The Month of September in History
By Mickey Dunaway | Reprinted with Permission by Limitless Magazine | Cornelius, NC
NOTE FROM THE WRITER: You are not reading the same blog (MUSIC MY WAY, in three parts) I posted earlier. The “Month in History” blog is always a reprint of my monthly column in Limitless Magazine. It is true that I was on a bit of a music tear for a while as the intro to this month’s TMIH indicates. Anyway, how can one have too much music in one’s life? Well, I guess I could have too much opera, but thank goodness my lovely wife is not smitten by the dulcet tones of operatic mezzo-sopranos.
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Asking a 74-year-old guy what he wants for Christmas usually gets a shrug and a “Damned if I know” response. When asked last Christmas, I finally came up with the idea of getting a turntable to play the 30 or so albums my wife and I have carted around to several states over the years since we abandoned the last turntable for a CD player. The idea of a new turntable evolved rather quickly into a new hobby of searching out places and adding LPs to the collection. With music on my mind these days—not that I am a musician by any stretch—it seemed like a good topic to look at musical events that have occurred in September.
Thanks to Wikipedia and On-This-Day.com (https://on-this-day.com/onthisday/thedays/music/sep01.htm) for pointing me in the right direction on many of the events noted below.
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| September 2, 1991 | Garth Brooks’ 3rd studio album, Ropin’ the Wind, debuted at number#1 on the Country and Pop Charts. | Shameless (by Billy Joel) and What’s She Doin’ Now rose to #1, and Papa Loves Mama made it to #3. |
| September 3, 1942 | Sinatra started his solo singing career. | I have never been a Sinatra fan. Am I by myself? |
| September 4, 1959 | Song Mack the Knife by Bobby Darin was banned by a radio station in NY, NY. | My, how music has changed. |
| September 4, 1981 | George Strait released his first album, Strait Country. | I came to admire George Strait when he skipped the Kentucky Derby one year because it was on his daughter’s first prom night. |
| September 6, 1968 | Eric Clapton recorded a guitar solo on the Beatles’While My Guitar Gently Weeps—written by George Harrison. | George Harrison and Paul McCartney attended the same school in Liverpool and rode the bus together to school every day. |
| September 7, 1957 | Sam Cooke’s You Send Me was released. | Cooke was shot and killed at a motel in Los Angeles at the age of 33. Another one-of-a-kind voice was lost tragically. |
| September 9, 1956 | Elvis makes his first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. | The camera shot Elvis from waist up. |
| September 11, 1847 | Oh! Susanna by Stephen Foster was performed for the first time. | Foster’s My Old Kentucky Home and Suwanee River are the state songs of Kentucky and Florida. |
| September 12, 1996 | Tupac Shakur died after being shot four times in a Las Vegas drive-by. | The murder has never been solved. |
| September 13, 1997 | 1973’s Candle in Wind by Elton John was re-released. | As a tribute to Princess Diana. |
| September 14, 1741 | George Handel wrote the “Messiah” for an orphan’s charity concert. | An Easter standard in Christian churches. |
| September 14, 1814 | The lyrics to the Star-Bangled Banner were written by Francis Scott Key. | It became the national anthem on March 3, 1931. |
| September 15, 1930 | Indiana native-son Hoagy Carmichael recorded Georgia on My Mind. | The state song of Georgia since 1922. |
| September 16, 1964 | Shindig!, a variety show focusing on rock, premiered on ABC. | The acts included Sam Cooke, The Everly Brothers, The Righteous Brothers. |
| September 18,1969 | Tiny Tim announced his engagement to Miss Vicki on The Tonight Show. | They tiptoed through the matrimonial tulips two months later—on The Tonight Show. |
| September 19, 1958 | Elvis joined his Army unit in Germany | Thousands of teens were in mourning. |
| September 19, 1975 | Eric Clapton earned a gold record for I Shot the Sherriff. | Written by Bob Marley. |
| September 20, 1973 | Jim Croce was killed in a plane crash on his way to a concert in Texas. | Another unique talent lost to a plane crash. |
| September 22, 1985 | First Farm Aid Concertwas held in Champaign, IL. | Organized by Willie Nelson, Neil Young, and John Mellencamp. $57 million raised since its beginning. |
| September 23, 1952 | Hank Williams recorded his last studio album. | He died of a drug overdose on January 1, 1953, at age 29, on his way to a concert. |
| September 24, 1942 | Glenn Miller ended his U.S. broadcast contract so that he could go to WWII. | December 15, 1944, Major Miller, without formal approval, caught a plane out of Bedfordshire, England, to Paris; the flight never arrived. |
| September 25, 1975 | Jackie Wilson collapsed with a heart attack while playing Lonely Teardrops at the Latino Casino in NJ. | Wilson was 41 and remained in care until he died in 1984 as the attack caused brain damage. |
| September 26, 1957 | The musical West Side Story opened on Broadway. | Music by Leonard Bernstein with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Inspired by Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. |
| September 26, 1984 | Prince released the song Purple Rain. | A private individual with considerable breadth and depth of musical talents. |
| September 27, 2004 | Phil Specter was charged with and later convicted of the murder of Lane Clarkson at his home in LA. | Specter was perhaps best known for the Beach Boys’ “wall of sound” background music. |
| September 29, 1962 | My Fair Lady closed on Broadway after six and a half years. | At that time, it held the record for the longest-running show. |
| September 30, 1791 | Mozart’s opera, The Magic Flute, premiered in Vienna. | Mozart died two month’s later. |
“Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without.”
― Confucius
Southern Exposures 