Chapter 01 — Today in music
On a day like today August 6
1965
'Help!': Lennon's cry for help disguised as a summer hit
On August 6, 1965, the Beatles released the album 'Help!' in the UK. Decades later, Lennon would confess the title track was a genuine distress call written while suffocating under fame, sung at hit-single speed to disguise it. The album also includes 'Yesterday', the most covered song in history. Real pain with perfect melodies: the Beatle formula.
The Beatles
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1960
Chubby Checker dances 'The Twist' on television and the world copies him
On August 6, 1960, Chubby Checker performed 'The Twist' on Dick Clark's 'American Bandstand' and the song became a national phenomenon overnight. It hit number one in September and — uniquely in Billboard Hot 100 history — returned to the top in January 1962. The trick was that you danced it without a partner and without knowing how to dance: you just twisted your hips. For the first time the dancefloor demanded no technique, only willingness.
Chubby Checker
Dick Clark
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1962
Jamaica becomes independent and starts inventing its own music
On August 6, 1962, the Union Jack came down across Jamaica and Alexander Bustamante became prime minister of a new country. Independence coincided with the moment Kingston's sound systems stopped imitating American rhythm and blues and pushed the tempo until they invented ska. Within ten years an island of two million people would give the whole world reggae. Few countries have turned political sovereignty into musical sovereignty so fast.
Alexander Bustamante
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1969
Elliott Smith is born, indie's saddest, most beautiful whisper
On August 6, 1969, Steven Paul Smith was born in Omaha, Nebraska; the world would know him as Elliott Smith. From Portland he built a songbook of whispered vocals, Beatlesque harmonies and lyrics about addiction and loneliness that defined nineties indie. In 1998 he lived the most improbable scene: singing 'Miss Misery', Oscar-nominated for 'Good Will Hunting', dressed in white among Hollywood stars. His influence on generations of songwriters has not stopped growing since his death in 2003.
Elliott Smith
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2004
Rick James dies, the hedonist prince of punk-funk
On August 6, 2004, Rick James died in Los Angeles at 56. The self-proclaimed inventor of punk-funk, with 'Super Freak' he signed one of the eighties' most contagious grooves, later sampled by MC Hammer for 'U Can't Touch This'. Overflowing talent and a life on the edge: his story sums up the splendor and the cliff-edge of that decade's funk.
Rick James
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1928
Andy Warhol is born: the painter who produced the album nobody bought
On August 6, 1928, Andy Warhol was born in Pittsburgh. Beyond painting soup cans, he took The Velvet Underground under his wing, brought them into the Factory, imposed Nico on them as a singer and signed the 1967 banana cover. The record sold almost nothing, but the line has circulated ever since that everyone who bought it started a band. Warhol understood before the labels did that a group is also an idea and an image, not just a handful of songs.
Andy Warhol
The Velvet Underground
Nico
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1973
The accident that nearly silenced Stevie Wonder at his peak
On August 6, 1973, three days after releasing 'Innervisions', Stevie Wonder was traveling near Salisbury, North Carolina, when the car he was riding in crashed into a logging truck. A log struck his head, fractured his skull and left him in a coma for four days. Legend has it he awoke when his friend Ira Tucker sang 'Higher Ground' into his ear and his fingers began tapping the rhythm. Wonder lost part of his sense of smell, but returned to complete the most glorious creative streak of seventies soul.
Stevie Wonder
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1983
Klaus Nomi dies: the opera alien and the first alarm bell
On August 6, 1983, Klaus Nomi died in New York aged 39 — a German countertenor who mixed baroque aria, new wave and Martian aesthetics. He was one of the earliest known figures from the arts to die of AIDS, when the illness still had no public name or face. In December 1979 he had sung backing vocals for David Bowie on 'Saturday Night Live' and was so struck by Bowie's plastic suit that he commissioned one for his own album cover.
Klaus Nomi
David Bowie
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1994
Domenico Modugno dies: the man who taught Italian song to fly
On August 6, 1994, Domenico Modugno died of a heart attack on Lampedusa aged 66. In 1958 his 'Nel blu, dipinto di blu' — which the world renamed 'Volare' — placed third at Eurovision, topped Billboard's year-end chart and won the first two Grammys ever awarded: Record and Song of the Year. It sold over twenty-two million copies. No Italian-language song has done all that in America since.
Domenico Modugno
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2005
Ibrahim Ferrer dies, the bolero singer fame found shining shoes
On August 6, 2005, Ibrahim Ferrer, the sweet voice of the Buena Vista Social Club, died in Havana at 78. When Ry Cooder sought him out in 1996, the singer was making a living shining shoes, retired and forgotten; the record they made sold four million copies and won a Grammy. At an age when others say goodbye, Ferrer knew world tours, solo albums and standing ovations. He passed away days after returning from a European tour, singing until the very end.
Ibrahim Ferrer
Buena Vista Social Club
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One ephemeris a day, one editorial a week. Zero spam, pure archive.