Today's the Day

[Richard Tarleton]

WW2 veteran Medgar Evers is murdered outside his house by a Ku Klux Klansman (1963 - the murderer escapes justice in two trials [both with whites-only jurors] and is only convicted 31 years later);

As described by Bob Dylan

From tomorrow, for Netflix subscribers, Martin Scorsese's film about the Rolling Thunder Review tour.

[johncorrigan]

The Feast Day of St Ternan, the 5th Century Scottish bishop, "Bishop of the Picts", and founder of a monastery near the Aberdeenshire town of Banchory. He is remembered by the bell that he brought to the monastery from Rome, and which now resides [mebbe] in the Presbyterian Church that bears his name in Banchory; in an annual Fair held in Banchory on the closest Saturday to his Feast Date; and in the Milking Croon of South Uist, sung by dairymaids to soothe cows whilst they [the cows] were being milked.

Come, Brendan, from the Ocean,
Come, Ternan, most potent of men,
Come, Michael valiant, down
And propitiate to me the cow of my joy.
First verse of one of the 'Milking Croons' from the 'Carmina Gadelica' collected by Alexander Carmichael

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

June 13th

The Feast Day of St Aquilina, a 3rd Century girl from the city of Byblos in the Lebanon [one of the oldest-inhabited cities in the world] who was tortured and killed at the age of 11 or 12 on the orders of the Governor of the city when she refused to renounce her faith. After an extended period of torture, she was left for dead, but revived, and went to the Governor [on the instructions of an angel, according to the legend] to denounce his evil acts. He ordered her to be beheaded as a witch, but she collapsed and died in prison on the night before her execution.

And, if the Chesterton Society is granted its petition to have GK Chesterton beatified by the Catholic Church, this will be his Feast Day, too.

Also on this Date: Richard II tries to negotiate with the Rebels of the "Peasants' Revolt", but refuses to leave his boat on the Thames to do so, so they enter London where they are joined by several Londoners, and ransack many buildings associated with the oppressive regime, including the Savoy Palace, owned by John of Gaunt [whose idea the Poll Tax had been], and where he stored around £10,000 worth of gold, jewellery and luxury items (1381 - that is over £6million today, in just one of the homes he owned - the exact sort of personal wealth possessed by those inflicting the Poll Tax on the poor that had caused the Revolt in the first place); defying the Catholic Church's ban on the clergy marrying, Martin Luther and Katherine von Bora marry (1525); Ferenc Rakoczi II announces the deposition of the House of Habsburg from the throne of Hungary (1707); a conflagration destoys most of the newly-built Candian city of Vancouver (1886); Stravinsky's Petrushka is premiered by the Ballets Russes at the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, conducted by Monteux (1911); the deadliest air raid on London in the First World War [and the first to take place in daylight] causes 162 deaths [18 of them children attending classes in Upper North Street Primary School in Poplar] and 432 injuries (1917); First Assistant US postmaster, John E Koons rules that children may no longer be treated as parcels and posted (1920); Stravinsky's ballet Les Noces is premiered by the Ballets Russes at the Théâtre de la Gaîté, Paris, conducted by Ansermet (1923); Charles Francis Jenkins demonstrates his method of transmitting synchronised pictures and sound, an early prototype of Television (1925); the first Doodlebug, V-1 rocket bombs, are launched (1944 - the first strike lands next to the railway bridge at Grove Rd, Mile End, and kills 8 people); Soviet fighter jets shoot down an unarmed Swedish reconnaissance aircraft over international waters, killing all 8 crew members; later that day, the seaplane sent to search for survivors is also shot down, with no casualties (1952 - the Soviet Union denies any involvement, and it is only after the collapse of Soviet Communism that the truth is admitted); Vaughan Williams' Tuba Concerto is premiered by Philip Catelinet with the LSO conducted by Barbirolli in the Royal Festival Hall, London (1954); the United States Supreme Court rules that police officers must inform suspects of their rights before they start to question them (1966); Thurgood Marshall becomes the first black justice on the US Supreme Court (1967); the New York Times begins publication of the leaked "Pentagon Papers", detailing how the Johnson administration had systematically lied to the public, and to Congress, about the Vietnam War (1971); Marcus Sarjeant, an unemployed 17-year-old who wants "to be famous ... to be somebody", "inspired" by the murder of John Lennon, fires 6 blanks from a starting pistol at the Queen during Trooping the Colour, startling her horse [which is older than he is] (1981 - at his trial for Treason, he pleads guilty and is sentenced to five years' imprisonment, of which he serves three); the Battles of Mount Tumbledown and of Wireless Ridge begin in the Falklands War (1982 - both end the next day with British victories); Pioneer 10 passes Neptune, becoming the first man-made object to pass beyond the major planets of the solar system into deep space (1983 - it continues to send back data until Jan 23rd, 2003, by which time it had reached 7.5 billion miles from Earth); the National Salvation Front government in Romania [partly made up of officials from the ousted Communist government of Ceaușescu] bring in industrial workers and coal miners to help police to disrupt and break up protestors in the capital, Bucharest (1990); the first Inter-Korean Summit between Kim Dae-Jung, president of South Korea, and Kim Jong-Il, president of North Korea, in the Northern capital of Pyongyang (2000); President Bush II withdraws the US from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (2002 - the official reason is so that the US wants to increase its weapons to defend against attacks from "rogue states"; Putin uses the withdrawal as an excuse to increase the number of Russian weapons); after an 18-month trial, Michael Jackson is found Not Guilty of 14 counts of molesting a 13-year-old boy at his ranch in Santa Barbara, California (2005); al-Qaeda launches a second bomb attack in 16 months on the Al-Askari shi'ite mosque in Samarra, Iraq (2007); Japanese Space Probe, Hyabusa ["peregrine falcon"] returns to Earth after successfully accomplishing its mission to land on near-Earth asteroid Itokawa and collect samples from its surface (2010); ... and, this time last year, Nature magazine reports research, led by Andrew Shepherd of the University of Leeds, that suggests that Antarctica is melting at three times the rate it had been ten years earlier.

