Chapter 01 — Today in music
On a day like today November 4
1940
Delbert McClinton is born, the tireless workhorse of roadhouse blues
Delbert McClinton is born in Lubbock, Texas: a legend of the Texas bar circuit. His harmonica drove “Hey! Baby” (1962) and, as the story goes, he gave pointers on the instrument to a young John Lennon during a British tour. With multiple Grammys won late in life, he embodies the working musician who wins by endurance, not fashion.
Delbert McClinton
1926
Patato Valdés is born, the Cuban who put tuning keys on the conga
On November 4, 1926, Carlos Valdés was born in Havana, nicknamed Patato for his short stature. He was the percussionist who solved a very old problem: congas were tuned by heating the skin over a fire and would drift out of tune on their own. He championed the metal tuning-key system every conga uses today. He recorded with Tito Puente, Dizzy Gillespie and Herbie Mann, and took Cuban percussion into the heart of American jazz.
Carlos "Patato" Valdés
Tito Puente
1931
Buddy Bolden dies: the first jazz musician, of whom not one recording survives
On November 4, 1931, Buddy Bolden died in a Louisiana psychiatric hospital, a New Orleans cornet player every musician of his generation named as the first to play what would later be called jazz. Around 1900 he played so loudly they said he could be heard for miles. In 1907 he was committed after a psychotic episode and spent twenty-four years there. No record of his sound survives.
Buddy Bolden
1954
Chris Difford is born, the lyric-writing half of South London's Lennon-McCartney
Chris Difford is born in London: lyricist and guitarist of Squeeze. With Glenn Tilbrook he formed one of British pop's finest songwriting partnerships, compared in its day to Lennon and McCartney. “Up the Junction” and “Cool for Cats” are three-minute kitchen-sink novels: ordinary English life turned into perfect song.
Chris Difford
Squeeze
1971
Gregory Porter is born: the football player who ended up singing jazz
On November 4, 1971, Gregory Porter was born in Sacramento, raised by a preacher mother who told him before she died to keep singing. He entered university on a sports scholarship and a shoulder injury put an end to all of it. He moved into jazz with a warm baritone voice and won two Grammy awards. He never explains the flapped cap he always wears; it is known to relate to an operation in childhood.
Gregory Porter
1847
Felix Mendelssohn dies: the man who rescued Bach from oblivion
On November 4, 1847, Felix Mendelssohn died in Leipzig at 38, worn out by work and by his sister's recent death. Beyond his own music he left an incalculable service: in 1829, aged twenty, he conducted the first performance of Bach's "St Matthew Passion" in a century. Bach was practically forgotten; after that concert he never was again.
Felix Mendelssohn
Johann Sebastian Bach
1889
Alton Adams is born: the first Black bandmaster in the United States Navy
On November 4, 1889, Alton Adams was born in Saint Thomas, in the Virgin Islands, son of a shoemaker, and learned music by correspondence course because there was nobody on the island to study with. When the United States bought the archipelago from Denmark in 1917, his band was taken into the Navy and he became that institution's first Black bandmaster. He composed the march that is still the territory's anthem.
Alton Adams
1924
Gabriel Fauré dies, having composed his last works without being able to hear them
On November 4, 1924, Gabriel Fauré died in Paris, son of a village schoolmaster who sent him at nine to a music boarding school. He ran the Paris Conservatoire and taught Maurice Ravel and Nadia Boulanger. For his last twenty years an illness distorted his hearing: he heard bass and treble displaced in pitch. He went on composing regardless, guided only by what he read on the page.
Gabriel Fauré
Maurice Ravel
1956
Jordan Rudess is born, who entered Juilliard at nine and ended up in a metal band
On November 4, 1956, Jordan Rudess was born in New York, a classical piano prodigy admitted to the Juilliard School at nine. At nineteen he heard progressive rock, decided he wanted to play synthesizers, and his teachers considered it a waste. Since 1999 he has been Dream Theater's keyboard player, and on stage he sets up a tower of keyboards that rotates on itself while he plays.
Jordan Rudess
Dream Theater
1956
James Honeyman-Scott is born, whose death at twenty-five broke the Pretenders apart
On November 4, 1956, James Honeyman-Scott was born in Hereford, England, the Pretenders' guitarist and the man behind the arrangements that made that band different: clean, echo-drenched arpeggios over songs that were punk underneath. In June 1982, two days after the group fired its bassist, he died of cocaine-related heart failure. He was twenty-five.
James Honeyman-Scott
The Pretenders
One ephemeris a day, one editorial a week. Zero spam, pure archive.