1959 in music
Encyclopedia

Events

  • January 5 – The first sessions for Ella Fitzgerald's George and Ira Gershwin Songbook
    Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Songbook
    Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Songbook is a 1959 five album set by the American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald, focusing on the songs of George and Ira Gershwin. It was recorded with the Nelson Riddle Orchestra, marking the first time that Ella and Riddle had worked together...

     are held.
  • January 12 – Tamla Records is founded by Berry Gordy Jr. in Detroit, Michigan.
  • January 22 – Buddy Holly
    Buddy Holly
    Charles Hardin Holley , known professionally as Buddy Holly, was an American singer-songwriter and a pioneer of rock and roll...

     records some acoustic demos in his New York City apartment, the last songs he recorded. Songs included "Peggy Sue Got Married", "Crying, Waiting, Hoping", "Learning the Game", "What to Do", "That's What They Say", and "That Makes It Tough."
  • February 3 – "The Day the Music Died
    The Day the Music Died
    On February 3, 1959, a small-plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa, killed three American rock and roll pioneers: Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson, as well as the pilot, Roger Peterson. The day was later called The Day the Music Died by Don McLean, in his song...

    ": Buddy Holly
    Buddy Holly
    Charles Hardin Holley , known professionally as Buddy Holly, was an American singer-songwriter and a pioneer of rock and roll...

    , Ritchie Valens
    Ritchie Valens
    Ritchie Valens was a Mexican-American singer, songwriter and guitarist....

    , and The Big Bopper
    The Big Bopper
    Jiles Perry "J. P." Richardson, Jr. also commonly known as The Big Bopper, was an American disc jockey, singer, and songwriter whose big voice and exuberant personality made him an early rock and roll star...

     are killed in a plane crash in Iowa. Future country star Waylon Jennings
    Waylon Jennings
    Waylon Arnold Jennings was an American country music singer, songwriter, and musician. Jennings began playing at eight. He began performing at twelve, on KVOW radio. Jennings formed a band The Texas Longhorns. Jennings worked as a D.J on KVOW, KDAV and KLLL...

     was scheduled to be on the plane, but instead gave his seat up to The Big Bopper.
  • February 7 – New Orleans blues
    Blues
    Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...

     and R&B
    Rhythm and blues
    Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a...

     guitarist Eddie "Guitar Slim" Jones dies of pneumonia in New York City.
  • March 2 – The first of two recording sessions for the extremely influential Miles Davis
    Miles Davis
    Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz,...

     album Kind of Blue
    Kind of Blue
    Kind of Blue is a studio album by American jazz musician Miles Davis, released August 17, 1959, on Columbia Records in the United States. Recording sessions for the album took place at Columbia's 30th Street Studio in New York City on March 2 and April 22, 1959...

     takes place.
  • March 11 – The 4th Eurovision Song Contest
    Eurovision Song Contest 1959
    The Eurovision Song Contest 1959 was the fourth Eurovision Song Contest. It was held in Cannes, following the French victory the previous year....

     is held in Cannes
    Cannes
    Cannes is one of the best-known cities of the French Riviera, a busy tourist destination and host of the annual Cannes Film Festival. It is a Commune of France in the Alpes-Maritimes department....

    , France, and won by the Netherlands
    Netherlands in the Eurovision Song Contest
    The Netherlands was one of the seven countries competing in the very first Eurovision Song Contest in 1956. It has missed only four contests so far...

     with the song "Een beetje
    Een Beetje
    "Een beetje" , sometimes spelled " 'n Beetje ", was the winning song of the Eurovision Song Contest 1959. Performed in Dutch by Teddy Scholten, the song was the second victory for the Netherlands in the first four years of the contest's history.The song is more up-tempo than the previous winners...

    " performed by Teddy Scholten
    Teddy Scholten
    Dorothea Margaretha "Teddy" Scholten was a Dutch singer from Rijswijk, close to The Hague, Netherlands....

    .
  • April 3 – The BBC
    BBC
    The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

     bans the Coasters
    The Coasters
    The Coasters are an American rhythm and blues/rock and roll vocal group that had a string of hits in the late 1950s. Beginning with "Searchin'" and "Young Blood", their most memorable songs were written by the songwriting and producing team of Leiber and Stoller...

     song "Charlie Brown" because of the word "spitball", a decision it reversed later in the month.
  • April 24 – The Your Hit Parade
    Your Hit Parade
    Your Hit Parade, is an American radio and television music program that was broadcast from 1935 to 1955 on radio, and seen from 1950 to 1959 on television. It was sponsored by American Tobacco's Lucky Strike cigarettes. During this 24-year run, the show had 19 orchestra leaders and 52 singers or...

     television series airs its last episode
  • May 12 – Plácido Domingo
    Plácido Domingo
    Plácido Domingo KBE , born José Plácido Domingo Embil, is a Spanish tenor and conductor known for his versatile and strong voice, possessing a ringing and dramatic tone throughout its range...

     makes his stage debut at the Teatro Degollado in Guadalajara
    Guadalajara, Jalisco
    Guadalajara is the capital of the Mexican state of Jalisco, and the seat of the municipality of Guadalajara. The city is located in the central region of Jalisco in the western-pacific area of Mexico. With a population of 1,564,514 it is Mexico's second most populous municipality...

     as Pascual in Marina.
  • May 30 – Helge Rosvaenge
    Helge Rosvaenge
    Helge Rosvaenge , Helge Anton Rosenvinge Hansen, was a famous Danish operatic tenor whose career was centred on Germany and Austria, before, during and after World War II....

     gives his farewell concert at Vienna's Great Musikvereinsaal.
  • June 11 – Violence erupts at the Seventh Festival of Neapolitan Song in a scandal that sparks a parliamentary inquiry amidst accusations of corruption and involvement of organized crime in a song competition that is seen to have become increasingly commercialised.
  • August 25 – September 5 – Darmstädter Ferienkurse held in Darmstadt, with lectures by Włodzimierz Kotoński, György Ligeti
    György Ligeti
    György Sándor Ligeti was a composer of contemporary classical music. Born in a Hungarian Jewish family in Transylvania, Romania, he briefly lived in Hungary before becoming an Austrian citizen.-Early life:...

    , Andrzej Markowski, Yoritsune Matsudaira
    Yoritsune Matsudaira
    was a Japanese composer of contemporary classical music.Matsudaira was descended, on his father's side of the family, from the Matsudaira clan, related to the Tokugawa clan who ruled Japan as shogun during the Edo Period , and on his mother's side of the family from the Fujiwara family, who were...

    , Werner Meyer-Eppler
    Werner Meyer-Eppler
    Werner Meyer-Eppler , was a German physicist, experimental acoustician, phoneticist, and information theorist....

    , Luigi Nono
    Luigi Nono
    Luigi Nono was an Italian avant-garde composer of classical music and remains one of the most prominent composers of the 20th century.- Early years :Born in Venice, he was a member of a wealthy artistic family, and his grandfather was a notable painter...

    , Henri Pousseur
    Henri Pousseur
    Henri Pousseur was a Belgian composer.-Biography:Pousseur studied at the Academies of Music in Liège and in Brussels from 1947 to 1953. He was closely associated with Pierre Froidebise and André Souris...

    , Karlheinz Stockhausen
    Karlheinz Stockhausen
    Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...

    , and Bo Wallner, and world premieres of Claude Baillif
    Claude Baillif
    Claude Baillif was a well known builder in New France during the 17th-century.There is little personal information on this early Canadian and we need to examine his historical contributions through his building contracts...

    's Mouvements pour deux, Sylvano Bussotti
    Sylvano Bussotti
    Sylvano Bussotti is an Italian composer of contemporary music whose work is unusually notated and often creates special problems of interpretation.Born in Florence, Bussotti learned to play the violin as a child, becoming a prodigy...

    's Piano Pieces for David Tudor, Cornelius Cardew
    Cornelius Cardew
    Cornelius Cardew was an English experimental music composer, and founder of the Scratch Orchestra, an experimental performing ensemble. He later rejected the avant-garde in favour of a politically motivated "people's liberation music".-Biography:Cardew was born in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire...

    's Two Books of Study for Pianists and Piano Piece 1959, Niccolo Castiglioni
    Niccolò Castiglioni
    Niccolò Castiglioni was an Italian composer, pianist, and writer on music.Castiglioni was born and raised in Milan, where he began studying piano at the age of 7. He received his performer's diploma from the Milan Conservatory in 1952, and graduated there in composition in 1953...

    's Cangiati per pianoforte, Roman Haubenstock-Ramati
    Roman Haubenstock-Ramati
    Roman Haubenstock-Ramati was a composer and music editor who worked in Kraków, Tel Aviv and Vienna.Haubenstock-Ramati studied composition, music theory, violin and philosophy in Kraków and Lemberg from 1937 to 1940. Among his teachers were Artur Malawski and Józef Koffler. From 1947 to 1950 he was...

    's Interpolation: Mobile pour flûte, Mauricio Kagel
    Mauricio Kagel
    Mauricio Kagel was a German-Argentine composer. He was notable for his interest in developing the theatrical side of musical performance .-Biography:...

    's Transición II, Angelo Paccagnini's Canti brevi: secondo libro, and Stockhausen's Zyklus
    Zyklus
    Zyklus für einen Schlagzeuger is a composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen, assigned Number 9 in the composer's catalog of works. It was composed in 1959 at the request of Wolfgang Steinecke as a test piece for a percussion competition at the Darmstadt Summer Courses, where it was premièred on 25...

    .
  • September 13 – Bo Diddley
    Bo Diddley
    Ellas Otha Bates , known by his stage name Bo Diddley, was an American rhythm and blues vocalist, guitarist, songwriter , and inventor...

    's single "Say Man" enters the US R&B charts.
  • Fall – Bill Haley & His Comets
    Bill Haley & His Comets
    Bill Haley & His Comets was an American rock and roll band that was founded in 1952 and continued until Haley's death in 1981. The band, also known by the names Bill Haley and The Comets and Bill Haley's Comets , was the earliest group of white musicians to bring rock and roll to the attention of...

     end their groundbreaking association with Decca Records
    Decca Records
    Decca Records began as a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis. Its U.S. label was established in late 1934; however, owing to World War II, the link with the British company was broken for several decades....

    , for whom they had recorded since 1954. Their first recording for the label, "Rock Around the Clock
    Rock Around the Clock
    "Rock Around the Clock" is a 12-bar-blues-based song written by Max C. Freedman and James E. Myers in 1952. The best-known and most successful rendition was recorded by Bill Haley and His Comets in 1954...

    ", helped usher in the rock and roll era. Haley signs with Warner Bros. Records
    Warner Bros. Records
    Warner Bros. Records Inc. is an American record label. It was the foundation label of the present-day Warner Music Group, and now operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of that corporation. It maintains a close relationship with its former parent, Warner Bros. Pictures, although the two companies...

