12-14: Keith Jarrett : Life Between the Exit Signs 1967 | El Juicio 1971 - Dinah Washington Sings Bessie Smith 1958 - C.P.E. Bach Magnificat & Sinfonias / Haenchen 1995

Not shown above: Johann Philipp Förtsch & Don Anthony

1732 – Johann Philipp Förtsch (German composer, statesman & scholar)
1788 – Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (German composer, keyboardist, author & teacher, son of Johann Sebastian)
1829 – Luigi Marchesi (Italian castrato singer)
1849 – Conradin Kreutzer (German composer & conductor)
1861 – Heinrich August Marschner (German composer known mainly for his operas)
1886 – Antoni Wincenty Rutkowski (Polish composer)
1901 – Adolf Müller, Jr. (Austrian operetta composer & conductor)
1914 – Giovanni Sgambati (Italian composer, singer & conductor)
1923 – Giuseppe Gallignani (Italian composer, organist & conductor)
1938 – Maurice Emmanuel (French composer & musicologist, pupil of Delibes & Franck, peer of Debussy, teacher of Messiaen & Dutilleux)
1945 – Constantino Gaito (Argentine composer of Italian ancestry)
1948 – R. O. Morris (English composer & teacher of Finzi, Tippett, Lambert & Rubbra)
1952 – Fartein Valen (Norwegian composer & music theorist)
1962 – Nazzareno De Angelis (Italian operatic bass)
1963 – Dinah Washington (American blues, R&B & jazz singer, "Queen of the Blues")
1965 – Herman Sandby (Danish composer & cellist)
1968 – Margarete Klose (German operatic mezzo-soprano)
1973 – Yitzhak Edel [לדא קחצי] (Israeli composer & violinist)
1994 – Mary Ann McCall (American jazz & pop singer)
1995 – Don Anthony (American bandleader & songwriter)
1997 – Kurt Winter (Canadian guitarist & songwriter, The Guess Who)
1999 – Gré Brouwenstijn (Dutch operatic soprano)
2006 – Ahmet Ertegün (Turkish-born American record executive, talent scout & songwriter, Atlantic Records)

Relax. Keith Jarrett is still alive. Trust me, I'll be crying my eyes out the day that cat poops. But I wanted to have something from Atlantic Records, in honor of Ahmet Ertegun, and at first I was really stumped at where to begin. Then I figured since we haven't had much jazz in a while, Jarrett's stellar debut on Atlantic subsidiary Vortex would be as good a choice as any. This issue was packaged with another one of his early Atlantic albums, too... one of the earliest of Keith with his "American Quartet." So, enjoy.

And to those of you who are fans of the Guess Who, my apologies. The studio albums the band made when Kurt Winter was in the fold (1970 thru '74, after the Randy Bachman years) weren't all that great, but I'd wanted to still give you some live stuff - preferably the very good Live at the Paramount from 1972, or else a boot from those years, but what little I did turn up was unavailable, for whatever reason. And yes, in some cases the reason was because the files were being hosted at one of those places where we can't go any more! So, we'll just have to take what we can get.

09-26: Bartók Miraculous Mandarin | Music for Strings etc / Boulez - Baden Powell Solitude 1971 - The Audience With Betty Carter 1980 - Jonas Hellborg / Shawn Lane Zenhouse 1999 - Bessie Smith Empress of the Blues 1923-1933

1788 – François Bainville (French organist & composer)
1800 – William Billings (American choral composer & tanner)
1808 – Pavel Vranický [Paul Wranitzky] (Moravian composer & conductor, active in Austria)
1871 – Cipriani Potter (English composer, pianist & teacher)
1937 – Bessie Smith (American blues singer)
1944 – Ernst Isler (Swiss organist, pianist, composer & music critic)
1945 – Béla Bartók (Hungarian composer, pianist & folksong collector)
1968 – Władysław Kędra (Polish pianist)
1979 – Seymour Shifrin (American composer)
1983 – Tino Rossi (Corsican-born French cabaret singer & actor)
1989 – Hemanta Kumar Mukhopadhyay [হেমন্ত কুমার মুখোপাধ্যায়] (Indian singer & film composer, director & producer)
1991 – Billy Vaughn (American country, R&B & pop singer, multi-instrumentalist, orchestra leader, & A&R man for Dot Records)
1998 – Betty Carter (American jazz singer & songwriter)
2000 – Baden Powell [de Aquino] (Brazilian jazz & classical guitarist, composer & singer)
2003 – Shawn Lane (American rock & jazz guitarist & pianist, Black Oak Arkansas, Jonas Hellborg)
2003 – Robert Palmer (English rock, pop & R&B singer, songwriter & multi-instrumentalist)
2008 – Marc Moulin (Belgian jazz pianist, composer, journalist, humorist, economist, animator & radio producer)

Wow... what a bunch for today! A couple of amazing guitarists, a couple of amazing African-American women of song, a legendary Bengali singer & composer, a Corsican cabaret singer who made all the ladies swoon, a very talented Wallonian touche-à-tout, one of the great composers in early American history... and the greatest Hungarian composer of the 20th century!

Don't get any funny ideas, though... this is NOT a write-up. Like I said last time, it's gonna be boom-boom-boom for a few. And then some write-ups. "Boom-boom-boom"... do you know what that means? Of course you don't, all you readers from... everywhere in the world, including our first readers from Africa (the Sudan, to be specific - مرحبا! ترحيب !), who just showed up this past week. This is just a placeholder. One day, there will be an actual write-up here, and what you're reading now will be GONE... forever! Doesn't that make you feel sad? Tough shit. Oh, my. Did I use potty-mouth? Are you offended that I haven't classified this as an "adult" blog because of my foul language? Too fucking bad.