashville in 1969.

The two-record album, which only had three recorded sides (the fourth was blank), introduced a couple more staples of Winter's concerts, including Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" and Bob Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited."

Also at this time Johnny entered into an intimate, albeit short-lived, affair with Janis Joplin. It culminated in a concert at New York's Madison Square Garden where Johnny joined Joplin on stage to sing and perform.

Contrary to urban legend, Johnny Winter did not perform with Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison on the 1968 infamous Hendrix bootleg album, Woke Up This Morning and found Myself Dead, from New York City's Scene Club.

According to Winter, "...I never even met Jim Morrison! There's a whole album of Jimi and Jim and I'm supposedly on the album, but I don't think I am 'cause I never met Jim Morrison in my life! I'm sure I never, never played with Jim Morrison at all! I don't know how that [rumor] got started."

Beginning in 1969, the first of numerous Johnny Winter albums was released which were cobbled together from approximately fifteen singles (about 30 "sides") he recorded before signing with Columbia in 1969.

In live performances, Winter often told the story about how, as a child, he dreamed of playing with the blues guitarist, Muddy Waters. In 1977, after Waters' long-time label Chess Records went out of business, he got his chance.

Winter brought Waters into the studio to record Hard Again for Blue Sky Records, a label set up by Winter's manager and distributed by Columbia. In addition to producing the album, Winter played guitar with Waters veteran James Cotton on harmonica.

Winter produced two more studio albums for Waters, I'm Ready (with Big Walter Horton on harmonica) and King Bee and a best-selling live album Muddy "Mississippi" Waters – Live.

The partnership produced three hit albums for Waters. Waters told Deep Blues author Robert Palmer that Winter had done remarkable work in reproducing the sound and atmosphere of Waters's vintage Chess Records recordings of the 1950s. The albums gave Waters the highest profile and greatest financial successes of his life.

Winter was professionally active until the time of his death near Zurich, Switzerland. He was found dead in his hotel room two days after his last performance, at the Cahors Blues Festival in France on July 14, at the age of 70.

The cause of Winter's death was not officially released. According to his friend and record producer Paul Nelson, Winter died of emphysema combined with pneumonia.

[Verle]

I was lucky enough to see Johnny Winter and his brother Edgar in concert at the old Labor Temple in Minneapolis. With the music and reefer smoke
it was an unforgetable experience.

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I was lucky enough to see Johnny Winter and his brother Edgar in concert at the old Labor Temple in Minneapolis. With the music and reefer smoke
it was an unforgetable experience.

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George Thorogood is 73 years old today.

A blues rock vocalist/guitarist from Wilmington, Delaware, Thorogood is known for his hit song "Bad to the Bone" as well as for covers of blues standards such as Hank Williams' "Move It On Over," Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love?" and "House Rent Boogie/One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer" by John Lee Hooker and Amos Milburn respectively.

George Thorogood and the Delaware Destroyers have released sixteen studio albums, including two that were Platinum and six that were Gold. He has sold more than 15 million albums worldwide. The band's early success contributed to the rise of folk label, Rounder Records.

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Ralph Stanley was born 96 years ago today
Faron Young was born 91 years ago today
Enrico Caruso was born in Naples, Italy this day in 1873 — 150 years ago



George Harrison was born 80 years ago today.

An English musician, singer and songwriter, Harrison achieved international fame as the lead guitarist of the Beatles. Although John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote most of the Beatles' songs, their albums generally included at least one Harrison composition.

During the 1960s, he became interested in the Hare Krishna movement, and became an admirer of Indian culture and mysticism, introducing it to the other Beatles and to their Western audience. Toward the end of the Beatles' career, he came to express and assert himself by incorporating Indian influences into his music.

His songs with the band include "Taxman," "Within You Without You," "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," "Here Comes the Sun," "For You Blue" and "Something," which has become the second most-covered Beatles song.

Following the band's break-up in 1970, Harrison released the triple album, All Things Must Pass, from which two hit singles originated. Later, he wrote hit songs for former Beatle, Ringo Starr.

With Ravi Shankar, Harrison organized the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh, a precursor to later benefit concerts such as Live Aid. Also a music and film producer, Harrison co-founded HandMade Films in 1978.

He achieved several best-selling singles and albums as a solo performer, and in 1988 co-founded the supergroup, the Traveling Wilburys.

Harrison was married twice, first to Pattie Boyd from 1966 to 1977, and from 1978 until his death at age 58 from lung cancer in 2001 to Olivia Trinidad Arias, with whom he had one son, Dhani.

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Mitch Ryder is 78 years old today
Gordon Edwards, bass player for Stuff, is 85 years old today
Fats Domino was born 95 years ago today



Johnny Cash was born 91 years ago today.

A singer-songwriter, actor and author, Cash was one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. Although he is primarily remembered as a country music icon, his songs and sound spanned other genres including rockabilly and rock and roll — especially early in his career — and blues, folk and gospel.

This crossover appeal won Cash the rare honor of induction in the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Gospel Music Hall of Fame. Cash was known for his deep, distinctive bass-baritone voice and for the "boom-chicka-boom" sound of his Tennessee Three backing band.

He was also known for a rebelliousness, coupled with an increasingly somber and humble demeanor; for providing free concerts inside prison walls; and for his dark performance clothing, which earned him the nickname "The Man in Black."

He traditionally began his concerts with the phrase, "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash,” followed by his standard, "Folsom Prison Blues." Much of Cash's music echoed themes of sorrow, moral tribulation and redemption, especially in the later stages of his career.

His best-known songs included "I Walk the Line," "Folsom Prison Blues," "Ring of Fire," "Get Rhythm" and "Man in Black." He also recorded humorous numbers like "One Piece At A Time" and "A Boy Named Sue."

He did a duet with his future wife, June Carter, called "Jackson,” and railroad songs including "Hey, Porter" and "Rock Island Line."

Cash was born in Kingsland, Arkansas, the fourth of seven children. He was named J. R. Cash because his parents couldn't think of a name. When Cash enlisted in the Air Force, they wouldn't let him use initials as his name, so he started to use the legal name John R. Cash.

In 1955, when signing with Sun Records, he took Johnny Cash as his stage name. In March, 1935, when Cash was three years old, the family settled in Dyess, Arkansas. He started working in cotton fields at age five, singing along with his family while working.

The family farm was flooded on at least two occasions, which later inspired him to write the song, "Five Feet High and Rising." His family's economic and personal struggles during the Great Depression inspired many of his songs, especially those about other people facing similar difficulties.

On December 4, 1956, Elvis Presley dropped in on Sam Phillips at the Sun Studio while Carl Perkins was cutting new tracks, with Jerry Lee Lewis backing him on piano. Cash was also in the studio and the four started an impromptu jam session.

Phillips left the tapes running and the recordings, almost half of which were gospel songs, survived and have since been released under the title Million Dollar Quartet.

In Cash: the Autobiography, Cash wrote that he was the one farthest from the microphone and was singing in a higher pitch to blend in with Elvis.

Cash's next record, "Folsom Prison Blues," made the country Top 5, and "I Walk the Line" became #1 on the country charts and entered the pop charts Top 20.

Cash felt great compassion for prisoners. He began performing concerts at various prisons starting in the late 1950s. His first prison concert was held on January 1, 1958 at San Quentin State Prison.

These performances led to a pair of highly successful live albums, Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison (1968) and Johnny Cash at San Quentin (1969).

Cash had met with Bob Dylan in the mid 1960s and became closer friends when they were neighbors in the late 1960s in Woodstock, New York.