Birthdays Today include: Gnaeus Julius Agricola (40); Charles the Bad (823); Charles the Fat (839); Alessandro Piccolomini (1508); Willebrord Snellius (1580); Thomas Young (1773); Heinrich Hoffmann (1809); James Clerk Maxwell (1831); WB Yeats (1865); Basil Rathbone (1892); Dorothy L Sayers (1893); Carlos Chavez (1899); Mary Whitehouse (1910); Malcolm MacDowell (1943); Ban Ki-Moon (1944); Tim Allen (1953); Alan Hansen (1955); Sarah Connolly (1963); Kathy Burke (1964); Lukas Ligeti (1965);

Final Days for: Henry Gray (1861); Ludwig II of Bavaria (1886); Eugene Goossens (1962); Benny Goodman (1986); Alfred Gerrard & Reg Smythe (both 1998); Ralph Shapey (2002); David Diamond (2005).


And the Radio 3 Schedules for the morning of Tuesday, 13th June, 1989 were:

Morning Concert: Copland El Salon Mexico; Hahn L'amitie; Chavez Sinfonia India; Rimsky-Korsakoff May Night Ovt; Scriabin Piano Concerto; Prokofiev Five Melodies, Op 35a.
Composer of the Week: Purcell ("Hail, Bright Cecilia" Z 328)
Clarinet & Piano - David Campbell (Clar) & Andrew Ball (Pno): Brahms Sonata in Eb, Op 120 #2; Stravinsky 3 Pieces for clarinet solo; Weber Grand Duo Concertant, Op 48.
Hungarian Pictures: Rosza 3 Hungarian Sketches Op 13; Bartok Hungarian Pictures.
BBCWSO conducted by Tadaaki Otaka: Tchaikovsky Romeo & Juliet; Schumann Pno Conc (with Kathryn Stott); Prokofiev Romeo & Juliet [excerpts]
(in the afternoon there was a broadcast of Berlioz' complete R&J Symphony).

