Music — The Day Vault

Three musicians sit cross-legged on a rug around a tall microphone in a lamplit 1960s studio, playing a reed pipe, a stringed sarod and tabla drums.

November 1, 2026

The first solo Beatle album had almost no singing on it

On 1 November 1968, George Harrison released Wonderwall Music in Britain. It was the first solo album by any member of the Beatles, and the first album issued on the band's new...

A young person's hand lowers the needle of a 1970s record player onto a spinning black single in a lamp-lit bedroom with patterned wallpaper.

October 31, 2026

Too long for radio, so radio sold it

On 31 October 1975, Queen released "Bohemian Rhapsody" as a single in Britain. It ran close to six minutes. It had no chorus. It moved from a piano ballad to mock opera to hard...

A smoky basement jazz club around 1959. Seen from behind the audience, a saxophonist in a suit plays under a warm spotlight while people listen at small tables.

October 30, 2026

A jazz club for players who weren't allowed in

On 30 October 1959, two saxophonists, Ronnie Scott and Pete King, opened a jazz club in a basement at 39 Gerrard Street, in London's...

Musicians in 18th-century wigs and coats, seen from behind, tune their violins and a cello by candlelight in a small wooden orchestra pit.

October 29, 2026

Prague got the opera. Vienna got the rewrite.

On 29 October 1787, Mozart's Don Giovanni had its first performance at the Nostitz Theatre in Prague. Mozart directed it himself from the...

A young man with his back to the viewer leans on the wooden counter of an early-1960s record shop, facing a shopkeeper in a suit beside a stack of plain record sleeves.

October 28, 2026

A customer asked for a record the shop had never heard of

On 28 October 1961, an eighteen-year-old named Raymond Jones walked into the NEMS record shop on Whitechapel in Liverpool and asked for a single called "My Bonnie." The man behind...

Four men in dark nineteenth-century coats, seen from behind, carry a plain wooden coffin down a narrow cobbled street at dusk, lit by lantern light.

October 27, 2026

The devil sold the tickets, then refused to leave

Niccolò Paganini was born in Genoa on October 27, 1782. By his forties he was the most famous violinist in Europe, filling halls in Vienna, Paris and...

Teenage girls in 1960s coats and headscarves, seen from behind, crowd against tall black iron railings as a police officer's arm holds them back on a grey autumn day.

October 26, 2026

Four medals went in at the palace. One came back.

On October 26, 1965, the four Beatles walked into Buckingham Palace and walked out as Members of the Order of the British Empire. The Queen pinned the medals on them herself....

Rows of teenage girls in 1960s hairstyles seen from behind, leaping up from studio seats with arms raised, lit by bright stage light.

October 25, 2026

He said never again. They kept coming back.

On October 25, 1964, the Rolling Stones made their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, the Sunday-night variety programme that most of America watched from the living-room...

Seen from behind, a crowd in early-1960s suits and hats leans over a theatre balcony rail with arms raised, shouting toward a hazy, spotlit stage.

October 24, 2026

The label wouldn't pay for it. So he did.

On October 24, 1962, James Brown and the Famous Flames played the Apollo Theater in Harlem while engineers taped the show. The finished record runs just over half an hour of hits,...

From behind a rock band on a dark television stage, a guitarist and drummer keep playing while an empty microphone stand stands alone in a bright spotlight.

October 23, 2026

The voice came on. The singer wasn't singing.

On October 23, 2004, Ashlee Simpson was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live. Her first number, "Pieces of Me," went cleanly. It was her breakout single, and the studio...

Seen from behind, two women in 1880s silk evening gowns and a man in white tie lean over the rail of a gilded, red-curtained opera box. One woman lifts opera glasses toward a softly lit stage in the distance.

October 22, 2026

Shut out of the opera, they built their own

On October 22, 1883, the Metropolitan Opera House opened at Broadway and 39th Street in New York. The first performance was Gounod's Faust, sung in Italian.

Violinists seen from behind in a dim 1950s recording studio, bows raised, playing toward a chrome microphone.

October 21, 2026

He brought in the violins. The best-known of those songs came out after the crash.

On October 21, 1958, Buddy Holly walked into Decca's Pythian Temple studio in New York and recorded with an orchestra. Eighteen musicians, most of them string players, sat where a...

Several men seen from behind wade through a misty swamp forest at dusk, flashlight beams cutting through the pines ahead of them.

