July 7, 1937: The Count Basie Orchestra Records "One O'Clock Jump"

July 7, 1937: The Count Basie Orchestra records "One O'Clock Jump" in New York City. It becomes one of the signature songs of "Big Band" jazz.

William James Basie was born on August 21, 1904 in Red Bank, Monmouth County, New Jersey. Both of his parents were musicians, and his mother taught him to play the piano. He loved going to the Palace Theatre in Red Bank, and dreamed of becoming a traveling musician like the ones he saw there.

Long before Bruce Springsteen was born, the teenaged Basie got piano gigs in nightclubs on the Jersey Shore. Then he moved to Harlem, and got a regular job in a band in Kansas City in 1929, playing what became known as the "Kansas City stomp" style. By that time, he was already nicknamed "Count." In 1936, he formed a new band, Count Basie and his His Barons of Rhythm, and moved it to Chicago. At a time when most "big bands" had one tenor saxophone, he had two, giving the Barons a distinctive sound.

In 1937, he moved them to the Woodside Hotel in Harlem, and conquered New York. As part of this process, they recorded "One O'Clock Jump." Basie based it on "head arrangements," where each section of the band makes up their part based on what other sections are playing, a precursor to the improvisational style that Miles Davis and John Coltrane would develop in the 1950s.

The song is notable for Basie's piano, the bass fiddle of Walter Page, the trumpet of Buck Clayton, and the saxophones of Herschel Evans and Lester Young. Young would go on to become one of the most beloved sax players in jazz.

After getting a poor revue at the famed Roseland Ballroom, the Basie band moved to the Savoy Ballroom, where they took on Billie Holiday as a singer. John Hammond of Columbia Records is credited with "discovering" both, and put them together onstage, although they never recorded together. 

It polished the band's sound, and, on January 16, 1938, a Battle of the Bands was set up for the Savoy, between the Basie Orchestra and the reigning champions of such things, the Chick Webb Orchestra. Webb, a dwarf drum wizard, had Ella Fitzgerald to sing for him, and they had defeated the all-white Benny Goodman Orchestra in such a contest a few months earlier, convincing Goodman to racially integrate his band. At the time, Webb's band was declared the winner, but for as long as those who were there lived, they disagreed about that call.

(There would be no more such contests, at least not with Webb: His health was already in decline, and he died of tuberculosis the next year.)

Holiday left Basie's band for Artie Shaw's, but Helen Humes was brought in, and the band continued to be one of the best in the business. Basie broke up the band after World War II, and kept things going by pretending to lead bands in films. He formed a new band in 1952, and in 1957, the year the live album Basie at Newport was released to great acclaim, the jazz magazine DownBeat wrote that Basie "has managed to assemble an ensemble that can thrill both the listener who remembers 1938 and the youngster who has never before heard a big band like this."

Count Basie continued to lead one band or another until he died on April 26, 1984, of cancer in the Miami suburb of Hollywood, Florida. He was 79. Shortly thereafter, the Carlton Theater in Red Bank was renamed the Count Basie Center for the Arts.

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July 7, 1937 was a Wednesday. Baseball held its All-Star Game that day, at Griffith Stadium in Washington. The American League beat the National League, 8-3. Dizzy Dean of the St. Louis Cardinals, pitching for the NL, took a comebacker off the bat of Earl Averill of the Cleveland Indians off his toe, breaking it. Favoring that injury, he ending up injuring his arm, and was never the same pitcher.

Since baseball was the only sport in season at the time, this was the only score on this historic day.

June 16, 1965: Bob Dylan Records "Like a Rolling Stone"

Bob with his original sheet of handwritten lyrics for the song

June 16, 1965: A planned anti-war protest at The Pentagon becomes a "teach-in," with demonstrators distributing 50,000 leaflets in and around the building.

On the same day, Bob Dylan records the familiar version of "Like a Rolling Stone," at Studio A at Columbia Records, at 799 7th Avenue at 52nd Street in New York. He does not one take, like the legend says, but 15 takes, in addition to one done the day before. The 4th take is the one we all know. He even tried one in 3/4 time, which would appear on The Bootleg Series, Vol. 1-3 in 1991.

