Chapter 01 — Today in music
On a day like today December 19
1941
Maurice White is born, the cosmic visionary of Earth, Wind & Fire
Maurice White is born in Memphis: a Chess session drummer who founded Earth, Wind & Fire with a total vision — funk, jazz, African kalimba, Egyptian philosophy and shows with pyramids and levitations. “September” and “Shining Star” still bring the planet joy. Few artists have joined spirituality and the dancefloor with such conviction.
Maurice White
Earth, Wind & Fire
1918
Professor Longhair is born, the pianist the whole New Orleans sound came out of
On December 19, 1918, Henry Roeland Byrd was born in Louisiana. He learned to play on abandoned pianos with missing keys. As Professor Longhair he mixed boogie with Caribbean rumba rhythm and created the language of New Orleans piano. Fats Domino, Allen Toussaint and Dr. John all came out of it. By the sixties he was sweeping the floor of a record shop.
Professor Longhair
Dr. John
Allen Toussaint
1935
Bobby Timmons is born, author of the tunes that defined soul jazz
On December 19, 1935, Bobby Timmons was born in Philadelphia, a pianist raised playing in his grandfather's church. That training shows in everything: he wrote "Moanin'" for Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and "This Here" for Cannonball Adderley, two tunes that brought gospel into jazz and created a genre. He died at thirty-eight, wrecked by alcohol.
Bobby Timmons
Art Blakey
Cannonball Adderley
1942
Cornell Dupree is born, guitarist on more than two thousand records almost nobody knows he played
On December 19, 1942, Cornell Dupree was born in Fort Worth. At twenty he went on tour with King Curtis and never stopped. He is reckoned to have played on more than two thousand five hundred albums as a session musician, several of them Aretha Franklin's. His speciality was playing exactly what was needed: never an extra flourish, never a note that stole focus from the singer.
Cornell Dupree
King Curtis
Aretha Franklin
1944
Alvin Lee is born, the fastest guitarist at Woodstock
Alvin Lee, leader of Ten Years After, is born in Nottingham, England. His incendiary performance of “I'm Going Home” at Woodstock, immortalized in the festival film, consecrated him as British blues rock's fastest gun. Fame discomfited him so much that he spent the rest of his career fleeing toward the music he loved.
Alvin Lee
Ten Years After
1949
Lenny White is born, who at twenty played on "Bitches Brew" without reading music
On December 19, 1949, Lenny White was born in Queens, a self-taught drummer whom Miles Davis called in at barely twenty to record "Bitches Brew", the album that opened up electric jazz. He then joined Return to Forever with Chick Corea, one of the groups that defined seventies fusion, and kept recording for five decades.
Lenny White
Miles Davis
Return to Forever
1952
Walter Murphy is born, who took Beethoven's Fifth to number one as a disco record
On December 19, 1952, Walter Murphy was born in New York, a Juilliard-trained arranger who in 1976 took Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, put a dance beat under it and released "A Fifth of Beethoven". It went to number one in the United States and ended up on the "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack. He then spent decades scoring television series.
Walter Murphy
Ludwig van Beethoven
1956
Merzbow is born, who released a box set of fifty albums of pure noise
On December 19, 1956, Masami Akita was born in Tokyo. He took the name Merzbow from a collage by the artist Kurt Schwitters. Since 1979 he has released several hundred albums of electronic noise with no recognisable melody or pulse, including a fifty-volume box set. He is also an animal rights activist, a cause that gives many of his records their titles.
Merzbow
1969
Aziza Mustafa Zadeh is born, who sings Azerbaijani mugham over jazz chords
On December 19, 1969, Aziza Mustafa Zadeh was born in Baku, daughter of the pianist who had begun crossing jazz with mugham, the traditional modal music of Azerbaijan. He died when she was ten and she carried the project on: she sings with mugham's vocal ornamentation while accompanying herself on piano with jazz harmony, a crossing that did not exist before her family.
Aziza Mustafa Zadeh
1998
King Princess is born, who grew up inside a Brooklyn recording studio
On December 19, 1998, Mikaela Straus was born in Brooklyn, daughter of the owner of a recording studio where musicians came through every day. In 2018 she released "1950", a song about lesbian love written in code during the years of persecution, and Mark Ronson signed her as the first artist on his label. She was nineteen and already a reference point for openly queer pop.
King Princess
Mark Ronson
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