10 Amazing Music Trivia Facts You Never Knew

1. Who Peed Off P Townsend

and

2. Who Made Smashingly Expensive Music

 Ever wonder why Pete Townsend of The Who smashed his guitars up so aggressively in concert?
It could be because The Who has never scored a number 1 hit in either North America or Britain. Their highest hit was just inside the top ten and was “I Can See for Miles” It was number 10 in the UK and 9 in the USA.

Did he use cheap copy guitars to smash an estimated 87 of them to pieces?
No. There were at least 23 Fender Stratocasters, 21 Gibson SGs and12 Gibson Les Pauls Deluxe

Expensive!

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3. Posthumous Battle

Aaliyah, a respected 22 year old R & B singer and actress, died on August 25 2001 in a plane crash.

Her single “More Than a Woman” was knocked off the Number 1 spot in the UK singles charts by George Harrisons “My Sweet Lord” who died of cancer in 2001.

This is the only time in, UK chart history that, posthumously, one artist has taken over the number one spot from another.

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4. Many Happy Financial Returns

Planning a Birthday Bash? Pondering how much to spend? Then think again!

If you’re planning to sing “Happy Birthday to You” you might have to spend more than you anticipated.

The song “Happy Birthday To You” is not a public-domain composition, despite the 1998 Guinness Book of World Records declaring it to be the most recognised song in the English language.

The melody was written, in 1893, by two kindergarten school teachers, sisters, Patty and Mildred Hill from Kentucky for the song “Good Morning to All.”
The Summy Company, who owned the publishing rights of “Good Morning to All”, copyrighted “Happy Birthday to You” in 1935 as a song for hire.

Eventually Time Warner Corporation bought the rights in 1998.

So now a single use in a film or TV programme will cost around $10,000!

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5. Play it Back

The only palindrome hit recorded by a palindrome artist is “SOS” by ABBA

6. The “Didn’t Got Up this Mornin’ ” Blues

In Britain the BBC banned the 1941 recording by Billie Holiday of the song “Gloomy Sunday”. It was not alone. The song, by various artists over the years has become known as “The Hungarian Suicide Song”

This is one verse from it.

“Sunday is gloomy,
My hours are slumberless
Dearest the shadows
I live with are numberless
Little white flowers
Will never awaken you
Not where the black coaches
Sorrow has taken you
Angels have no thoughts
Of ever returning you
Wouldn’t they be angry
If I thought of joining you?

Gloomy Sunday”

Radio stations from many countries have banned it because of its reputation. People have either quoted it in suicide notes or been found dead with a copy of the music in their hand or the record found on a player in their presence.

The song was composed by Hungarian Rezso Seres, based on a poem by Ladislas Javor, in 1933

Seress said, “I stand in the midst of this deadly success as an accused man. This fatal fame hurts me. I cried all of the disappointments of my heart into this song, and it seems that others with feelings like mine have found their own hurt in it.”

The New York Times, January 14, 1968
“Budapest, January 13. Rezsoe Seres, whose dirge-like song hit, “Gloomy Sunday” was blamed for touching off a wave of suicides during the nineteen-thirties, has ended his own life as a suicide it was learned today.
Authorities disclosed today that Mr. Seres jumped from a window of his small apartment here last Sunday, shortly after his 69th birthday.
Mr. Seres complained that the success of “Gloomy Sunday” actually increased his unhappiness, because he knew he would never be able to write a second hit.”

7. Biggest Historical Mistake in Music

“We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.”

“Guitar Groups are out of fashion, Mr Epstein”.

Decca Recording Company rejecting the Beatles in 1962.

Oops!

Dick Rowe was an A&R man at Decca Records from the 1940s to the 1960s and the finger points at him for rejecting signing up the Beatles.

The Beatles signed up to Parlophone part of the EMI group, before eventually starting their own Apple Label.

8. The Strange Story of Strange Fruit

“Strange Fruit” is a strong, controversial and rare song.
It is rare in that it may have actually changed the world.

Briefly:

Marion, Indiana, 1930. Three black men accused of murder and rape, were taken from custody by a mob. Two were mutilated, murdered and hung from a tree.

A local photographer recorded the scene.

New York 1936. Seeing a copy of the photograph of the lynching, a Jewish schoolteacher penned a three verse poem called “Strange Fruit.”

Turned into a song, in 1939 the poem written under a pseudonym was recorded and published.

The song was taken up as an anthem for civil rights

Read the full horror and achievement in The Incredible Story of Strange Fruit

9. Did Robert Johnson sell his soul to the Devil at the Crossroads?

Robert Johnson is known as “the King of the Delta Blues Singers” but did he get that title with a Faustian pact, and as legend has it, “sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads”?

Transferred from old African beliefs, the legend in the South became that if a man went down to the crossroads at midnight and sat down and started playing his guitar and wished for the devil, the devil would appear. He would sit down next to the man, take his guitar, tune it and start playing it. He would hand the guitar back to the man and the deal was done. The man could play anything that he wanted and have what he wanted in this life, but in the next his soul belonged to the devil.

Robert Leroy Johnson lived in Robinsonville and blues man Son House moved into the same town.
“As a teenager, Johnson venerated House, especially, and Willie Brown; and badgered them to let him sit in at gigs. House recalls Johnson’s guitar playing as a “racket”, though both of them helped him out with the basics” (Joe Cushley)

For various reasons, in1930 Robert moved back to the town of his birth, Hazlehurst, Mississippi.

In 1932 he went back to Robinsonville, and played again for House and Brown. They were astounded by the quality and originality of his style to such an extent that Son House said “he must have done a deal with the devil to get that good, that quick.”

So the legend was born.

However playing songs entitled “Crossroad Blues” and “Me and the Devil Blues” would not help to dispel the story.

Nor would his “womanising” or the way in which he died.

He died on August 16, 1938 at the age of 27 by drinking whisky poisoned, it is thought, by a club owner with whose wife he was “fooling around”.

On the sleeve notes of the album “Robert Johnson: Old School Blues”, Joe Cushley writes: “his use of diminished chords and his innovative use of the boogie bass… had Keith Richards (of The Rolling Stones) convinced there were two guitars playing when he first heard it.” He also quotes Eric Clapton saying “His remains the most powerful cry you can find in the human voice.”

In the two years that he was away from Robinsonville, honing his skills, did Robert Johnson sell his soul to the devil?

Only Robert Johnson will ever know …….and the devil.

10 The Shows Over

“Elvis has left the building” This well known phrase usually indicates that the show is over. But where does it come from and who said it?

Horace Lee Logan said it.

On October16th 1954 the 19 year old Elvis appeared on the radio show, “Louisiana Hayride” in front of a live audience. The young Elvis at this time had not yet developed his stage presence and the reception by the audience was said to be “polite”. However Logan recognised his potential and signed him up for more appearances.

In the next two years Elvis’s career reached the verge of superstardom. He bought out his contract with “Louisiana Hayride” on the agreement that he would play at one last show. This he did on December 15th 1956.

10,000 screaming fans turned up for the show and continued screaming right through Elvis’s forty-five minute set. When Elvis left the stage the audience headed for the exits, even though there were still acts waiting to play. In desperation Logan grabbed the microphone: “Please, young people . . . Elvis has left the building. He has gotten in his car and driven away. . . . Please take your seats.”

This was the first, but not the last time, that it was used at an Elvis performance.

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Other music articles by this author:

The Beatles, Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, U2, Muse: my Generation

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