Cash was enthusiastic about reintroducing the reclusive Dylan to his audience. He sang a duet with Dylan on Dylan's country album, Nashville Skyline, and also wrote the album's liner notes.

Another artist who received a major career boost from The Johnny Cash Show was Kris Kristofferson, who was beginning to make a name for himself as a singer/songwriter.

During a live performance of Kristofferson's "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down," Cash refused to change the lyrics to suit network executives, singing the song with its references to marijuana intact:

“On a Sunday morning sidewalk
I'm wishin', Lord, that I was stoned.”

By the early 1970s, Cash had crystallized his public image as "The Man in Black." He regularly performed dressed all in black, wearing a long black knee-length coat. This outfit stood in contrast to the costumes worn by most of the major country acts in his day: rhinestone suit and cowboy boots.

In 1971, Cash wrote the song, "Man in Black," to help explain his dress code:

“We're doing mighty fine I do suppose
In our streak of lightning cars and fancy clothes
But just so we're reminded of the ones who are held back
Up front there ought to be a man in black.”

In 1997, Cash was diagnosed with the neurodegenerative disease Shy-Drager syndrome, a form of multiple system atrophy. The diagnosis was later altered to autonomic neuropathy associated with diabetes. This illness forced Cash to curtail his touring.

He was hospitalized in 1998 with severe pneumonia, which damaged his lungs. The albums American III: Solitary Man (2000) and American IV: The Man Comes Around (2002) contained Cash's response to his illness in the form of songs of a slightly more somber tone than the first two American albums.

Cash’s wife, June Carter Cash, died on May 15, 2003, at the age of 73. She had told Cash to keep working, so he continued to record, completing 60 more songs in the last four months of his life, and even performed a couple of surprise shows at the Carter Family Fold outside Bristol, Virginia.

While hospitalized at Baptist Hospital in Nashville, Cash died of complications from diabetes on September 12, 2003 — less than four months after his wife. It was suggested that Johnny's health worsened due to a broken heart over June's death. He was 71.

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Dexter Gordon, jazz tenor saxophonist, was born 100 years ago today

Marian Anderson was born 126 years ago today

Anderson performs in front of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter, 1939

Marian Anderson was born 126 years ago today.

Anderson was a contralto and one of the most celebrated singers of the 20th century. "Her voice was a rich, vibrant contralto of intrinsic beauty," wrote the music critic, Alan Blyth.

Most of her singing career, from 1925 to 1965, was spent performing in concert and recital in major music venues and with famous orchestras throughout the United States and Europe. Although offered roles with many important European opera companies, Anderson declined, as she had no training in acting.

Anderson preferred to perform in concert and recital only. She did, however, perform opera arias within her concerts and recitals. She made many recordings that reflected her broad performance repertoire of everything from concert literature to lieder to opera to traditional American songs and spirituals.

Between 1940 and 1965, the German-American pianist, Franz Rupp, was her permanent accompanist.

Anderson became an important figure in the struggle for black artists to overcome racial prejudice in the United States during the mid-twentieth century. In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused permission for Anderson to sing to an integrated audience in Constitution Hall. The incident placed Anderson into the spotlight of the international community on a level unusual for a classical musician.

With the aid of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and her husband, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Anderson performed a critically acclaimed open-air concert on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

She sang before a crowd of more than 75,000 people and a radio audience in the millions.

Anderson continued to break barriers for black artists in the United States, becoming the first black person, American or otherwise, to perform at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City on January 7, 1955. Her performance as Ulrica in Giuseppe Verdi's Un ballo in maschera at the Met was the only time she sang an opera role on stage.

Anderson worked for several years as a delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Committee and as a "goodwill ambassadress" for the United States Department of State, giving concerts all over the world. She participated in the civil rights movement in the 1960s, singing at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963.

The recipient of numerous awards and honors, Anderson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963, the Kennedy Center Honors in 1978, the National Medal of Arts in 1986 and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1991.

Anderson died of congestive heart failure on April 8, 1993 at the age of 96. She had suffered a stroke a month earlier. She died in Portland, Oregon, at the home of her nephew, conductor James DePreist.

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Joe South was born 83 years ago today
John Fahey was born 84 years ago today
Dinah Shore was born 107 years ago


Brian Jones turns his back to the audience during a Rolling Stones set at the All Night Rave
at Alexandra Palace, London, June 24, 1964

Brian Jones was born 81 years ago today.

An English musician and a founding member of The Rolling Stones, Jones’ main instruments were the guitar, the harmonica and the piano, but he was a talented and wide-ranging multi-instrumentalist.

His innovative use of traditional or folk instruments, such as the sitar and marimba, was integral to the changing sound of the band.

Although he was originally the leader of the group, Jones' fellow band members Mick Jagger and Keith Richards soon overshadowed him, especially after they became a successful songwriting team. He developed a serious drug problem over the years and his role in the band steadily diminished.

He was asked to leave the Rolling Stones in June, 1969 and guitarist Mick Taylor took his place in the group.

Jones died less than a month later at age 27 by drowning in the swimming pool at his home on Cotchford Farm in Hartfield, East Sussex.

Original Stones bassist Bill Wyman said of Jones: "He formed the band. He chose the members. He named the band. He chose the music we played. He got us gigs. Very influential, very important and then slowly he lost it — highly intelligent — and just kind of wasted it and blew it all away."

His death, at 27, was the first of several major rock artists. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison found their own drug-related deaths at the same age within two years (Morrison died two years to the day after Jones). The coincidence of ages has been described as the "27 Club."

When Alastair Johns, who owned Cotchford Farm for over 40 years after Jones's death, refurbished the pool, he sold the original tiles to Jones’s fans for £100 each, paying for half of the work. Johns noted that Cotchford Farm remained for decades an attraction for Jones' fans.

The Stones' "Shine a Light" was written by Jagger after his death and depicts Jones's behavior and remoteness from the band, and asks God to shine a light on his soul.

Several other songs have been written about Jones. The Doors' song, "Tightrope Ride," was originally written for Jones by Morrison, but after Morrison's death Ray Manzarek rewrote some of the lyrics so that they apply to both musicians.

The Psychic TV song, "Godstar," is about Jones's death, as are Robyn Hitchcock's "Trash," The Drovers' "She's as Pretty as Brian Jones Was," Ted Nugent's "Death by Misadventure" and Salmonblaster's "Brian Jones."

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Harry Belafonte, Jr. is 96 years old today
Glenn Miller was born 119 years ago today
Frédéric Chopin, Romantic-era Polish composer, was born 213 years ago today


Roger Daltry at a New York City bar, 2005

Roger Daltrey is 79 years old today.

An English singer, musician, songwriter and actor, Daltrey is best known as the founder and lead singer of The Who. He has maintained a musical career as a solo artist and has also worked in the film industry, acting in films, theatre and television roles. He has also produced films.

Born in the Hammersmith area of London, Daltrey was brought up in Acton. It was the same working class suburban district that produced fellow Who members, Pete Townshend and John Entwistle.

Daltrey attended Victoria Primary School and then Acton County Grammar School for Boys along with Townshend and Entwistle. He showed academic promise in the English state school system.

His parents hoped he would eventually continue on to study at university, but Daltrey turned out to be a self-described "school rebel" and developed a dedicated interest in the emerging rock and roll music scene instead.

He made his first guitar from a block of wood, a cherry red Strat copy, and joined an existing skiffle band called the Detours in need of a lead singer. They told him he had to bring a guitar, and within a few weeks he showed up with it. And he could play it too.