    .
  • Otto Luening
    Otto Luening
    Otto Clarence Luening was a German-American composer and conductor, and an early pioneer of tape music and electronic music....

     and Vladimir Ussachevsky
    Vladimir Ussachevsky
    Vladimir Kirilovitch Ussachevsky was a composer, particularly known for his work in electronic music.-Biography:...

     co-found the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York City.
  • The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences
    National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences
    The National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, Inc., known variously as The Recording Academy or NARAS, is a U.S. organization of musicians, producers, recording engineers and other recording professionals dedicated to improving the quality of life and cultural condition for music and its...

     sponsors the first Grammy Award ceremony for music recorded in 1958.
  • Dalida
    Dalida
    Dalida , born with Italian name of Iolanda Cristina Gigliotti, was a world-famous singer and actress born in Egypt with Italian origins but naturalised French with the name Yolanda Gigliotti. She spent her early years in Egypt amongst the Italian Egyptian community, but she lived most of her adult...

     receives a Music Oscar for Best Song and a first foreign award (a "Golden Lion" in Berlin).
  • Jacques Loussier
    Jacques Loussier
    Jacques Loussier is a French pianist and composer. He is well-known for his jazz interpretations in trio formation of many of Johann Sebastian Bach's works, such as the Goldberg Variations.-Early life and education :...

     forms the Play Bach Trio
    Play Bach Trio
    The Play Bach Trio , was a Third Stream jazz piano trio that became known for their Jazz interpretations of European classical music....

     with bassist Pierre Michelot
    Pierre Michelot
    Pierre Michelot was a French bebop and hard bop double bass player.Born in Saint-Denis, Seine-Saint-Denis, Paris, Michelot studied piano from 1936 until 1938, but switched to playing bass at the age of sixteen...

     and percussionist Christian Garros.
  • Ornette Coleman
    Ornette Coleman
    Ornette Coleman is an American saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter and composer. He was one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s....

     plays a legendary and controversial concert at New York's Five Spot
    Five Spot
    The Five Spot Café was a jazz club located at 5 Cooper Square in the Bowery neighbourhood of New York City.-History:In 1937, Salvatore Termini purchased what was then known as the Bowery Café, a working-class bar located under the Third Avenue El. In 1946, two of Termini's sons, Joe and Ignatze ...

    .
  • Roy Orbison
    Roy Orbison
    Roy Kelton Orbison was an American singer-songwriter, well known for his distinctive, powerful voice, complex compositions, and dark emotional ballads. Orbison grew up in Texas and began singing in a rockabilly/country & western band in high school until he was signed by Sun Records in Memphis...

     signs with Monument Records
    Monument Records
    Monument Records was an American record label, Washington, D.C. named for the Washington Monument, founded in 1958, by Fred Foster and Buddy Deane . Buddy Deane soon left the company, and in the early 60's bought KOTN in Pine Bluff, Arkansas where he retired to until his death...

    .
  • The Supremes
    The Supremes
    The Supremes, an American female singing group, were the premier act of Motown Records during the 1960s.Originally founded as The Primettes in Detroit, Michigan, in 1959, The Supremes' repertoire included doo-wop, pop, soul, Broadway show tunes, psychedelic soul, and disco...

     are founded as a quartet ("The Primettes").
  • Jimi Hendrix
    Jimi Hendrix
    James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...

     buys his first electric guitar: a White Single pickup Supro Ozark 1560 S
    Supro Ozark 1560 S
    The Supro Ozark 1560 S is a vintage electric guitar, employing a single pick-up near the bridge. It is most famous as being the first electric guitar Jimi Hendrix owned. His white single-pickup Supro Ozark was from his father, who purchased it from Myers Music shop in Seattle in 1958. It has 12 mm...

    .
  • Veteran sarodiya and multi-instrumentalist Allauddin Khan
    Allauddin Khan
    Allauddin Khan , was a Bengali sarodiya and multi-instrumentalist, composer and one of the most renowned music teachers of the 20th Century in Indian classical music.In 1935, he toured Europe, along with Uday Shankar's ballet troupe, and later also worked at his...

     records for All India Radio
    All India Radio
    All India Radio , officially known since 1956 as Akashvani , is the radio broadcaster of India and a division of Prasar Bharati. Established in 1936, it is the sister service of Prasar Bharati's Doordarshan, the national television broadcaster. All India Radio is one of the largest radio networks...

    .
  • Jilin
    Jilin
    Jilin , is a province of the People's Republic of China located in the northeastern part of the country. Jilin borders North Korea and Russia to the east, Heilongjiang to the north, Liaoning to the south, and Inner Mongolia to the west...

     opera is developed in China.

Albums released (in alphabetical order)

  • All That Jazz – The Hi-Lo's
    The Hi-Lo's
    The Hi-Lo's were an a cappella quartet formed in 1953. The group's name is reportedly a reference to their extreme vocal and physical ranges .-History:The group consisted of Gene Puerling , Bob Strasen , Bob Morse...

  • An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer
    An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer
    An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer is an album recorded by Tom Lehrer, the well-known satirist and Harvard lecturer. The recording was made on March 20-21, 1959 in Sanders Theater at Harvard.-Track listing:#"Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" – 2:38...

     – Tom Lehrer
    Tom Lehrer
    Thomas Andrew "Tom" Lehrer is an American singer-songwriter, satirist, pianist, mathematician and polymath. He has lectured on mathematics and musical theater...

  • At Large
    At Large
    In reviewing At Large for Allmusic, music critic Bruce Eder wrote the album "shows in the far more complex sound achieved by the trio throughout this album, with voices and instruments more closely interwoven than on their earlier studio recordings and achieving control over their volume that, even...

     – The Kingston Trio
    The Kingston Trio
    The Kingston Trio is an American folk and pop music group that helped launch the folk revival of the late 1950s to late 1960s. The group started as a San Francisco Bay Area nightclub act with an original lineup of Dave Guard, Bob Shane, and Nick Reynolds...

  • Ballad of the Blues
    Ballad of the Blues
    Ballad of the Blues is a 1959 album by Jo Stafford. It is a concept album which tells a story through song, showcasing the influence of the Blues. The album has a predominantly pop setting and sees Jo Stafford accompanied by her husband Paul Weston and backed by The Starlighters...

     – Jo Stafford
    Jo Stafford
    Jo Elizabeth Stafford was an American singer of traditional pop music and jazz standards and occasional actress whose career ran from the late 1930s to the early 1960s...

  • Barbershop Harmony – The Mills Brothers
  • Bill Haley's Chicks – Bill Haley & His Comets
    Bill Haley & His Comets
    Bill Haley & His Comets was an American rock and roll band that was founded in 1952 and continued until Haley's death in 1981. The band, also known by the names Bill Haley and The Comets and Bill Haley's Comets , was the earliest group of white musicians to bring rock and roll to the attention of...

  • Blind Joe Death
    Blind Joe Death
    Blind Joe Death is the first album by American fingerstyle guitarist and composer John Fahey. There are three different versions of the album, and the original self-released edition of fewer than 100 copies is extremely rare...

     – John Fahey
    John Fahey (musician)
    John Fahey was an American fingerstyle guitarist and composer who pioneered the steel-string acoustic guitar as a solo instrument. His style has been greatly influential and has been described as the foundation of American Primitivism, a term borrowed from painting and referring mainly to the...

  • Breezin' Along – The Four Lads
    The Four Lads
    The Four Lads is a popular Canadian male singing quartet. In the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, the group earned many gold singles and albums. Its million-selling signature tunes include "Moments to Remember," "Standin' on the Corner," "No, Not Much," "Who Needs You," and "Istanbul."The Four Lads makes...

  • Broadway Playbill – The Hi-Lo's
    The Hi-Lo's
    The Hi-Lo's were an a cappella quartet formed in 1953. The group's name is reportedly a reference to their extreme vocal and physical ranges .-History:The group consisted of Gene Puerling , Bob Strasen , Bob Morse...

  • Chuck Berry Is on Top
    Chuck Berry Is on Top
    Chuck Berry Is on Top is a compilation album by rock and roll pioneer Chuck Berry, released in July 1959 on Chess Records. The album consists of some of his single releases up to that point, along with one new track "Blues for Hawaiians". In his review of the album on Allmusic, Cub Koda describes...

     – Chuck Berry
    Chuck Berry
    Charles Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter, and one of the pioneers of rock and roll music. With songs such as "Maybellene" , "Roll Over Beethoven" , "Rock and Roll Music" and "Johnny B...

  • Cliff
    Cliff (album)
    Cliff Richard's first album Cliff was released in April 1959 and reached No. 4 in the UK album chart. It was recorded live at Abbey Road Studios in February 1959 with The Shadows, then known as The Drifters, in front of an invited audience of 200 to 300 fans...

     – Cliff Richard
    Cliff Richard
    Sir Cliff Richard, OBE is a British pop singer, musician, performer, actor, and philanthropist who has sold over an estimated 250 million records worldwide....

     (debut) ('Live' and with 'The Drifters
    The Shadows
    The Shadows are a British pop group with a total of 69 UK hit-charted singles: 35 as 'The Shadows' and 34 as 'Cliff Richard and the Shadows', from the 1950s to the 2000s. Cliff Richard in casual conversation with the British rock press frequently refers to the Shadows by their nickname: 'The Shads'...

    ')
  • Cliff Sings
    Cliff Sings
    Cliff Richard's second album Cliff Sings was released in November 1959 and reached No. 2 in his native the UK, album chart despite not including "Living Doll", Richard's first #1 single...

     – Cliff Richard
  • Come Dance With Me! – Frank Sinatra
    Frank Sinatra
    Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...

  • Como Swings
    Como Swings
    Como Swings was Perry Como's fifth RCA Victor 12" long-play album, released in 1959 and the third recorded in full "living" stereophonic sound. The album's concept was one of swing standards from the Great American Songbook, set to loud, complex, booming arrangements which only the new high...

     – Perry Como
    Perry Como
    Pierino Ronald "Perry" Como was an American singer and television personality. During a career spanning more than half a century he recorded exclusively for the RCA Victor label after signing with them in 1943. "Mr...

  • Connie's Greatest Hits – Connie Francis
    Connie Francis
    Connie Francis is an American pop singer of Italian heritage and the top-charting female vocalist of the 1950s and 1960s. Although her chart success waned in the second half of the 1960s, Francis remained a top concert draw...

  • Cuttin' Capers
    Cuttin' Capers (album)
    Cuttin' Capers was a Doris Day album issued by Columbia Records, as catalog # CL-1232 in monaural and CS-8078 in stereo, on March 9, 1959....

     – Doris Day
    Doris Day
    Doris Day is an American actress, singer and, since her retirement from show business, an animal rights activist. With an entertainment career that spanned through almost 50 years, Day started her career as a big band singer in 1939, but only began to be noticed after her first hit recording,...

  • A Date with Elvis
    A Date With Elvis
    A Date with Elvis is the eighth album by Elvis Presley, issued on RCA Victor Records in July 1959. It is a compilation of previously unreleased material from an August 1956 recording session at 20th Century Fox Stage One, two from Radio Recorders in Hollywood, and multiple sessions at Sun Studio....

     – Elvis Presley
    Elvis Presley
    Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....

  • Day By Night
    Day by Night
    Day by Night was a Doris Day album released on November 11, 1957 by Columbia Records, It was released in two versions, catalog number CL-1053 and CS-8089 , though the stereo version was only released in 1959...

     – Doris Day
    Doris Day
    Doris Day is an American actress, singer and, since her retirement from show business, an animal rights activist. With an entertainment career that spanned through almost 50 years, Day started her career as a big band singer in 1939, but only began to be noticed after her first hit recording,...

  • Dinah, Yes Indeed – Dinah Shore
    Dinah Shore
    Dinah Shore was an American singer, actress, and television personality...

  • Dreams of Italy – Johnny Cole
  • Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Songbook
    Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Songbook
    Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Songbook is a 1959 five album set by the American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald, focusing on the songs of George and Ira Gershwin. It was recorded with the Nelson Riddle Orchestra, marking the first time that Ella and Riddle had worked together...

     – Ella Fitzgerald
    Ella Fitzgerald
    Ella Jane Fitzgerald , also known as the "First Lady of Song" and "Lady Ella," was an American jazz and song vocalist...

  • The Fabulous Johnny Cash
    The Fabulous Johnny Cash
    The Fabulous Johnny Cash is the third album by country singer Johnny Cash. It was released in January 1959 by the Columbia label, after Cash's departure from Sun Records, and was re-issued in 2002 by Sony Music's Legacy imprint...

