musical birthdays

[weimy froob]

a new thread to recognize the b-days of those in the music business.

Carl Smith, country singer, was born 95 years ago today
Phil Lesh is 82 years old today
Jimmy McPartland was born 115 years ago today
Lightnin’ Hopkins was born 111 years ago today
Mike Love, founding member of the Beach Boys, is 81 years old today
Ry Cooder is 75 years ago today
Sly Stone is 79 years old today

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On March 16, 1970 — 52 years ago today—Tammi Terrell died of complications from the malignant brain tumor
Ray Benson is 71 years old today
Patty Griffin is 58 years old today
Jerry Jeff Walker was born 80 years ago today
Henny Youngman, comedian and violinist famous for his "one-liners," was born 116 years ago today

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Michelle Shocked is 60 years old today
John Sebastian is 78 years old today
Paul Kantner was born 81 years ago today
Vince Martin was born 85 years ago today
Nat King Cole, a singer and musician who first came to prominence as a leading jazz pianist, was born 103 years ago today

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Bill Frisell is 71 years old today
Wilson Pickett was born 81 years ago today
Charley Pride was born 88 years ago today
John Kander, Broadway composer and half of the songwriting team of Kander and Ebb, is 95 years old today

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Clarence "Frogman" Henry, R&B singer and pianist from New Orleans, is 85 years old today

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Jimmie Vaughan is 71 years old today
Jerry Reed was born 85 years ago today
Sam Lay was born 87 years ago today
Sister Rosetta Tharpe was born 107 years ago today

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Jen Chapin is 51 years old today
Eddie Money was born 73 years ago today
Solomon Burke was born 82 years ago today
Son House was born 120 years ago today

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David Grisman is 77 years old today

3-22-21
George Benson is 79 years old today

[Nightfly]

On March 16, 1970 — 52 years ago today—Tammi Terrell died of complications from the malignant brain tumor
Ray Benson is 71 years old today
Patty Griffin is 58 years old today
Jerry Jeff Walker was born 80 years ago today
Henny Youngman, comedian and violinist famous for his "one-liners," was born 116 years ago today

Wolfgang Van Halen was born on 3/16/1991. I only remember this because of the track called '316' on Van Halen's 1991 album For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge.

[weimy froob]

On March 16, 1970 — 52 years ago today—Tammi Terrell died of complications from the malignant brain tumor
Ray Benson is 71 years old today
Patty Griffin is 58 years old today
Jerry Jeff Walker was born 80 years ago today
Henny Youngman, comedian and violinist famous for his "one-liners," was born 116 years ago today

Wolfgang Van Halen was born on 3/16/1991. I only remember this because of the track called '316' on Van Halen's 1991 album For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge.

good addition to the day.

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Billy Stewart was born 85 years ago today
Don Covay was born 86 years ago today
Carol Kaye is 87 years old today

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Elton John is 75 years old today
Aretha Franklin was born 80 years ago today
Hoyt Axton was born 84 years ago today
Johnny Burnette, rockabilly musician, was born 88 years ago today
Tom Wilson, prolific record producer for major musical acts, was born 91 years ago today
Béla Bartók, Hungarian composer and pianist, was born 141 years ago today

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Teddy Pendergrass was born 72 years ago today
Johnny Crawford, child actor turned musician, was born 76 years ago today
Diana Ross is 78 years old today
Alan Arkin is 88 years old today
Leonard Nimoy was born 91 years ago today
Izzy Young, folk music pioneer in New York City, was born 94 years ago today
Rufus Thomas was born 105 years ago

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Johnny Copeland was born 85 years ago today
Sarah Vaughan was born 98 years ago today

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Lady Gaga is 36 years old today
Reba McEntire is 67 years old today

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i think i'll highlight one of the b-days every day to put a little more juice in the thread.

John Popper is 55 years old today
Johnny Dowd, alternative country musician from Ithaca, New York, is 74 years old today
Pearl Bailey was born 104 years ago today
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
An actress and singer, Bailey appeared in vaudeville and made her Broadway debut in St. Louis Woman in 1946.

She won a Tony Award for the title role in the all-black production of Hello, Dolly! in 1968.

Bailey was born in Southampton County in southeastern Virginia. She was raised in the Bloodfields neighborhood of Newport News, Virginia.

She made her stage-singing debut when she was 15 years old.

Her brother, Bill Bailey, was beginning his own career as a tap dancer, and suggested she enter an amateur contest at the Pearl Theatre in Philadelphia.

She entered the amateur song and dance contest and won. She was offered $35 a week to perform there for two weeks, but the theatre closed during her engagement and she wasn't paid.

She later won a similar contest at Harlem’s famous Apollo Theater, and decided to pursue a career in entertainment.

Bailey began by singing and dancing in Philadelphia’s black nightclubs in the 1930s, and soon started performing in other parts of the East Coast.

In 1941, during World War II, Bailey toured the country with the USO, performing for American troops.

After the tour, she settled in New York. Her solo successes as a nightclub performer were followed by acts with such entertainers as Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington.

In 1946, Bailey made her Broadway debut in St. Louis Woman. She continued to tour and record albums in between her stage and screen performances.

In 1954, Bailey took the role of Frankie in the film version of Carmen Jones, and her rendition of "Beat Out That Rhythm on the Drum" is one of the highlights of the film.

She also starred in the Broadway musical, House of Flowers.

In 1959, she played the role of Maria in the film version of Porgy and Bess, starring Sidney Poitier and Dorothy Dandridge.

Also that year, she played the role of Aunt Hagar in the movie, St. Louis Blues, alongside Mahalia Jackson, Eartha Kitt and Nat King Cole.

In 1967, Bailey and Cab Calloway headlined an all-black cast version of Hello, Dolly!

The touring version was so successful, producer David Merrick took it to Broadway where it played to sold-out houses and revitalized the long running musical.

Bailey was given a special Tony Award for her role and RCA made a second original cast album. The recording is the only one of the score to have an overture written especially for it.

Pearl Bailey died at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia on August 17, 1990.

Following an autopsy, it was announced the cause of death as arterio

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Norah Jones is 43 years old today
Tracy Chapman is 58 years old today
Eric Clapton is 77 years old today

Sonny Boy Williamson I was born 108 years ago today


A blues harmonica player and singer, Williamson was the first to use the name Sonny Boy Williamson.

Born near Jackson, Tennessee in 1914, his original recordings were considered to be in the country blues style. But soon he demonstrated skill at making harmonica a lead instrument for the blues and popularized it for the first time in a more urban blues setting.

Williamson has been called "the father of modern blues harp."

While in his teens, he joined Yank Rachell and Sleepy John Estes playing in Tennessee and Arkansas. In 1934, he settled in Chicago.

Williamson first recorded for Bluebird Records in 1937. His first recording, "Good Morning, School Girl," became a standard.

He was hugely popular among black audiences throughout the southern United States as well as in the midwestern industrial cities including Chicago and Detroit. His name became synonymous with the blues harmonica for the next decade.