When his father bought him an Epiphone guitar in 1959, he became the lead guitarist for the band and soon afterwards was expelled from school for smoking.

Describing the post-war times, Pete Townshend wrote in his autobiography:

"Until he was expelled, Roger had been a good pupil. Then he heard Elvis and transmogrified into a Teddy Boy with an electric guitar and a dress-sneer. Was it simply rock 'n' roll? It was obvious to a young man as intelligent as Roger that there was no future in conforming any more."

Daltrey became a sheet metal worker during the day, while practicing and performing nights with the band at weddings, pubs and working men's clubs. He invited schoolmate Entwistle to play bass in the band, and on the advice of Entwistle, invited Townshend to play guitar.

At that time, the band consisted of Daltrey on lead guitar, Pete Townshend on rhythm guitar, John Entwistle on bass, Doug Sandom on drums and Colin Dawson on lead vocals.

After Colin Dawson left the band, Daltrey switched to vocals and played harmonica as well, while Townshend became the lead guitarist. In 1964, drummer Doug Sandom left the band, eventually being replaced by Keith Moon.

Early on, Daltrey was the band's leader, earning a reputation for using his fists to exercise control when needed. In 1964, the group discovered another band working as the Detours and discussed changing their name.

Pete Townshend suggested "The Hair" and Townshend's roommate, Richard Barnes, suggested "The Who." The next morning, Daltrey made the decision for the band, saying "It's The Who, innit?"

With the band's first hit single and record deal in early 1965, Townshend began writing original material and Daltrey's dominance of the band began to decline.

As Townshend developed into one of rock's most accomplished composers, Daltrey's vocals became the vehicle through which Townshend's visions were expressed, and he gained an equally vaunted reputation as a powerful vocalist and riveting frontman.

The Who's stage act was highly energetic, and Daltrey's habit of swinging the microphone around by its cord on stage became his signature move.

Daltrey's Townshend-inspired stuttering expression of youthful anger, frustration and arrogance in the band's breakthrough single, "My Generation,” captured the revolutionary feeling of the 1960s for many young people around the world and became the band's trademark.

Later, his scream near the end of "Won't Get Fooled Again" became a defining moment in rock and roll.

With each of The Who's milestone achievements, Tommy, Who's Next, and Quadrophenia, Daltrey was the face and voice of the band as they defined themselves as the ultimate rebels in a generation of change.

When filmmaker Ken Russell's adaptation of Tommy appeared as a feature film in 1975, Daltrey played the lead role, was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for "Best Acting Debut in a Motion Picture" and appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine on April 10, 1975.

Afterward, Daltrey worked with Russell again, starring as Franz Liszt in Lisztomania. He worked with Rick Wakeman on the soundtrack to this film, writing the lyrics to three songs and also performing these, as well as others.

Daltrey has long been known as one of the most charismatic of rock's frontmen. According to Pete Townshend: "He almost invented the pseudo-messianic role taken up later by Jim Morrison and Robert Plant."

Daltrey uses Shure SM 58 microphones with cords which he tapes to reinforce the connection and avoid cutting his hands when he swings and catches the microphone.

In addition to music, Roger Daltrey has acted in advertisements, television and films, and maintains an extensive filmography.

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David Massengill is 72 years old today
Desi Arnaz was born 106 years ago today
Marc Blitzstein, composer, was born 118 years ago today
Kurt Weill, German composer, was born 123 years ago today


Lou Reed, 2011

Lou Reed was born 81 years ago today.

A rock musician, songwriter and photographer, Reed was best known as guitarist, vocalist and principal songwriter of The Velvet Underground, and for his solo career, which spanned several decades.

Though the Velvet Underground were a commercial failure in the late 1960s, the group gained a considerable cult following in the years since its demise and has gone on to become one of the most widely cited and influential bands of the era.

As the Velvet Underground's principal songwriter, Reed wrote about subjects of personal experience that rarely had been examined so openly in rock and roll, including sexuality and drug culture.

After his departure from the group, Reed began a solo career in 1971. He had a hit the following year with "Walk on the Wild Side," although he subsequently lacked the mainstream commercial success its chart status seemed to indicate.

Reed's work as a solo artist frustrated critics wishing for a return of the Velvet Underground.

In 1975, Reed released a double album of feedback loops, Metal Machine Music, upon which he later commented, "No one is supposed to be able to do a thing like that and survive.”

In 2008, Reed married performance artist Laurie Anderson.

In May of 2013, Reed underwent a liver transplant in Cleveland. He died Oct. 27, 2013 of liver disease at the age of 71.

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Jennifer Warnes is 76 years old today
Willie Chambers, former member of The Chambers Brothers, is 85 years old today



Doc Watson was born 100 years ago today.

A guitarist, songwriter and singer of bluegrass, folk, country, blues and gospel music, Watson's flatpicking skills and knowledge of traditional American music are highly regarded.

He performed with his son, Merle, for over 15 years until Merle's death in 1985 in an accident on the family farm.

Born in Deep Gap, North Carolina, Watson got the nickname "Doc" during a live radio broadcast when the announcer remarked that his given name Arthel was odd and he needed an easy nickname. A fan in the crowd shouted "Call him Doc!" presumably in reference to the literary character Sherlock Holmes's sidekick, Doctor Watson. The name stuck ever since.

An eye infection caused Doc Watson to lose his vision before his first birthday. Despite this, he was taught by his parents to work hard and care for himself. He attended North Carolina's school for the visually impaired — The Governor Morehead School — in Raleigh, North Carolina.

In a 1989 radio interview with host Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air, Watson explained how he got his first guitar. His father told him that if he and his brother (David Watson) chopped down all the small, dead, chestnut trees along the edge of their field, he could sell the wood to the tannery and make money.

The brothers did the work and Watson bought a $10 Stella guitar from Sears Roebuck, while his brother bought a new suit. Later in that same interview, Watson explained that his first high-quality guitar was a Martin D-18.

Watson's earliest influences were country roots musicians and groups such as the Carter Family and Jimmy Rodgers. The first song he learned to play on the guitar was "When Roses Bloom in Dixieland," first recorded by the Carter Family in 1930.

Watson said in an interview with American Songwriter that, "Jimmy Rodgers was the first man that I started to claim as my favorite."

Watson proved to be a natural musical talent and within months was performing on local street corners playing songs from the Delmore Brothers, Louvin Brothers and Monroe Brothers alongside his brother, Linny. By the time Watson reached adulthood, he had become a proficient acoustic and electric guitar player.

In 1953, Watson joined the Johnson City, Tennessee-based Jack Williams' country and western swing band on electric guitar. The band seldom had a fiddle player, but was often asked to play at square dances. Following the example of country guitarists Grady Martin and Hank Garland, Watson taught himself to play fiddle tunes on his Les Paul electric guitar.

He later transferred the technique to acoustic guitar, and playing fiddle tunes became part of his signature sound. During his time with Jack Williams, Doc also supported his family as a piano tuner.

In 1960, as the American folk music revival grew, Watson took the advice of folk musicologist, Ralph Rinzler, and began playing acoustic guitar and banjo exclusively. That move ignited Watson's career when he played on his first recording, Old Time Music at Clarence Ashley's.

Also of pivotal importance for his career was his February 11, 1961 appearance at P.S. 41 in Greenwich Village. He subsequently began to tour as a solo performer and appeared at universities and clubs like the Ash Grove in Los Angeles.

