NewMexiKen

It’s the birthday of John Coltrane (1926), Ray Charles (1930) and Bruce Springsteen (1949).

It ought to be a holiday.

Not to mention, four-time Oscar nominee Mickey Rooney is 90, Julio Iglesias is 67, Emmy winner Mary Kay Place is 63, and seven-time Emmy nominee Jason Alexander is 51.

Further, many-time winner of an ALMA Award, Elizabeth Peña is 49. I liked her best in Lone Star.

Trane

“My music,” John Coltrane said, “is the spiritual expression of what I am — my faith, my knowledge, my being…” The grandson of ministers, he began his career in the blues clubs of Philadelphia, and throughout his career combined the sacred and the secular in the intense, earnest sound of his saxophone. His musical sermons, by turns somber and ecstatic, radiated his undying faith in music’s power to heal.

Coltrane fell under the spell of Charlie Parker at age 18 and dedicated himself to a practice regime that sometimes found him asleep, fingers still ghosting the keys. He first gained fame as a member of Miles Davis’s classic quintet in 1955, worked with Thelonious Monk, then took the lessons he’d learned from those masters and became a leader in his own right — and the most admired, most influential and most adventurous saxophonist of the 1960s.

“There is never any end,” Coltrane said. “There are always new sounds to imagine; new feelings to get at. And always, there is the need to keep purifying these feelings and sounds so that … we can give … the best of what we are.”

Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame

The Genius

Many musicians possess elements of genius, but only one — the great Ray Charles — so completely embodies the term that it’s been bestowed upon him as a nickname. Charles displayed his genius by combining elements of gospel and blues into a fervid, exuberant style that would come to be known as soul music. While recording for Atlantic Records during the Fifties, the innovative singer, pianist and bandleader broke down the barriers between sacred and secular music. The gospel sound he’d heard growing up in the church found its way into the music he made as an adult. In his own words, he fostered “a crossover between gospel music and the rhythm patterns of the blues.” But he didn’t stop there: over the decades, elements of country & western and big-band jazz have infused his music as well. He is as complete and well-rounded a musical talent as this century has produced.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

The Boss

Bruce Springsteen ranks alongside such rock and roll figureheads as Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, the Beatles and Bob Dylan. Just as those artists shaped popular music, Springsteen served as a pivotal figure in its evolution with his rise to prominence in the mid-Seventies. Early on, he was touted as one of several heirs to Bob Dylan’s mantle. All of these would-be “new Dylans”-who also included Loudon Wainwright, John Prine and Elliott Murphy-rose above the hype, but Springsteen soared highest, catapulting himself to fame on the unrestrained energy of his live shows, the evocative power of his songwriting, and the direct connection he forged with his listeners.

Springsteen lifted rock and roll from its early Seventies doldrums, providing continuity and renewal at a point when it was sorely in need of both. During a decade in which disco, glam-rock, heavy-metal and arena-rock provided different forms of escape into fantasy, Springsteen restored a note of urgency and realism to the rock and roll landscape.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

In the day we sweat it out on the streets of a runaway American dream
At night we ride through the mansions of glory in suicide machines
Sprung from cages out on highway 9,
Chrome wheeled, fuel injected,and steppin’ out over the line
Oh-Oh, Baby this town rips the bones from your back
It’s a death trap, it’s a suicide rap
We gotta get out while we’re young
‘Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run

Caesar Augustus, the first Roman Emperor, was born on this date in 63 BCE.

Lewis and Clark arrived back in St. Louis from their saunter to the Pacific on September 23, 1806.

Tommy Lasorda, the former Dodgers manager, is 83 today.

Former University of Arizona basketball coach Lute Olson is 76.

Harry’s daughter Shari is 56 and Pat’s daughter Debby is 54. Belafonte and Boone, respectively.

Joan Jett is 52.

I saw him dancin’ there by the record machine
I knew he must a been about seventeen
The beat was goin’ strong
Playin’ my favorite song
An’ I could tell it wouldn’t be long
Till he was with me, yeah me, singin’

I love rock n’ roll
So put another dime in the jukebox, baby
I love rock n’ roll
So come an’ take your time an’ dance with me

Chachi is 49. That’s Scott Baio.

Ronaldo Luiz Nazario de Lima, the Brazilian football star, is 34.