October 20, 2026

The album cover showed them standing in flames

On October 20, 1977, a chartered Convair 240 carrying Lynyrd Skynyrd ran out of fuel over Mississippi and came down in swampy woods near Gillsburg. Twenty-six people were aboard....

Three men in nineteenth-century evening dress lean out of a gilded opera box, one lifting a small silver whistle to his mouth, their faces turned toward the stage.

October 19, 2026

Wagner finished his opera. Then he spent thirty years fixing it.

On October 19, 1845, Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser opened at the Court Opera in Dresden, where Wagner was Kapellmeister. He was 32, and he conducted it himself.

Seen from behind, plainclothes police officers and a handler leading an Alsatian climb the steps of a white London townhouse on a grey, wet day in the late 1960s.

October 18, 2026

He pleaded guilty to protect her. It followed him to America.

On October 18, 1968, police raided a flat at 34 Montagu Square in London, where John Lennon and Yoko Ono were staying. Ringo Starr held the lease. Officers arrived with a sniffer...

A woman in a dark 19th-century cloak and bonnet sits in a coach with her back to the viewer, holding a small cloth-wrapped jar in her lap in grey window light.

October 17, 2026

His body stayed in Paris. His heart went home.

Frédéric Chopin died in Paris on October 17, 1849, aged 39, after years of a lung illness usually identified as tuberculosis. He had left Poland as a young man in 1830 and never...

Seen from behind, a row of concertgoers in early-1990s denim and flannel raise their arms and jeer toward a distant, blurred, spotlit stage in a dark, hazy arena.

October 16, 2026

She came to sing Dylan. She never got to start.

On October 16, 1992, Madison Square Garden filled for a concert marking thirty years of Bob Dylan records. Neil Young, Johnny Cash, Eric Clapton and George Harrison were on the...

Seen from behind, a line of dancers in 1940s practice clothes rehearse a high kick beside an upright piano in a dim, bare rehearsal room.

October 15, 2026

The horse fell in 1937. The songs stopped in 1958.

Cole Porter died in Santa Monica, California, on October 15, 1964, at 73. He had written "Anything Goes," "Night and Day" and "I've Got You Under My Skin," songs that sounded as...

Four golfers in 1970s clothes walk away across a sunny fairway toward a low white clubhouse, their long shadows stretching behind them.

October 14, 2026

His last duet aired after his funeral

Bing Crosby died on October 14, 1977, on a golf course outside Madrid. He had just finished eighteen holes at La Moraleja, and his side had won. On the walk back to the clubhouse...

A 1960s London policeman stretches his arms to hold back a small group of excited teenage girls in wool coats and beehive hairstyles on a wet pavement at night.

October 13, 2026

The papers printed a riot. Some who were there saw a handful of girls.

On October 13, 1963, the Beatles topped the bill on Sunday Night at the London Palladium, the most-watched variety show on British television. They played a short set to the...

Young people in early-1970s clothes sit on a carpeted floor around a wooden record player as one lowers the needle onto a spinning record.

October 12, 2026

It was a record before it was a show

On October 12, 1971, Jesus Christ Superstar opened on Broadway at the Mark Hellinger Theatre. Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice were in their twenties, and the story of Christ's...

At night, two men in overcoats, seen from behind, load a covered stretcher into the back of a pale 1960s ambulance outside a country villa.

October 11, 2026

She died on the Riviera. Paris was told otherwise.

On October 11, 1963, French radio announced that Édith Piaf had died in her Paris apartment on the Boulevard Lannes. She was 47. Her voice had carried France through the war and...

Seen from the side of a 1930s theatre stage, a woman in a cotton dress rocks a baby on wooden steps while performers in work clothes sit nearby with their backs turned, lit by warm footlights.

October 10, 2026

The songs were a hit. The opera was not.

On October 10, 1935, Porgy and Bess opened at the Alvin Theatre in New York. George Gershwin had spent most of two years on it, working with DuBose Heyward, whose novel supplied...

A cellist plays in a gaslit nineteenth-century Paris drawing room while a few guests in evening dress lean in to listen.

October 9, 2026

His best-loved piece was the one he locked away

Camille Saint-Saëns was born in Paris on October 9, 1835. He grew into the serious man of French music: organist at the Madeleine, composer of symphonies, operas and concertos, a...

A young woman, seen from behind in a lamplit 1970s room, lowers a turntable's needle onto a spinning black vinyl record.

October 8, 2026

Imagine no possessions, recorded in a mansion

On October 8, 1971, John Lennon's album Imagine went on sale in Britain, a month after its American release. It reached number one on both sides of the Atlantic.