[Padraig]

Final Days for: Benny Goodman (1986);

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kguj_dz9JjI&list=RDkguj_dz9JjI&start_radio=1

Benny Goodman, Teddy Wilson - a particular favourite of a previous Jazz Host - and Gene Krupa.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Vaughan Williams' Tuba Concerto is premiered by Philip Catelinet with the LSO conducted by Barbirolli in the Royal Festival Hall, London (1954)

http://philipcatelinet.com/biography/the-truth-about-the-vaughan-williams-tuba-concerto-by-philip-catelinet-itea-journal-volume-14-number-2-november-1986/

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

June 14th

The Feast Day of [St] Elisha, the Old Testament prophet, venerated as a saint in some Christian Churches - and venerated "above the rest of creation", "among the excellent" in all Islam. And the Pattern Day of St Caomhán of Inisheer, patron [hence "pattern", from an English mishearing of "Lá an Phátrúin"] of the smallest of the Arran Islands [population c 260] about whom not much else is known, not even when precisely he lived. His grave is near the church that bears his name ["St Cavan's"] and it was reputed to have healing powers for those who spent the night of his feast in vigil at the graveside.

And it's World Blood Donor Day, for anyone who wishes to give very nearly an armful.

Also on this Date: Henry the Lion, Duke of Bavaria, establishes the city of Munich (1158); King Louis of England captures Winchester from King John, prompting Gerald of Wales to comment "The madness of slavery is over, the time of liberty has been granted, English necks are free from the yoke." (1216); citizens with a Flemish-seeming name, or who appeared to be "foreign", are attacked by rioting crowd in the "Peasants' Revolt" - over 75 suspected people are murdered; the Tower of London is taken [the gates had been left open ready for the return of Richard II, who had gone out to Mile End to negotiate with the rebels] and several officials are also killed, including the Archbishop of Canterbury - and very nearly the 14-year-old son of the universally hated Jahn of Gaunt, but for the intervention of one of the Royal Guards [the boy later deposed Richard and had himself installed as Henry IV] - the rebels spend much of the day seeking out their enemies and extracting revenge (1381); Owain Glyndwr allies with the French forces against aforementioned Henry IV (1404); the Battle of Naseby is fought in the Civil War, resulting in a decisive victory for the New Model Army (1645 - Charles I loses the cream of his troops ... and secret papers which prove that he had been negotiating with Irish Catholics and foreign mercenaries, which greatly boosted the Parliamentary cause); the 5-day long Raid of the Medway ends with a victory for the Dutch navy and one of the worst defeats in the history of the Royal Navy (1667); William of Orange lands in Ireland ready to confront ousted king James II (1690); the American Continental Army, forerunner of the modern US Army, is founded to fight the British in the American War of Independence (1775); the 13-star "Stars & Stripes" is adopted as the National flag by the Continental Congress [the forerunner of today's US Congress] (1777); William Bligh, former Commanding Lieutenant of HMS Bounty, lands in Timor with 18 loyal crew after being cast adrift 47 days earlier by the mutineers (1789 - they have rowed over 4,000 miles, and several of them are now so weak that they die shortly after arriving); Napoleon defeats the Austrian army at the Battle of Marengo, re-establishing his control of Italy (1800); Charles Babbage announces his invention of the Difference Engine in a paper presented to the Royal Astronomical Society (1822); the first Regatta is held on the River Thames at the village of Henley-on-Thames (1839 - it doesn't become "Royal" for another 12 years); Hawaii becomes a US territory (1900 - on the same day, Kaiser Wilhelm II announces that the German Navy is to be doubled in size); middle-class Norwegian women gain the right to vote (1907); Alcock & Brown [accompanied by toy cat mascots, Lucky Jim and Twinkletoes] set off from Newfoundland on their 19-hour first non-stop Transatlantic Flight (1919); Gliere's ballet The Red Poppy is premiered at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow (1927); Nazi troops begin their occupation of Paris (1940); Britten's The Little Sweep is premiered in the Jubilee Hall, Aldeburgh, conducted by Norman Del Mar (1949 - on the same day, Albert, a rhesus monkey, rides on a V-1 rocket to become the First Monkey in Space ... and, very shortly thereafter, the first monkey to suffocate in space); the phrase "under God" is added to the US Pledge of Allegiance (1954); the Roman Catholic Church announces that, whilst the Index of Forbidden Books retained its moral force, it was no longer part of Ecclesiastical Positive Law (1966 - Catholics can now read Copernicus and Galileo without worrying about being fined for so doing); Mariner 5, a space probe to examine the atmosphere of Venus, is launched (1967); Argentine forces surrender to British troops, ending the 10-week-long Falklands War (1982); Kevin Reynolds' film Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, starring Alan Rickman, is released in the USA (1991); an asteroid with diameter of 73 meters misses collision with the Earth by 74,000 miles [a third of the distance between the Earth and the Moon] (2002 - it is only noticed by astronomers three days after the near-collision, and there is a 1/360,000 chance that it will collide with Earth "sometime after 2070", so book your holidays now); Luhansk separatists in Eastern Ukraine shoot down a transport aircraft of the Ukrainian Air Force; killing all 49 people on board (2014); ... and, two years ago, the Grenfell Tower block fire kills 72 people, injures 74 others, and leaves 196 households homeless.