John Houseman was born on this date in 1902. This from the Times obituary when Houseman died in 1988:

John Houseman, who spent more than half a century in the theater as an influential producer and director but who did not achieve fame until, at the age of 71, he portrayed a crusty law school professor in the film ”The Paper Chase” and its subsequent television series, died of spinal cancer yesterday at his home in Malibu, Calif. He was 86 years old and despite his failing health had been working on various projects until three days ago.

Professor Kingsfield, the role he played in ”The Paper Chase,” led to another well-known part, that of a haughty spokesman for a brokerage house in its television commercials, delivering the lines: ”They make money the old-fashioned way. They earn it.”

Houseman won a supporting actor Oscar for his portrayal of Professor Kingsfield.

Nathan Hale was hanged by the British as a spy on this date in 1776. Hale was in fact spying on the British for General Washington — he had volunteered for the duty.

A statue of Nathan Hale is located between the [CIA] Auditorium and the Original Headquarters Building. Hale was the first American executed for spying for his country. This statue is a copy of the original work created in 1914 for Yale University, Nathan Hale’s alma mater. The Agency’s statue was erected on the grounds in 1973, 200 years after his graduation from Yale.

There is no known portrait of Nathan Hale; this life-size statue portrays what little written description there is of him. The statue captures the spirit of the moment before his execution – a 21-year-old man prepared to meet his death for honor and country, hands and feet bound, face resolute, and his eyes on the horizon. His last words, “I regret that I have but one life to lose for my country,” circle the base around his feet.

He stands vigilant guard on the Agency and is a continuing reminder to its employees of the duties and sacrifices of an intelligence officer.

Central Intelligence Agency

And it’s my baby brother’s birthday. Happy birthday, John.

Larry Hagman, who dreamt of Jeannie before moving to Dallas, is 79 today.

Leonard Cohen is 76.

There are few artists in the realm of popular music who can truly be called poets, in the classical, arts-and-letters sense of the word. Among them are Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Joni Mitchell and Phil Ochs. Leonard Cohen heads this elite class. In fact, Cohen was already an established poet and novelist before he turned his attention to songwriting. His academic training in poetry and literature, and his pursuit of them as livelihood for much of the Fifties and Sixties, gave him an extraordinary advantage over his pop peers when it came to setting language to music. Along with other folk-steeped musical literati, Cohen raised the songwriting bar.
. . .

In his notes for The Essential Leonard Cohen, writer Pico Iyer noted, “The changeless is what he’s been about since the beginning…Some of the other great pilgrims of song pass through philosophies and selves as if through the stations of the cross. With Cohen, one feels he knew who he was and where he was going from the beginning, and only digs deeper, deeper, deeper.”

Cohen’s artistic outlook might best be expressed in his own words with this lyric from “Anthem”: On Anthem (1992), he wrote: “There is a crack, a crack in everything/ That’s how the light gets in.” He remarked, “That’s the closest thing I could describe to a credo. That idea is one of the fundamental positions behind a lot of the songs.”

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum

Leonard Cohen, Live in London

Bill Murray is 60. Nominated for an Oscar for Lost in Translation, NewMexiKen still thinks Murray’s best effort was as Phil Connors in Groundhog Day.

Faith Hill is 43.

Owen and Andrew Wilson’s brother Luke is 39 today.

September 21st is an important date in fantasy literature. Stephen King is 63 today. He was born on H.G. Wells’ birthday (1866-1946) and on the 10th anniversary of the publication of J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Hobbit (1937).

Henry Lewis Stimson was born on September 21st in 1867. He served in five presidential administrations and had been appointed U.S. Attorney by another, Theodore Roosevelt. Most of his service was after he was 60.

As President Truman’s senior adviser on military use of atomic energy, Henry L. Stimson made the deciding recommendation to drop the first atomic bomb, one of the most significant events in the history of mankind.

In addition to this great responsibility, Mr. Stimson assumed heavy burdens as President Hoover’s Secretary of State (1929-1933) and again as Secretary of War in the cabinets of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and President Truman (1940-1945). His unusually long period of public life which established him as an elder statesman in the American scene included an earlier period (1911-1913) as President Taft’s Secretary of War, then a relatively minor post.

When he was in his late seventies Mr. Stimson was the civilian administrative head of a victorious army of more than 10,000,000, the largest ever raised by the United States.

New York Times Obituary (1950)

414 years ago today (1596) Spain named Juan de Oñate governor of the colony of Nuevo México. 226 years ago today (1784) the nation’s first daily newspaper, the Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser, began publication. The Library of Congress has a little more about each.