Rick Beyer is giving the keynote address right now. He said his mom warned him not to ever speak to an audience that knows more about a topic than you do! I'll keep updating as he speaks...
He also mentioned that he took piano for two years and learned two songs: one that was Yankee Doodle and one that wasn't. Haha.
Ivan Vaughan... May be the most important person in the history of rock n roll. He changed twelves of billions of music fans. He introduced two friends to each other. He introduced John and Paul. (Lennon and McCartney... July 6, 1957). This illustrates the most important history lesson he knows... "Everything that ever happened ALMOST DIDN'T."
Martin Scorsese and Robert Deniro... Scorsese had hired Kander and Ebb to write the music for a musical. Deniro didn't like the title song. He asked them if they could do better. They walked out, outraged that an actor told them how to write a song. The musical was called "New York, New York." If it weren't for Robert Deniro's anger, the song New York, New York would never have been written. No one even remembers the original song that he had complained about, but everyone knows NY NY!
"But for a button..." Story... Handel was a hot headed second violinist in the opera company and got into a duel with another musician. The sword got caught on a button and broke, saving their lives. Handel went on to become a famous composer, writing The Messiah.
Isidore Hocberg...lost all his possessions, but found his way with creativity. He called up Gershwin, a high school buddy, and Gershwin set him up with someone with whom he could write songs. His name is Yip Harburg in the Americanized version. He is best known for writing the music for The Wizard of Oz. He also wrote, "Brother, can you spare a dime?" He also wrote "big blue tears." I could go on crying big blue tears, ever since you said we're through. He wrote the "spare a dime" lyrics when a homeless man asked him that phrase. A chance encounter gave us one of the most important American songs ever written.
The act of creation is often NOT PRETTY.
Rick Beyer sang a bit of the flying trapeze, and got the audience to sing along. The song was inspired by a real person... A young Frenchman who made his Paris debut as an aerial acrobat. We remember him today for what he WORE... A skin-tight piece of clothing that he invented himself. His name? Jules Leotard.
The oldest song in the world with music that is still extant? You have to go back 3400 years to find the earliest known piece of published music. It's a hymn to a moon goodness that's carved in stone. An archaeologist cross-referenced the musical notation to figure out what the actual notes were. "You can still get it on a tablet." Hahaha
He threw a POP QUIZ! If you win, you will not get Carl Castle's voice on your answering machine.
1973...Watergate Hearings inspired a broadway musical. Bennett and friends had an all-night "therapy session to talk about their lives, their worries, etc. He was a dancer, and his friends were dancers... The musical was A CHORUS LINE.
two songs from 1850's... Dixie and Jingle Bells... One from the north. One from the south. Dixie was written by an Ohio man in a NY hotel room for a minstrel show. He was enraged when the song was adopted as a confederate anthem. He said, if i had known they would It was written by a "damned Yankee." Haha
Peirpont grew up in Bedford, Mass, but he published Jingle Bells while living in Savannah Georgia. Pierpont also wrote many songs for the confederate.
America's first recording star? A African-American street musician... George Washington Johnson...late 1800's ... Really good as a street musician who whistled and laughed in tune. A talent scout found him and they recorded him a lot. In the 1890's, the recorded onto a wax cylinder. There was no master. Each recording has to be made individually. He had to perform his songs 50 times a day in order to be able to record anything. He made 50,000 recordings. He played a clip of THE LAUGHING SONG. George was paid 20cents a song, so musicians "have always been screwed financially." He fell from the public eye poor and forgotten.
Early phonographs were a novelty that phonograph concerts were a novelty. People went to the theatre to hear records being played.
John Philip Sousa was worried that recorded music was ruining live music in America. He wrote "THE MENACE OF MECHANICAL MUSIC." "Sweeping across the country... Comes now the mechanical device... And substitute for human skill, intelligence and soul..." With recorded music available, he feared that people would stop learning to play live music. Today, we live Ina. World drenched in recorded music.
Ben Franklin saw a musician playing on the rims of glasses, so he was inspired to invent the Armonica. It inspired Mozart and Beethoven to write pieces for it. Factories sprung up to make lots of these. Many people felt it had healing properties. People became to believe that it caused insanity, though. The instruction manual warned of its impact on peoples' temperament. It was banned in parts of Germany. By the 1800's, people had turned against the instrument. It was kill by it's own magical powers...
A song once saved the life of a president. John Tyler went on a ship called the Princeton. There was a new cannon called "the peacemaker." They announced that they were going to fire the cannon one more time, but someone broke into an impromptu song and he didn't want to be rude and walk out on the song. The cannon blew up and six people died.
Jean Baptiste Lully... Killed by his own conducting... He was pounding a stick and hit his foot. He got gangrene and lead poisoning and died two months later. He's the only person to be killed by his own conducting.
1913.. Curtain opens ... RIOT! It was the premiere of THE RITE OF SPRING. Two months earlier, in March 1913, a similar concert took place in Vienna at a concert by Schoenberg. He had to be forced off the stage. The citizens of the USA were also torn apart by something musical... It took the country by storm... The TANGO! The dance swept across Europe and America in 1913. Tango classes became all the rage. NYC had a tango car on the trolleys so people could dance their way to and from work. Harvard U banned it's track team from doing the tango. The tango fever subsided, but other culture wars have appeared throughout history and somehow, we are still here.
Hail to the Chief is a showtune from THE LADY OF THE LAKE.
Take me out to the Ballgame was written on the subway by a guy who had never been to a ball game. There are a bunch of verses, all about Katie.
The Drifters... "Save the Last Dance for Me." Doc Pomas (sp?) wrote the lyrics to that song. He wanted to be a blues singer, so he started writing to make some extra money. He wrote the lyrics to a lot of pop songs. He wrote the lyrics on the back of an old wedding invitation when he was thinking of his own wedding three years prior. He was crippled by polio since he was a child. He urged his new wife to dance with other guests. His song was really a plea of a man who couldn't dance with his bride.
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