Other well-known recordings of Williamson include "Sugar Mama Blues," "Shake the Boogie," "You Better Cut That Out," "Sloppy Drunk," "Early in the Morning," "Stop Breaking Down" and "Hoodoo Hoodoo" a/k/a "Hoodoo Man Blues."

In 1947, "Shake the Boogie" made #4 on Billboard's Race Records chart. Williamson's style influenced a large number of blues harmonica performers, including Billy Boy Arnold, Junior Wells, Sonny Terry, Little Walter and Snooky Pryor.

His music was also influential on many of his non-harmonica playing contemporaries and successors, including Muddy Waters (who had played guitar with Williamson in the mid-1940s) and Jimmy Rogers (whose first recording in 1946 was as a harmonica player, performing an uncanny imitation of Williamson's style).

Rogers later recorded Williamson's songs "My Little Machine" and "Sloppy Drunk" on Chess Records, and Waters recorded "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl" in September, 1963 for his Chess Folk Singer LP and again in the 1970s when he moved to Johnny Winter's Blue Sky label on CBS.

Williamson was popular enough that by the 1940s, another blues harp player, Aleck/Alex "Rice" Miller, from Mississippi, began also using the name Sonny Boy Williamson.

Williamson I is said to have objected to this, though no legal action took place, possibly due to the fact that Miller did not release any records during Williamson's lifetime.

Also, Williamson played mainly around the Chicago area, while Miller seldom ventured beyond the Mississippi Delta region until after Williamson's death.

In 1942, Williamson allegedly confronted Miller, but according to Miller's friend and guitarist, Robert Lockwood, "Big Sonny Boy [Miller] chased Little Sonny Boy [Williamson] away from there. He couldn't play with Rice. Rice Miller could play Sonny Boy's stuff better than he could play it!"

Williamson recorded prolifically both as a bandleader and a sideman over the entire course of his career, mainly for the Bluebird record label. Before Bluebird moved to Chicago, where it eventually became part of RCA Records, many early sessions took place at the Leland Tower, a hotel in Aurora, Illinois.

The top-floor nightclub at the Leland, known as "The Sky Club," was used for live big band broadcasts on a local radio station, was utilized during off-hours as a recording studio for Williamson's early sessions, as well as those of other Bluebird artists.

Williamson's final recording session took place in Chicago in December, 1947, backing Big Joe Williams.

On June 1, 1948, Williamson was killed in a robbery on Chicago's South Side, as he walked home from a performance at The Plantation Club at 31st St. and Giles Ave., a tavern just a block and a half away from his home at 3226 S. Giles.

Williamson's final words are reported to have been "Lord have mercy."

His legacy has been somewhat overshadowed in the post-war blues era by the popularity of the musician who appropriated his name, Rice Miller, who after Williamson's death went on to record many popular blues songs for Chicago's Checker Records label and others, and toured Europe several times during the blues revival in the early 1960s.

Williamson is buried at the former site of The Blairs Chapel Church, southwest of Jackson, Tennessee. In 1991, a red granite marker was purchased by fans and family to mark the site of his burial.

A Tennessee historical marker, also placed in 1991, indicates the place of his birth and describes his influence on the blues music. The historical marker is located south of Jackson on TN Highway 18, at the corner of Caldwell Road.

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Herb Alpert is 87 years old today
Lefty Frizzell was born 94 years ago today
Etta Baker was born 109 years ago today

Johann Sebastian Bach was born 337 years ago today


Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist and violinist of the Baroque period.

He enriched many established German styles through his skill in counterpoint, harmonic and motivic organization, and the adaptation of rhythms, forms and textures from abroad — particularly from Italy and France.

Bach's compositions include the Brandenburg Concertos, the Mass in B minor, the The Well-Tempered Clavier, his cantatas, chorales, partitas, Passions and organ works. His music is revered for its intellectual depth, technical command and artistic beauty.

Bach was born in Eisenach, Saxe-Eisenach, into a very musical family. His father, Johann Ambrosius Bach, was the director of the town musicians, and all of his uncles were professional musicians.

His father taught him to play violin and harpsichord, and his brother, Johann Christoph Bach, taught him the clavichord and exposed him to much contemporary music.

Bach also went to St Michael's School in Lüneburg because of his singing skills. After graduating, he held several musical posts across Germany: he served as Kapellmeister (director of music) to Leopold, Prince of Anhalt-Köthen, Cantor of Thomasschule in Leipzig and Royal Court Composer to August III.

Bach's health and vision declined in 1749 and he died at age 65 on July 28, 1750.

Modern historians believe that his death was caused by a combination of stroke and pneumonia.

Bach's abilities as an organist were highly respected throughout Europe during his lifetime, although he was not widely recognized as a great composer until a revival of interest and performances of his music in the first half of the 19th century.

He is now generally regarded as one of the main composers of the Baroque period, and as one of the greatest composers of all time.

[Beef Supreme]

Happy 67th birthday, Angus Young!

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Amos Milburn was born 95 years ago today
Alberta Hunter, blues singer, songwriter and nurse, was born 127 years ago today

Gil Scott-Heron was born 73 years ago today


A soul and jazz poet, musician and author, Scott-Heron is known primarily for his work as a spoken word performer in the 1970s and '80s.

His collaborative efforts with the musician, Brian Jackson, featured a musical fusion of jazz, blues and soul, as well as lyrical content concerning social and political issues of the time, delivered in both rapping and melismatic vocal styles by Scott-Heron.

His own term for himself was "bluesologist," which he defined as "a scientist who is concerned with the origin of the blues."

His music, most notably on Pieces of a Man and Winter in America in the early 1970s, influenced and helped engender later African-American music genres such as hip hop and neo soul.

Besides influencing contemporary musicians, Scott-Heron remained active until his death at age 62 in 2011.

In 2010, he released his first new album in 16 years — I'm New Here.

A memoir he had been working on for years up to the time of his death, The Last Holiday, was also published, posthumously in January, 2012.

His recording work received much critical acclaim, especially one of his best-known compositions "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." His poetic style has influenced every generation of hip hop.

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Leon Russell was born 80 years ago today
Marvin Gaye was born 83 years ago today

Emmylou Harris is 75 years old today



A singer-songwriter and musician, Harris has released many chart-topping albums and singles over the course of her long career.

In addition to her work as a solo artist and bandleader, both as an interpreter of other composers' works and as a singer-songwriter, she is a sought-after backing vocalist and duet partner.

She has worked with numerous other artists including Gram Parsons, John Denver, Linda Ronstadt, Dolly Parton, Roy Orbison, The Band, Mark Knopfler, Guy Clark, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, Rodney Crowell, Little Feat and Neil Young.

Harris is from a career military family. Her father, Walter Harris, was a military officer and her mother, Eugenia, was a wartime military wife. Her father, a member of the Marine Corps, was reported missing in action in Korea in 1952 and spent ten months as a prisoner of war.

Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Harris spent her childhood in North Carolina and Woodbridge, Virginia, where she graduated from Gar-Field Senior High School as class valedictorian.