Birthdays Today include: Johann Abraham Ihle (1627); Antonio Sacchini (1730); Simon Mayr (1763); Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811); Andrey Matkov (1856); Alois Alzheimer (1864); Jane Batholi (1877); John McCormack (1884); Emmy Wegener (1901); Rose Rand (1903); Rene Char (1907); Burl Ives (1909); Rudolf Kempe (1910); Gene Barry & Sam Wanamaker (1919); Judith Kerr (1923); Che Guevara (1928); Cy Coleman (1929); some guy called Trump (1946); Rowan Williams (1950); Paul O'Grady (1955); Boy George (1961); Lang Lang (1982); Steffi Graf is 50, and Jim Lea, Alan White, & Anthony Sher are all 70 today.

Final Days for: Carpentras (1542); Orlando di Lasso/Roland de Lassus/Orlande de Lassus/Orlande/Roland de Lattre/Orlandus Lassus (all of him, 1594); Colin Mclaurin (1746); Benedict Arnold (1801); Giacomo Leopardi (1837); Edward FitzGerald (1883); Alexander Ostrovsky (1886); Johan Svendsen (1911); Max Weber (1920); Mary Cassatt (1926); Jerome K Jerome (1927); Emmeline Pankhurst (1928); GK Chesterton (1936); John Logie Baird (1946); John Blackwood McEwen (1948); Salvatore Quasimodo & Karl-Birger Blomdahl (both 1968); Alan Reed (1977); Jorge Luis Borges and Alan J Lerner (both 1986); Peggy Ashcroft (1991); Rory Gallagher (1995); Noemí Gerstein (1996); Carlo Maria Giulini & Mimi Parent (both 2005); Monty Berman (2006); ... and, 25 years ago, Henry Mancini .


And the morning schedules for the morning of Saturday, 14th June, 1969 were:

The Saturday Concert ("Fourth of five programmes built round a choice of Britten's music, and in which all Mozart's later string Quintets will be heard"): Britten Nocturne; Mozart S5tet in D; Mozart Minuet in D.
Record Review presented by John Lade (Stephen Walsh BaL-ed Mahler's Resurrection; Noel Goodwin reviewed Recent Releases)
Jazz Record Requests with Steve Race

[followed by seven hours of cricket]

[Richard Tarleton]

Napoleon defeats the Austrian army at the Battle of Marengo, re-establishing his control of Italy (1800)

...a battle which Napoleon very nearly lost, General Desaix arriving in the nick of time to save the day - and getting killed for his pains.

The battle gave rise to a famous recipe, countless versions of which may be found on the internet but which bear little resemblance to what Napoleon' chef Dunand rustled up after the battle....

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

June 15th

The Feast Day of St Edburga, the 10th Century daughter of King Edward the Elder (the real "Edward I") and half-sister of Aethelstan, who died on this day in 960. The legend has it that, as a baby, her father chose whether she should follow a secular or spiritual life by placing toys on one side of her, and a book of the Gospels on the other, and the infant turned to the book to play with; so, at the age of three, she was given over to the Abbey of St Mary in Winchester to be educated and to take her vows. She was, it seems, almost ostentatiously humble, and the usual legends of miracles after her death led to a cult that survived for 400 years.

And today is also the Feast Day of Augustine of Hippo, and, here in the UK, National Beer Day - so, no different from any other Saturday. And - absolutely no connection - Global Wind Day.