He had already written and recorded these songs: "Blowin' in the Wind," "Masters of War," "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall," "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," "The Times They Are a-Changin'," "With God On Our Side," "When the Ship Comes In," "My Back Pages," "Subterranean Homesick Blues," "Maggie's Farm," "Mr. Tambourine Man," "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" and "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue." All of those were done before his 24th birthday, on May 24, 1965. Now, he had written and recorded "Like a Rolling Stone."

Like some of Bob's other songs from around the same time -- especially "Maggie's Farm" and "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," and the subsequent "Ballad of a Thin Man" -- it was a message to the people who were upset with him for "going electric," seemingly "betraying folk music" and its "movement." They never understood that he was a rocker at heart, loving Elvis Presley and Little Richard as much as he did Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger.

In spite of being a full 6 minutes long, the song reached Number 2 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 chart. Keeping it out of the Number 1 slot: "I Got You Babe" by Sonny & Cher. Cher made it up to Bob by making his song "All I Really Want to Do" her 1st solo hit single.

In 1967, the magazine Rolling Stone was founded, named for this song. The band The Rolling Stones was named after the Muddy Waters song "Rollin' Stone," which Dylan may have named his song after. Previously, of course, there was the proverb: "A rolling stone gathers no moss."

In 2004, surprising no one, Rolling Stone put "Like a Rolling Stone" at Number 1 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. They occasionally revive the list. In 2010, they kept it at Number 1. In 2021, they put it at Number 4, behind Aretha Franklin's version of Otis Redding's "Respect," Public Enemy's "Fight the Power," and Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come."

Bass guitarist Joe Macho (who also recorded under the name Joe Mack) died in 1977, producer Tom Wilson in 1978, guitarist Mike Bloomfield in 1981, pianist Paul Griffin in 2000, drummer Bobby Gregg in 2014, and guitarist and tambourine player Bruce Langhorne in 2017.

The other musicians on this recording are still alive: Organist Al Kooper, guitarist Al Gorgoni, and pianist Frank Owens. And, of course, guitarist, harmonica player and singer Bob Dylan. There were no backup singers.

UPDATE: Frank Owens died in 2023. 

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June 16, 1965 was a Wednesday. These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Baltimore Orioles, 5-1 at Yankee Stadium. Dave McNally outpitched Al Downing. The only Yankee run came on a home run by Clete Boyer. Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris each went 1-for-4. For the Orioles, so did Brooks Robinson.

* The New York Mets lost to the Cincinnati Reds, 8-4 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Jim O'Toole outpitched Al Jackson. Leo Cárdenas hit 2 home runs. Frank Robinson went 0-for-4. Pete Rose went 1-for-4 with an RBI.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Washington Senators, 5-0 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Luis Tiant allowed just 1 hit, a leadoff single in the 7th inning by Woodie Held. He also walked 3 batters and hit 1. That was the closest he ever got to a no-hitter.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Boston Red Sox, 9-4 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. Willie Horton went 3-for-4 with a home run and 5 RBIs. Al Kaline went 1-for-4 with a walk. Carl Yastrzemski went 2-for-5 with a home run and 3 RBIs.

* The Chicago White Sox beat the Minnesota Twins, 3-1 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Harmon Killebrew went 0-for-4.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Milwaukee Braves, 6-2 at Milwaukee County Stadium. Hank Aaron went 1-for-3 with a walk and an RBI. Pat Corrales, later to manage the Phillies, and also the Texas Rangers and the Cleveland Indians, hit his 1st major league home run. He would finish his playing career with 4.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 10-9 at the 1st Busch Stadium, formerly the last Sportsman's Park, in St. Louis. Roberto Clemente went 1-for-2, before leaving the game due to an injury. Willie Stargell went 3-for-5 with a home run and 4 RBIs.

* The California Angels swept a doubleheader from the Kansas City Athletics, 7-1 and 5-4 at Kansas City Municipal Stadium.

* The Houston Astros beat the Chicago Cubs, 3-2 at the Astrodome in Houston. Bob Aspromonte singled Joe Morgan home with the winning run in the bottom of the 13th inning. Ernie Banks went 0-for-6.

