Chapter 01 — Today in music
On a day like today November 27
1942
Jimi Hendrix is born, the Seattle lefty who would reinvent the guitar
Johnny Allen Hendrix is born in Seattle, raised in poverty and schooled on the rhythm and blues circuit behind Little Richard and the Isley Brothers. When London discovered him in 1966, he redefined rock's central instrument within months. Every electric guitar since, from metal to funk, still converses with what he did in four years.
Jimi Hendrix
1945
Randy Brecker is born, whose trumpet plays on jazz, funk and rock records alike
On November 27, 1945, Randy Brecker was born in Philadelphia, a trumpeter who played on Blood, Sweat & Tears' first album, on Bruce Springsteen's debut and on sessions for Frank Zappa, Parliament and Charles Mingus. With his brother Michael he formed the Brecker Brothers, a fusion band whose horns played impossible lines at funk tempo. Between them they accumulated more than twenty Grammys.
Randy Brecker
Michael Brecker
1969
El Chombo is born: the Panamanian whose records seeded reggaeton before it existed
On November 27, 1969, Rodney Clark was born in Panama, known as El Chombo. In the nineties he produced the "Cuentos de la Cripta" compilations, gathering the Panamanian artists who were mixing Jamaican dancehall with Spanish lyrics: the broth reggaeton later came out of. Decades on, two of his songs became viral internet phenomena without him planning it.
El Chombo
1970
George Harrison releases “All Things Must Pass” and outdoes his former bandmates
George Harrison releases “All Things Must Pass”, a triple album of the songs the Beatles wouldn't let him record. With “My Sweet Lord” he scored the first solo number one by a former Beatle, and critics discovered the “quiet one” had been hoarding treasure. Few artistic paybacks have been so elegant and so emphatic.
George Harrison
1976
Jean Grae is born, daughter of two South African jazz giants who chose rap
On November 27, 1976, Tsidi Ibrahim was born in Cape Town, daughter of the singer Sathima Bea Benjamin and the pianist Abdullah Ibrahim, two central figures of South African jazz exiled by apartheid. She grew up in New York and chose hip-hop. Her dense lyrics, full of black humour, made her one of the rappers most respected by her peers and least heard by the mass audience.
Jean Grae
Abdullah Ibrahim
1953
Lyle Mays is born, who left music for a while to write software
On November 27, 1953, Lyle Mays was born in Wisconsin, keyboard player and co-writer of almost everything the Pat Metheny Group recorded over thirty years. He won eleven Grammy awards. He was also trained in mathematics and in the 2000s stepped away from music to work as a software architecture consultant, a parallel career he took just as seriously. He died in 2020.
Lyle Mays
Pat Metheny
1960
Maria Schneider is born, who won a Grammy with an album sold in no shop
On November 27, 1960, Maria Schneider was born in Minnesota, a bandleader and composer who studied with Gil Evans. In 2005 she won a Grammy with "Concert in the Garden", an album funded by her own listeners and sold only over the internet: the first record in the award's history never to pass through a shop or a record label.
Maria Schneider
Gil Evans
1973
Twista is born, declared the fastest rapper in the world by a book of records
On November 27, 1973, Carl Mitchell was born in Chicago and developed a technique of accelerated rapping by dividing each beat into more syllables than fit. In 1992 the Guinness book recognised him as the fastest rapper on the planet: he could articulate almost twelve syllables a second. It took him another decade to have a commercial hit, but his technical influence was immediate.
Twista
1978
Mike Skinner is born, who rapped about everyday English life without faking an American accent
On November 27, 1978, Mike Skinner was born in London and raised in Birmingham. In 2002 he released, as The Streets, "Original Pirate Material", recorded in his bedroom cupboard. His fundamental decision was linguistic: to rap in an English accent about English things — the pub, betting, takeaways, boredom — when all British rap was imitating New York.
Mike Skinner
The Streets
1979
Hilary Hahn is born, who commissioned twenty-seven new pieces to stop repeating the same ones
On November 27, 1979, Hilary Hahn was born in Virginia. She started the violin a month before her fourth birthday and at ten was already studying at the Curtis Institute. Tired of the encore repertoire always being the same handful of nineteenth-century pieces, she commissioned twenty-seven short works from living composers around the world and recorded them all on a single album.
Hilary Hahn
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