     – Johnny Cash
    Johnny Cash
    John R. "Johnny" Cash was an American singer-songwriter, actor, and author, who has been called one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century...

  • 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong
    50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong
    50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong: Elvis' Gold Records - Volume 2 is the ninth album by Elvis Presley, issued on RCA Victor Records in November 1959. It is a compilation of hit singles released in 1958 and 1959 by Presley, from two recording sessions in June 1958 at RCA Studios in Nashville and...

     – Elvis Presley
    Elvis Presley
    Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....

  • For LP Fans Only
    For LP Fans Only
    For LP Fans Only is the seventh album by Elvis Presley, issued on RCA Victor Records in February 1959. It is a compilation of material from an August 1956 recording session at 20th Century Fox Stage One, a September 1956 session at Radio Recorders in Hollywood, sessions on January 10 and 11 at RCA...

     – Elvis Presley
  • ...from the Hungry i
    ...from the Hungry i
    -Personnel:*Dave Guard – vocals, banjo, guitar*Bob Shane – vocals, guitar*Nick Reynolds – vocals, tenor guitar, bongos, conga*David "Buck" Wheat – bass-Chart positions:-External links:* *...

     – The Kingston Trio
    The Kingston Trio
    The Kingston Trio is an American folk and pop music group that helped launch the folk revival of the late 1950s to late 1960s. The group started as a San Francisco Bay Area nightclub act with an original lineup of Dave Guard, Bob Shane, and Nick Reynolds...

     (live)
  • Get Happy! – Ella Fitzgerald
  • Go Bo Diddley
    Go Bo Diddley
    Go Bo Diddley is the second LP record by rock and roll pioneer Bo Diddley released in July 1959. The album was Bo's first studio album and his first LP for Checker Records...

     – Bo Diddley
    Bo Diddley
    Ellas Otha Bates , known by his stage name Bo Diddley, was an American rhythm and blues vocalist, guitarist, songwriter , and inventor...

  • Gogi Grant – If You Want To Get To Heaven, Shout – Gogi Grant
    Gogi Grant
    Gogi Grant is an American popular singer.-Life and career:Grant was born Myrtle Audrey Arinsberg in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At the age of 12, she moved to Los Angeles, California, where she attended Venice High School. In California, she won a teenage singing contest and appeared on television...

  • Gogi Grant – Torch Time – Gogi Grant
  • Greatest!
    Greatest!
    Greatest! is the fourth album by country singer Johnny Cash, released on Sun Records on 12 January 1959 . It was Cash's third record on the label, which he had left the previous year to join Columbia Records. By the time the album was released, Cash had already recorded The Fabulous Johnny Cash,...

     – Johnny Cash
    Johnny Cash
    John R. "Johnny" Cash was an American singer-songwriter, actor, and author, who has been called one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century...

  • Guy Mitchell's Greatest Hits – Guy Mitchell
    Guy Mitchell
    Guy Mitchell, born Albert George Cernik, was an American pop singer, successful in his homeland, the U.K. and Australia...

  • Heavenly – Johnny Mathis
    Johnny Mathis
    John Royce "Johnny" Mathis is an American singer of popular music. Starting his career with singles of standards, he became highly popular as an album artist, with several dozen of his albums achieving gold or platinum status, and 73 making the Billboard charts...

  • Heavenly Lover – Teresa Brewer
    Teresa Brewer
    Teresa Brewer was an American pop singer whose style incorporated elements of country, jazz, R&B, musicals and novelty songs. She was one of the most prolific and popular female singers of the 1950s, recording nearly 600 songs. Born Theresa Breuer in Toledo, Ohio, Brewer died of a neuromuscular...

  • Here We Go Again!
    Here We Go Again!
    Here We Go Again! is an album by American folk music group The Kingston Trio, released in 1959 . It was one of the four the Trio would have simultaneously in Billboard's Top 10 albums during the year. It spent eight weeks at #1 and received an RIAA gold certification the same day as At Large...

     – The Kingston Trio
  • Hooray for Hollywood (Vol. 2) – Doris Day
    Doris Day
    Doris Day is an American actress, singer and, since her retirement from show business, an animal rights activist. With an entertainment career that spanned through almost 50 years, Day started her career as a big band singer in 1939, but only began to be noticed after her first hit recording,...

  • Hymns by Johnny Cash
    Hymns by Johnny Cash
    Hymns by Johnny Cash is the fifth album and the first gospel album by Johnny Cash. It was originally released in May 1959, then re-issued in 2002 with an alternate version of "It Was Jesus" as a bonus track...

     – Johnny Cash
    Johnny Cash
    John R. "Johnny" Cash was an American singer-songwriter, actor, and author, who has been called one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century...

  • I Hear The Word – Kay Starr
    Kay Starr
    Kay Starr is an American pop and jazz singer who enjoyed considerable success in the 1940s and 50s. She is best remembered for introducing two songs that became #1 hits in the 1950s, "Wheel of Fortune" and "The Rock And Roll Waltz"....

  • I'll Be Seeing You – Jo Stafford
    Jo Stafford
    Jo Elizabeth Stafford was an American singer of traditional pop music and jazz standards and occasional actress whose career ran from the late 1930s to the early 1960s...

  • In a Little Spanish Town – Bing Crosby
    Bing Crosby
    Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby was an American singer and actor. Crosby's trademark bass-baritone voice made him one of the best-selling recording artists of the 20th century, with over half a billion records in circulation....

  • A Jazz Portrait of Frank Sinatra
    A Jazz Portrait of Frank Sinatra
    A Jazz Portrait of Frank Sinatra is a 1959 album by The Oscar Peterson trio, recorded in tribute to Frank Sinatra. -Track listing:# "You Make Me Feel So Young"  – 2:40...

     – Oscar Peterson
    Oscar Peterson
    Oscar Emmanuel Peterson was a Canadian jazz pianist and composer. He was called the "Maharaja of the keyboard" by Duke Ellington, "O.P." by his friends. He released over 200 recordings, won seven Grammy Awards, and received other numerous awards and honours over the course of his career...

  • Kind of Blue
    Kind of Blue
    Kind of Blue is a studio album by American jazz musician Miles Davis, released August 17, 1959, on Columbia Records in the United States. Recording sessions for the album took place at Columbia's 30th Street Studio in New York City on March 2 and April 22, 1959...

     – Miles Davis
    Miles Davis
    Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz,...

  • Le Disque d'Or de Dalida – Dalida
    Dalida
    Dalida , born with Italian name of Iolanda Cristina Gigliotti, was a world-famous singer and actress born in Egypt with Italian origins but naturalised French with the name Yolanda Gigliotti. She spent her early years in Egypt amongst the Italian Egyptian community, but she lived most of her adult...

  • London by Night
    London by Night
    London by Night was an LP album by Julie London, released by Liberty Records under catalog numbers LRP-3105 in monaural and LST-7105 in stereophonic form in 1958....

     – Julie London
    Julie London
    Julie London was an American singer and actress. She was best known for her smoky, sensual voice. London was at her singing career's peak in the 1950s. Her acting career lasted more than 35 years...

  • Look To Your Heart
    Look to Your Heart (Frank Sinatra album)
    Look to Your Heart is an album by American singer Frank Sinatra, released in 1959 but recorded between 1953 and 1955.This is the third Capitol collection of Sinatra singles and B-sides with Nelson Riddle, following 1956's This Is Sinatra! and 1958's This Is Sinatra Volume 2...

     – Frank Sinatra
    Frank Sinatra
    Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...

  • Love In Portofino (A San Cristina) – Dalida
    Dalida
    Dalida , born with Italian name of Iolanda Cristina Gigliotti, was a world-famous singer and actress born in Egypt with Italian origins but naturalised French with the name Yolanda Gigliotti. She spent her early years in Egypt amongst the Italian Egyptian community, but she lived most of her adult...

  • Mingus Ah Um
    Mingus Ah Um
    Mingus Ah Um is a jazz album by Charles Mingus, recorded and released on Columbia Records in 1959. It was his first album recorded for Columbia. The cover features a painting by S...

     – Charles Mingus
    Charles Mingus
    Charles Mingus Jr. was an American jazz musician, composer, bandleader, and civil rights activist.Mingus's compositions retained the hot and soulful feel of hard bop and drew heavily from black gospel music while sometimes drawing on elements of Third stream, free jazz, and classical music...

  • Moanin' in the Moonlight
    Moanin' in the Moonlight
    Moanin' in the Moonlight was the first full-length album by American blues singer Howlin' Wolf. The album was a compilation of previously-issued singles by Chess Records. It was originally released by Chess Records as a mono-format LP record in 1959...

     – Howlin' Wolf
    Howlin' Wolf
    Chester Arthur Burnett , known as Howlin' Wolf, was an influential American blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player....

     (debut)
  • Movin' – Kay Starr
    Kay Starr
    Kay Starr is an American pop and jazz singer who enjoyed considerable success in the 1940s and 50s. She is best remembered for introducing two songs that became #1 hits in the 1950s, "Wheel of Fortune" and "The Rock And Roll Waltz"....

  • No One Cares
    No One Cares
    No One Cares is a 1959 album by Frank Sinatra.The album can be seen as a sequel to the Sinatra's earlier album Where Are You?, which was also arranged by Gordon Jenkins. The album was released in 1959 in both stereo and mono versions, each containing 11 songs...

     – Frank Sinatra
    Frank Sinatra
    Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...

  • ¡Olé Tormé!: Mel Tormé Goes South of the Border with Billy May
    ¡Olé Tormé!: Mel Tormé Goes South of the Border with Billy May
    - Personnel :* Mel Tormé – vocals, drums* Frank Beach – trumpet* Pete Candoli* Conrad Gozzo* Manny Klein* Eddie Kusby – trombone* Tommy Pederson* Dave Wells* Si Zentner* Gene Cipriano – woodwind* Chuck Gentry* Justin Gordon...

     – Mel Tormé
    Mel Tormé
    Melvin Howard Tormé , nicknamed The Velvet Fog, was an American musician, known for his jazz singing. He was also a jazz composer and arranger, a drummer, an actor in radio, film, and television, and the author of five books...

  • On The Trail – Johnnie Ray
    Johnnie Ray
    Johnnie Ray was an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. Popular for most of the 1950s, Ray has been cited by critics as a major precursor of what would become rock and roll, for his jazz and blues-influenced music and his animated stage personality.-Early life:John Alvin Ray was born in...

  • Once Upon a Summertime
    Once Upon a Summertime
    Once Upon a Summertime is a 1959 album by Blossom Dearie.This is the third in a series of six albums recorded by Dearie for the Verve label. The liner notes quote Dearie as saying "Norman Granz called and asked me to make another album with Tom Nola. He had Ray Brown playing bass, Mundell Lowe...

     – Blossom Dearie
    Blossom Dearie
    Blossom Dearie was an American jazz singer and pianist, often performing in the bebop genre and remembered for her girlish voice.-Early career:...

  • Pat Boone Sings – Pat Boone
    Pat Boone
    Charles Eugene "Pat" Boone is an American singer, actor and writer who has been a successful pop singer in the United States during the 1950s and early 1960s. He covered black artists' songs and sold more copies than his black counterparts...

  • Persuasive Percussion
    Persuasive Percussion
    Persuasive Percussion was an LP album performed by Terry Snyder and the All Stars and released in 1959 by Command Records . The packaging includes the first use of the gatefold cover which, upon being unfolded, lists information about each selection...

     – Terry Snyder and the All Stars
  • Portrait in Jazz
    Portrait in Jazz
    Portrait in Jazz is an album by American jazz pianist Bill Evans, released in 1960.-History:Eight months after his successful collaboration with Miles Davis on the album Kind of Blue, Evans recorded Portrait in Jazz with a new group that helped change the direction of modern jazz.Most noticeably,...

