Chapter 01 — Today in music
On a day like today September 14
1983
Amy Winehouse is born, the last great voice of classic soul
Amy Winehouse is born in north London: the singer who returned sixties soul to twenty-first century charts. “Back to Black” (2006) was confession, retro and modernity at once, and won five Grammys in a single night. Her death at 27, in 2011, turned her brief catalogue into one of recent music's most intense legacies.
Amy Winehouse
Listen
Via YouTube
1955
Little Richard records Tutti Frutti in fifteen minutes with the lyric freshly laundered
New Orleans, 14 September 1955, J&M studio. The session was going nowhere until Little Richard sat at the piano during the break and let loose a version of Tutti Frutti that could never have been released. Bumps Blackwell called in Dorothy LaBostrie to rewrite the words and, with Fats Domino's band behind him, they cut it in three takes and a quarter of an hour.
Little Richard
Dorothy LaBostrie
Bumps Blackwell
Listen
Via YouTube
1959
Morten Harket is born, the Norwegian falsetto that conquered the eighties
Morten Harket is born in Kongsberg, Norway: a-ha's vocalist and owner of one of pop's widest ranges. “Take On Me” and its rotoscoped video made MTV history, but reducing the band to that hit is unfair: their melancholy catalogue influenced artists as different as Coldplay and The Weeknd.
Morten Harket
a-ha
Listen
Via YouTube
1969
Blind Faith top the British chart with the only album they ever made
On 14 September 1969 the Blind Faith album went to number one in Britain and stayed two weeks. Clapton and Ginger Baker came from Cream, Steve Winwood from Traffic, Ric Grech from Family: the modern idea of a supergroup starts roughly here, and so does its shelf life, because they were already coming apart. The sleeve, with an eleven-year-old girl, remains indefensible.
Blind Faith
Eric Clapton
Steve Winwood
Ginger Baker
Listen
Via YouTube
1974
Clapton lands his only American number one with a song that is not his
On 14 September 1974 I Shot the Sheriff topped the Billboard Hot 100. It came from 461 Ocean Boulevard, the album with which Clapton resurfaced after three years lost in heroin, and it remains his only US number one single across sixty years. It was written by Bob Marley, whom almost nobody in that country had yet heard.
Eric Clapton
Bob Marley
Listen
Via YouTube
1993
Counting Crows debut with a song about wanting to be famous and it turns into a prophecy
August and Everything After came out on 14 September 1993 on DGC, produced by T Bone Burnett. Mr. Jones put a San Francisco band that sounded like Van Morrison with a nineties accent onto the radio, and the album ended up selling seven million in America alone. The song is two friends fantasising about fame; Adam Duritz got the whole thing at once.
Counting Crows
Adam Duritz
T Bone Burnett
Listen
Via YouTube
1996
Pearl Jam go number one in America and everyone still writes it up as a defeat
The Billboard chart dated 14 September 1996 put No Code at number one on 366,500 copies in its first week. Over half a million had been expected. The band were still refusing Ticketmaster venues, so there was barely an American tour, and the album sank within weeks. It was the first time they were allowed not to be enormous.
Pearl Jam
Eddie Vedder
Listen
Via YouTube
1998
The Manic Street Preachers go to number one with the most defeated album they knew how to make
This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours came out on 14 September 1998 on Epic: number one in Britain on 136,000 copies in seven days, three weeks at the top. It was the first with lyrics written entirely by Nicky Wire, without a single line left over from Richey Edwards. The result is slow, Welsh and sad, and it sold five million. Nobody had planned for that.
Manic Street Preachers
Nicky Wire
Richey Edwards
Listen
Via YouTube
2004
Arcade Fire turn four family funerals into the debut of the decade
Funeral came out on 14 September 2004 on Merge, a small North Carolina label. Between 2003 and 2004 Régine Chassagne's grandmother, the Butler brothers' grandfather and two of Richard Reed Parry's aunts had died; hence the title. It entered the Billboard 200 at 123 and became the fastest-selling record in the label's history.
Arcade Fire
Win Butler
Régine Chassagne
Listen
Via YouTube
1958
Elvis spends seven weeks on top in Britain while serving in the army
On 14 September 1958 King Creole reached number one on the British albums chart and held for seven weeks. It was the soundtrack to the one Elvis film critics were willing to discuss seriously, directed by Michael Curtiz and shot in a hurry before his call-up. With him already in uniform, a record of film songs kept the business running.
Elvis Presley
Michael Curtiz
Listen
Via YouTube
1968
Hendrix signs records in a shop in the afternoon and headlines the Hollywood Bowl at night
On 14 September 1968 the Jimi Hendrix Experience spent the afternoon signing autographs at The Groove Company, a Hollywood record shop, and that night filled the Hollywood Bowl. The set included Red House, Little Wing, Voodoo Child (Slight Return) and a reading of the American anthem that eleven months later, at Woodstock, would mean something else entirely.
The Jimi Hendrix Experience
Jimi Hendrix
Listen
Via YouTube
1970
Jefferson Airplane stretch out for a whole night at the Fillmore West and the tape survives
On 14 September 1970, at Bill Graham's Fillmore West, Jefferson Airplane played in no hurry at all: Somebody to Love, White Rabbit and a vast reading of The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil with a bass solo from Jack Casady. Hot Tuna, half the same band under another name, opened. Graham's archive still holds the complete recording.
Jefferson Airplane
Hot Tuna
Jack Casady
Listen
Via YouTube
1990
Redd Kross sign to Atlantic and make the album junk culture deserved
Third Eye came out on 14 September 1990, the McDonald brothers' first for Atlantic, cut at Sound City with Michael Vail Blum. They had started as punk kids in Hawthorne and ended up the band that best understood that seventies television and trading cards were first-rate material. The record barely sold; the idea, on the other hand, prospered without them.
Redd Kross
Jeff McDonald
Steve McDonald
Listen
Via YouTube
1999
Sheryl Crow gathers Keith Richards, Clapton, Stevie Nicks and the Dixie Chicks in Central Park
On 14 September 1999, on Central Park's East Meadow, she played with Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Stevie Nicks, Chrissie Hynde, Sarah McLachlan and the Dixie Chicks, with Bill Murray as compere. They all ended up together on Dylan's Tombstone Blues. The album came out in December and proves she could move between generations that were not speaking to each other.
Sheryl Crow
Keith Richards
Stevie Nicks
Eric Clapton
Listen
Via YouTube
2004
Paul Weller shuts himself in an Amsterdam studio to sing other people's songs
Studio 150 came out on 14 September 2004 and takes its name from the small Amsterdam studio where he cut it: covers of Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Gil Scott-Heron and whoever else he fancied. Number two in Britain. At forty-six, the man who had founded and dissolved two bands decided he no longer owed anyone a masterpiece.
Paul Weller
Listen
Via YouTube
One ephemeris a day, one editorial a week. Zero spam, pure archive.