Watson would eventually get his big break and rave reviews for his performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963. He recorded his first solo album in 1964 and began performing with his son, Merle, the same year.

After the folk revival waned during the late 1960s, Watson's career was sustained by his performance of "Tennessee Stud" on the 1972 live album, Will the Circle Be Unbroken. As popular as ever, Doc and Merle began in 1974 playing as a trio, with T. Michael Coleman on bass guitar.

The trio toured the globe during the late seventies and early eighties, recorded nearly fifteen albums between 1973 and 1985 and brought Doc and Merle’s unique blend of acoustic music to millions of new fans. In 1985, Merle died in a tractor accident.

Watson played guitar in both flatpicking and fingerpicking style, but is best known for his flatpick work. His guitar playing skills, combined with his authenticity as a mountain musician, made him a highly influential figure during the folk music revival.

Watson pioneered a fast and flashy bluegrass lead guitar style including fiddle tunes and crosspicking techniques which were adopted and extended by Clarence White, Tony Rice and many others.

Watson was also an accomplished banjo player and sometimes accompanied himself on harmonica as well. Known also for his distinctive and rich baritone voice, Watson over the years developed a vast repertoire of mountain ballads, which he learned via the oral tradition of his home area in Deep Gap, North Carolina.

His affable manner, humble nature and delightful wit endeared him to his fans nearly as much as his musical talent.

In late May, 2012, Watson was listed in critical condition but was responsive at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, after undergoing colon surgery. Watson had fallen at his home earlier in the week, after which he was sent to Watauga Medical Center in nearby Boone, NC.

Watson was not seriously injured in the fall, but an underlying medical condition prompted the surgery which required him to be airlifted to Winston-Salem.

Watson died on May 29, 2012 at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center at the age of 89.

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Willie Johnson was born 100 years ago today



Bobby Womack was born 79 years ago today.

A singer-songwriter and musician, Womack, was an active recording artist from the early 1960s where he started his career as the lead singer of his family musical group, The Valentinos, and as Sam Cooke's backing guitarist.

Womack's career spanned more than 50 years and included a repertoire in the styles of R&B, soul, rock and roll, doo-wop, gospel and country. He wrote and originally recorded The Rolling Stones' first UK #1 hit, "It's All Over Now," and New Birth's, "I Can Understand It."

As a singer, he is most notable for the hits "Lookin' For a Love," "That's The Way I Feel About Cha," "Woman's Gotta Have It," "Harry Hippie," "Across 110th Street" and his 1980s hit, "If You Think You're Lonely Now."

Born and raised in Cleveland's East 85th and Quincy area, Womack was raised Baptist. His mother played organ in their church and his father was a minister and musician, often known to play guitar though he advised his sons to not touch the instrument while he was away.

One night, eight-year-old Bobby broke a guitar string. After his father replaced the string with a shoelace, he let Bobby play the guitar for him. According to Bobby, his father was shocked by his son's talents. Soon afterwards, he bought Bobby his own guitar and formed The Womack Brothers.

The group toured the gospel circuit with their parents accompanying them on organ and guitar respectively. In 1954, the group under the moniker, Curtis Womack and the Womack Brothers, released the Pennant single, "Buffalo Bill." Bobby was only ten years old at the time.

Even though brother, Curtis Womack, often sang lead, Bobby was allowed to sing alongside him showcasing his gruff baritone vocals in contrast to his older brother's smoother tenor. During performances, Bobby would sometimes imitate the role of a preacher.

Sam Cooke discovered the group performing while he was still in the Soul Stirrers in 1956 and began mentoring the boys, promising them that he would help with their careers once he established himself.

Within four years, Cooke had formed SAR Records and signed the quintet to the label. Bobby was sixteen. The group recorded two gospel sides before Cooke decided to have the boys switch over to pop music.

Changing their name to The Valentinos, Cooke produced and arranged the group's first hit single, "Looking for a Love," which was a pop version of a gospel song they had released titled "Couldn't Hear Nobody Pray," written by Womack.

The song became a R&B hit and helped land the group a spot on James Brown's Revue. The Valentinos' career was left shaky after Sam Cooke was shot and killed in a Los Angeles motel. Devastated by the news, the brothers disbanded and SAR Records folded. Womack began a solo career.

In early 2012, Womack entered several hospitals with health problems including pneumonia, for which he was successfully treated. It was soon revealed that Womack was diagnosed with colon cancer after Bootsy Collins reported it on his Facebook page. Womack announced afterwards that he was undergoing cancer surgery.

On May 24, 2012, it was announced that Womack's surgery to remove a tumor from his colon was successful and he was declared cancer free.

On January 1, 2013, Womack admitted that he has struggled to remember his songs and other people's names, leading doctors to suggest that he is in early stages of Alzheimer's disease.

Womack died at his home in Tarzana, California at the age of 70 on June 27, 2014.

[weimy froob]

Freebo is 79 years old today
J. B. Lenoir was born 94 years ago today


Tom Russell, New York City, 2017

Tom Russell, singer-songwriter, is 74 years old today.

Although strongly identified with the Americana tradition, Russell’s music also incorporates elements of folk, rock and the cowboy music of the American West. Many of his songs have been recorded by other artists, including Johnny Cash, k.d. lang, Guy Clark, Joe Ely, Jason Boland, Nanci Griffith, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Iris Dement, Dave Alvin and Suzy Bogguss.

In addition to his music, Russell is also a painter and author. He has published a book of songwriting quotes (co-edited with Sylvia Tyson), a detective novel (in Scandinavia) and a book of letters with Charles Bukowski (Tough Company, Mystery Island Press).

Born in Los Angeles and educated at the University of California, Santa Barbara with a master's degree in Sociology of Law (criminology), Russell spent 1969 teaching in Ibadan, Nigeria during the Biafran War. He has also lived in Spain, Norway and played music at a circus in Puerto Rico.

Russell began his musical career in earnest in the early 1970s in Vancouver playing strip bars, then later relocated to Texas and formed a band with singer-pianist, Patricia Hardin.

In 1977, they moved to San Francisco, performing regularly in clubs there as Hardin & Russell, during which time they recorded the second of their two studio albums. They eventually split in 1979, at which point Russell drifted out of the music industry for a while.

While working as a taxi driver in Queens, Russell met guitarist Andrew Hardin (no relation to Patricia). After hearing his songs, Hardin convinced him that they should form a new band.

Shortly after this, Robert Hunter of the Grateful Dead was a passenger in Russell's cab. Russell sang him his song, Gallo Del Cielo.

An impressed Hunter invited Russell and Hardin first to join him on stage at New York's Bitter End, and then to become his regular opening act. Hardin remained Russell's full-time sideman until April, 2006.

Between 1984 and 1994, the Tom Russell Band, (composed of Russell on acoustic guitar and vocals, Andrew Hardin (guitar, bass), David Mansfield (slide guitar), Fats Kaplin (pedal steel, fiddle, harmonica, accordion), Lee Thornburg, Tom Timko (horns), Skip Edwards (keyboards), Hank Bones, Dusty Wakeman, Billy Troiani (bass), Steve Holley, Charlie Caldarola, Mike Warner, and Jeff Donovan (drums), released four albums on Philo records.

These albums blend elements of folk, country and rock music, and often featured songs inspired by the American Southwest, blue-collar American life, and events from his own life (for instance the track, Road to Bayamon, a regular concert favorite, draws on his experiences playing in Puerto Rico).

Russell’s storytelling approach was also showcased in songs such as Haley's Comet, which has also been recorded by co-writer Dave Alvin and tells of the last, sad days of Bill Haley.