     – Bill Evans Trio
    Bill Evans
    William John Evans, known as Bill Evans was an American jazz pianist. His use of impressionist harmony, inventive interpretation of traditional jazz repertoire, and trademark rhythmically independent, "singing" melodic lines influenced a generation of pianists including: Chick Corea, Herbie...

  • Presenting Dion & The Belmonts – Dion DiMucci
    Dion DiMucci
    Dion Francis DiMucci , better known as Dion, is an American singer-songwriter whose work has incorporated elements of doo-wop, pop oldies music, rock and R&B styles....

     & The Belmonts
  • Reunion In Rhythm – Frankie Laine
    Frankie Laine
    Frankie Laine, born Francesco Paolo LoVecchio , was a successful American singer, songwriter, and actor whose career spanned 75 years, from his first concerts in 1930 with a marathon dance company to his final performance of "That's My Desire" in 2005...

     and Michel LeGrand
    Michel Legrand
    Michel Jean Legrand is a French musical composer, arranger, conductor, and pianist...

  • Ricky Sings Again
    Ricky Sings Again
    Ricky Sings Again is the third rock and roll album by Ricky Nelson, released in 1959.-Track listing:#"It's Late" - 1:59#"One of These Mornings" - 1:54#"Believe What You Say" - 2:05...

     – Ricky Nelson
    Ricky Nelson
    Eric Hilliard Nelson , better known as Ricky Nelson or Rick Nelson, was an American singer-songwriter, instrumentalist, and actor...

  • Ritchie Valens
    Ritchie Valens (album)
    Ritchie Valens is the first album by Ritchie Valens. The album was posthumously released by Del-Fi Records in March 1959—one month after his death in a plane crash. It is Valens' only studio album entirely composed of master tracks recorded at Gold Star Studios...

     – Ritchie Valens
    Ritchie Valens
    Ritchie Valens was a Mexican-American singer, songwriter and guitarist....

  • San Antonio Rose – The Mills Brothers
  • Seasons Greetings From Perry Como – Perry Como
    Perry Como
    Pierino Ronald "Perry" Como was an American singer and television personality. During a career spanning more than half a century he recorded exclusively for the RCA Victor label after signing with them in 1943. "Mr...

  • The Shape of Jazz to Come
    The Shape of Jazz to Come
    The Shape of Jazz to Come is an influential album by Ornette Coleman. It was his debut album for Atlantic Records who released it in late 1959....

     – Ornette Coleman
    Ornette Coleman
    Ornette Coleman is an American saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter and composer. He was one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s....

  • Sincerely Yours – Guy Mitchell
    Guy Mitchell
    Guy Mitchell, born Albert George Cernik, was an American pop singer, successful in his homeland, the U.K. and Australia...

  • Ella Fitzgerald Sings Sweet Songs for Swingers
    Ella Fitzgerald Sings Sweet Songs for Swingers
    Ella Fitzgerald Sings Sweet Songs for Swingers is a 1959 album by the American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald, recorded with a studio Orchestra arranged and conducted by Frank DeVol....

     – Ella Fitzgerald
  • A Sinner Am I – Johnnie Ray
    Johnnie Ray
    Johnnie Ray was an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. Popular for most of the 1950s, Ray has been cited by critics as a major precursor of what would become rock and roll, for his jazz and blues-influenced music and his animated stage personality.-Early life:John Alvin Ray was born in...

  • The Song You Heard When You Fell in Love – Betty Johnson
    Betty Johnson
    Betty Johnson is an American traditional pop and cabaret singer.-Biography:Johnson was born in Guilford County, North Carolina. Her professional debut was in a family group, The Johnson Family Singers, including her parents and three brothers, singing a repertoire primarily of religious material...

  • Songs of Our Soil
    Songs of Our Soil
    Songs of Our Soil is the sixth album by the singer Johnny Cash. It was originally released in September 1959 , but later re-issued on August 27, 2002 with two bonus tracks....

     – Johnny Cash
    Johnny Cash
    John R. "Johnny" Cash was an American singer-songwriter, actor, and author, who has been called one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century...

  • Stereo Concert
    Stereo Concert
    Stereo Concert is The Kingston Trio's second live album, released in 1959 . It was never released in monaural—unusual for a record release in 1959....

     – The Kingston Trio (live)
  • Strictly Instrumental – Bill Haley & His Comets
    Bill Haley & His Comets
    Bill Haley & His Comets was an American rock and roll band that was founded in 1952 and continued until Haley's death in 1981. The band, also known by the names Bill Haley and The Comets and Bill Haley's Comets , was the earliest group of white musicians to bring rock and roll to the attention of...

  • Swing Along
    Swing Along
    Swing Along was an LP album by The Four Lads, released by Columbia Records in 1959.-Track listing:The album was reissued, combined with the 1960 Four Lads album Everything Goes!!!, in compact disc format, by Collectables Records on July 31, 2001....

     – The Four Lads
    The Four Lads
    The Four Lads is a popular Canadian male singing quartet. In the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, the group earned many gold singles and albums. Its million-selling signature tunes include "Moments to Remember," "Standin' on the Corner," "No, Not Much," "Who Needs You," and "Istanbul."The Four Lads makes...

  • Swing Me an Old Song
    Swing Me an Old Song
    Swing Me an Old Song was an LP album by Julie London, released by Liberty Records under catalog numbers LRP-3119 and LST-7119 in 1959.-Track listing:-References:...

     – Julie London
    Julie London
    Julie London was an American singer and actress. She was best known for her smoky, sensual voice. London was at her singing career's peak in the 1950s. Her acting career lasted more than 35 years...

  • Tenderly – Pat Boone
    Pat Boone
    Charles Eugene "Pat" Boone is an American singer, actor and writer who has been a successful pop singer in the United States during the 1950s and early 1960s. He covered black artists' songs and sold more copies than his black counterparts...

  • Teresa Brewer And The Dixieland Band – Teresa Brewer
    Teresa Brewer
    Teresa Brewer was an American pop singer whose style incorporated elements of country, jazz, R&B, musicals and novelty songs. She was one of the most prolific and popular female singers of the 1950s, recording nearly 600 songs. Born Theresa Breuer in Toledo, Ohio, Brewer died of a neuromuscular...

  • The Genius of Ray Charles
    The Genius of Ray Charles
    The Genius of Ray Charles is a 1959 album by Ray Charles. In 2003, the album was ranked number 263 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time....

     – Ray Charles
    Ray Charles
    Ray Charles Robinson , known by his shortened stage name Ray Charles, was an American musician. He was a pioneer in the genre of soul music during the 1950s by fusing rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues styles into his early recordings with Atlantic Records...

  • The West Side – Patti Page
    Patti Page
    Clara Ann Fowler , known by her professional name Patti Page, is an American singer, one of the best-known female artists in traditional pop music. She was the best-selling female artist of the 1950s, and has sold over 100 million records...

  • Time Out
    Time Out (album)
    Time Out is a jazz album by The Dave Brubeck Quartet, released in 1959 on Columbia Records, catalogue CL 1397. Recorded at Columbia's 30th Street Studio in New York City, it is based upon the use of time signatures that were unusual for jazz such as 9/8 and 5/4. The album is a subtle blend of cool...

     – Dave Brubeck Quartet
  • What a Diff'rence a Day Makes!
    What a Diff'rence a Day Makes!
    What a Diff'rence a Day Makes! is a 1959 album by Dinah Washington, arranged by Belford Hendricks, featuring her hit single of the same name.The title track won Washington the Grammy Award for Best Rhythm & Blues Recording at the Grammy Awards of 1960....

     – Dinah Washington
    Dinah Washington
    Dinah Washington, born Ruth Lee Jones , was an American blues, R&B and jazz singer. She has been cited as "the most popular black female recording artist of the '50s", and called "The Queen of the Blues"...

  • When Your Love Has Gone – Teresa Brewer
    Teresa Brewer
    Teresa Brewer was an American pop singer whose style incorporated elements of country, jazz, R&B, musicals and novelty songs. She was one of the most prolific and popular female singers of the 1950s, recording nearly 600 songs. Born Theresa Breuer in Toledo, Ohio, Brewer died of a neuromuscular...

  • White Christmas – Pat Boone
    Pat Boone
    Charles Eugene "Pat" Boone is an American singer, actor and writer who has been a successful pop singer in the United States during the 1950s and early 1960s. He covered black artists' songs and sold more copies than his black counterparts...

  • Wishing You a Merry Christmas – Johnny Cole and the Robert Evans Chorus
  • Words And Music – The Ames Brothers
  • You Are My Love – Frankie Laine
    Frankie Laine
    Frankie Laine, born Francesco Paolo LoVecchio , was a successful American singer, songwriter, and actor whose career spanned 75 years, from his first concerts in 1930 with a marathon dance company to his final performance of "That's My Desire" in 2005...

  • Your Number Please
    Your Number Please
    Your Number Please was an LP album by Julie London, released by Liberty Records under catalog number LRP 3130.1. Makin' Whoopee - Julie London, Donaldson, Walter2. It Could Happen To You - Julie London, Burke, Johnny...

     – Julie London
    Julie London
    Julie London was an American singer and actress. She was best known for her smoky, sensual voice. London was at her singing career's peak in the 1950s. Her acting career lasted more than 35 years...


Biggest hit singles

The following songs achieved the highest chart positions
in the charts of 1959.
# Artist Title Year Country Chart Entries
1 Bobby Darin
Bobby Darin
Bobby Darin , born Walden Robert Cassotto, was an American singer, actor and musician.Darin performed in a range of music genres, including pop, rock, jazz, folk and country...

 
Mack the Knife
Mack the Knife
"Mack the Knife" or "The Ballad of Mack the Knife", originally "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer", is a song composed by Kurt Weill with lyrics by Bertolt Brecht for their music drama Die Dreigroschenoper, or, as it is known in English, The Threepenny Opera. It premiered in Berlin in 1928 at the...

 
1959   UK 1 – Sep 1959, US BB 1 – Sep 1959, US BB 1 of 1959, US CashBox 1 of 1959, Canada 1 – Aug 1959, Grammy in 1959, POP 1 of 1959, DDD 3 of 1959, Norway 9 – Nov 1959, South Africa 13 of 1959, RYM 15 of 1959, RIAA 15, Italy 38 of 1960, Europe 88 of the 1950s, Party 226 of 1999, Rolling Stone 251, Acclaimed 407, WXPN 518
2 Johnny Horton
Johnny Horton
John Gale "Johnny" Horton was an American country music and rockabilly singer most famous for his semi-folk, so-called "saga songs" which began the "historical ballad" craze of the late 1950s and early 1960s...

 
The Battle of New Orleans
The Battle of New Orleans
"The Battle of New Orleans" is the title of a song written by Jimmy Driftwood. The song describes the 1815 Battle of New Orleans from the perspective of an American soldier; the lyrics are evidently intended to be comical. It has been recorded by many artists, but the singer most often associated...

 
1959   US BB 1 – May 1959, Canada 1 – May 1959, Australia 1 for 5 weeks Dec 1958, US CashBox 2 of 1959, Australia 9 of 1959, UK 16 – Jun 1959, South Africa 17 of 1959, RYM 19 of 1959, US BB 38 of 1959, POP 38 of 1959, DDD 47 of 1959, RIAA 333, Acclaimed 821
3 Lloyd Price
Lloyd Price
Lloyd Price is an American R&B vocalist. Known as "Mr. Personality", after the name of one of his biggest million-selling hits...