She won a drama scholarship to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she began to study music seriously. She learned to play the songs of Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez on guitar.

Leaving college to pursue her musical aspirations, she moved to New York, working as a waitress to support herself while performing folk songs in Greenwich Village coffeehouses.

She married fellow songwriter Tom Slocum in 1969 and recorded her first album, Gliding Bird. Harris and Slocum soon divorced, and Harris and her newborn daughter, Hallie, moved in with her parents in the Maryland suburbs on the edge of Washington, D.C.

Harris soon returned to performing as part of a trio with Gerry Mule and Tom Guidera. One night in 1971, members of the country rock group, The Flying Burrito Brothers, happened to be in the audience.

Former Byrds member Chris Hillman, who had taken over the band after the departure of its founder, Gram Parsons, was so impressed by Harris that he briefly considered asking her to join the band.

Instead, Hillman ended up recommending her to Parsons, who was looking for a female vocalist to work with on his first solo album, GP. Harris toured as a member of Parsons' band, The Fallen Angels, in 1973, and the two of them performed well during vocal harmonies and duets.

Harris was quite pleased with their work, and invested a lot emotionally in their relationship. Later that year, Parsons and Harris worked on a studio album, Grievous Angel.

Parsons died in his motel room near what is now Joshua Tree National Park on September 19, 1973 from an accidental overdose of drugs and alcohol.

Parsons's Grievous Angel was released posthumously in 1974, and three more tracks from his last sessions with Harris were included on another posthumous Parsons album, Sleepless Nights, in 1976. There was one more album of recorded material from that period of time that was packaged with the name, Live 1973, but was not released until 1982.

The working relationship between Harris and Parsons is of great importance in country and country-rock music history. Parsons offered Harris a study in true country music, introducing her to artists like The Louvin Brothers. He also provided her with a musical identity.

Harris's harmony and duet vocals were lauded by those who heard them, and helped inspire Parsons' performances.

His death left her devastated and at an emotional and musical crossroads. She eventually carried on with her own version of Parsons' musical vision, and was instrumental in bringing attention to his achievements.

Harris's earliest signature song, and arguably her most personal one, "Boulder to Birmingham," written shortly after Gram's death, showed the depth of her shock and pain at losing Parsons.

It was, according to her best friend, Linda Ronstadt, the beginning of a "lifetime effort to process what had happened," and was just the first of many songs written and/or performed by Harris about her life with (and without) Parsons.

Warner Brothers A&R representative Mary Martin introduced Harris to Canadian producer, Brian Ahern, who produced her major label debut album, Pieces of the Sky. It was released in 1975 on Reprise Records.

The album was surprisingly eclectic, especially by Nashville standards, including cover versions of The Beatles' "For No One," Merle Haggard's "Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down" and The Louvin Brothers' "If I Could Only Win Your Love."

It also featured "Bluebird Wine," a composition by a young Texas songwriter, Rodney Crowell, who was the first in a long line of songwriters whose talents Harris has championed. The record was one of the most expensive country records produced at the time.

Executives of Warner Bros. Records (Reprise Records's parent company) told Harris they would agree to record her if she would "get a hot band." Harris did so, enlisting guitarist James Burton and pianist Glen Hardin — both of whom had played with Elvis Presley as well as Parsons.

Burton was a renowned guitarist, starting in Ricky Nelson's band in the 1950s, and Hardin had been a member of The Crickets.

Other Hot Band members were drummer John Ware, pedal steel guitarist Hank DeVito and bassist Emory Gordy, Jr., with whom Harris had worked while performing with Parsons.

Singer-songwriter Crowell was enlisted as a rhythm guitarist and duet partner. Harris's first tour schedule originally dovetailed around Presley's, owing to Burton and Hardin's continuing commitments to Presley's band.

The Hot Band lived up to its name, with most of the members moving on with fresh talent replacing them as they continued on to solo careers of their own. Harris' reputation for guest work continued. Aside from contributing to albums by Linda Ronstadt, Guy Clark and Neil Young, Harris was tapped by Bob Dylan to perform on his Desire album, but entirely uncredited.

Harris also filmed one of the studio sequences, owing to her touring schedule, in The Band's The Last Waltz. She sang "Evangeline."

In 1995, Harris released one of the most critically acclaimed albums of the decade, Wrecking Ball, produced by Daniel Lanois, best known for his work with U2, Peter Gabriel and Bob Dylan.

An experimental album for Harris, the record included Harris's rendition of the Neil Young-penned title track (Young himself provided guest vocals on two of the album's songs), Steve Earle's "Goodbye," Julie Miller's "All My Tears," Jimi Hendrix's "May This Be Love," Kate and Anna McGarrigle's "Goin' Back to Harlan" and Gillian Welch's "Orphan Girl."

The Traveling Kind, a collaboration with Rodney Crowell, was released May 12, 2015 by Nonesuch Records.

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Richard Manuel, member of the Band, was born 79 years ago today
Artie Traum was born 79 years ago today
Billy Joe Royal was born 80 years ago today
Jan Berry, creative force behind surf rock duo, Jan and Dean, was born on this day 81 years ago
Jimmy McGriff was born 86 years ago today
Don Gibson was born 94 years ago today
Doris Day, actress, singer and animal rights activist, was born 100 years ago today
Arthur "Dooley" Wilson — piano-player and singer, Sam, who sings "As Time Goes By" in the 1942 film, Casablanca — was born 136 years ago today

Richard Thompson is 73 years old today


Thompson is a British songwriter, guitarist and recording and performing musician. He was awarded the Orville H. Gibson award for best acoustic guitar player in 1991. Similarly, his songwriting has earned him an Ivor Novello Award and, in 2006, a lifetime achievement award from BBC Radio.

Artists who have recorded Thompson's compositions include such diverse talents as Del McCoury, R.E.M., Bonnie Raitt, Christy Moore, David Gilmour, Mary Black, Elvis Costello, Marshall Crenshaw, The Corrs, Sandy Denny, June Tabor, Joel Fafard, Maria McKee, Shawn Colvin, Norma Waterson, Martin Carthy, Nanci Griffith, Graham Parker, The Pointer Sisters, Maura O'Connell, Los Lobos, John Doe, Greg Brown, Bob Mould, Barbara Manning, Loudon Wainwright III, The Futureheads and The Blind Boys of Alabama.

Thompson made his début as a recording artist as a member of Fairport Convention in September, 1967. He continues to write and record new material regularly and frequently performs live throughout the world.

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Muddy Waters was born on this day in 1913 — 109 years ago



When Bob Dylan picked up an electric guitar at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, he permanently alienated a portion of his passionate fan base.

When Muddy Waters went electric roughly 20 years earlier, he didn't have a fan base to be concerned about, and those who did go to his shows probably had no quarrel with his motivation for plugging in, which was simply to play loud enough to be heard inside a raucous nightclub.

Little could those lucky Chicagoans have known that they were hearing the birth of a style of blues that would become a fundamental part of their city's cultural identity.

Out of all the bluesmen plying their trade in the clubs of the Windy City in the late 40s and early 50s, none did more than Muddy Waters to create the Chicago Blues — the hard-driving, amplified, distinctly urban sound with roots in the rural Mississippi Delta, where Waters was born on this day in 1913 — 109 years ago.

Muddy Waters was born McKinley Morganfield in Clarksdale, Mississippi. He played and sang at parties and fish fries from the age of 17, spending his days picking cotton on the Stovall Plantation for 50 cents a day.

In 1941, folklorist Alan Lomax, on his famous trip through the Delta on behalf of the Library of Congress, discovered Waters and made the first recordings of his slide-guitar blues, released many years later as the "Plantation Recordings."

By 1944, Waters had joined the Great Migration that took African Americans by the hundreds of thousands north to cities like Chicago. It was there that his country blues evolved into the aggressive Chicago Blues exemplified on famous songs like "Rollin' Stone," "Hoochie Coochie Man," "Mannish Boy" and "Got My Mojo Working."

The first of those songs would later provide songwriting inspiration to Bob Dylan and the idea for a name to a famous British rock group, The Rolling Stones.

The Stones were just one of hundreds of blues-based groups that formed in England in the early 1960s, inspired in part by Muddy Waters' records and by his tour of Britain in 1958.

Waters would be regarded as a blues giant on the strength of his 1947-1958 Chess Records recordings alone, but he influenced an entire young generation of British musicians to follow in his footsteps.

Waters died at age 70 near his adopted hometown of Chicago on April 30, 1983.

Today, Waters is considered the "father of modern Chicago blues” and one of the greatest artists of his time.

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Billy Bland was born 90 years ago today
Joe Meek, pioneering English record producer and songwriter, was born 93 years ago today

Cowboy Jack Clement was born 91 years ago today


A singer, songwriter, record and film producer, Clement was raised and educated in Memphis. In 1953, he made his first record for the Sheraton label in Boston but did not immediately pursue a full time career in music, instead choosing to study at Memphis State University from 1953 to 1955.

He was nicknamed “Cowboy” Jack Clement during his student days when he played steel guitar with a local band. In 1956, he became part of one of the seminal events in rock and roll history when he went to work as a producer and engineer for Sam Phillips at Sun Records.

There, Clement worked with future stars such as Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash. But most importantly, he discovered and recorded Jerry Lee Lewis while Sam Phillips was away on a trip to Florida.

One of those recordings, "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On," was selected in 2005 for permanent preservation in the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress.

In 1957, Clement wrote the song "Ballad of a Teenage Queen" that became a crossover hit for Johnny Cash. Other Cash hits written by Clement included "Guess Things Happen That Way," which was #1 country and #11 pop in 1958, and the humorous "The One on the Right Is on the Left," which was a #2 country and #46 pop hit in 1966.

Clement performed "Guess Things Happen That Way" on the Johnny Cash Memorial Tribute show on CMT in November, 2003. In 1959, Clement accepted an offer to work as a producer at RCA in Nashville, then the most important label in the industry.

Clement went on to become a significant figure in the Nashville music business. He established a publishing business and his own recording studio, making records for stars such as Charley Pride and Ray Stevens.

In 1971, he co-founded the J-M-I Record Company. He wrote a number of highly successful songs that have been recorded by singing stars such as Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Ray Charles, Carl Perkins, Bobby Bare, Elvis Presley, Jim Reeves, Jerry Lee Lewis, Cliff Richard ("It'll Be Me"), Charley Pride, Tom Jones, Dickey Lee and Hank Snow. He also produced albums by Townes Van Zandt and Waylon Jennings.

Clement was involved in a few film projects as a singer or songwriter on soundtracks, and produced the 1975 horror film, Dear Dead Delilah, that marked the last film performance by actress Agnes Moorehead.

In 1987, Clement was approached by U2 to record at the legendary Sun Studio in Memphis. He had never heard of U2, but took the session based on the urging of someone else in his office. The result was a portion of the U2 album, Rattle and Hum.

In 2005, a documentary on Clement entitled “Shakespeare Was a Big George Jones Fan” was created by Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville, pieced together from Clement's home videos and interviews with peers, including Jerry Lee Lewis and Bono. Clement has been inducted into the Rockabilly Hall of Fame and the Music City Walk of Fame.

On June 25, 2011, a fire destroyed Clement’s home and studio on Belmont Blvd. in Nashville. Clement was unhurt, but many priceless recordings and memorabilia were lost. Until his death, Clement hosted a weekly program on Sirius XM Satellite Radio's Outlaw country channel.

Clement died at his home on August 8, 2013 in Nashville. He had suffered from liver cancer.

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Warren Haynes is 62 years old today
Danny Kortchmar is 76 years old today
Hedy West was born 84 years ago today
Gerry Mulligan was born 95 years ago today

Merle Haggard was born 85 years ago today

“By the time you get close to the answers, it’s nearly all over.”— Merle Haggard

A country music singer, songwriter, guitarist, fiddler and instrumentalist, Haggard and his band, the Strangers, along with Buck Owens, helped create the Bakersfield sound.

The sound is characterized by the unique twang of the Fender Telecaster and the mix with the traditional country steel guitar sound, new vocal harmony styles in which the words are minimal, and a rough edge not heard on the more polished Nashville Sound recordings of the same era.

By the 1970s, Haggard was aligned with the growing outlaw country movement. He continued to release successful albums through the 1990s and into the 2000s.

Haggard's parents, James Francis and Flossie Mae, moved to California from their home in Checotah, Oklahoma, during the Great Depression after their barn burned in 1934. They settled with their children, Lowell and Lillian in an apartment in Bakersfield, while James Francis Haggard started working for the Santa Fe Railroad.

A woman who owned a boxcar, which was placed in Oildale, a close town north of Bakersfield, asked Haggard's father about the possibility of converting it into a house. He reformed the boxcar, and soon after moved in, also purchasing the lot, where Merle Ronald Haggard was born on April 6, 1937.

His father died of a brain hemorrhage in 1945, an event that deeply affected Haggard during his childhood and for the rest of his life. To support the family, Haggard’s mother worked as a bookkeeper. His brother, Lowell, gave Haggard his used guitar as a gift when he was twelve years old.

Haggard learned to play alone, with the records he had at home, influenced by Bob Wills, Lefty Frizzell and Hank Williams. As his mother was absent due to work, Haggard became progressively rebellious. His mother sent him for a weekend to a juvenile detention center to change his attitude, which worsened. He escaped multiple times.

Haggard committed several minor offenses, such as thefts and bad checks. For shoplifting in 1950, he was sent to a juvenile detention center. When he was 14, he ran away to Texas with his friend, Bob Teague.

He and Teague hopped freight trains and hitchhiked throughout the state. When they returned the same year, he and Teague were arrested, suspected of robbery. They where released when the real robbers where found.

Haggard had stints working in a series of laborer jobs, including driving a potato-truck, as well as short-order cook, hay pitcher and oil well shooter. He did his debut performance long with Teague in a bar named "Fun Center" being paid $5 and free beer. He returned to Bakersfield in 1951, and was again arrested for truancy and petty larceny and sent to a juvenile detention center.

After another scape, he was sent to the Preston School of Industry, a high-security installation. He was released fifteen months later, but was sent back after beating a local boy during a burglary attempt.

After his release, Haggard saw Lefty Frizzell in concert with his friend, Bob Teague. After hearing Haggard sing along to his songs backstage, Frizzell refused to sing unless Haggard would be allowed to sing first.

Due to the positive reception, Haggard decided to pursue a career in music. While working as a farmer or in oil fields, he played in nightclubs. He eventually landed a spot on the local television show, Chuck Wagon, in 1956.

Married and plagued with financial issues, he was arrested in 1957 shortly after he tried to rob a Bakersfield roadhouse. He was sent to Bakersfield jail, and was later transferred after an escape attempt to San Quentin Prison on February 21, 1958.

While in prison, Haggard discovered that his wife was expecting a child from another man. He was fired from a series of prison jobs and planned to escape along with another inmate nicknamed, "Rabbit." Haggard was convinced not to escape by fellow inmates.

Haggard started to run a gambling and brewing racket with his cellmate. After he was caught drunk, he was sent for a week to solitary confinement where he encountered Caryl Chessman, an author and death row inmate.

Meanwhile, "Rabbit" had successfully escaped, only to shoot a police officer and return to San Quentin for execution. Chessman's predicament, along with the execution of "Rabbit," inspired Haggard to turn his life around.

Haggard soon earned a high-school equivalence diploma and kept a steady job in the prison's textile plant, while also playing for the prison's country music band, attributing a 1958 performance by Johnny Cash on the prison as his main inspiration to join it.

Upon his release in 1960, Haggard said it took about four months to get used to being out of the penitentiary and that, at times, he actually wanted to go back in. He said it was the loneliest he had ever felt. Upon his release, Haggard started digging ditches and wiring houses for his brother. Soon he was performing again, and later began recording with Tally Records.

The Bakersfield Sound was developing in the area as a reaction against the over-produced Nashville Sound. Haggard's first song was "Skid Row." In 1962, he performed at a Wynn Stewart show in Las Vegas and heard Wynn's "Sing a Sad Song.” He asked for permission to record it, and the resulting single was a national hit in 1964.

The following year he had his first national Top 10 record with "(My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers," written by Liz Anderson, the mother of country singer Lynn Anderson. His career was off and running.

In 1966, he had his first #1 song "I'm a Lonesome Fugitive," also written by Liz Anderson, which Haggard acknowledges in his autobiography remains his most popular number with audiences.

In 1968, Haggard's first tribute album, Same Train, Different Time: A Tribute to Jimmie Rodgers, was released to acclaim.

"Okie From Muskogee," 1969's apparent political statement, was, according to some Merle Haggard interviews decades later, actually written as an abjectly humorous character portrait. In one such interview, Haggard called the song a "documentation of the uneducated that lived in America at the time."

On Tuesday, March 14, 1972, shortly after "Carolyn" became another #1 country hit for Haggard, then-California governor Ronald Reagan granted Haggard a full pardon for his past crimes. On December 5, 2015, Haggard was treated at an undisclosed hospital in California for pneumonia. He made a recovery, but postponed several concerts.

In March, 2016, Haggard was once again hospitalized with pneumonia. Concerts for April were cancelled due to his ongoing battle with double pneumonia.

On the morning of April 6, 2016, his 79th birthday, he died of complications from pneumonia at his home in Palo Cedro, California.

Haggard was buried in a private funeral at his ranch on April 9, 2016. His longtime friend, The Psycho Stuart, officiated.

Spoiler:

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Janis Ian is 71 years old today
John Oates is 74 years old today
Freddie Hubbard, jazz trumpeter, was born 84 years ago today
Ravi Shankar was born 102 years ago today

Billie Holiday was born 107 years ago today


Billie Holiday and her dog, Mister, in her backstage dressing room at the Downbeat, NYC, June, 1946

A jazz singer and songwriter, Holiday was nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and musical partner, Lester Young. She had a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo.

Holiday co-wrote only a few songs, but several of them have become jazz standards, notably "God Bless the Child," "Don't Explain," "Fine and Mellow" and "Lady Sings the Blues."

She also became famous for singing "Easy Living," "Good Morning Heartache” and "Strange Fruit," a protest song which became one of her standards and was made famous with her 1939 recording.

Music critic Robert Christgau called her "uncoverable, possibly the greatest singer of the century.”

Born Eleanora Fagan on April 7, 1915, in Philadelphia to Sarah Julia "Sadie" Fagan, Holiday’s father, Clarence Holiday, a musician, did not marry or live with her mother. Her mother had moved to Philadelphia at the age of thirteen, after being rejected from her parents' home in Sandtown-Winchester, Baltimore for becoming pregnant.

With no support from her own parents, Holiday's mother arranged for the young Holiday to stay with her older married half sister, Eva Miller, who lived in Baltimore.

Holiday had a difficult childhood. Her mother often took what were then known as "transportation jobs," serving on the passenger railroads. Holiday was left to be raised largely by Eva Miller's mother-in-law, Martha Miller, and suffered from her mother's absences and leaving her in others' care for much of the first ten years of her life.

Holiday's mother returned to their home on December 24, 1926, to discover a neighbor, Wilbur Rich, raping Holiday. Rich was arrested. Officials placed the girl at the House of the Good Shepherd in protective custody as a state witness in the rape case.

Holiday was released in February, 1927, at nearly twelve. She found a job running errands in a brothel. During this time, Holiday first heard the records of Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith.

By the end of 1928, Holiday's mother decided to try her luck in Harlem and left Holiday again with Martha Miller. By early 1929, Holiday joined her mother in Harlem. Their landlady was a sharply dressed woman named Florence Williams, who ran a brothel at 151 West 140th Street.

Holiday's mother became a prostitute and, within a matter of days of arriving in New York, Holiday, who had not yet turned fourteen, also became a prostitute for $5 a session.

On May 2, 1929, the house was raided, and Holiday and her mother were sent to prison. After spending some time in a workhouse, her mother was released in July, followed by Holiday in October, at the age of 14.

In Harlem, she started singing in various night clubs. Holiday took her professional pseudonym from Billie Dove, an actress she admired, and the musician, Clarence Holiday, her father. At the outset of her career, she spelled her last name "Halliday," the birth-surname of her father, but eventually changed it to "Holiday," his performing name.

The young singer teamed up with a neighbor, tenor sax player Kenneth Hollan. From 1929 to 1931, they were a team, performing at clubs such as the Grey Dawn, Pod's and Jerry's and the Brooklyn Elks' Club. Benny Goodman recalled hearing Holiday in 1931 at The Bright Spot.

As her reputation grew, Holiday played at many clubs, including Mexico's and The Alhambra Bar and Grill where Charles Linton, a vocalist who later worked with Chick Webb, first met her.