Russell worked on the New York country music circuit of the 1980s and 1990s, along with other local musicians including Larry Campbell, Larry Eagle, Kenny Davis, Tommie Joe White, Dave Sonnenborn, Bruce Kirschner, Billy and Bruce Lang, John Widgren and Rich Upright.

Largely due to several of Manhattan nightclubs — including City Limits, O'Lunneys, Cody's, The Rodeo Bar and The Lone Star Cafe — many artists regularly met. At these clubs, an intermingling of the bands took place. Russell was one of the "purer" bands, almost always featuring the same line-up. In the 1990s, Russell made a number of solo albums, collaborated with blues singer Barrence Whitfield on two albums, and also recorded an acoustic album mixing new material with his favorite cowboy-themed songs.

His albums include several guest appearances from other folk, country and Americana artists, including Chris Gaffney and Dave Alvin.

His song, "Outbound Plane," co-written with Nanci Griffith, became a Top Ten country hit for Suzy Bogguss. However, his most significant album of the 1990s was the 1999 folk opera, The Man From God Knows Where.

Drawing on the music of Norway and Ireland in addition to American folk and country, the album is a song cycle tracing the journeys of Russell's ancestors from Europe to America and the struggles they encountered there.

Recorded in Norway near the spot where his great-grandfather was born in 1847, the album features singers Iris DeMent, Dolores Keane and Dave Van Ronk playing the roles of Russell's various ancestors and telling their stories. The title came from the epitaph of another Tom Russell, an Irish activist executed in 1803.

Russell's albums in the 21st century have been heavily influenced by his current home city, El Paso. Albums such as Borderland feature a strong Tex-Mex influence and feature songs of life on both sides of the border.

In 2005, Russell released Hotwalker, the second part of his Americana trilogy (the first part being "The Man From God Knows Where"). It was another conceptual work largely inspired by his correspondence with author Charles Bukowski.

Subtitled "A Ballad for Gone America," the album features songs and spoken word pieces, many of the latter delivered by another friend of Bukowski, circus Little Person Little Jack Horton.

The sampled voices of Lenny Bruce and Edward Abbey are also heard on an album which takes the form of a musical collage lamenting the passing of the America of Russell's childhood and the Beat generation.

In addition to working on new music, Russell also exhibits his original artwork and organizes an annual trans-Canadian music train, which combines song-writing and -singing workshops with live concerts aboard a vintage long-distance streamline train.

This train trek was depicted in Russell's 2005 concert/documentary, "Hearts on the Line," produced by Canyon Productions, which features a concert with Russell and Andrew Hardin videotaped at Capilano College in Vancouver as well as behind the scenes footage of the music train experience.

In 2006, Russell released Love and Fear, a collection of original songs that were inspired by the highs and lows of his relationships with women.

This was followed in 2007 by "Wounded Heart of America," a tribute album of Tom Russell songs covered by other artists, including Joe Ely, Suzy Bogguss, Dave Alvin, Jerry Jeff Walker and beat poet legend, Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

In 2008, Russell's new record company, Shout Factory, released a two CD retrospective album "Veteran's Day: Anthology" and Russell and Canyon Productions, Inc. released a DVD featuring Russell and Ian Tyson discussing the art of songwriting called "Mano a Mano."

In 2009, Shout! Factory released Russell's album "Blood and Candle Smoke" featuring twelve original songs. The album was recorded in Tucson, AZ at Wave Lab Studios with members of Calexico providing a world music beat to many of the songs.

In 2015, Russell released The Rose of Roscrae, a double-album on Frontera Records. It’s a cowboy folk opera that completes the trilogy begun with The Man From God Knows Where and Hotwalker.

In 2016, Frontera Record released the second Tom Russell Anthology: Gunpowder Sunsets.

[weimy froob]

Mary Wilson, founding member of the Supremes, was born 79 years ago today
Wes Montgomery was born 100 years ago today
Furry Lewis, blues guitarist and songwriter, was born 130 years ago today



David Gilmour, guitarist, lead singer and songwriter of Pink Floyd, is 77 years old today.

In addition to his work with Pink Floyd, Gilmour has worked as a producer for a variety of artists, and has had a successful career as a solo artist. He has been actively involved with many charities over the course of his career.

Gilmour was born in Cambridge, England. His father, Douglas Gilmour, was a senior lecturer in zoology at the University of Cambridge and his mother, Sylvia, was a teacher and film editor who raised her family at Grantchester Meadows.

Grantchester Meadows was later immortalized by a Roger Waters song on Pink Floyd's Ummagumma.

Gilmour attended The Perse School on Hills Road, Cambridge, which he "didn't enjoy" and met future Pink Floyd guitarist and vocalist Syd Barrett, along with bassist and vocalist, Roger Waters, who attended Cambridgeshire High School for Boys, also situated on Hills Road.

In 1954, Gilmour bought his first single, Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock.” At age 13, he was given his first guitar, a Tatay, by his neighbor. He started learning how to play due to a book and record sent by Pete Seeger.

Gilmour was approached in late December, 1967 by drummer Nick Mason, who asked if he would be interested in joining Pink Floyd, which he did in January, 1968, making Pink Floyd briefly a five-piece band.

He filled in for Syd Barrett's guitar parts when the frontman was unable to take a consistent part in Floyd's live performances.

Syd Barrett "left" the group due to his erratic behavior — commonly believed to have been caused by excessive use of LSD — when the band chose not to pick Barrett up one night for a gig.

Gilmour, by default, assumed the role of the band's lead guitarist. He took over most of the band's lead vocal duties, with bassist Roger Waters and keyboard player, Richard Wright.

However, after the back-to-back successes of The Dark Side of the Moon and then Wish You Were Here, Waters took more control over the band, writing much of Animals and The Wall by himself.

Wright was fired during The Wall sessions and the relationship between Gilmour and Waters would further deteriorate during the making of The Wall film and the 1983 Pink Floyd album, The Final Cut. In addition to Pink Floyd, Gilmour has recorded four solo albums, all four of which charted in the U.S. Top 40.

Gilmour is best known for his lead guitar work. His solo style is often characterized by blues-influenced phrasing, expressive note bends and sustain.

In March, 2015, Gilmour announced a tour of the UK and Europe planned from September to October 2015, his first live tour in nine years, coinciding with the release of his fourth solo studio album. Gilmour has said he will tour again.

In November, 2015, Gilmour was the subject of the BBC Two documentary David Gilmour: Wider Horizons, which was billed as "an intimate portrait of one of the greatest guitarists and singers of all time, exploring his past and present."

[weimy froob]

Joseph Maurice Ravel, French composer, was born 148 years ago today. Ravel is perhaps known best for his orchestral work Boléro (1928).



Townes Van Zandt was born 79 years ago today.

Many of this singer-songwriter’s songs, including "If I Needed You," "To Live is to Fly" and "No Place to Fall" are considered standards of their genre.

While alive, Van Zandt had a small and devoted fanbase, but he never had a financially successful album or single. He even had difficulty keeping his recordings in print.

In 1983, six years after Emmylou Harris had first popularized it, Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard covered his song, "Pancho and Lefty," scoring a #1 hit on the Billboard country music charts.

Despite achievements like these, the bulk of his life was spent touring various dive bars, often living in cheap motel rooms, backwoods cabins and on friends' couches.

Van Zandt was notorious for his drug addictions, alcoholism and his tendency to tell tall tales. When young, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and insulin shock therapy erased much of his long-term memory.

