Chapter 01 — Today in music
On a day like today August 14
1941
David Crosby is born, the golden harmony and the impossible temper
On August 14, 1941, David Crosby was born in Los Angeles — vocal architect of The Byrds and of Crosby, Stills & Nash. His celestial harmonies defined the California sound of the sixties and seventies, while his temperament made him unbearable to nearly every band he was in. A choral genius, a castaway of his own excesses and a lucid survivor: few lives sum up the era better.
David Crosby
The Byrds
Crosby, Stills & Nash
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1946
Larry Graham is born, the man who invented slap bass and changed the instrument forever
On August 14, 1946, Larry Graham was born in Texas — bassist for Sly and the Family Stone. Trying to compensate for the lack of a drummer in his duo with his mother, he began thumping and plucking the strings: slap bass was born, the technique that redefined the instrument in funk and beyond. From Bootsy Collins to Flea, everyone who slaps a bass pays him tribute, knowingly or not.
Larry Graham
Sly and the Family Stone
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1965
"I Got You Babe": Sonny & Cher reach the top with a nod to Dylan
On August 14, 1965, Sonny & Cher's "I Got You Babe" hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100, where it reigned for three weeks until the Beatles dethroned it with "Help!". Written by Sonny Bono with Bob Dylan's folk-rock as an avowed inspiration, the song turned the couple into the pop emblem of the gentle counterculture: bangs, fur vests and young love. It was their only number one on the all-genre chart, but it was enough to fix an anthem that film and television keep rewinding decades later.
Sonny & Cher
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1976
'Breezin'' tops the chart and a jazz guitarist sells like a pop star
On August 14, 1976, George Benson's 'Breezin'' topped the R&B albums chart. Benson was a respected and poor jazz guitarist until he agreed to sing on a version of Leon Russell's 'This Masquerade', which won him the Grammy for Record of the Year. The album sold like no jazz record before it. Purists accused him of selling out; he answered by buying a house and kept playing exactly as well.
George Benson
Leon Russell
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1993
UB40 reggae-fy Elvis and settle in at number one for weeks
On August 14, 1993, UB40's 'Can't Help Falling in Love' had been at number one in the United States for weeks. The eight men from Birmingham — white, Black and Asian, named after the British unemployment benefit form — had built a career reggae-fying other people's songs. Here they stripped Elvis of his Hawaiian waltz and gave him a Jamaican offbeat. It was the year's best-selling reggae, made by immigrants' children in an English industrial city.
UB40
Elvis Presley
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1910
Pierre Schaeffer is born: the engineer who invented sampling without knowing it
On August 14, 1910, Pierre Schaeffer was born in Nancy — a French radio engineer who coined the term musique concrète in 1948. His idea was simple and devastating: instead of starting from a score, start from recorded real sounds — a train, a door, a voice — and manipulate them backwards, slower, in loops. Jean Michel Jarre called him the first disc jockey in history. Everything a hip-hop producer does began in his studio.
Pierre Schaeffer
1975
Rocky Horror hits the screen: the midnight ritual is born
On August 14, 1975, "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" premiered at London's Rialto cinema, the adaptation of Richard O'Brien's musical with Tim Curry up front. It was an immediate box-office flop, but midnight screenings in New York resurrected it as a participatory cult phenomenon: costumes, rice and lines shouted at the screen. Its soundtrack of glam rock and B-movie science fiction turned the failure into the longest-running cinematic ritual in rock history.
Tim Curry
Richard O'Brien
1988
Roy Buchanan, the guitarist's guitarist, dies
On August 14, 1988, Roy Buchanan died, found hanged in a Fairfax County, Virginia jail cell after an arrest for intoxication; the official ruling of suicide was always disputed by his family and friends. A pioneer of the Telecaster sound, his crying harmonics and vocal phrasing made tracks like "The Messiah Will Come Again" cult material. He never chased fame — he himself said he didn't care about it — but half of rock cited him as a master, from Jeff Beck on down.
Roy Buchanan
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1999
'Genie in a Bottle' and the year teen pop swallowed the radio
On August 14, 1999, Christina Aguilera's 'Genie in a Bottle' was number one in the United States, her first. She was eighteen and came from the same Disney children's show as Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake, a coincidence that defined an entire decade of popular music. The song played with desire and restraint at once, and that double edge was exactly what the industry knew how to exploit for years.
Christina Aguilera
2004
'True Story' tops the chart and the Bronx sets the summer's dance
On August 14, 2004, Terror Squad's 'True Story' topped the R&B and hip-hop albums chart. The Bronx collective led by Fat Joe carried 'Lean Back', produced by Scott Storch, and with it a dance that essentially consisted of not dancing: lean back and roll your shoulders. In a genre obsessed with proving skill, the hit of the year was a song about standing still and looking good.
Terror Squad
Fat Joe
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