Rick Beyer - The Greatest Music Stories Never Told: 100 Tales from Music History to Astonish, Bewilder, and Stupefy

To see videos and hear songs related to the stories in this book, go to www.greateststoriesnevertold.com/musiclinks

CONTENTS

W hat does Marie Antoinette have to do with For Hes a Jolly Good Fellow? Which hugely popular song was written in a fit of anger at actor Robert De Niro? How was a musical genius of the 1600s literally killed by his own conducting? Why has one country run through eight versions of its national anthem in the last hundred yearsthree of them written by the same person? How did an idea for a sitcom inspire the Woodstock music festival? And why is a virtual unknown named Ivan Vaughan arguably the most important person in the history of rock n roll?

The fascinating answers to those questions and many more lie within.

This is the fifth in my series of Greatest Stories Never Told books, produced in conjunction with HISTORY. Music may be older than we aresome scholars think Homo sapiens got the idea from Neanderthal man. No wonder then that its long history is filled with such a host of amazing tales. Among them: a symphony that helped spark a revolution, a ballet that started a riot, a military song that saved the life of a president, and a musical instrument invented by Ben Franklin that was reputed to both heal the sick and drive the healthy insane.

Working on this book gave me a wonderful opportunity to range over a dizzying array of genres and topics: jazz, classical, country, rock n roll, hip-hop, show tunes, composers, band names, song lyrics, instruments, technology, controversies, and more. The result is a book filled with the quirky kind of history that I just cant get enough of: the hit song born in a history class, the monk behind do-re-mi, and the convict who sang himself out of jail. And lets not forget Waltz King Johann Strauss, who hired thugs to derail the career of another composerhis son!

If youre looking for surprising music firsts, this book has got em! Americas first recording star and music videoboth from the 1890s. Beatlemania? That was nothing compared to the Lisztomania that swept Europe a century earlier. Fascinating tales about the first jazz musician, the first radio jingle (it saved a brand thats still popular today), the first rock n roll song, and the first singing telegramsung by an operator with the lusciously appropriate name of Lucille Lipps. These truly are stories to astonish, bewilder, and stupefy.

Some stories are about musicians who are household names: Mozart, Louis Armstrong, Paul McCartney. Then there are characters that most people have never heard of, like the New York banker who wrote the lyrics to one song in his entire lifebut boy, was it a doozy! There are songs so familiar you hardly even think about where they came from: Happy Birthday, Jingle Bells, Mary Had a Little Lamb. Yet each has a complicated and compelling story behind it.

Im the son of an opera fan, the father of an electronic fusion musician, and the husband of a folk DJ. I grew up on the Beatles and the Rolling Stones but also came to love show tunes and Steve Goodman. My playlist runs the gamut from Abba to Warren Zevon, and includes selections from JS Bach, Johnny Cash, Muddy Waters, and the US Marine Corps Band. From this musical melting pot has emerged the book you hold in your hand. The stories inside are carefully researched, each as true as I know how to make it. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I have enjoyed finding them and bringing them to you.

A song that will really take you back

The song is written in the ancient Hurrian language. The exact lyrics are unclear, although the name of Nikkal is easily recognizable, and Kilmer has translated one phrase as Thou lovest them in thy heart.

M ore than 3,400 years ago in the Mediterranean port city of Ugarit, now part of Syria, an unknown composer wrote a hymn in praise of Nikkal, the wife of the moon god. The words and music were carefully chiseled into a stone tablet.

It is the oldest surviving song in the world.

The tablet was discovered in the 1950s, but it wasnt until the 1970s that University of California at Berkeley professor Anne Kilmer was able to decipher some of the cuneiform figures on it as musical notation. She recognized them from other Babylonian tablets she had already analyzed, including a four-thousand-year-old instruction manual for tuning an ancient stringed instrument called a lyre. The song appeared to have been written in a seven-note scale similar to the one we use today.

Amazingly, Kilmer was able to reconstruct a version of the song note for note, so that the lost tune could be played once again for modern ears.

A little late for royalties, however.

V ersions of the Hymn to Nikkal have been recorded by several modern artists including musicologist Richard Crocker and Syrian pianist Malek Jandali.

The exact location of the Bronze Age city of Ugarit was unknown to modern archaeologists until a Syrian farmer accidentally opened an old tomb while plowing a field. Subsequent excavations have revealed one of the most important cities of ancient times.

Secrets of the brotherhood

T hey were considered shadowy, mysterious, even dangerous. As members of a religious brotherhood, they observed a strict code of secrecy and loyalty. They were vegetarians who wore white robes and practiced sexual abstinence. It was said that they ruthlessly executed anyone who violated their code.

And they worshipped numbers.

The Pythagoreans were the original math geeks. They believed that numbers were magical, and could reveal the divine mysteries of the universe. Odd numbers were considered male; even numbers, female. They even associated concepts such as justice (4) and marriage (5) with numbers.

The brotherhood was founded by a Greek named Pythagoras, who came to be regarded by his followers as semi-divine. Today most people associate the name with high school geometry and vague memories of the Pythagorean theorem.

But these mathematical mystics also laid the foundations for modern Western music.

They showed that the relationships between musical notes could all be expressed mathematically. That plucking a string two times longer than another will play a note an octave higher. That two strings, one 1.5 times as long as the other, will sound together in a perfect fifth. Thus they laid the foundation for music more complex and beautiful than ever before.

A marriage of math and music that would prove harmonious indeed.

According to legend, one member of the brotherhood, Hippasus of Metapontum, was drowned for bringing to light their most disturbing secret. The Pythagorean theorem says that a right triangle one unit long on each side has a hypotenuse that is the square root of 2. Thats an irrational number. In other words, it cant be represented as a ratio of two whole numbers. Since the Pythagoreans believed whole numbers were the basis of the whole universe, they didnt want anyone else to know that there were other numbers that werent whole.

P ythagoras and his followers seemed to have a thing about beans: