Category: Birthdays

was born in Peru, Indiana, on this date in 1891. The following is from the web site for the PBS series American Masters:

“Birds do it. Bees do it. Even educated fleas do it. Let’s do it, let’s fall in love.”

“Night and Day,” “I Get A Kick Out of You,” “You’re the Top,” “Begin the Beguine,” “My Heart Belongs to Daddy” — some of the cleverest, funniest, and most romantic songs ever written came from the pen of Cole Porter. He was unmatched as a tunesmith, and his Broadway musicals — from “Kiss Me Kate” and “Anything Goes” to “Silk Stockings” and “Can Can” — set the standards of style and wit to which today’s composers and lyricists aspire.

Night and Day was one of NPR’s 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century. Listen to the NPR report on the great Cole Porter song [Real Audio].

was born on this date in 1915. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as Les Paul.

The name Les Paul is synonymous with the electric guitar. As a player, inventor and recording artist, Paul has been an innovator from the early years of his life. Born Lester William Polfus in 1915 in Waukesha, Wisconsin, Paul built his first crystal radio at age nine – which was about the time he first picked up a guitar. By age 13 he was performing semi-professionally as a country-music guitarist and working diligently on sound-related inventions. In 1941, Paul built his first solid-body electric guitar, and he continued to make refinements to his prototype throughout the decade. He also worked on refining the technology of sound, developing revolutionary engineering techniques such as close miking, echo delay and multitracking. All the while he busied himself as a bandleader who could play both jazz and country music.

His career as a musician nearly came to an end in 1948, when a near-fatal car accident shattered his right arm and elbow. However, he instructed the surgeons to set his arm at an angle that would allow him to cradle and pick the guitar. Paul subsequently made his mark as a jazz-pop musician extraordinaire, recording as a duo with his wife, singer Colleen Summers (a.k.a. Mary Ford). Their biggest hits included “How High the Moon” (1951) and “Vaya Con Dios” (1953), both reaching #1. The recordings of Les Paul and Mary Ford are noteworthy for Paul’s pioneering use of overdubbing – i.e., layering guitar parts one atop another, a technique also referred to as multitracking or “sound on sound” recording. The results were bright, bubbly and a little otherworldly – just the sort of music you might expect from an inventor with an ear for the future.

In 1952, Les Paul introduced the first eight-track tape recorder (designed by Paul and marketed by Ampex) and, more significantly for the future of rock and roll, launched the solid-body electric guitar that bears his name. Built and marketed by Gibson, with continuous advances and refinements from Paul in such areas as low-impedance pickup technology, the Les Paul guitar became a staple instrument among discerning rock guitarists. This list of musicians associated with the Gibson Les Paul include Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Duane Allman and Mike Bloomfield. Over the ensuing decades, Paul himself has remained active, cutting a Grammy-winning album of instrumental duets with Chet Atkins, Chester and Lester in 1977, performing at New York jazz clubs, and continuing to indulge his inventor’s curiosity in a basement workshop at his home in Mahwah, New Jersey.

of Peter, Paul & Mary is 66 today. It was Peter who wrote “Puff the Magic Dragon.”

was born on this date in 1909. Goodman was the son of Russian Jewish immigrants who thought that music might be a way out of poverty. His older brothers were given a tuba and a trombone but — just 10 — Benjamin was given a clarinet. He learned to play at a synagogue and then with a Jane Hull House band. By 16, he was in the Ben Pollack Orchestra; by 19, Goodman was making solo recordings.

In 1934, Goodman put together his own band and they played on a live NBC radio program “Let’s Dance” during the late hours in New York. It was not until the band played before a live audience at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles that it found its fans — because of the time difference, the Goodman band that was on so late in the east was heard during prime dancing time on the west coast. (It’s a good scene in the 1955 film The Benny Goodman Story.) Some date the beginning of the Swing Era to that August 21, 1935, appearance in Los Angeles.

On January 16, 1938, Goodman brought jazz to Carnegie Hall. This great concert was recorded (with one microphone), but the original disk was lost. In 1950, Goodman discovered a copy in a closet. It quickly became a best-selling record and the CD is an absolute essential.

But NewMexiKen’s favorite Benny Goodman appearance was on December 30, 1966, at the Tropicana in Las Vegas. That’s because I was there.

is 59 today. Fogerty was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993 with Creedence Clearwater Revival.

“In 1968, I always used to say that I wanted to make records they would still play on the radio in ten years,” John Fogerty, former leader of Creedence Clearwater Revival, said on the eve of their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In retrospect, Fogerty got all he wished for and more. Three decades later, Creedence’s songs – including “Proud Mary,” “Born on the Bayou,” “Bad Moon Rising,” and “Green River” – endure as timeless rock and roll classics. Under Fogerty’s tutelage, Creedence Clearwater Revival defined the spirit and sound of rock and roll as authentically as any American group ever has.

CCR’s cover of “I Heard It Through the Grape Vine” isn’t too bad either.

In his great book The Heart of Rock & Soul, Dave Marsh tells us:

Creedence Clearwater started out in the late fifties as just another Northern California high school band, formed by Fogerty, his brother Tom, and a couple of friends, Stu Cook and Doug Clifford. (They were called, among other things, the Blue Velvets and the Golliwogs.) They got a chance at recording for Fantasy, basically a jazz label, only because it happened to be in the neighborhood and the boys had found jobs in the warehouse. They got the kind of record deal you’d expect from that situation, one in which the label not only didn’t have to pay much in royalties but also controlled their song publishing rights.

Somewhere along the way, out of their own avarice and some bad judgment, Creedence was convinced to invest its royalties in an offshore banking tax dodge. Several Fantasy executives also poured money into the scam. Unfortunately, the bank they chose was a Bahamian shell called the Castle Bank, which went down in one of the great financial swindles of the century, leaving Creedence short more than $3 million and with huge overdue payments to the IRS (which stepped in for its bite once the scheme crashed).

Bitter, John Fogerty sued everybody including Fantasy. For the best part of a decade, he litigated but made no music. Meantime, his songs and records continued to generate huge income for Fantasy (which took its profits and produced, among other things, the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest).

Fogerty was still pissed when he finally made another record, Centerfield, in 1985. The final track on each side was an unmistakable slug at Fantasy owner Saul Zaentz: “Mr. Greed” and “Zanz Kant Danz.” Zaentz, apparently feeling as vindictive as Fogerty, sued for libel, asking $142 million damages, then charged Fogerty with infringing on a Fantasy copyright-“Run Through the Jungle.”

Centerfield‘s first track, and its first single, was “The Old Man Down the Road.” Everybody who heard it remarked on its amazing similarity to “Run Through the Jungle.” And so Fantasy sued Fogerty for royalties plus damages for plagiarizing his own song!

Amazingly enough, the case actually went to trial and in the fall of 1988, John Fogerty spent two days on the witness stand with a guitar on his lap, explaining “swamp rock” and its limitations to a jury. Pressed about the similarity between the two songs, he finally snapped, “Yeah, I did use that half-step. What do you want me to do, get an inoculation?”

Even if Fantasy did, the jury didn’t. They acquitted him in early November 1988, and, having proven his skills in running through the modern jungle, John Fogerty went back to making his new record. Which he vowed would sound not approximately but exactly like Creedence.

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Well, I spent some time in the mudville nine, watchin’ it from the bench;
You know I took some lumps when the mighty casey struck out.
So say hey willie, tell ty cobb and joe dimaggio;
Don’t say “it ain’t so”, you know the time is now.

Oh, put me in, coach – I’m ready to play today;
Put me in, coach – I’m ready to play today;
Look at me, I can be centerfield.