 
Personality  1959   Australia 1 for 4 weeks Nov 1958, US BB 2 – May 1959, Canada 2 – May 1959, Australia 5 of 1959, US CashBox 6 of 1959, Norway 6 – Jul 1959, South Africa 12 of 1959, UK 25 – Aug 1959, US BB 33 of 1959, POP 33 of 1959, Europe 36 of the 1950s, DDD 56 of 1959, RYM 85 of 1959, Acclaimed 2027
4 Lloyd Price
Lloyd Price
Lloyd Price is an American R&B vocalist. Known as "Mr. Personality", after the name of one of his biggest million-selling hits...

 
Stagger Lee
Stagger Lee (song)
"Stagger Lee", also known as "Stagolee", "Stackerlee", "Stack O'Lee", "Stack-a-Lee" and several other variants, is a popular folk song based on the murder of William "Billy" Lyons by Stagger Lee Shelton...

 
1959   US BB 1 – Jan 1959, Canada 3 – Dec 1958, South Africa 5 of 1959, UK 7 – Feb 1959, Norway 8 – Apr 1959, US CashBox 11 of 1959, DDD 23 of 1958, US BB 28 of 1959, POP 28 of 1959, RYM 31 of 1958, Europe 86 of the 1950s, Rolling Stone 456, Acclaimed 1013
5 Frankie Avalon
Frankie Avalon
Frankie Avalon is an American actor, singer, playwright, and former teen idol.-Career:By the time he was 12, Avalon was on U.S. television playing his trumpet. As a teenager he played with Bobby Rydell in Rocco and the Saints...

 
Venus
Venus (Frankie Avalon song)
"Venus" is the name of a song written by Ed Marshall and Peter DeAngelis. The most successful and well-known recording of it was done by Frankie Avalon and released in 1959 . It became Avalon's first number-one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, where it spent five weeks atop the survey. The song...

 
1959   US BB 1 – Feb 1959, Canada 1 – Feb 1959, Australia 1 for 2 weeks Oct 1958, US CashBox 3 of 1959, RYM 4 of 1959, Italy 6 of 1959, South Africa 6 of 1959, Australia 15 of 1959, UK 16 – Apr 1959

Top hits on record (in alphabetical order)

  • "A Big Hunk o' Love
    A Big Hunk o' Love
    "A Big Hunk o' Love" is a song co-written by Aaron Schroeder and originally recorded by American rock and roll icon Elvis Presley. The song was released as a single on June 23, 1959 by RCA Victor and later topped the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks....

    " – Elvis Presley
    Elvis Presley
    Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....

  • "All for the Love of a Girl" – Johnny Horton
    Johnny Horton
    John Gale "Johnny" Horton was an American country music and rockabilly singer most famous for his semi-folk, so-called "saga songs" which began the "historical ballad" craze of the late 1950s and early 1960s...

  • "(All of a Sudden) My Heart Sings" – Paul Anka
    Paul Anka
    Paul Albert Anka, is a Canadian singer, songwriter, and actor.Anka first became famous as a teen idol in the late 1950s and 1960s with hit songs like "Diana'", "Lonely Boy", and "Put Your Head on My Shoulder"...

  • "Among My Souvenirs" – Connie Francis
    Connie Francis
    Connie Francis is an American pop singer of Italian heritage and the top-charting female vocalist of the 1950s and 1960s. Although her chart success waned in the second half of the 1960s, Francis remained a top concert draw...

  • "The Battle of New Orleans" – Johnny Horton
    Johnny Horton
    John Gale "Johnny" Horton was an American country music and rockabilly singer most famous for his semi-folk, so-called "saga songs" which began the "historical ballad" craze of the late 1950s and early 1960s...

  • "Beyond the Sea
    Beyond the Sea (song)
    "Beyond the Sea" is a 1946 contemporary pop song with music taken from the song "La Mer" by Charles Trenet and lyrics by Jack Lawrence.Trenet had composed "La Mer" with French lyrics totally different and unrelated to the English language version that Lawrence composed...

    " – Bobby Darin
    Bobby Darin
    Bobby Darin , born Walden Robert Cassotto, was an American singer, actor and musician.Darin performed in a range of music genres, including pop, rock, jazz, folk and country...

  • "The Big Hurt" – Toni Fisher
    Toni Fisher
    Toni Fisher was an American pop singer. She was known for her recordings of "The Big Hurt", "West of the Wall", "Maybe ," and "Why Can't The Dark Leave Me Alone".-Biography:...

  • "Billy Bayou
    Billy Bayou
    "Billy Bayou" is a 1958 single by Jim Reeves. Billy Bayou spent a total of twenty-five weeks on the country chart and became Jim Reeves fourth release to reach number one, where it stayed for five weeks. There is a song on the B-side of "Billy Bayou" titled "I'd Like to Be", which peaked at number...

    " – Jim Reeves
    Jim Reeves
    James Travis Reeves , better known as Jim Reeves, was an American country and popular music singer-songwriter. With records charting from the 1950s to the 1980s, he became well-known for being a practitioner of the Nashville sound...

  • "Ciao, Ciao Bambina" – Dalida
    Dalida
    Dalida , born with Italian name of Iolanda Cristina Gigliotti, was a world-famous singer and actress born in Egypt with Italian origins but naturalised French with the name Yolanda Gigliotti. She spent her early years in Egypt amongst the Italian Egyptian community, but she lived most of her adult...

  • "Come Softly to Me
    Come Softly to Me
    "Come Softly to Me" is a popular song written by Gretchen Christopher that was published in 1959 and was performed by The Fleetwoods, composed of Christopher, Gary Troxel, and Barbara Ellis. It was the first release for the new Dolphin Records label....

    " – The Fleetwoods
    The Fleetwoods
    The Fleetwoods were a singing trio from Olympia, Washington, United States; formed in the late 1950s. They were responsible for eleven hit songs, beginning with "Come Softly to Me"...

  • "Crying, Waiting, Hoping" – Buddy Holly
    Buddy Holly
    Charles Hardin Holley , known professionally as Buddy Holly, was an American singer-songwriter and a pioneer of rock and roll...

  • "Don't You Know?
    Don't You Know?
    "Don't You Know?" is a 1959 popular song by written by Bobby Worth, and hit record for singer Della Reese.The song was adapted from an aria from Puccini's La Boheme. It became Reese's biggest hit, reaching number two on the U.S. Pop chart and number one on the U.S. R&B chart...

    " – Della Reese
    Della Reese
    Delloreese Patricia Early, known professionally as Della Reese , is an American actress, singer, game show panelist of the 1970s, one-time talk-show hostess and ordained minister. She started her career in the 1950s as a gospel, pop and jazz singer, scoring a hit with her 1959 single "Don't You...

  • "Dream Lover
    Dream Lover
    "Dream Lover" is a song written and recorded by Bobby Darin on March 5, 1959. It was produced by Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler and engineered by Tom Dowd. It is considered a soulful rock song. The song became a multi-million seller, reaching #2 in US charts and was #1 in UK for three weeks during...

    " – Bobby Darin
    Bobby Darin
    Bobby Darin , born Walden Robert Cassotto, was an American singer, actor and musician.Darin performed in a range of music genres, including pop, rock, jazz, folk and country...

  • "Driftin" – The Drifters
    The Shadows
    The Shadows are a British pop group with a total of 69 UK hit-charted singles: 35 as 'The Shadows' and 34 as 'Cliff Richard and the Shadows', from the 1950s to the 2000s. Cliff Richard in casual conversation with the British rock press frequently refers to the Shadows by their nickname: 'The Shads'...

     (B-side to "Jet Black")
  • "Dynamite" – Cliff Richard
    Cliff Richard
    Sir Cliff Richard, OBE is a British pop singer, musician, performer, actor, and philanthropist who has sold over an estimated 250 million records worldwide....

     and The Shadows
    The Shadows
    The Shadows are a British pop group with a total of 69 UK hit-charted singles: 35 as 'The Shadows' and 34 as 'Cliff Richard and the Shadows', from the 1950s to the 2000s. Cliff Richard in casual conversation with the British rock press frequently refers to the Shadows by their nickname: 'The Shads'...

  • "El Paso
    El Paso (song)
    "El Paso" is a country and western ballad written and originally recorded by Marty Robbins, and first released on Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs in September 1959. It was released as a single the following month, and became a major hit on both the country and pop music charts, reaching number...

    " – Marty Robbins
    Marty Robbins
    Martin David Robinson , known professionally as Marty Robbins, was an American singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist...

  • "Expresso Bongo" (EP) – Cliff Richard
    Cliff Richard
    Sir Cliff Richard, OBE is a British pop singer, musician, performer, actor, and philanthropist who has sold over an estimated 250 million records worldwide....

     and The Shadows
    The Shadows
    The Shadows are a British pop group with a total of 69 UK hit-charted singles: 35 as 'The Shadows' and 34 as 'Cliff Richard and the Shadows', from the 1950s to the 2000s. Cliff Richard in casual conversation with the British rock press frequently refers to the Shadows by their nickname: 'The Shads'...

  • "First Name Initial" – Annette
    Annette Funicello
    Annette Joanne Funicello is an American singer and actress. She was Walt Disney's most popular cast member of the original Mickey Mouse Club, and went on to appear in a series of beach party films.-Early life and early stardom:...

  • "(Now and Then There's) A Fool Such as I
    (Now and Then There's) A Fool Such as I
    " A Fool Such as I" is a popular song written by Bill Trader and was published in 1952. Performed by Hank Snow it peaked at number four on the country charts early in 1953....

    " – Elvis Presley
    Elvis Presley
    Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....

  • "Feelin' Fine" – The Drifters
    The Shadows
    The Shadows are a British pop group with a total of 69 UK hit-charted singles: 35 as 'The Shadows' and 34 as 'Cliff Richard and the Shadows', from the 1950s to the 2000s. Cliff Richard in casual conversation with the British rock press frequently refers to the Shadows by their nickname: 'The Shads'...

  • "Forty Miles of Bad Road" – Duane Eddy
    Duane Eddy
    Duane Eddy is a Grammy Award-winning American guitarist. In the late 1950s and early 1960s he had a string of hit records, produced by Lee Hazlewood, which were noted for their characteristically "twangy" sound, including "Rebel Rouser", "Peter Gunn", and "Because They're Young"...

  • "The Happy Organ
    The Happy Organ
    "The Happy Organ" is the name of an instrumental composition made famous by Dave "Baby" Cortez in 1959. Cortez co-composed it with Kurt Wood; both were orphans. A significant portion of the tune bears a strong resemblance to the traditional "Shortnin' Bread" tune. The song topped the Billboard Hot...

    " – Dave "Baby" Cortez
  • "Heartaches by the Number
    Heartaches by the Number
    "Heartaches by the Number" is a popular and country song written by Harlan Howard and published in 1959.The biggest hit version was recorded by Guy Mitchell on August 24, 1959. It reached the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 for the weeks of December 14 and December 21, 1959. The recording was...

    " – Guy Mitchell
    Guy Mitchell
    Guy Mitchell, born Albert George Cernik, was an American pop singer, successful in his homeland, the U.K. and Australia...

  • "He'll Have to Go
    He'll Have to Go
    "He'll Have to Go" is an American country and pop hit recorded on October 15, 1959 by Jim Reeves. The song, released in the fall of 1959, went on to become a massive hit in both genres early in 1960.-Background:...

    " – Jim Reeves
    Jim Reeves
    James Travis Reeves , better known as Jim Reeves, was an American country and popular music singer-songwriter. With records charting from the 1950s to the 1980s, he became well-known for being a practitioner of the Nashville sound...

  • "High Hopes
    High Hopes (1959 song)
    "High Hopes" is a popular song first popularized by Frank Sinatra, with music written by Jimmy Van Heusen and lyrics by Sammy Cahn. It was introduced in the 1959 film A Hole in the Head, nominated for a Grammy and won an Oscar for Best Original Song at the 32nd Academy Awards.-Description:The song...

    " – Frank Sinatra
    Frank Sinatra
    Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...

