April 5, 2019

Twenty-five years ago today, on April 5, 1994, the American rock musician Kurt Cobain tragically took his own life. Cobain was the lead singer of the popular rock band Nirvana. The band revolutionized rock music in the early 1990’s with its fiery, raw sound and passionate songs about apathy and anger. Cobain shocked the rock music world with his suicide at the age of 27. He became even more famous after his death than during his lifetime.

The American rock musician Kurt Cobain died 25 years ago today on April 5, 1994. Credit: © Frank Micelotta, Getty Images

Kurt Donald Cobain was born in Hoquiam, Washington, on Feb. 20, 1967. He grew up in Aberdeen, Washington, where he began playing drums. Cobain and his friend Krist Novoselic formed Nirvana in 1987, with Cobain playing guitar and Novoselic the bass. They added the drummer Chad Channing and the guitarist Jason Everman and recorded the band’s first album, Bleach, in 1989. Channing and Everman left the group and were replaced by the drummer Dave Grohl in 1990. (Grohl later formed the rock band the Foo Fighters.)

Nirvana released the best-selling album Nevermind in 1991, which included the hit single “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” In 1992, the band issued Incesticide, a collection of previously recorded material. That album was followed by another hit album, In Utero, in 1993. The band’s final public performance took place in Munich, Germany, on March 1, 1994.

During his short career, Cobain gained international attention for his personal life as well as his music. In 1992, Cobain married Courtney Love, a member of the rock band Hole. Their sometimes turbulent relationship was followed closely by the media.

Cobain had viewed Nirvana as a band that challenged establishment attitudes. He became upset when the group achieved mainstream popularity. Cobain suffered from depression as well as drug addiction. He overdosed twice on heroin in 1993 and apparently attempted suicide in March 1994, a month before his death. Two albums of live Nirvana performances were issued after Cobain’s death, MTV Unplugged in New York (1994) and From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah (1996). Selections from Cobain’s notebooks were published as Journals in 2002.

Cobain is often described as an icon of Generation X, the group of people born in the United States and Canada between 1965 and 1981. Nirvana was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014.

February 4, 2019

On Feb. 3, 1959, 60 years ago yesterday, a plane crash in the Midwestern state of Iowa took the lives of young rock and roll music stars Buddy Holly, J.P. Richardson (known as the “Big Bopper”), and Ritchie Valens. All three stars had achieved quick success, and their deaths at the early heights of popularity shocked the American public. The lasting impact of the tragedy led singer Don McLean to pen the 1971 hit song “American Pie,” which remembers the rockers’ deaths as “the day the music died.”

Buddy Holly was the most famous of the artists killed in an Iowa plane crash 60 years ago on Feb. 3, 1959. He was 22 years old. Credit: © Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy Images

Buddy Holly was born in Texas in 1936. He began playing the piano when he was 11 years old but soon turned to playing the guitar. He performed as a country singer during the early 1950′s. In 1957, he and his his band The Crickets gained fame with the song “That’ll Be the Day.” That same year, Holly recorded his first solo hit, “Peggy Sue.” His other hits with the Crickets included “Oh, Boy!,” “Maybe Baby,” and “Rave On.” As a solo artist, Holly recorded the 1959 hits “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore” and “Raining in My Heart.” Holly was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986. The Crickets were inducted in 2012.

Rising star Ritchie Valens was just 17 years old when he died in a plane crash on Feb. 3, 1959. Credit: © Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Ritchie Valens was born Richard Valenzuela in Los Angeles, California, in 1941. He taught himself to play guitar and other instruments as a youth, and was influenced musically by his family’s Latin culture. He recorded his first hit song, “Come On, Let’s Go,” while still in high school. His most famous song, the Spanish-language hit “La Bamba,” was the B-side of the hit ballad “Donna.” Valens’s life was dramatized in the 1987 motion picture La Bamba starring Lou Diamond Phillips. Valens was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001.

J. P. Richardson, better known as the Big Bopper, was the oldest of the young artists killed in the 1959 Iowa plane crash: he was 28 years old. Credit: © General Artists Corporation

J. P. Richardson was born in Texas in 1930. Richardson served in the United States Army and worked as a disc jockey at a radio station (where he was known on air as the Big Bopper). He started his music career writing songs for such artists as George Jones and Johnny Preston. In 1958, Richardson recorded the hit song “Chantilly Lace” and became a full-time musician.

In January 1959, Holly, Valens, and Richardson joined the “Winter Dance Party” tour through the northern Midwest. After performing at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, on February 2, the three boarded an overnight plane bound for their next show in Minnesota. The plane crashed in bad weather, killing the pilot and all three musicians. Notable members of the tour who took the long cold bus ride safely to Minnesota instead of the risky flight included guitarist and future country music star Waylon Jennings (a member of Holly’s band at the time) and the group Dion and the Belmonts.

August 17, 2018

Yesterday, on Aug. 16, 2018, American rhythm and blues singer Aretha Franklin died at age 76 at her home in Detroit, Michigan. Franklin ranks among the best-selling female artists in the history of recorded music. Popularly known as the “Queen of Soul,” her 1967 recording of “Respect” became an inspirational anthem for the civil rights movement and a symbol of black pride.

American rhythm and blues singer Aretha Franklin died on Aug. 16, 2018. Credit: © Jamie McCarthy, Getty Images/Thinkstock

Aretha Louise Franklin was born on March 25, 1942, in Memphis, Tennessee. She was raised in Detroit. She began her singing career at the age of 12 in the Detroit church of her father, C. L. Franklin, a noted preacher and gospel singer. She later transferred the passion and intensity of her gospel singing to popular songs. Most of Franklin’s recordings also feature her piano playing.

Aretha Franklin, center, performs on an American television program in 1968. Credit: © CBS/Landov

Franklin’s period of greatest popularity came in the late 1960′s and early 1970′s. In 1967 alone, she had five top-10 hit recordings. They were “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You),” “Respect,” “Baby, I Love You,” “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” and “Chain of Fools.” In 1968, she recorded the hits “(Sweet Sweet Baby) Since You’ve Been Gone,” “Think,” “The House That Jack Built,” and “I Say a Little Prayer.” Franklin’s other hits include “Share Your Love with Me” (1969), “Call Me” (1970), “Spanish Harlem” and “Rock Steady” (both 1971), “Day Dreaming” (1972), “Until You Come Back to Me (That’s What I’m Gonna Do)” (1973), “Freeway of Love” (1985), and “Jimmy Lee” (1986). Franklin also recorded gospel music. Her gospel albums include Amazing Grace (1972) and One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism (1987).

Franklin won numerous Grammy Awards and, in 1987, she was the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She sang “I Dreamed a Dream” at President Bill Clinton’s first inauguration in 1993. In 2005, Franklin received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor awarded by the president of the United States. Memorable later performances included her rendition of “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” at President Barack Obama’s first inauguration in 2009; and “(You Make Me Feel Like) a Natural Woman” at the 2015 Kennedy Center Honors, where she herself was honored in 1994. Kennedy Center Honors are awarded annually to men and women in recognition of their lifetime contributions to American culture through the performing arts.