Van Zandt died at age 52 on New Years Day, 1997 from health problems stemming from years of substance abuse.

The 2000s saw a resurgence of interest in his work. During the decade, two books, a documentary film and a number of magazine articles about the singer were created.

Van Zandt's music has been covered by such notable and varied musicians as Bob Dylan, Norah Jones, Lyle Lovett, Steve Earle, Cowboy Junkies, Andrew Bird, Robert Plant, Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch.

Van Zandt has been referred to as a cult musician and "a songwriter's songwriter."

Musician Steve Earle, who met him in 1978 and considered Van Zandt a mentor, once called Van Zandt "the best songwriter in the whole world and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that."

The quote was printed on a sticker featured on the packing of At My Window, much to Van Zandt's displeasure. In the years following, the quote was often cited by the press, much to Van Zandt and Earle's embarrassment. In 2009, Earle told the New York Times: "Did I ever believe that Townes was better than Bob Dylan? No."

But he later concluded at the end of the same article that, "As a songwriter, you won’t find anybody better."

Earle has championed the songwriter on a number of occasions. His eldest son, Justin Townes Earle, also a musician, is named after Van Zandt.

Earle wrote the song "Fort Worth Blues" as a tribute to the singer in the late 1990s, and in 2009 released an album titled Townes, which featured all covers of Van Zandt songs.

[weimy froob]

Little Peggy March is 75 years old today
Carole Bayer Sager, lyricist, songwriter, singer and painter, is 76 years old today
Dick Hyman, jazz pianist and composer, is 96 years old today
Johnny Dollar, country and rockabilly musician, was born 101 years ago today
Mississippi John Hurt was born 131 years ago today



Richard Fariña was born 86 years ago today.

A writer and folksinger, Fariña was born in Brooklyn of Cuban and Irish descent. He grew up in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn and attended Brooklyn Technical High School. He earned an academic scholarship to Cornell University, starting as an engineering major, but later switching to English.

While at Cornell, he published short stories for local literary magazines and for national periodicals, including Transatlantic Review and Mademoiselle.

Fariña became good friends with Thomas Pynchon, David Shetzline and Peter Yarrow while at Cornell. He was suspended for alleged participation in a student demonstration against campus regulations and although he later resumed his status as a student, he ultimately dropped out in 1959, just before graduation.

Back in Manhattan, Fariña became a regular patron of the White Horse Tavern, the well-known Greenwich Village tavern frequented by poets, artists and folksingers. There he befriended Tommy Makem. He also met Carolyn Hester, a successful folk singer. They married eighteen days later.

Fariña appointed himself Hester's agent. They toured worldwide while Fariña worked on his novel and Carolyn performed gigs. Fariña was present when Hester recorded her third album at Columbia studios during September, 1961, where a then-little-known Bob Dylan played harmonica on several tracks.

Fariña developed a friendship with Dylan. Their friendship is a major topic of David Hajdu's book, Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña and Richard Fariña.

Fariña then traveled to Europe, where he met Mimi Baez, the teenage sister of Joan Baez in the spring of 1962.

Hester divorced Fariña soon thereafter, and Fariña married 17-year-old Mimi in April, 1963. Thomas Pynchon was the best man. They moved to a small cabin in Carmel, California, where they composed songs with a guitar and Appalachian dulcimer. They debuted their act as "Richard & Mimi Fariña" at the Big Sur Folk Festival in 1964 and signed a contract with Vanguard Records.

The couple recorded their first album, Celebrations For a Grey Day, with the help of Bruce Langhorne, who had previously played for Dylan.

Due to his brief life, Fariña's musical output was limited. The Fariñas released three albums, one was released after his death.

Fariña was considered a protest singer, and several of his songs are overtly political. Several critics have considered Fariña to be a major folk music talent of the 1960s.

His best-known songs are "Pack Up Your Sorrows" and "Birmingham Sunday," the latter of which was recorded by Joan Baez and became better known after it became the theme song to Spike Lee's film, 4 Little Girls, a documentary about the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Alabama during 1963.

At the time of his death, Fariña also was producing an album for his sister-in-law, Joan Baez. She ultimately decided not to release the album, however, though two of the songs were included on Fariña's posthumous album, and another, a cover version of Fariña's "Pack up Your Sorrows," co-written by Fariña with the third Baez sister, Pauline Marden, was released as a single in 1966. It has since been included in a number of Baez' compilation albums.

Fariña is known for his novel, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me, originally published by Random House in 1966. The novel, based largely on his college experiences and travels, is a comic picaresque novel, set in the American West, in Cuba during the Cuban Revolution, and at an upstate New York university.

The protagonist is Gnossos Pappadopoulis. The book has become something of a cult classic among fans of 1960s and counterculture literature.

Thomas Pynchon, who later dedicated his book, Gravity's Rainbow (1973), to Fariña, described his novel as "coming on like the Hallelujah Chorus done by 200 kazoo players with perfect pitch... hilarious, chilling, sexy, profound, maniacal, beautiful and outrageous all at the same time."

On April 30, 1966, two days after the publication of his novel, Fariña attended a book-signing ceremony at a Carmel Valley Village bookstore, the Thunderbird. Later that day, while at a party to celebrate his wife Mimi's twenty-first birthday, Fariña saw a guest with a motorcycle, who later gave Fariña a ride up Carmel Valley Road, heading east toward Cachagua.

At an S-turn the driver lost control. The motorcycle tipped over on the right side of the road, came back to the other side, and tore through a barbed wire fence into a field where a small vineyard now exists. The driver survived, but Fariña was killed instantly. He was 29.

According to Pynchon's preface to Been Down, the police said the motorcycle must have been traveling at 90 miles per hour, even though "a prudent speed" would have been 30 miles per hour.

Fariña was buried in a simple grave. Its marker emblazoned with a peace sign, at Monterey City Cemetery in Monterey, California. Fariña's widow helped to gather a collection of his final poetry and short stories, which was released as, Long Time Coming and a Long Time Gone.

Joan Baez's song, "Sweet Sir Galahad," commemorates Fariña's death, the grieving of his widow, Mimi, and Mimi's eventual recovery and remarriage.

[weimy froob]

march 9
John Cale is 81 years old today
Lloyd Price was born 90 years ago today
Ornette Coleman was born 93 years old today
Clara Rockmore, Lithuanian virtuoso performer of the theremin, was born 112 years ago today

march 10
Rick Rubin is 60 years old today
Leon Bismark "Bix" Beiderbecke, jazz cornetist, pianist and composer, was born 120 years ago today


Edie Brickell and Paul Simon, 2016

Edie Brickell is 57 years old today.

The singer-songwriter recorded 1988's Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars, the debut album by Edie Brickell & New Bohemians, which went to #4 on the Billboard 200 chart. She is married to Paul Simon.

Born in Oak Cliff, Dallas, Texas, to Paul Edward Brickell and his wife, Larry Jean (Sellers) Linden, Brickell was raised with her older sister, Laura Strain. She attended Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas, and later studied at Southern Methodist University until she joined a band and decided to focus on songwriting.

In 1985, Brickell was invited to sing one night with friends from her high school in a local folk rock group, New Bohemians. She would join the band as lead singer. After the band was signed to a recording contract, the label changed the group's name to Edie Brickell & New Bohemians. Their 1988 debut album, Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars, became a critical and commercial success, including the single "What I Am.”

The band's follow-up album, Ghost of a Dog (1990), was a deliberate effort to highlight the band's eclectic personality and move away from the pop sensibility of their first record.