  • "I'm Blue Again" – Patsy Cline
    Patsy Cline
    Patsy Cline , born Virginia Patterson Hensley in Gore, Virginia, was an American country music singer who enjoyed pop music crossover success during the era of the Nashville sound in the early 1960s...

  • "I Only Have Eyes for You
    I Only Have Eyes for You
    "I Only Have Eyes for You" is a popular song by composer Harry Warren and lyricist Al Dubin, written in 1934 for the film Dames where it was introduced by Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler....

    " – The Flamingos
    The Flamingos
    The Flamingos were a doo wop group from the United States, most popular in the mid to late 1950s and best known for their 1959 cover version of "I Only Have Eyes for You".-Early quintet:...

  • "It Doesn't Matter Anymore
    It Doesn't Matter Anymore
    "It Doesn't Matter Anymore" is a pop ballad written by Paul Anka and recorded by Buddy Holly in 1958. The song reached #13 as a posthumous hit on the Billboard Hot 100 charts in early 1959 shortly after Holly was killed in a plane crash on February 3, 1959. The single was a two-sided hit, backed...

    " – Buddy Holly
    Buddy Holly
    Charles Hardin Holley , known professionally as Buddy Holly, was an American singer-songwriter and a pioneer of rock and roll...

  • "It's All in the Game" – Tommy Edwards
    Tommy Edwards
    Tommy Edwards was a singer and songwriter. His biggest-selling record was with the multi-million-selling song, "It's All in the Game."-Career:...

  • "It's Just a Matter of Time" – Brook Benton
    Brook Benton
    Brook Benton was an American singer and songwriter who was popular with rock and roll, rhythm and blues, and pop music audiences during the late 1950s and early 1960s, when he scored hits such as "It's Just A Matter Of Time" and "Endlessly", many of which he co-wrote.He made a comeback in 1970...

  • "It's Only The Good Times" – Tommy Edwards
    Tommy Edwards
    Tommy Edwards was a singer and songwriter. His biggest-selling record was with the multi-million-selling song, "It's All in the Game."-Career:...

  • "J'ai rêvé" – Dalida
    Dalida
    Dalida , born with Italian name of Iolanda Cristina Gigliotti, was a world-famous singer and actress born in Egypt with Italian origins but naturalised French with the name Yolanda Gigliotti. She spent her early years in Egypt amongst the Italian Egyptian community, but she lived most of her adult...

  • "Jet Black" – The Drifters
    The Shadows
    The Shadows are a British pop group with a total of 69 UK hit-charted singles: 35 as 'The Shadows' and 34 as 'Cliff Richard and the Shadows', from the 1950s to the 2000s. Cliff Richard in casual conversation with the British rock press frequently refers to the Shadows by their nickname: 'The Shads'...

  • "Kansas City" – Wilbert Harrison
    Wilbert Harrison
    Wilbert Harrison was an American rhythm and blues singer, pianist, guitarist and harmonica player.Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, United States, Harrison had a Billboard #1 record in 1959 with the song "Kansas City". The song was written in 1952 and was one of the first credited collaborations...

  • "Kissin' Time" – Bobby Rydell
    Bobby Rydell
    Bobby Rydell is an American professional singer, mainly of rock and roll music. In the early 1960s he was considered a so-called "teen idol"...

  • "La Bamba
    La Bamba (song)
    "La Bamba" is a Mexican folk song, originally from the state of Veracruz, best known from a 1958 adaptation by Ritchie Valens, a top 40 hit in the U.S. charts and one of early rock and roll's best-known songs...

    " – Ritchie Valens
    Ritchie Valens
    Ritchie Valens was a Mexican-American singer, songwriter and guitarist....

  • "Lipstick on Your Collar
    Lipstick on Your Collar (song)
    "Lipstick on Your Collar" is a song written by Edna Lewis and George Goehring which was a 1959 hit single for Connie Francis.Francis recorded the song 15 April 1959 in a session at Metropolitan Studio produced and conducted by Ray Ellis...

    " – Connie Francis
    Connie Francis
    Connie Francis is an American pop singer of Italian heritage and the top-charting female vocalist of the 1950s and 1960s. Although her chart success waned in the second half of the 1960s, Francis remained a top concert draw...

  • "Livin' Lovin' Doll" – Cliff Richard
    Cliff Richard
    Sir Cliff Richard, OBE is a British pop singer, musician, performer, actor, and philanthropist who has sold over an estimated 250 million records worldwide....

     and The Drifters
    The Shadows
    The Shadows are a British pop group with a total of 69 UK hit-charted singles: 35 as 'The Shadows' and 34 as 'Cliff Richard and the Shadows', from the 1950s to the 2000s. Cliff Richard in casual conversation with the British rock press frequently refers to the Shadows by their nickname: 'The Shads'...

  • "Living Doll
    Living Doll (song)
    "Living Doll" is a song written by Lionel Bart made popular by Cliff Richard and the Shadows in 1959. It has topped the UK charts twice; in its original version and a new version recorded in 1986 in aid of Comic Relief....

    " – Cliff Richard
    Cliff Richard
    Sir Cliff Richard, OBE is a British pop singer, musician, performer, actor, and philanthropist who has sold over an estimated 250 million records worldwide....

     and The Drifters
    The Shadows
    The Shadows are a British pop group with a total of 69 UK hit-charted singles: 35 as 'The Shadows' and 34 as 'Cliff Richard and the Shadows', from the 1950s to the 2000s. Cliff Richard in casual conversation with the British rock press frequently refers to the Shadows by their nickname: 'The Shads'...

  • "Lonely Boy" – Paul Anka
    Paul Anka
    Paul Albert Anka, is a Canadian singer, songwriter, and actor.Anka first became famous as a teen idol in the late 1950s and 1960s with hit songs like "Diana'", "Lonely Boy", and "Put Your Head on My Shoulder"...

  • "Lonesome Fella" – The Shadows
    The Shadows
    The Shadows are a British pop group with a total of 69 UK hit-charted singles: 35 as 'The Shadows' and 34 as 'Cliff Richard and the Shadows', from the 1950s to the 2000s. Cliff Richard in casual conversation with the British rock press frequently refers to the Shadows by their nickname: 'The Shads'...

     (B-side to "Saturday Dance")
  • "Lonesome Town" – Ricky Nelson
    Ricky Nelson
    Eric Hilliard Nelson , better known as Ricky Nelson or Rick Nelson, was an American singer-songwriter, instrumentalist, and actor...

  • "Love in Portofino (A San Cristina)" – Dalida
    Dalida
    Dalida , born with Italian name of Iolanda Cristina Gigliotti, was a world-famous singer and actress born in Egypt with Italian origins but naturalised French with the name Yolanda Gigliotti. She spent her early years in Egypt amongst the Italian Egyptian community, but she lived most of her adult...

  • "Love Potion Number Nine" – The Clovers
    The Clovers
    -History:The group formed in 1946 at Armstrong High School in Washington, D.C., with members Harold Lucas, Billy Shelton, and Thomas Woods. John "Buddy" Bailey was added soon after, and they began calling themselves the "Four Clovers", with Bailey on lead...

  • "M.T.A." – The Kingston Trio
    The Kingston Trio
    The Kingston Trio is an American folk and pop music group that helped launch the folk revival of the late 1950s to late 1960s. The group started as a San Francisco Bay Area nightclub act with an original lineup of Dave Guard, Bob Shane, and Nick Reynolds...

  • "Mack the Knife
    Mack the Knife
    "Mack the Knife" or "The Ballad of Mack the Knife", originally "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer", is a song composed by Kurt Weill with lyrics by Bertolt Brecht for their music drama Die Dreigroschenoper, or, as it is known in English, The Threepenny Opera. It premiered in Berlin in 1928 at the...

    " – Bobby Darin
    Bobby Darin
    Bobby Darin , born Walden Robert Cassotto, was an American singer, actor and musician.Darin performed in a range of music genres, including pop, rock, jazz, folk and country...

  • "Mean Streak" – Cliff Richard
    Cliff Richard
    Sir Cliff Richard, OBE is a British pop singer, musician, performer, actor, and philanthropist who has sold over an estimated 250 million records worldwide....

     and The Drifters
    The Shadows
    The Shadows are a British pop group with a total of 69 UK hit-charted singles: 35 as 'The Shadows' and 34 as 'Cliff Richard and the Shadows', from the 1950s to the 2000s. Cliff Richard in casual conversation with the British rock press frequently refers to the Shadows by their nickname: 'The Shads'...

  • "Mr. Blue
    Mr. Blue
    "Mr. Blue" is a popular song written by and first recorded by DeWayne Blackwell in 1959. It became a hit for The Fleetwoods, reaching #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in November 1959 and giving the group its second chart-topping hit of the year.-Cover versions:...

    " – The Fleetwoods
    The Fleetwoods
    The Fleetwoods were a singing trio from Olympia, Washington, United States; formed in the late 1950s. They were responsible for eleven hit songs, beginning with "Come Softly to Me"...

  • "Misty
    Misty (song)
    "Misty" is a jazz standard written in 1954 by the pianist Erroll Garner.Originally composed as an instrumental following the traditional 32-bar format, the tune later had lyrics by Johnny Burke and became the signature song of Johnny Mathis, reaching #12 on the U.S. Pop Singles chart in 1959...

    " – Johnny Mathis
    Johnny Mathis
    John Royce "Johnny" Mathis is an American singer of popular music. Starting his career with singles of standards, he became highly popular as an album artist, with several dozen of his albums achieving gold or platinum status, and 73 making the Billboard charts...

  • "My Happiness" – Connie Francis
    Connie Francis
    Connie Francis is an American pop singer of Italian heritage and the top-charting female vocalist of the 1950s and 1960s. Although her chart success waned in the second half of the 1960s, Francis remained a top concert draw...

     (released in 1958).
  • "Morgen" – Ivo Robic
    Ivo Robic
    Ivo Robić was Croatian singer and songwriter.-Domestic career:Robić began his career as a soloist with the Radio Zagreb Orchestra, while studying at the same time in Zagreb...

  • "My Heart is an Open Book" – Carl Dobkins, Jr.
    Carl Dobkins, Jr.
    Carl Dobkins, Jr. is an American singer best known for his 1959 hit, "My Heart is an Open Book," which went to #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The record sold over one million copies, resulting in the awarding of a gold disc.-Career:The Seniors, Dobkins' backup group, included Keith Ross, Paul...

  • "Never Mind" – Cliff Richard
    Cliff Richard
    Sir Cliff Richard, OBE is a British pop singer, musician, performer, actor, and philanthropist who has sold over an estimated 250 million records worldwide....

     and The Drifters
    The Shadows
    The Shadows are a British pop group with a total of 69 UK hit-charted singles: 35 as 'The Shadows' and 34 as 'Cliff Richard and the Shadows', from the 1950s to the 2000s. Cliff Richard in casual conversation with the British rock press frequently refers to the Shadows by their nickname: 'The Shads'...

     (B-side to "Mean Streak")
  • "Non Dimenticar" – Nat King Cole
    Nat King Cole
    Nathaniel Adams Coles , known professionally as Nat King Cole, was an American musician who first came to prominence as a leading jazz pianist. Although an accomplished pianist, he owes most of his popular musical fame to his soft baritone voice, which he used to perform in big band and jazz genres...

  • "Peggy Sue Got Married
    Peggy Sue Got Married (song)
    "Peggy Sue Got Married" is a song written and sung by Buddy Holly. It was released in 1959 as a 45-rpm single with "Crying, Waiting, Hoping". It refers to his song hit "Peggy Sue". It was one of the first sequels of the rock era...

    " – Buddy Holly
    Buddy Holly
    Charles Hardin Holley , known professionally as Buddy Holly, was an American singer-songwriter and a pioneer of rock and roll...