* And the Los Angeles Dodgers beat their arch-rivals, the San Francisco Giants, 2-1 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Sandy Koufax outpitched Bob Shaw. Willie Mays went 2-for-4.

April 5, 1939: Kate Smith's Recording of "God Bless America" Is Released

Kate Smith, The Spectrum, May 19, 1974

April 5, 1939: Columbia Records releases Kate Smith's recording of "God Bless America." It becomes her signature song, and, behind the official "The Star-Spangled Banner," America's secondary National Anthem.

Irving Berlin, a Jewish immigrant from Belarus, then in the Russian Empire, wrote the song in 1918, while serving in the U.S. Army for World War I, for a musical revue titled Yip, Yip, Yaphank, but decided it didn't fit in with the rest of the show, and put it aside.

In 1938, with the Nazi threat rising, Berlin felt it was time to use the song. Kate Smith sang it on an Armistice Day broadcast on November 11. That broadcast was on CBS, which also owned Columbia Records, for whom she recorded. She recorded the song, and it was released.

Millions of Americans took to the song as an example of patriotism in World War II. Millions of others did not. Woody Guthrie, a folksinger with leftist leanings, wrote "This Land Is Your Land" as a response in 1940. And the Ku Klux Klan, a white Protestant supremacist organization that hated Catholics and Jews as much as it hated black people, denounced the song because of its Jewish origin.

In 1943, the musical film This Is the Army was released, with all Berlin songs, including Smith singing "God Bless America," and Berlin himself singing "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up In the Morning." Years later, after Smith had switched from CBS to NBC, she sang the song on her TV shows on that network.

On December 11, 1969, instead of a recording of "The Star-Spangled Banner," the NHL's Philadelphia Flyers played Smith's recording of "God Bless America" before their game against the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Flyers won, 6-3.

Hockey, as much as -- and sometimes, it seems, more than -- any other sport, is laden with superstitious people. The Flyers took the win as a good sign, and began to use Smith's recording before games they thought were big enough to need good luck.

Eventually, they invited her to sign it live at The Spectrum. She had never attended a hockey game before, but she loved it, even the fact that "The Broad Street Bullies" did a lot of fighting. They were 36-3-1 before Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals, on May 19, 1974. The Flyers had the chance to wrap the Cup up against the Boston Bruins that day, and didn't want to go back to the Boston Garden for a Game 7, so they invited their good luck charm Smith, by then 67 years old and 30 years past her peak, to sing it live, and she did.

The ovation was huge. To counteract her good luck, the Bruins' 2 best players, Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito, skated over to her, and gave her a big bouquet of flowers. It was a nice gesture, but it didn't work: A goal by Rick MaLeish at 14:48 of the 1st period held up, and the Flyers won, 1-0.

Kate Smith made her final public performance on May 23, 1985, before Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Finals, when the Flyers lost to the Edmonton Oilers, and lost the series in 5 games. She died the next year, at the age of 79. The year after that, the team erected a statue of her outside The Spectrum. On one side was a plaque telling her life story; on the other, a plaque with the lyrics of "God Bless America."

When the Flyers and the NBA's 76ers moved from The Spectrum to what's now named the Wells Fargo Center in 1996, the Smith statue, the Dornhoefer goal statue, and a statue of 76ers legend Julius "Dr. J" Erving were moved to the new arena. A statue of Clarke and Parent holding the Cup is also now outside the new arena, as is one of earlier Philadelphia basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain.

The Smith statue was covered and then removed in April 2019, due to criticism of lyrics in some of Smith's earlier songs that were perceived as racist. This may have been unfair, as some of those songs had also been sung by black singers. Smith's recording of "God Bless America" has not been played before Flyers home games since. The Flyers' record in such games is 100 wins, 29 losses and 5 ties, for a winning percentage of .765.

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April 5, 1939 was a Wednesday. This was also the day that the Library of Congress opened its annex building, now named the John Adams Building. I have a separate entry for that event.

Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And the Stanley Cup Playoffs were between the Semifinals and the Finals. So there were no scores on this historic day. The Boston Bruins went on to beat the Toronto Maple Leafs for the Cup.