It was also during this period that she connected with her father, who was playing with Fletcher Henderson's band.

By the end of 1932 — at the age of 17 — Billie Holiday replaced the singer Monette Moore at a club called Covan's on West 132nd Street. The producer, John Hammond, who loved Monette Moore's singing and had come to hear her, first heard Holiday in early 1933.

Hammond arranged for Holiday to make her recording debut, at age 18, in November, 1933 with Benny Goodman. She performed two songs: "Your Mother's Son-In-Law" and "Riffin' the Scotch," the latter being her first hit.

"Son-in-Law" sold 300 copies, but "Riffin' the Scotch," released on November 11, sold 5,000 copies.

Hammond was impressed by Holiday's singing style. "Her singing almost changed my music tastes and my musical life, because she was the first girl singer I'd come across who actually sang like an improvising jazz genius," Hammond said.

Hammond compared Holiday favorably to Armstrong and said she had a good sense of lyric content at her young age.

In 1935, Billie Holiday had a small role as a woman being abused by her lover in Duke Ellington's short, Symphony in Black: A Rhapsody of Negro Life. In her scene, she sang the song, "Saddest Tale."

Holiday was signed to Brunswick Records by John Hammond to record current pop tunes with Teddy Wilson in the new "swing" style for the growing jukebox trade. They were given free rein to improvise the material. Holiday's improvisation of the melody line to fit the emotion was revolutionary.

Their first collaboration included "What a Little Moonlight Can Do" and "Miss Brown to You." The record label did not favor the recording session, because producers wanted Holiday to sound more like Cleo Brown.

After "What a Little Moonlight Can Do" garnered success, however, the company began considering Holiday an artist in her own right. She began recording under her own name a year later (on the 35-cent Vocalion label), producing a series of extraordinary performances with groups comprising the swing era's finest musicians.

With their arrangements, Wilson and Holiday took pedestrian pop tunes, such as "Twenty-Four Hours a Day" (#6 Pop) or "Yankee Doodle Never Went To Town," and turned them into jazz classics. Most of Holiday's recordings with Wilson or under her own name during the 1930s and early 1940s are regarded as important parts of the jazz vocal library. She was then in her early to late 20s.

Another frequent accompanist was the tenor saxophonist Lester Young, who had been a boarder at her mother's house in 1934 and with whom Holiday had a special rapport. Young nicknamed her, "Lady Day," and she, in turn, dubbed him, "Prez."

In late 1937, Holiday had a brief stint as a big band vocalist with Count Basie. The traveling conditions of the band were often poor and included one-nighters in clubs, moving from city to city with little stability. Holiday chose the songs she sang and had a hand in the arrangements, choosing to portray her then developing persona of a woman unlucky in love.

Holiday found herself in direct competition with popular singer Ella Fitzgerald, with whom Holiday would later become friends. Fitzgerald was the vocalist for the Chick Webb Band, who were in competition with Count Basie.

On Jan 16, 1938, in the same day Benny Goodman performed his legendary Carnegie Hall jazz concert, the Count Basie and Chick Webb bands had a battle at the Savoy Ballroom. Chick Webb and Fitzgerald were declared winners by Metronome magazine. Downbeat magazine declared Holiday and Basie the winners. A straw poll of the audience saw Fitzgerald win by a three-to-one margin.

By February of that year, Holiday was no longer singing for Basie. The reason given for her firing varies from person to person. Jimmy Rushing, Basie's male vocalist, called her unprofessional.

According to All Music Guide, Holiday was officially fired for being "temperamental and unreliable." Holiday complained of low pay and working conditions and may have refused to sing the tunes requested of her or change her style.

Holiday was hired by Artie Shaw a month after being fired from the Count Basie Band. This association placed her among the first black women to work with a white orchestra, an unusual arrangement for the times. In situations where there was a lot of racial tension, Shaw was known to stick up for his vocalist.

Holiday describes one incident in her autobiography where she could not sit on the bandstand with other vocalists because she was black. Shaw said to her, "I want you on the band stand like Helen Forrest, Tony Pastor and everyone else."

When touring the American South, Holiday would sometimes be heckled by members of the audience. In Louisville, Kentucky a man called her a "***DO NOT SAY SHIT LIKE THAT, YOU FUCKING IDIOT!!!!*** wench" and requested she sing another song. Holiday lost her temper and needed to be escorted off the stage.

Holiday was recording for Columbia in the late 1930s when she was introduced to "Strange Fruit," a song based on a poem about lynching written by Abel Meeropol, a Jewish schoolteacher from the Bronx. Meeropol used the pseudonym "Lewis Allan" for the poem, which was set to music and performed at teachers' union meetings.

It was eventually heard by Barney Josephson, proprietor of Café Society, an integrated nightclub in Greenwich Village, who introduced it to Holiday. She performed it at the club in 1939, with some trepidation, fearing possible retaliation.

Holiday later said that the imagery in "Strange Fruit" reminded her of her father's death and that this played a role in her resistance to performing it.

When Holiday's producers at Columbia found the subject matter too sensitive, Milt Gabler agreed to record it for his Commodore Records. That was done on April 20, 1939, and "Strange Fruit" remained in her repertoire for twenty years.

During her time at Commodore, Billie Holiday also babysat the young Billy Crystal. His father was Jack Crystal and his uncle was Milt Gabler, the co-founders of Commodore Records.

"God Bless the Child" became Holiday's most popular and covered record. It reached #25 on the record charts in 1941 and ranked third in Billboard's top songs of the year, selling over a million records.

Holiday's drug addictions were a growing problem. She earned more than a thousand dollars a week from her club ventures at the time, but spent most of it on heroin. By 1947, Holiday was at her commercial peak, having made a quarter of a million dollars in the three years prior.

On May 16, 1947, Holiday was arrested for the possession of narcotics in her New York apartment. On May 27, 1947, she was in court. Dehydrated and unable to hold down any food, she pled guilty and asked to be sent to the hospital.

The D.A. spoke up in her defense, saying, "If your honor please, this is a case of a drug addict, but more serious, however, than most of our cases, Miss Holiday is a professional entertainer and among the higher rank as far as income was concerned."

At the end of the trial, Holiday was sentenced to Alderson Federal Prison Camp in West Virginia, more popularly known as "Camp Cupcake." Holiday was released early (March 16, 1948) because of good behavior.

On March 27, 1948, Holiday played Carnegie Hall to a sold-out crowd. There were 2,700 tickets sold in advance, a record at the time for the venue. Her popularity at the time was unusual in that she didn't have a current hit record.

Holiday was arrested again on January 22, 1949, inside her room at San Francisco's Hotel Mark Twain. Because of her 1947 conviction, Holiday's New York City Cabaret Card was revoked, which kept her from working anywhere that sold alcohol for the remaining 12 years of her life.

By the 1950s, Holiday's drug abuse, drinking and relationships with abusive men caused her health to deteriorate. In early 1959, Holiday found out that she had cirrhosis of the liver. The doctor told her to stop drinking, which she did for a short time, but soon returned to heavy drinking. By May, she had lost twenty pounds.

On May 31, 1959, Holiday was taken to Metropolitan Hospital in New York suffering from liver and heart disease. She was arrested for drug possession as she lay dying, and her hospital room was raided by authorities.

Police officers were stationed at the door to her room. Holiday remained under police guard at the hospital until she died from pulmonary edema and heart failure caused by cirrhosis of the liver on July 17, 1959. She was 44.

In the final years of her life, she had been progressively swindled out of her earnings, and she died with $0.70 in the bank and $750 (a tabloid fee) on her person.

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Jacques Brel was born 93 years ago
Fred Ebb was born 94 years ago today

Carmen McRae was born 100 years ago today


Carmen McRae and Oscar Peterson, 1956

A jazz singer, composer, pianist and actress, McRae was considered one of the most influential jazz vocalists of the 20th century, it was her behind-the-beat phrasing and her ironic interpretations of song lyrics that made her memorable.

McRae drew inspiration from Billie Holiday, but established her own distinctive voice. She went on to record more than 60 albums, enjoying a rich musical career, performing and recording in the United States, Europe and Japan.

McRae sang in jazz clubs throughout the world for more than fifty years. She was a popular performer at the Monterey Jazz Festival (1961–1963, 1966, 1971, 1973, 1982), performing with Duke Ellington's orchestra at the North Sea Jazz Festival in 1980, singing "Don't Get Around Much Anymore," and at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1989.

She left New York for Southern California in the late 1960s, but appeared in New York regularly, usually at the Blue Note, where she performed two engagements a year through most of the 1980s. She withdrew from public performance in May, 1991 after an episode of respiratory failure only hours after she completed an engagement at the Blue Note jazz club in New York.

On November 10, 1994, McRae died at her home in Beverly Hills at the age of 74. She had fallen into a semi-coma four days earlier, a month after being hospitalized for a stroke.

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Mance Lipscomb, blues singer, was born 127 years ago today

Carl Perkins, King of Rockabilly, was born 90 years ago today



Perkins is a rockabilly musician who recorded most notably at Sun Records Studio in Memphis, beginning in 1954. His best known song is "Blue Suede Shoes."

"Carl Perkins' songs personified the rockabilly era, and Carl Perkins' sound personifies the rockabilly sound more so than anybody involved in it, because he never changed," said Charlie Daniels.

Perkins' songs were recorded by artists (and friends) as influential as Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and Johnny Cash, which further cemented his place in the history of popular music. Paul McCartney even claimed that “If there were no Carl Perkins, there would be no Beatles.”

Perkins was the son of poor sharecroppers, Buck and Louise Perkins (misspelled on his birth certificate as "Perkings") near Tiptonville, Tennessee. At age six, when he started working in the cotton fields, he heard Southern gospel music sung by whites in church and by black field workers.

During spring and autumn, the school day would be followed by several hours of work in fields. In the summer, workdays were 12 to 14 hours "from can to can't."

Perkins and his brother, Jay, together would earn 50 cents a day. With all family members working and not having any credit, there was enough money for beans and potatoes, some tobacco for Perkin’s father, Buck, and occasionally the luxury of a five-cent bag of hard candy.

During Saturday nights, Perkins would listen to the radio with his father and hear the Grand Ole Opry. Roy Acuff's broadcasts on the Opry inspired him to ask his parents for a guitar. Because they could not afford a real guitar, Perkin’s father fashioned one from a cigar box and a broomstick.

When a neighbor in tough straits offered to sell his dented and scratched Gene Autry model guitar with worn-out strings, Buck purchased it for a couple of dollars.

For the next year, Perkins taught himself parts of Acuff's "Great Speckled Bird" and "The Wabash Cannonball," which he had heard on the Opry. He also cited the fast playing and vocals of Bill Monroe as an early influence.

Perkins began learning more about playing his guitar from a fellow field worker, John Westbrook, who he befriended. "Uncle John," as Perkins called him, was an African American in his sixties who played blues and gospel on his battered acoustic guitar.

Most famously, "Uncle John" advised Perkins when playing the guitar to "Get down close to it. You can feel it travel down the strangs, come through your head and down to your soul where you live. You can feel it. Let it vib-a-rate."

Because Perkins could not afford new strings when they broke, he retied them. The knots would cut into his fingers when he tried to slide to another note, so he began bending the notes, stumbling onto a type of "blue note."

Perkins and his brother, Jay, had their first paying job (in tips) as entertainers at the "Cotton Boll" tavern on Highway 45 some twelve miles south of Jackson, starting on Wednesday nights during late 1946. Perkins was only 14 years old. One of the songs they played was an uptempo, country blues shuffle version of Bill Monroe's "Blue Moon of Kentucky."

Free drinks were one of the perks of playing in a tavern, and Perkins drank four beers that first night. Within a month, Perkins and his brother began playing Friday and Saturday nights at the Sand Ditch tavern near the western boundary of Jackson. Both places were the scene of occasional fights, and both of the Perkins Brothers gained a reputation as fighters.

During the next couple of years, the Perkins Brothers, who were becoming better known, began playing other taverns, including El Rancho, The Roadside Inn and the Hilltop around Bemis and Jackson.

Perkins persuaded his brother, Clayton, to play the bass fiddle to complete the sound of the band. He began performing regularly on WTJS-AM in Jackson during the late 1940s as a sometime member of the Tennessee Ramblers. He also appeared on Hayloft Frolic where he performed two songs, sometimes including "Talking Blues," as done by Robert Lunn on the Grand Ole Opry.

Perkins and then his brothers began appearing on The Early Morning Farm and Home Hour. Overwhelmingly positive listener response resulted in a 15-minute segment sponsored by Mother's Best Flour. By the end of the 1940s, the Perkins Brothers were the best-known band in the Jackson area.

Perkins had day jobs during most of these early years, working first at picking cotton, then at Day's Dairy in Malesus, then at a mattress factory and in a battery plant. He then worked as a pan greaser for the Colonial Baking Company from 1951 through 1952.

During July, 1954, Perkins and his wife heard a new release of "Blue Moon of Kentucky" by Elvis Presley, Scotty Moore and Bill Black on the radio. Later, Presley told Perkins that he had traveled to Jackson and seen Perkins and his group playing at El Rancho.

Perkins successfully auditioned for Sam Phillips at Sun Records during early October, 1954. "Movie Magg" and "Turn Around" were released on the Phillips-owned Flip label on March 19, 1955, with "Turn Around" becoming a regional success.

With the song getting airplay across the South and Southwest, Perkins was booked to appear along with Elvis Presley at theaters in Marianna and West Memphis, Arkansas.

"When I'd jump around they'd scream some, but they were gettin' ready for him. It was like TNT, man, it just exploded. All of a sudden the world was wrapped up in rock," Perkins said of audience reaction to he and Presley.

Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two were the next musicians to be added to the performances by Sun musicians. During the summer of 1955, there were junkets to Little Rock and Forrest City, Arkansas and to Corinth and Tupelo, Mississippi.

That same autumn, Perkins wrote "Blue Suede Shoes" after seeing a dancer get angry with his date for scuffing up his shoes. Several weeks later, on December 19, 1955, Perkins and his band recorded the song during a session at Sun Studio in Memphis. Phillips suggested changes to the lyrics ("Go, cat, go") and the band changed the end of the song to a "boogie vamp.” Released on January 1, 1956, "Blue Suede Shoes" was a massive chart success.

In the United States, it scored #1 on Billboard magazine's country music charts (the only #1 success he would have) and #2 on Billboard's Best Sellers popular music chart.

Perkins died on January 19, 1998 at the age of 65 at Jackson-Madison County Hospital in Jackson, Tennessee from throat cancer after suffering several strokes. Among mourners at the funeral were George Harrison, Jerry Lee Lewis, Wynonna Judd, Garth Brooks, Nashville Agent Jim Dallas Crouch, Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash.

Perkins’ version of "Blue Suede Shoes" was chosen for preservation by the National Recording Preservation Board in the Library of Congress National Recording Registry in 2006.

The Perkins family still owns his songs, which are administered by former Beatle Paul McCartney's company, MPL Communications.

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Herbie Hancock is 82 years ago today
Hound Dog Taylor was born 107 years ago today

Tiny Tim was born 90 years ago today

Tiny Tim with Miss Vicky and Johnny Carson after being married on the Tonight Show

Born as Herbert Khaury, he was a singer, ukulele player and musical archivist. He was best known for his rendition of "Tiptoe Through the Tulips," sung in a distinctive high falsetto/vibrato voice.

Tiny Tim was born in Manhattan, the son of a Polish Jewish mother, Tillie, a garment worker, and a Lebanese Catholic father, Butros Khaury, a textile worker. He displayed musical talent at a very young age.

In a 1968 interview on The Tonight Show, Tiny Tim described the discovery of his ability to sing in an upper register in 1952: "I was listening to the radio and singing along as I was singing I said 'Gee, it's strange. I can go up high as well.'" He then entered a local talent show and sang "You Are My Sunshine" in his newly discovered falsetto.

He started using the stage name Tiny Tim in 1962 when his manager at the time, George King, booked him at a club that favored acts by performers short in stature.

Tiny Tim appeared in Jack Smith's Normal Love, as well as the independent feature film, You Are What You Eat, in which he sang the Ronettes song, "Be My Baby" in his falsetto range. Also featured was a rendition of Sonny and Cher's "I Got You Babe," with Tim singing the Cher parts in his falsetto voice, along with Eleanor Barooshian singing Sonny Bono's baritone part.

These tracks were recorded with musicians who would later go on to be in The Band. The latter performance led to a booking on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, an American television comedy-variety show.

Co-host Dan Rowan announced that Laugh-In believed in showcasing new talent, and introduced Tiny Tim. The singer entered carrying a shopping bag, pulled his soprano ukulele from it, and sang a medley of "A Tisket A Tasket" and "On the The Good Ship Lollipop" as an apparently dumbfounded co-host, Dick Martin, watched.

In his third performance on Laugh-In, Tiny Tim entered, blowing kisses, preceded by an elaborate procession of the cast, and after a short interview, sang "Tiptoe Through the Tulips.”

In 1968, his first album, God Bless Tiny Tim, was released. It contained an orchestrated version of "Tiptoe Through the Tulips," which became a hit after being released as a single.

On December 17, 1969, with 21.4 million viewers watching, Tiny Tim married Victoria Mae Budinger (aka "Miss Vicki") on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. During their marriage, Tiny Tim and Miss Vicki mostly lived apart, and divorced eight years later.

When Tiny Tim first became well-known to the American public, pundits and journalists debated whether or not this character being presented was just an orchestrated act, or the real thing.

It quickly became clear that he was genuine, however, and that he could probably be best described as a lonely outcast intoxicated by fame and a romantic always in pursuit of his ideal dream. As Tiny Tim's television appearances dwindled, his popularity began to wane. He continued to play around the United States, making several appearances in Las Vegas.

When he lost his Reprise recording contract, he founded his own record label, and humorously named it Vic Tim Records, as a pun on the combination of his wife's name with that of his own.

In September, 1996, Tiny Tim suffered a heart attack just as he began singing at a ukulele festival at the Montague Grange Hall (often confused in accounts of the incident with the nearby Montague Bookmill, at which he had recorded a video interview earlier that same day) in Montague, Massachusetts.

He was hospitalized at the nearby Franklin County Medical Center in Greenfield for approximately three weeks, before being discharged with strong admonitions not to perform again because of his health and the dietary needs for his diabetic and heart conditions. Nevertheless, he ignored the advice.

While playing at a Gala Benefit at The Woman's Club of Minneapolis on November 30, he had a second heart attack on stage and he later died at the Hennepin County Medical Center. He was 64.

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Max Weinberg is 71 years old today
Al Green is 76 years old today
Jack Casady is 78 years old today

Lester Chambers is 81 years old today


Lester Chambers is 81 years old today.

Chambers was lead singer of the 1960s soul rock group, The Chambers Brothers, who had the hit single, "Time Has Come Today." As a member of the Chambers Brothers, he sang lead on "All Strung Out Over You," "People Get Ready," "Uptown," "I Can't Turn You Loose" and "Funky."

As a solo artist, Chambers released singles and albums and teamed up with ex-Electric Flag bassist Harvey Brooks to form the Lester Chambers Harvey Brooks Band. He also added vocals to Bonnie Raitt's Sweet Forgiveness album.

In March 2011, Lester Chambers was inducted into the West Coast Blues Hall of Fame.

Chambers said that despite the group's success, he did not receive any royalty payments from 1967 to 1994.

In 2002, his wife, Lola Chambers, testified before the California Senate hearings on Label Accounting Practices that "Time Has Come Today" earned the group under $250 in royalties for the European market over 16 years.

She said that Columbia Records told them that "there were no overseas sales to report because The Chambers Brothers records were never licensed to an overseas distributor." But she later discovered copies on eBay of numerous foreign pressings of their records on Columbia foreign affiliate labels for which they were not compensated.

In 2003, the home of Lola and Lester Chambers was broken into and their record collection, consisting of over sixty Chambers Brothers albums and over one hundred singles, was stolen. Lola Chambers had spent twenty five years collecting Chambers Brothers records at various venues to leave these for their sons.

Lester Chambers developed a number of medical problems that went untreated because he lacked insurance. He later became homeless, sleeping in a rehearsal hall in Novato, California, until Yoko Ono paid to rent a home for him and his son Dylan.

On July 13, 2013, Chambers was assaulted onstage during a performance at the Russell City Hayward Blues Festival after dedicating a performance of "People Get Ready" to Trayvon Martin, the day the jury found his killer not guilty of a criminal offense.

Chambers now lives Petaluma, California.