  • "Personality" – Lloyd Price
    Lloyd Price
    Lloyd Price is an American R&B vocalist. Known as "Mr. Personality", after the name of one of his biggest million-selling hits...

  • "Pillow Talk" – Doris Day
    Doris Day
    Doris Day is an American actress, singer and, since her retirement from show business, an animal rights activist. With an entertainment career that spanned through almost 50 years, Day started her career as a big band singer in 1939, but only began to be noticed after her first hit recording,...

  • "Poison Ivy
    Poison Ivy
    Poison Ivy is a fictional character, a DC Comics supervillainess who is primarily an enemy of Batman. Created by Robert Kanigher and Sheldon Moldoff, she first appeared in Batman #181 ....

    " – The Coasters
    The Coasters
    The Coasters are an American rhythm and blues/rock and roll vocal group that had a string of hits in the late 1950s. Beginning with "Searchin'" and "Young Blood", their most memorable songs were written by the songwriting and producing team of Leiber and Stoller...

  • "Poor Jenny" – The Everly Brothers
    The Everly Brothers
    The Everly Brothers are country-influenced rock and roll performers, known for steel-string guitar playing and close harmony singing...

  • "Plenty Good Lovin" – Connie Francis
    Connie Francis
    Connie Francis is an American pop singer of Italian heritage and the top-charting female vocalist of the 1950s and 1960s. Although her chart success waned in the second half of the 1960s, Francis remained a top concert draw...

  • "Put Your Head on My Shoulder
    Put Your Head on My Shoulder
    "Put Your Head on My Shoulder" is a song written by Canadian singer-songwriter Paul Anka. Anka's version, released as a single in 1959, became very successful, reaching number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100....

    " – Paul Anka
    Paul Anka
    Paul Albert Anka, is a Canadian singer, songwriter, and actor.Anka first became famous as a teen idol in the late 1950s and 1960s with hit songs like "Diana'", "Lonely Boy", and "Put Your Head on My Shoulder"...

  • "Raining in My Heart
    Raining in My Heart
    "Raining in My Heart" is a popular rock and roll ballad recorded by Buddy Holly with the orchestral backing by Dick Jacobs. The music and lyrics are written by the songwriting team of Felice Bryant and Boudleaux Bryant. It was released as a single on Coral Records in 1959, peaking at #88 on the...

    " – Buddy Holly
    Buddy Holly
    Charles Hardin Holley , known professionally as Buddy Holly, was an American singer-songwriter and a pioneer of rock and roll...

  • "Roberta" – Frankie Ford
    Frankie Ford
    Frankie Ford is an American rock and roll and rhythm and blues singer.He is the adopted son of Vincent and Anna Guzzo, who named him Francis Guzzo. He was born in Gretna, Louisiana, across the Mississippi River from New Orleans, where he still lives...

  • "Rockin' Mother" – Frankie Laine
    Frankie Laine
    Frankie Laine, born Francesco Paolo LoVecchio , was a successful American singer, songwriter, and actor whose career spanned 75 years, from his first concerts in 1930 with a marathon dance company to his final performance of "That's My Desire" in 2005...

  • "Rocks and Gravel" – Frankie Laine
    Frankie Laine
    Frankie Laine, born Francesco Paolo LoVecchio , was a successful American singer, songwriter, and actor whose career spanned 75 years, from his first concerts in 1930 with a marathon dance company to his final performance of "That's My Desire" in 2005...

  • "Rummy Polka" – Matys Brothers
    Matys Brothers
    The Matys Brothers were a rockabilly musical act made up of the four Matys brothers, and their sister Vera for a time, were born and raised in Chester, in the Philadelphia area...

  • "Running Bear" – Johnny Preston
    Johnny Preston
    Johnny Preston was an American pop music singer, who was best known for his international number one hit in 1960, "Running Bear".-Life and career:...

  • "Saturday Dance" – The Shadows
    The Shadows
    The Shadows are a British pop group with a total of 69 UK hit-charted singles: 35 as 'The Shadows' and 34 as 'Cliff Richard and the Shadows', from the 1950s to the 2000s. Cliff Richard in casual conversation with the British rock press frequently refers to the Shadows by their nickname: 'The Shads'...

  • "Sea Cruise" – Frankie Ford
    Frankie Ford
    Frankie Ford is an American rock and roll and rhythm and blues singer.He is the adopted son of Vincent and Anna Guzzo, who named him Francis Guzzo. He was born in Gretna, Louisiana, across the Mississippi River from New Orleans, where he still lives...

  • "Sea of Love
    Sea of Love (song)
    "Sea of Love" is a song written by John Phillip Baptiste and George Khoury. Phillips' 1959 recording of the song peaked at #1 on the U.S. Billboard R&B chart and #2 on the Billboard Hot 100. In the UK, Marty Wilde covered the song, and Phillips' version failed to chart there...

    " – Phil Phillips
    Phil Phillips
    Phil Phillips is an American singer and songwriter, best known for his 1959 hit, "Sea of Love".-Biography:...

  • "Since I Don't Have You" – The Skyliners
    The Skyliners
    The Skyliners are an American doo-wop group from Pittsburgh fronted by Jimmy Beaumont. The original lineup also included Wally Lester, Jack Taylor, Joe Verscharen, Louis M. Tutino and Janet Vogel...

  • "Sleep Walk
    Sleep Walk
    "Sleep Walk" is an instrumental steel guitar-based song written, recorded, and released in 1959 by brothers Santo & Johnny ....

    " – Santo & Johnny
    Santo & Johnny
    Santo & Johnny were an Italian-American rock and roll duo from Brooklyn, New York, comprising brothers Santo and Johnny Farina.They are best known for their instrumental "Sleep Walk", which became a regional hit and eventually reached the top of the Billboard pop chart when it was released...

  • "Small World" – Johnny Mathis
    Johnny Mathis
    John Royce "Johnny" Mathis is an American singer of popular music. Starting his career with singles of standards, he became highly popular as an album artist, with several dozen of his albums achieving gold or platinum status, and 73 making the Billboard charts...

  • "Stagger Lee" – Lloyd Price
    Lloyd Price
    Lloyd Price is an American R&B vocalist. Known as "Mr. Personality", after the name of one of his biggest million-selling hits...

  • "Sweet Nothin's" – Brenda Lee
    Brenda Lee
    Brenda Mae Tarpley , known as Brenda Lee, is an American performer who sang rockabilly, pop and country music, and had 37 US chart hits during the 1960s, a number surpassed only by Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Ray Charles and Connie Francis...

  • "Take a Message to Mary" – The Everly Brothers
    The Everly Brothers
    The Everly Brothers are country-influenced rock and roll performers, known for steel-string guitar playing and close harmony singing...

  • "Tall Oak Tree" – Dorsey Burnette
    Dorsey Burnette
    Dorsey Burnette was an early Rockabilly singer. With his younger brother, Johnny Burnette, and a friend named Paul Burlison, he was a founder member of The Rock and Roll Trio.-Background and early career:Dorsey Burnett was born on December 28, 1932 to Willie May and Dorsey Burnett Sr...

  • "A Teenager in Love
    A Teenager in Love
    "A Teenager in Love" is a song written by Doc Pomus and partner Mort Shuman and was originally sung and released by Dion and the Belmonts in March 1959. It reached #5 on the Billboard pop charts. In May 1959, the song held three positions in the British Top 20, the other two versions being by Marty...

    " – Dion and the Belmonts
    Dion and the Belmonts
    Dion and the Belmonts was a leading American vocal group of the late 1950s. The group formed when Dion DiMucci, lead singer , joined The Belmonts - Carlo Mastrangelo, baritone , Freddie Milano, second tenor , and Angelo D'Aleo, first tenor , in late 1957.-History:After an unsuccessful first single,...

  • "The Three Bells
    The Three Bells
    "The Three Bells", also known as "Jimmy Brown" or "Little Jimmy Brown", is a song made popular by The Browns in 1959. The single reached number one on the U.S. country and pop charts,. outperforming a competing version by Dick Flood. The version by The Browns also hit number ten on the Hot R&B...

    " – The Browns
    The Browns
    The Browns were an American country and folk music vocal trio best known for their 1959 Grammy-nominated hit, "The Three Bells". The group, composed of Jim Ed Brown and his sisters Maxine and Bonnie Brown, had a close, smooth harmony characteristic of the Nashville sound, though their music also...

  • "There Goes My Baby" – The Drifters
    The Drifters
    The Drifters are a long-lived American doo-wop and R&B/soul vocal group with a peak in popularity from 1953 to 1963, though several splinter Drifters continue to perform today. They were originally formed to serve as Clyde McPhatter's backing group in 1953...

  • "(Till) I Kissed You
    (Till) I Kissed You
    " I Kissed You" is a song written by Don Everly of The Everly Brothers. It was released as a single in 1959 and peaked at number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100.-Connie Smith version:...

    " – The Everly Brothers
    The Everly Brothers
    The Everly Brothers are country-influenced rock and roll performers, known for steel-string guitar playing and close harmony singing...

  • "Till There Was You
    Till There Was You
    "Till There Was You" is a song written by Meredith Willson for his 1957 musical play The Music Man, and which also appeared in the 1962 movie version...

    " – Anita Bryant
    Anita Bryant
    Anita Jane Bryant is an American singer, former Miss Oklahoma beauty pageant winner, and gay rights opponent. She scored four Top 40 hits in the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s, including "Paper Roses", which reached #5...

  • "Travellin' Light
    Travellin' Light
    Travellin' Light is a UK number-one single by Cliff Richard and The Shadows. It sold 1,600,000 worldwide. It was his last single of the 50's, during the 50's he sold more than 5,000,000 singles worldwide within just 18 months....

     – Cliff Richard
    Cliff Richard
    Sir Cliff Richard, OBE is a British pop singer, musician, performer, actor, and philanthropist who has sold over an estimated 250 million records worldwide....

     and The Shadows
    The Shadows
    The Shadows are a British pop group with a total of 69 UK hit-charted singles: 35 as 'The Shadows' and 34 as 'Cliff Richard and the Shadows', from the 1950s to the 2000s. Cliff Richard in casual conversation with the British rock press frequently refers to the Shadows by their nickname: 'The Shads'...

     (B-side to "Dynamite")
  • "True Love, True Love" / "Dance With Me" – The Drifters
    The Drifters
    The Drifters are a long-lived American doo-wop and R&B/soul vocal group with a peak in popularity from 1953 to 1963, though several splinter Drifters continue to perform today. They were originally formed to serve as Clyde McPhatter's backing group in 1953...

  • "The Twist" – Hank Ballard
    Hank Ballard
    Hank Ballard , born John Henry Kendricks, was a rhythm and blues singer and songwriter, the lead vocalist of Hank Ballard and The Midnighters and one of the first proto-rock 'n' roll artists to emerge in the early 1950s...

  • "Venus" – Frankie Avalon
    Frankie Avalon
    Frankie Avalon is an American actor, singer, playwright, and former teen idol.-Career:By the time he was 12, Avalon was on U.S. television playing his trumpet. As a teenager he played with Bobby Rydell in Rocco and the Saints...

  • "What a Difference a Day Makes" – Dinah Washington
    Dinah Washington
    Dinah Washington, born Ruth Lee Jones , was an American blues, R&B and jazz singer. She has been cited as "the most popular black female recording artist of the '50s", and called "The Queen of the Blues"...

  • "What'd I Say
    What'd I Say
    According to Charles' autobiography, "What'd I Say" was accidental when he improvised it to fill time at the end of a concert in December 1958. He asserts that he never tested songs on audiences before recording them, but "What'd I Say" is an exception...

    " – Ray Charles
    Ray Charles
    Ray Charles Robinson , known by his shortened stage name Ray Charles, was an American musician. He was a pioneer in the genre of soul music during the 1950s by fusing rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues styles into his early recordings with Atlantic Records...