Brickell had a role as a folk singer in the 1989 film, Born on the Fourth of July. Her version of Bob Dylan's "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" is featured on the film's soundtrack. She also sang a cover version of Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side" in the 1990 film, Flashback.

As a solo artist, Brickell released Picture Perfect Morning (1994) and Volcano (2003).

In 2010, Brickell became a founding member of The Gaddabouts, consisting of Steve Gadd on drums, Edie Brickell as lead vocalist and guitar, Andy Fairweather Low on electric and acoustic guitars and background vocals, Pino Palladino on bass and guitar. It also featured Dan Block, Ronnie Cuber, Joey DeFrancesco, Gil Goldstein and Marcus Rojas.

In 2011, Brickell wrote the title track "The Meaning of Life" for Tamar Halpern's film Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life.

Love Has Come For You was released on April 23, 2013. The album is a collaboration with Steve Martin. Both appeared on talk shows, such as The View and Late Show with David Letterman, to promote and perform the song in April, 2013. Starting in May, 2013, she toured with Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers throughout the United States and North America.

Brickell married singer-songwriter Paul Simon on May 30, 1992. She was performing on NBC's Saturday Night Live on Saturday November 5, 1988, when she noticed Simon standing in front of the cameraman.

"Even though I'd performed the song hundreds of times in clubs, he made me forget how the song went when I looked at him," she said with a smile. "We can show the kids the tape and say, 'Look, that's when we first laid eyes on each other.'" Brickell and Simon have three children.

[Bon Scott]

Already posted in “This day in music history”, because I didn’t see this thread:

Bobby McFerrin is having a “don’t worry be happy” birthday.

Not necessarily my cup of tea, but happy birthday!




You couldn’t go anywhere in fall of ‘88 without hearing the song telling not to worry and be happy.

[weimy froob]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

trudat. that song was ubiquitous that year.

Harvey Mandel is 78 years old today



Lawrence Welk, television bandleader, was born 120 years ago today.

Welk was born in the German-speaking community of Strasburg, North Dakota. The part of North Dakota where he lived had been settled largely by Germans from Russia. Even his teachers spoke English as a second language.

Welk thus acquired his trademark accent, typical of these Plattdeutsch or Low German-speaking immigrants who usually spoke the language at home long after they began to learn English at school.

He took elocution lessons in the 1950s and could speak almost accent-free, but he realized his public expected to hear him say: "A-one, an-a-two" and "Wunnerful, Wunnerful!"

On his 21st birthday, Welk left the family farm to pursue a career in music. During the 1920s, he performed with the Luke Witkowski, Lincoln Boulds and George T. Kelly bands before starting his own orchestra.

He led big bands in North Dakota and eastern South Dakota. These included the Hotsy Totsy Boys and later the Honolulu Fruit Gum Orchestra. His band was also the station band for popular radio station WNAX in Yankton, South Dakota. In 1927, he graduated from the MacPhail School of Music in Minneapolis.

During the 1930s, Welk led a traveling big band that specialized in dance tunes and "sweet" music (during this period, bands which played light, melodic music were referred to as "sweet bands" to distinguish them from the heavy, loud, rhythmic swing bands of artists like Glenn Miller and Duke Ellington).

Initially, the band traveled around the country by car. They were too poor to rent rooms, so they usually slept and changed clothes in their cars. The term "Champagne Music" was derived from an engagement at the William Penn Hotel in Pittsburgh, when a dancer referred to his band's sound as "light and bubbly as champagne." The hotel also lays claim to the original "bubble machine," a prop left over from a 1920s movie premiere.

Welk described his band's sound, saying "We still play music with the champagne style, which means light and rhythmic. We place the stress on melody. The chords are played pretty much the way the composer wrote them. We play with a steady beat so that dancers can follow it."

Welk's big band performed across the country, but particularly in the Chicago and Milwaukee areas. In the early 1940s, the band began a 10-year stint at the Trianon Ballroom in Chicago, regularly drawing crowds of nearly 7,000. His orchestra also performed frequently at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City during the late 1940s.

In 1944 and 1945, Welk led his orchestra in many motion picture "Soundies," considered to be the early pioneers of music videos. Welk collaborated with Western artist, Red Foley, to record a version of Spade Cooley's "Shame on You" in 1945. The record (Decca 18698) was #4 to Cooley's #5 on Billboard's September 15 "Most Played Juke Box Folk Records" listing.

From 1949 through 1951, the band had its own national radio program on ABC, sponsored by "The Champagne of Bottle Beer" Miller High Life.

In 1951, Welk settled in Los Angeles. The same year, he began producing The Lawrence Welk Show on KTLA in Los Angeles, where it was broadcast from the Aragon Ballroom in Venice Beach. The show became a local hit and was picked up by ABC in June, 1955.

During its first year on the air, the Welk hour instituted several regular features. To make Welk's "Champagne Music" tagline visual, the production crew engineered a "bubble machine" that spouted streams of large bubbles across the bandstand.

While the bubble machine was originally engineered to produce soap bubbles, complaints from the band members about soapy build-ups on their instruments led to the machine being re-worked to produce glycerine bubbles instead.

Whenever the orchestra played a polka or waltz, Welk himself would dance with the band's female vocalist, the "Champagne Lady." As Welk's show mainly targeted older viewers, they seldom played recent music that the audience might not be familiar with.

On December 8, 1956, two examples on the same broadcast were "Nuttin' for Christmas," which became a vehicle for Rocky Rockwell dressed in a child's outfit, and Elvis Presley's "Don't Be Cruel," which was sung by violinist Bob Lido, wearing fake Presley-style sideburns.

On another episode, The Lennon Sisters performed The Orlons' "The Wah-Watusi" with bass singer Larry Hooper wearing a beatnik outfit. This stood in comparison to the contemporary American Bandstand, which catered to a teenager audience and featured the latest acts.

Befitting the target audience, the type of music on The Lawrence Welk Show was almost always conservative, concentrating on popular music standards, polkas and novelty songs, delivered in a smooth, calm easy listening style and "family-oriented" manner.

Although described by one critic (the Canadian journalist and entertainment editor, Frank Rasky) as "the squarest music this side of Euclid," this strategy proved commercially successful and the show remained on the air for 31 years.

Much of the show's appeal was Welk himself. His unusual accent appealed to the audience. While Welk's English was passable, he never did grasp the English "idiom" completely and was thus famous for his "Welk-isms," such as "George, I want to see you when you have a minute, right now" and "Now, for my accordion solo; Myron, will you join me?"

His TV show was recorded as if it were a live performance, and it was sometimes quite free-wheeling. Another famous "Welk-ism" was his trademark count-off, "A one and a two . . . ," which was immortalized on his California automobile license plate that read "A1ANA2." This plate is visible on the front of a Model A Ford in one of the shows from 1980.

He often took women from the audience for a turn around the dance floor. During one show, Welk brought a cameraman out to dance with one of the women and took over the camera himself.

Welk's musicians were always top-quality, including accordionist Myron Floren, concert violinist Dick Kesner, guitarist Buddy Merrill and New Orleans Dixieland clarinetist, Pete Fountain.

Though Welk was occasionally rumored to be very tight with a dollar, he paid his regular band members top scale—a very good living for a working musician. Long tenure was very common among the regulars.

Welk's insistence on wholesome entertainment led him to be a somewhat stern taskmaster at times. For example, he fired Alice Lon, at the time the show's "Champagne Lady," because he believed she was showing too much leg.