Also on this Date: a solar eclipse is recorded in Assyrian eponym lists (763 BCE - this later enables histrorians to "map" the Assyrian calendar onto Western equivalents); King John puts his seal on the Magna Carta (1215); French physician Jean-Baptiste Denys performs the first recorded blood transfusion (1667 - not quite what we think today - the patients [a 15-year-old boy and a farm labourer] were both given 12 ounces of blood taken from a sheep, and both survived; less happy was the outcome on a Swedish nobleman, who was given twice the dose, and died); this is the "traditional" date given to Benjamin Franklin's experiment with a kite in a thunderstorm to prove that lightning is electricity (1752); the day after its creation, George Washington is appointed the first Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army (1775); the first recorded air crash occurs when an attempt to cross the English Channel in a balloon goes wrong (1785 - one of the fatalities is Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier, one of the most important figures in Montgolfian balloon flight); Charles Goodyear receives a patent for the vulcanisation of rubber (1844); the Oregon Treaty establishes the border between Canada and the United States (1846); Arlington Military Cemetery is established (1864); Eadweard Muybridge takes his famous sequence of photographs establishing that the four feet of a horse all leave the ground [at times] when it is running (1878); the Year of the Three Emperors: on the death of Friedrich II of Germany, who had been Emperor for only 99 days, his son Wilhelm II becomes Kaiser (1888); an earthquake off the coast of Honshu [the largest & most populated island of Japan] creates a tsunami that kills over 22,000 people and destroys more than 9000 homes (1896); Alcock & Brown [+ mascots] crash-land in Ireland having completed the first non-stop Transatlantic flight (1919 - on the same day, the first aircraft ever made by the Boeing company is flown for the first time); Bessie Coleman becomes the first black person to receive a Pilot's Licence (1921); following the New York State decision to make failure to co-operate with Nuclear Air Raid drills a criminal offence [punishable by a $500 fine and up to a year's imprisonment], 27 peace campaigners stage a "sit up" demonstration in Manhattan's City Park (1955 - they are arrested and given suspended sentences); Bob Dylan records Like a Rolling Stone (1965); Woodward & Bernstein's All the President's Men is published by Simon & Schuster (1974); the first democratic elections since 1936 are held in Spain (1977); the first episode of The Black Adder is broadcast (1983); a Soviet Lithuanian national, later judged insane, throws suphuric acid onto Rembrandt's painting Danae and hacks at it with a knife in the Hermitage Museum, Leningrad (1985); the second largest volcanic eruption of the 20th Century kills 800 people living near Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines (1991); the US Supreme Court rules that forcible extradition of suspects from outside the US, without the consent of the nations involved, is legal (1992 - on the same day, 12-year-old William Figueroa spells "potato" correctly on a blackboard in front of American TV and newspaper cameras; Dan Quayle tells him he's got it wrong, and that there should be an "e" at the end of the word); an IRA lorry bomb explodes in the centre of Manchester - at 3,300 lbs, it is the largest bomb exploded in Britain since WW2, and causes over a billion pounds'-worth of damage to property, and results in 212 injuries (1996); the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is established (2001); and, this time last year, Stephen Hawking's ashes were buried in Westminster Abbey, alongside the graves of Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin.

Birthdays Today include: Edward, the "Black Prince" (1330); Lisa del Giocondo (1479); Thomas Randolph (1605); Georg Joseph Vogler (1749); Franz Danzi (1763); Edvard Grieg (1843); Guy Ropartz (1864); Charles Wood (1866); Harry Langdon (1884); Robert Russell Bennett (1894); Otto Luening (1900); Erik Erikson (1902); James Robertson Justice (1907); the Revd W Awdry (1911); Erroll Garner (1921 - or, possibly 1923); John Veale (1922); Richard Baker (1925); Ross Andru & Hugo Pratt (both 1927); Miguel Méndez (1930); Brian Sewell (1931); Rolf Riehm (1937); Jean-Claude Eloy (1938); Ward Connerly (1939); Neal Adams & Harry Nilsson (both 1941); Noddy Holder & Demis Roussos (both 1946); Paul Patterson (1947); Raphael Wallfisch (1953); Paul Rusesabagina (1954); Chris Morris & Andrea Rost (both 1962); Helen Hunt (1963); Courtney Cox (1964); Julia Fischer (1983); ... and Simon Callow is 70 today.