Seen from behind in a dim 1950s cinema, a small boy kneels up on a red velvet seat between his parents, leaning toward the screen as a hazy projector beam passes overhead.

October 7, 2026

He barely sang opera. He made opera singers.

Mario Lanza died in a clinic in Rome on October 7, 1959. He was 38, and he was the most famous tenor of his time.

A small group of young Black travellers in 1870s clothing, seen from behind, board an old wooden railway carriage with carpetbags as steam drifts across the platform.

October 6, 2026

The school was out of money. So the choir left town.

On October 6, 1871, nine students left Nashville to sing for money. Fisk University, founded after the Civil War to educate freed slaves, was nearly bankrupt. Its buildings were...

Seen from behind, a group of teenagers in early-1960s sweaters crowds around a portable record player in a lamp-lit front room as one of them lowers the needle.

October 5, 2026

The drummer on the record depended on when you bought it

On October 5, 1962, Parlophone released "Love Me Do", the first single by a Liverpool group called the Beatles. It sold steadily rather than spectacularly and peaked at number 17...

An empty vocal microphone stands in a dim 1970s recording studio while out-of-focus musicians play guitar, organ and drums behind it.

October 4, 2026

The band played the song. The singer never came back.

Janis Joplin was found dead on October 4, 1970, in her room at the Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood. She was 27. The cause was a heroin overdose.

A stagehand, back to the camera, sweeps torn scraps of white paper across a dark television stage lit by one spotlight.

October 3, 2026

The photo she tore up wasn't the one they rehearsed

On October 3, 1992, Sinéad O'Connor was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live. For her second song she sang Bob Marley's "War" a cappella, standing still under a single light,...

Seen from behind, a radio disc jockey in a 1970s studio flips a small vinyl record over in his hands above a turntable, with a microphone and wooden mixing desk around him in warm amber light.

October 2, 2026

The hit was on the back

On October 2, 1971, "Maggie May" by Rod Stewart reached number one on Billboard's Hot 100. It held the top spot for five weeks. In the same stretch, the album it came from, Every...

A man's hands placing a shiny silver disc into the open tray of a flat, silver early-1980s music player in a softly lit electronics shop.

October 1, 2026

The new music machine had almost nothing to play

On 1 October 1982, Sony put the CDP-101 on sale in Japan. It was the first compact disc player offered to the public, built on a format that Sony and Philips had developed...

From behind, a crowded audience in eighteenth-century wigs and coats sits on wooden benches, leaning toward a stage lit by warm candlelight.

September 30, 2026

The crowd kept coming. The composer did not.

On 30 September 1791, The Magic Flute opened at the Theater auf der Wieden, a wooden playhouse in a suburb outside Vienna's city walls. Mozart led the orchestra himself.

Two men in work clothes haul an upright piano up the steps of a weathered farmhouse porch while a barefoot boy holds the screen door open in warm evening light.

September 29, 2026

Three cousins, one piano, and the devil's music

Jerry Lee Lewis was born on September 29, 1935, in Ferriday, Louisiana, a small cotton town near the Mississippi River. The family was poor. When the boy showed a gift for the...

A teenage girl in a 1960s bedroom sits on a shag rug beside a portable record player, eyes closed and singing along, one hand raised, in warm afternoon light.

September 28, 2026

Radio said it was too long. Radio played it for nine weeks.

On September 28, 1968, "Hey Jude" by the Beatles reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100. It was the first single on the band's own Apple label. It ran seven minutes and...

Seen from behind, young theatregoers in 1960s clothes climb onto a warmly lit stage to dance with barefoot performers, their arms raised.

September 27, 2026

The censor left on Thursday. The musical opened on Friday.

On 27 September 1968, a rock musical called Hair opened at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London. Its producers had been waiting for one date. The day before, the Theatres Act 1968...

A group of young dancers in 1950s jeans and T-shirts crouch mid-step on a worn wooden floor in a bare brick rehearsal room, snapping their fingers in unison.

September 26, 2026

The gang musical lost to the marching band

On September 26, 1957, West Side Story opened at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York. It took Romeo and Juliet and moved it to the Upper West Side, where two street gangs, the...

In a dim rehearsal room, a man seen from behind kneels beside a half-dismantled drum kit and lowers a cymbal into a black equipment case.

September 25, 2026

The tour was booked for October. The band ended in December.

On September 25, 1980, John Bonham, the drummer of Led Zeppelin, was found dead at Jimmy Page's house in Windsor. He was 32.