Chapter 01 — Today in music
On a day like today November 10
1967
The Moody Blues release “Days of Future Passed” and rock embraces the orchestra
The Moody Blues release “Days of Future Passed”, recorded with the London Festival Orchestra. What the label commissioned as a stereo sound demonstration ended up a pioneering concept album, with “Nights in White Satin” as its central jewel. Symphonic rock and much of prog were born from this accidental experiment.
The Moody Blues
1928
Ennio Morricone is born, who composed more than five hundred scores without leaving Rome
On November 10, 1928, Ennio Morricone was born in Rome, son of a trumpeter who made him study the same instrument. For Sergio Leone's films he invented a vocabulary nobody had used: whistles, whipcracks, screams, a harmonica and an electric guitar where an orchestra should have been. He composed more than five hundred scores and only in 2016, at 87, won his competitive Oscar.
Ennio Morricone
Sergio Leone
1947
Greg Lake is born, founding voice of King Crimson and ELP
Greg Lake is born in Poole, England; he sang “In the Court of the Crimson King”, progressive rock's founding stone, before co-founding Emerson, Lake & Palmer. His warm voice and his ballad “Lucky Man” humanized his bandmates' unleashed virtuosity. Few figures were present at the birth of a genre twice.
Greg Lake
Emerson, Lake & Palmer
King Crimson
1971
Big Pun is born: the first solo Latino rapper to sell a million records
On November 10, 1971, Christopher Ríos was born in the Bronx to Puerto Rican parents. He left home at fifteen and spent time living on the street. In 1998 "Capital Punishment" became the first album by a solo Latino rapper to pass a million copies. He rhymed with fiendish technique and very long lines without breathing. He died in 2000, aged 28, of a heart attack.
Big Pun
Fat Joe
1978
Eve is born: the first woman signed to rap's toughest biker label
On November 10, 1978, Eve Jeffers was born in Philadelphia to a teenage mother. Dr. Dre signed her and dropped her before she had recorded anything; she then joined Ruff Ryders, a label with a biker aesthetic where she was the only woman. In 2001 "Let Me Blow Ya Mind", a duet with Gwen Stefani, won the first Grammy the academy ever awarded to a rap and sung collaboration.
Eve
Gwen Stefani
1891
Carl Stalling is born, who taught classical music to generations of children without their noticing
On November 10, 1891, Carl Stalling was born in Missouri, a silent cinema organist who joined Warner Bros in 1936 to score cartoons. Over twenty-two years he wrote more than six hundred scores for Bugs Bunny and the Coyote, built from fragments of Rossini, Liszt and Wagner slotted in as jokes. Millions of people met those melodies through cartoons before ever reaching a concert hall.
Carl Stalling
Looney Tunes
1909
Johnny Marks is born: the Jewish songwriter who wrote half of the American Christmas
On November 10, 1909, Johnny Marks was born in Massachusetts and specialised in an improbable niche for a man from a Jewish family: Christmas songs. In 1949 he turned into a song a story his brother-in-law had written for a department store, about a reindeer with a red nose. Gene Autry recorded it reluctantly and sold millions. Marks went on to write "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree".
Johnny Marks
Gene Autry
1944
Tim Rice is born, who wrote a rock opera about Jesus before he was thirty
On November 10, 1944, Tim Rice was born in England, a lyricist who at twenty-one met an eighteen-year-old composer named Andrew Lloyd Webber. Together they wrote "Jesus Christ Superstar", which came out as a record first in 1970 because no theatre dared stage it, and then "Evita". Decades later he wrote the words for Elton John's songs in "The Lion King" and won three Academy Awards.
Tim Rice
Andrew Lloyd Webber
Elton John
1970
Warren G is born, who introduced Snoop Dogg to Dr. Dre at a party
On November 10, 1970, Warren Griffin was born in Long Beach, Dr. Dre's stepbrother. In 1991 he played Dre a tape of an unknown rapper from the neighbourhood at a birthday party; the rapper was Snoop Dogg, and half the West Coast rap catalogue came out of it. In 1994 he recorded "Regulate", a song about a night that goes wrong, built over a Michael McDonald record.
Warren G
Snoop Dogg
Dr. Dre
1978
Diplo is born, who went to Rio's favelas for the music he later sold to the world
On November 10, 1978, Thomas Pentz was born in Mississippi. He studied film and spent the early 2000s travelling to Brazil to record the baile funk of Rio's favelas. As Diplo he took those rhythms, plus Jamaican dancehall and cumbia, into the centre of American pop. The argument over where diffusion ends and appropriation begins followed him through his entire career.
Diplo
Major Lazer
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