Final Days for: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1938); Alfred Cortot (1962); Wes Montgomery (1968); Meredith Wilson (1984); Ray McAnally (1989); Brett Whiteley (1992); James Hunt (1993); John Vincent Atanasoff (1995); Ella Fitzgerald (1996); Casey Kasem (2014); Matt "Guitar" Murphy (2018).


And the Radio 3 schedules for the morning of Friday, 15th June, 1979 were:

Overture: Vivaldi Concerto for 2 Trumpets; Hummel Quintet in Eb Op 87; Eberlin Pieces for hydraulic organ; Mozart Concerto for Flute & Harp; Grieg Lyric Piece Op71 #3 "Puck"; Ravel Valses nobles et sentimentales.
Composer of the Week: Bach (Trio Sonatas BWVs 528 & 530; Suite in g minor BWV 995).
Young Artists Recital: Peter Knapp [baritone] & Antony Saunders [pno] (Schumann Liederkreis Op 24; Vaughan Williams Songs of Travel, Linden Lea).
BBCNIO conducted by Eric Wetherell: Hindemith Cupid and Psyche Ovt; Tcherepnin Bagatelles (with Edward Pearl, piano); Trevor Roberts Pastorale; Haydn "Schoolmaster" Symphony.
The Part Song Repertory: the BBCSingers conducted by Nicolas Cleobury perform a selection of madrigals by John Wilbye.

[Pulcinella]

Very few churches dedicated to St Edburg, that in Bicester (where I used to live) being one:

http://www.stedburgschurch.org/

PS: Oops!
Looks like a different St Edburg(a).

The patron saint of our church is Saint Edburg of Bicester.

Sometimes referred to as Edburga, or Eadburh, she was daughter of the great pagan warrior King Penda of Mercia, and was born around 620 AD. Though little is known about her, for a time she was a nun at Castor in Northamptonshire under her sister, Saint Cuneburga. However, with another sister, Saint Edith of Aylesbury, she built a small monastery, on land given by her father, at Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. Here, the two educated their niece, Saint Osith. The villages of Adderbury and Edburton near Bicester are said to be named after Saint Edburg. In 1182, her relics were translated to Bicester Priory, a house of Augustinian Canons, and became a popular attractions with medieval pilgrims. However, in 1500, Pope Alexander VI ordered her remains to be removed and relocated to Flanders in Belgium, where they are presumed to remain, in an unknown location, to this day.The base of her shrine can still be seen at Stanton Harcourt.

She died at Aylesbury on 18th July 650 AD, and this was subsequently appointed her feast day.

[Richard Tarleton]

Bob Dylan records Like a Rolling Stone (1965)

"Nobody had ever created anything quite like it before and everybody there that day knew it. They grouped together to hear the fruits of their labour as [Tom] Wilson pushed the playback button and giggled between themselves. They knew it was special. "

- from Colin Irwin's book "Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited", a fascinating account of the making of the album.

[Petrushka]

Birthdays Today

... and my father would have been 100 today!

(Typo alert: Alcock and Brown completed the first transatlantic flight on that very same day so above it should, of course, read 1919 not 1916)

[cloughie]

"Nobody had ever created anything quite like it before and everybody there that day knew it. They grouped together to hear the fruits of their labour as [Tom] Wilson pushed the playback button and giggled between themselves. They knew it was special. "

- from Colin Irwin's book "Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited", a fascinating account of the making of the album.

I loved ‘Like a rolling stone’ from the moment I heard it - it was a landmark in pop music as was the recording which probably influenced it the Animals ‘House of the Rising Sun’ - maybe a tale of two Als - Al Kooper and Alan Price as the organ parts on each were what made them complete.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Alcock and Brown completed the first transatlantic flight on that very same day so above it should, of course, read 1919 not 1916)

Of course it should! (A transatlantic flight in the middle of WW1 would've been even more "fraught"! )

[Richard Tarleton]

I loved ‘Like a rolling stone’ from the moment I heard it - it was a landmark in pop music as was the recording which probably influenced it the Animals ‘House of the Rising Sun’ - maybe a tale of two Als - Al Kooper and Alan Price as the organ parts on each were what made them complete.