Welk told the audience that he would not tolerate such "cheesecake" performances on his show. He later tried unsuccessfully to rehire the singer after fan mail indicated overwhelmingly that viewers disagreed with her dismissal.

He then had a series of short-term "Champagne Ladies" before Norma Zimmer filled that spot on a permanent basis. Highly involved with his stars' personal lives, he often arbitrated their marriage disputes.

Welk completely retired from all public appearances in 1992 at the age of 89. He died on May 17 in his Santa Monica apartment. The cause of death was officially "bronchial pneumonia with cerebrovascular insufficiency as a contributing factor."

[weimy froob]

Liza Minnelli is 77 years old today
Al Jarreau was born 83 years ago today
Jesse "Lone Cat" Fuller was born 127 years ago today



James Taylor is 75 years old today.

A singer-songwriter and guitarist, Taylor achieved his breakthrough in 1970 with the #3 single, "Fire and Rain," and had his first #1 hit the following year with "You've Got a Friend," a recording of Carole King's classic song.

His 1976 Greatest Hits album sold 12 million U.S. copies. Following his 1977 album, JT, Taylor retained a large audience over the decades. His commercial achievements declined slightly until a resurgence during the late 1990s and 2000s, when some of his best-selling and most-awarded albums (including Hourglass, October Road and Covers) were released.

Taylor was born at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where his father, Isaac M. Taylor, was a resident physician. His father was from a well-off family of Southern Scottish ancestry. His mother, the former Gertrude Woodard, had studied singing with Marie Sundelius at the New England Conservatory of Music and was an aspiring opera singer before the couple's marriage in 1946.

James was the second of five children, the others being Alex (1947-1993), Kate (born 1949), Livingston (born 1950) and Hugh (born 1952).

In 1951, when James was three, the family moved to what was then the countryside of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, when Isaac took a job as Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. They built a house in the Morgan Creek area off of what is now Morgan Creek Road, which was sparsely populated.

James would later say, "Chapel Hill, the Piedmont, the outlying hills, were tranquil, rural, beautiful, but quiet. Thinking of the red soil, the seasons, the way things smelled down there, I feel as though my experience of coming of age there was more a matter of landscape and climate than people."

James attended public primary school in Chapel Hill. Isaac's career prospered, but he was frequently away from home, either on military service at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland or as part of Operation Deep Freeze in Antarctica during 1955–1956.

Isaac Taylor later rose to become Dean of the UNC School of Medicine from 1964 to 1971. The family spent summers on Martha's Vineyard beginning in 1953.

Taylor first learned to play the cello as a child in North Carolina, and switched to the guitar in 1960. His style on that instrument evolved from listening to hymns, carols and Woody Guthrie, while his technique derived from his bass clef-oriented cello training and from experimenting on his sister Kate's keyboards.

"My style was a finger-picking style that was meant to be like a piano, as if my thumb were my left hand, and my first, second, and third fingers were my right hand," he said.

He began attending Milton Academy, a prep boarding school in Massachusetts in Fall, 1961. Summering before then with his family on Martha's Vineyard, he met Danny Kortchmar, an aspiring teenage guitarist from Larchmont, New York.

The two began listening to and playing blues and folk music together, and Kortchmar quickly realized that Taylor's singing had a "natural sense of phrasing, every syllable beautifully in time. I knew James had that thing."

Taylor wrote his first song on guitar at age 14, and continued to learn the instrument effortlessly. By the summer of 1963, he and Kortchmar were playing coffeehouses around the Vineyard, billed as "Jamie & Kootch.”

Taylor faltered during his junior year at Milton, not feeling at ease in the high-pressured college prep environment despite having good scholastic performance. The Milton principal would later say, "James was more sensitive and less goal-oriented than most students of his day."

He returned home to North Carolina to finish out the semester at Chapel Hill High School. There he joined a band his brother Alex had formed called The Corsayers (later The Fabulous Corsairs), playing electric guitar. In 1964, they cut a single in Raleigh that featured James's song, "Cha Cha Blues," on the B-side.

Having lost touch with his former school friends in North Carolina, Taylor returned to Milton for his senior year. There, Taylor started applying to colleges, but soon descended into depression. His grades collapsed, he slept twenty hours a day, and he felt part of a "life that I [was] unable to lead."

In late 1965, he committed himself to the renowned McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, where he was treated with Thorazine and where the organized days began to give him a sense of time and structure.

As the Vietnam War built up, Taylor received a psychological rejection from Selective Service System when he appeared before them with two white-suited McLean assistants and was uncommunicative.

Taylor earned a high school diploma in 1966 from the hospital's associated Arlington School. He would later view his nine-month stay at McLean as "a lifesaver ... like a pardon or like a reprieve," and both his brother, Livingston, and sister, Kate, would later be patients and students there as well.

As for his mental health struggles, Taylor would think of them as innate, and say: "It's an inseparable part of my personality that I have these feelings." Taylor checked himself out of McLean and, at Kortchmar's urging, moved to New York City to form a band.

They recruited Joel O'Brien, formerly of Kortchmar's old band, The King Bees, to play drums, and Taylor's childhood friend, Zachary Wiesner, (son of noted academic Jerome Wiesner) to play bass. After Taylor rejected the notion of naming the group after him, they called themselves The Flying Machine.

They played songs that Taylor had written at and about McLean, such as "Knocking 'Round the Zoo," "Don't Talk Now" and "The Blues Is Just a Bad Dream.“ In some other songs, Taylor romanticized his life, although he was plagued by self-doubt.

By the summer of 1966, they were performing regularly at the high-visibility Night Owl Cafe in Greenwich Village alongside acts such as The Turtles and Lothar and the Hand People.

Taylor associated with a motley collection of people and began using heroin, to Kortchmar's dismay, and wrote "Paint It, Black” — influenced "Rainy Day Man" to depict his drug experience.

Taylor would later say of this New York period, "I learned a lot about music and too much about drugs." Indeed, his drug use had developed into full-blown heroin addiction during the final Flying Machine period: "I just fell into it, since it was as easy to get high in the Village as get a drink." He hung out in Washington Square Park, playing guitar to ward off depression and then passing out, letting runaways and criminals stay at his apartment.

Finally out of money and abandoned by his manager, he made a desperate call one night to his father. Isaac Taylor flew to New York and staged a rescue, renting a car and driving all night back to North Carolina with James and his possessions. Taylor spent six months getting treatment and making a tentative recovery. He also required a throat operation to fix vocal cords damaged from singing too harshly.

Taylor decided to try being a solo act and a change of scenery. In late 1967, funded by a small family inheritance, he moved to London, living variously in Notting Hill, Belgravia and Chelsea.

He recorded some demos in Soho and, capitalizing on Kortchmar's connection to The King Bees (who once opened for Peter and Gordon), brought the demos to Peter Asher, who was A&R head for The Beatles' newly formed label, Apple Records.

Asher showed the demos to Paul McCartney, who later said, "I just heard his voice and his guitar and I thought he was great ... and he came and played live, so it was just like, 'Wow, he's great.'" Taylor became the first non-British act signed to Apple.

Living chaotically in various places with various women, Taylor wrote additional material, including "Carolina in My Mind," and rehearsed with a new backing band. Taylor recorded what would become his first album from July to October, 1968 at Trident Studios, at the same time The Beatles were recording The White Album.

McCartney and an uncredited George Harrison guested on "Carolina in My Mind," whose lyric “holy host of others standing around me” referred to the Beatles. The title phrase of Taylor's "Something in the Way She Moves" provided the lyrical starting point for Harrison's classic, "Something."