...and, the stuff of legends, Al Kooper wasn't even supposed to be playing the organ . He wandered over to the vacant organ (the organist having moved over to the piano) when the producer was taking a phone call, and Tom Wilson only noticed him when the next take was beginning.

'I had played the organ before', says Kooper now, 'but just on my own demos. The song was a very long one, and the band was playing so loud I couldn't hear the organ. I put my hands on the keyboard, and not hearing what I was playing but knowing enough about music to know that if I played a C it would fit into an F chord, I waited for the band to make a chord change before I played. It was the first complete take of the day, and when they went to play it back, Dylan said , 'Turn up that organ'. Tom Wilson said, 'That cat's not an organ player'. Dylan said, 'Don't tell me who is an organ player. Just turn up the organ.' That was the take of Like a Rolling Stone, and that is how I became an organ player.'

...Ch.3 of Colin Irwin's book.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

June 16th

Bloomsday!

Also, the Feast Day of St Cethach, the 5th Century disciple of St Patrick who ordained him as Bishop of Oran, now in County Roscommon where there used to be a shrine to him which was a place of pilgrimage for many Catholics until the 18th Century - but which has become so "obscure" that Cethach's WIKI entry seems to believe is in Algeria.

And the Feast Day of St Curig, the 7th Century Welsh Bishop who settled on the mountain of the village of Llanbadarn Fawr, a couple of miles from Aberystwyth - the mountain is called Eisteddfa Gurig ["Curig's Seat"] after him.

Also on this Date: the Battle of Stoke Field, two years after Bosworth Field, Henry VII routs the Yorkist forces pitted against him, decisively ending the Wars of the Roses (1487); Abraham Lincoln gives his "house divided" speech, warning that the US government cannot survive divided over the issue of slavery (1858); the University Tests Act allows students [other than those studying Theology] to enter the Universities of Oxford & Cambridge without having first to submit to a religious tes (1871); Bruckner's Mass in f minor is premiered at the Augustinian Church, Vienna conducted by the Composer (1872); 183 children [aged between 3 and 14] are crushed to death in a stampede at the end of a Children's Variety show at the Victoria Hall in Sunderland (1883 - free gifts had been announced, and children from the gallery rush downstairs to collect theirs: at the foot of the stairs was a door that opened inwards, and the children at the front are pushed into it, unable to pull it open); the stage Musical adaptation of The Wizard of Oz premieres at the Chicago Grand Opera House (1902); the Ford Motor Company is founded (1903 - on the same day, Norwegian explorer, Roald Amundsen sets of on the first successful crossing of the North-West passage); Finnish Nationalist Eugen Schauman shoots dead Nikolay Bobrikov, the Russian Governor-General of Finland, for his "crimes against the people of Finland" (1904 - he then turns the gun on himself; on the same day, James Joyce has his first date with Nora Barnacle); in the first Irish General Election, Michael Collins' "Pro-Treaty Sinn Fein" party defeats Eamon de Valera's "Anti-Treaty Sinn Fein" party, leading to statements either that the Irish electorate were supportive of the partition agreement Collins had agreed to, or that the Irish electorate hadn't been given sufficient time to study the agreement (1922 - the draft Constitution had only been published the day before); Franklin D Roosevelt signs the National Industrial Recovery Act into force, enabling him to regulate Industry to ensure fair wages and prices (1933 - it is declared "unconstitutional" by the US Supreme Court two years later); Philippe Pétain becomes Prime Minister of France (1940 - his first act is to request Germany to cease hostilities and make known its terms for peace); George Stinney is electrocuted in a California prison for the murder of two young girls - he is 14 years old; he is said by the [white] policemen who arrested him to have confessed, which convinces the [white] jurymen of his guilt, in spite of the lack of other evidence (1944 - no prizes for guessing the ethnicity of Stinney - the youngest victim of execution in American history; his conviction was overturned overturned in 2013); three British plantation managers are murdered by Malayan Nationalists, marking the beginning of the Malayan Liberation War (1948); Argentinian Air bombers attack a public demonstration of support for President Juan Peron [whom the Pope, it was believed, had excommunicated the day before] in main square of Buenos Aires, marking the beginning of a coup d'etat (1955 - 308 civilians were identified as having been killed in the attack; several more bodies were never identified); Khrushchev orders the execution of the leaders of the Hungarian Uprising of two years earlier "as a lesson for all other leaders in Socialist countries": they are hanged on this date (1958 - exactly 31 years to the day later, their bodies are reburied with honour in Budapest after the fall of the Communist regime); Alfred Hitchcock's film Psycho, with Music by Bernard Herrmann , is premiered in New York (1960); at Le Bourget Airport in Paris, Rudolf Nureyev escapes from his KGB handlers and asks for asylum (1961 - on the same day in Vienna, Schönberg's Die Jakobsleiter [what there is of it, prepared for performance by Winfried Zillig] is premiered - 10 years after the Composer's death, conducted by Kubelik ); Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman in space (1963); Britten's Death in Venice is premiered at the Snape Maltings, conducted by Steuart Bedford (1973); school students in Soweto protesting against recent laws requiring classes to be taught only in Afrikaans are shot dead by South African police (1976 - SA government reports say that "only" 23 teenagers were killed: it is at least 176, with literally thousands of others injured. The Date is now commemorated as Youth Day in South Africa); Kenneth Taylor, former Canadian Ambassador to Iran, is presented with the US Congressional Medal of Honor for his work in getting the Iranian authorities to release the American Embassy Hostages - the first foreign citizen to receive the award (1981); Islamist terrorists kill 50 men in the Algerian village of Daïat Labguer (1997 - they also kidnap women, steal whatever valuables they can, and slaughter livestock); 22 years after it was issued, Israeli troops comply [mostly] with UN Resolution 425 and withdraw from [most of] Lebanon (2000); a neo-Nazi murders Jo Cox, Labour MP for Batley & Spen, on her way to holding a Constituency surgery (2016 - shouting "Britain first", he shoots her three times and then stabs her repeatedly, also injuring a 77-year-old passer-by who had tried to help her).

Birthdays Today include: John Cleveland (1613); Adam Smith (1723); John Linnell (1792); Otto Jahn (1813); Geronimo (1826); Frederic Archer (1838); Stan Laurel (1890); Helen Traubel (1899); Barbara McClintock (1902); Willi Boskovsky (1909); Enoch Powell (1912); Henryk Czyż (1923); Eileen Atkins (1934); Joyce Carol Oates (1938); Neil MacGregor & Simon Williams (both 1946); ... and Shami Chakrabarti will be 50, and Eleanor Sokoloff 105 today.

Final Days for: John Churchill (1722); Johann Adam Hiller (1804); Ernst Schröder (1902); DuBose Heyward (1940); John Reith (1971); Wernher von Braun (1977); Maurice Duruflé (1986); Screaming Lord Sutch (1999); Maureen Forrester (2010); ... and, this time last year, Gennady Rozhdestvensky.


And the Radio 3 schedules for the morning of Friday, 16th June, 1989 were:

Morning Concert: Mozart, Serenade in c minor K388; Smetana Tabor; Liszt Pno Conc #2; Harris Symph #3.
This Week's Composer: Purcell (Abdelazer Inc Music; From Rosy Bowers; Sonata #10 in D; O dive custos Auriacae; Come, Ye Sons of Art.
A Company of Englishmen: "In a sequence of English music of many shades of style and colour, Tippett's Little Music for Strings, Vaughan Williams 's rarely-heard Fantasia on the Old 104th, Variations on Sellinger's Round by various composers, written for the 1953 Aldeburgh Festival, and Walton's Cello Concerto are interspersed with piano music by Rawsthome, Berkeley, Elgar, Bridge and composer/pianist James Walker. Music for counter-tenor and guitar by Richard Rodney Bennett and Arthur Wills completes the mixture. Simon Milner puts it all in context."
BBCPO conducted by David Atherton: Beethoven Egmont Ovt; Lutoslwaski Mi-Parti; Brahms Vln Conc (with Mayumi Fujikawa).