  • "Where the Boys Are" – Connie Francis
    Connie Francis
    Connie Francis is an American pop singer of Italian heritage and the top-charting female vocalist of the 1950s and 1960s. Although her chart success waned in the second half of the 1960s, Francis remained a top concert draw...

  • "Why" – Frankie Avalon
    Frankie Avalon
    Frankie Avalon is an American actor, singer, playwright, and former teen idol.-Career:By the time he was 12, Avalon was on U.S. television playing his trumpet. As a teenager he played with Bobby Rydell in Rocco and the Saints...

  • "A Worried Man" – The Kingston Trio
    The Kingston Trio
    The Kingston Trio is an American folk and pop music group that helped launch the folk revival of the late 1950s to late 1960s. The group started as a San Francisco Bay Area nightclub act with an original lineup of Dave Guard, Bob Shane, and Nick Reynolds...



See also: Hot 100 number-one hits of 1959 (United States)

Published popular music

  • " 'Twixt Twelve and Twenty" w.m. Fredda Gold & Aaron Schroeder
    Aaron Schroeder
    Aaron Schroeder was an American songwriter and music publisher.-Biography:Born Aaron Harold Schroder , he graduated from the school now known as the Fiorello H...

  • "77 Sunset Strip
    77 Sunset Strip
    77 Sunset Strip is an hour-length American television private detective series created by Roy Huggins and starring Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., Roger Smith, and Edd Byrnes....

    "     w.m. Mack David
    Mack David
    Mack David was an American lyricist and songwriter, best known for his work in film and television, with a career spanning from the early 1940s through the early 1970s. Mack was credited with writing lyrics and/or music for over one thousand songs...

     & Jerry Livingston
    Jerry Livingston
    Jerry Livingston was an American songwriter, and dance orchestra pianist.-Biography:...

  • "Along Came Jones
    Along Came Jones (song)
    "Along Came Jones" is a comedic song written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller and originally recorded by The Coasters, but covered by many other groups and individuals.-The song:...

    "     w.m. Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller
  • "All My Tomorrows" w. Sammy Cahn
    Sammy Cahn
    Sammy Cahn was an American lyricist, songwriter and musician. He is best known for his romantic lyrics to films and Broadway songs, as well as stand-alone songs premiered by recording companies in the Greater Los Angeles Area...

     m. Jimmy Van Heusen, from the film A Hole in the Head
    A Hole in the Head
    A Hole in the Head is a comedy film released by United Artists. It was directed by Frank Capra and featured Frank Sinatra, Edward G. Robinson, Eleanor Parker, Keenan Wynn, Carolyn Jones, Thelma Ritter, Dub Taylor and Joi Lansing. The film introduced the song "High Hopes", a Sinatra standard used...

  • "Alvin's Harmonica"     w.m. Ross Bagdasarian
  • "Angela Jones"     w.m. John D. Loudermilk
    John D. Loudermilk
    John D. Loudermilk is an American singer and songwriter.-Biography:Born in Durham, North Carolina, Loudermilk grew up in a family who were members of the Salvation Army faith and was influenced by the church singing. His cousins Ira and Charlie Loudermilk were known professionally as the Louvin...

  • "Anyone Would Love You"     w.m. Harold Rome. Introduced by Andy Griffith
    Andy Griffith
    Andy Samuel Griffith is an American actor, director, producer, Grammy Award-winning Southern-gospel singer, and writer. He gained prominence in the starring role in director Elia Kazan's epic film A Face in the Crowd before he became better known for his television roles, playing the lead...

     and Dolores Gray in the musical Destry Rides Again
    Destry Rides Again
    Destry Rides Again is a western starring Marlene Dietrich and James Stewart. The supporting cast includes Mischa Auer, Charles Winninger, Brian Donlevy, Allen Jenkins, Irene Hervey, Billy Gilbert, Bill Cody, Jr., and Una Merkel. The original Max Brand novel was translated into an "oater" with the...

  • "The Battle Of New Orleans"     trad arr. Jimmy Driftwood
    Jimmy Driftwood
    James Corbitt Morris , known professionally as Jimmy Driftwood or Jimmie Driftwood, was a prolific American folk music songwriter and musician, most famous for his songs "The Battle of New Orleans" and "Tennessee Stud"...

  • "The Best Is Yet to Come
    The Best Is Yet to Come (song)
    "The Best is Yet to Come" is a 1959 song composed by Cy Coleman, with lyrics by Carolyn Leigh. It is associated with Frank Sinatra, who recorded it on his 1964 album It Might as Well Be Swing, accompanied by Count Basie, under the direction of Quincy Jones...

    " w. Carolyn Leigh
    Carolyn Leigh
    Carolyn Leigh was an American lyricist for Broadway, movies, and popular songs. She is best known as the writer with partner Cy Coleman of the pop standards "Witchcraft" and "The Best Is Yet to Come."-Biography:...

     m. Cy Coleman
    Cy Coleman
    Cy Coleman was an American composer, songwriter, and jazz pianist.-Life and career:He was born Seymour Kaufman on June 14, 1929, in New York City to Eastern European Jewish parents, and was raised in the Bronx. His mother, Ida was an apartment landlady and his father was a brickmason...

  • "Best Of Everything"     w. Sammy Cahn
    Sammy Cahn
    Sammy Cahn was an American lyricist, songwriter and musician. He is best known for his romantic lyrics to films and Broadway songs, as well as stand-alone songs premiered by recording companies in the Greater Los Angeles Area...

     m. Lionel Newman, from the film The Best of Everything
    The Best of Everything
    The Best of Everything is the first novel by Rona Jaffe. It is the story of five young employees of a New York publishing company.-Adaptions:...

  • "A Big Hunk o' Love
    A Big Hunk o' Love
    "A Big Hunk o' Love" is a song co-written by Aaron Schroeder and originally recorded by American rock and roll icon Elvis Presley. The song was released as a single on June 23, 1959 by RCA Victor and later topped the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks....

    " w. m. Aaron Schroeder
    Aaron Schroeder
    Aaron Schroeder was an American songwriter and music publisher.-Biography:Born Aaron Harold Schroder , he graduated from the school now known as the Fiorello H...

     & Sid Wyche
  • "Big Iron"     w.m. Marty Robbins
    Marty Robbins
    Martin David Robinson , known professionally as Marty Robbins, was an American singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist...

  • "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
    Breaking Up is Hard to Do
    "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" is a song recorded by Neil Sedaka, and co-written by Sedaka and Howard Greenfield. Sedaka recorded this song twice, in 1962 and 1975, in two vastly different arrangements.-1962 version:...

    "     w.m. Neil Sedaka
    Neil Sedaka
    Neil Sedaka is an American pop/rock singer, pianist, and composer. His career has spanned nearly 55 years, during which time he has sold millions of records as an artist and has written or co-written over 500 songs for himself and other artists, collaborating mostly with lyricists Howard...

     & Howard Greenfield
    Howard Greenfield
    Howard Greenfield was an American lyricist and songwriter, who for several years in the 1960s worked out of the famous Brill Building...

  • "The Children's Marching Song
    This Old Man
    "This Old Man" is an English language children's song, counting and nursery rhyme with a Roud Folk Song Index number of 3550.-Origins and history:The origins of this song are obscure...

    "     trad arr. Malcolm Arnold. Performed by Ingrid Bergman
    Ingrid Bergman
    Ingrid Bergman was a Swedish actress who starred in a variety of European and American films. She won three Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards, and the Tony Award for Best Actress. She is ranked as the fourth greatest female star of American cinema of all time by the American Film Institute...

     and The Orphans' Chorus in the film Inn of the Sixth Happiness
  • "China Doll"     w.m. Cindy Walker
    Cindy Walker
    Cindy Walker was a prolific American songwriter, as well as a country music singer and dancer. As a songwriter Walker was responsible for a large number of popular and enduring songs recorded by many different artists. She adopted a craftsman-like approach to her songwriting, often tailoring...

  • "Ciao, Ciao, Bambina"     w.(Eng) Mitchell Parish (Ital) Eduardo Verde & Domenico Modugno
    Domenico Modugno
    Domenico Modugno was an Italian singer, songwriter, actor, and later in life, a member of the Italian Parliament. He is known for his 1958 international hit song "Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu "...

     m. Domenico Modugno
    Domenico Modugno
    Domenico Modugno was an Italian singer, songwriter, actor, and later in life, a member of the Italian Parliament. He is known for his 1958 international hit song "Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu "...

  • "Climb Ev'ry Mountain
    Climb Ev'ry Mountain
    "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" is a show tune from the 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The Sound of Music. Here it is sung at the close of the first act by the Mother Abbess...

    "     w. Oscar Hammerstein II
    Oscar Hammerstein II
    Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II was an American librettist, theatrical producer, and theatre director of musicals for almost forty years. Hammerstein won eight Tony Awards and was twice awarded an Academy Award for "Best Original Song". Many of his songs are standard repertoire for...

     m. Richard Rodgers
    Richard Rodgers
    Richard Charles Rodgers was an American composer of music for more than 900 songs and for 43 Broadway musicals. He also composed music for films and television. He is best known for his songwriting partnerships with the lyricists Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II...

    . Introduced by Patricia Neway
    Patricia Neway
    Patricia Neway is an American operatic soprano and musical theatre actress who had an active international career during the mid-1940s through the 1970s. She is particularly remembered for creating roles in the world premieres of several contemporary American operas, most notably Magda Sorel in...

     in the musical Sound of Music
  • "Come Softly To Me
    Come Softly to Me
    "Come Softly to Me" is a popular song written by Gretchen Christopher that was published in 1959 and was performed by The Fleetwoods, composed of Christopher, Gary Troxel, and Barbara Ellis. It was the first release for the new Dolphin Records label....

    "     w.m. Gary Troxel, Barbara Ellis & Gretchen Christopher
    The Fleetwoods
    The Fleetwoods were a singing trio from Olympia, Washington, United States; formed in the late 1950s. They were responsible for eleven hit songs, beginning with "Come Softly to Me"...

  • "Delaware
    Delaware (song)
    "Delaware" is a popular song, written by Irving Gordon. The song was published in 1959 and has references to 15 States, in such fashion as: "Where has Oregon, boy?" and "Why did Cali-phone ya?"...

    "     w.m. Irving Gordon
    Irving Gordon
    Irving Gordon was an American songwriter.-Biography:Irving Gordon was born in Brooklyn, New York. As a child, he studied violin, and after attending public schools in New York City, went to work in the Catskill Mountains at some of the resort hotels in the area...

  • "Don't You Know"     w.m. adapt. Bobby Worth
  • "Do-Re-Mi"     w. Oscar Hammerstein II
    Oscar Hammerstein II
    Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II was an American librettist, theatrical producer, and theatre director of musicals for almost forty years. Hammerstein won eight Tony Awards and was twice awarded an Academy Award for "Best Original Song". Many of his songs are standard repertoire for...

     m. Richard Rodgers
    Richard Rodgers
    Richard Charles Rodgers was an American composer of music for more than 900 songs and for 43 Broadway musicals. He also composed music for films and television. He is best known for his songwriting partnerships with the lyricists Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II...

    . Introduced by Mary Martin
    Mary Martin
    Mary Virginia Martin was an American actress and singer. She originated many roles over her career including Nellie Forbush in South Pacific and Maria in The Sound of Music. She was named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1989...

     in the musical Sound of Music. Sung by Julie Andrews
    Julie Andrews
    Dame Julia Elizabeth Andrews, DBE is an English film and stage actress, singer, and author. She is the recipient of Golden Globe, Emmy, Grammy, BAFTA, People's Choice Award, Theatre World Award, Screen Actors Guild and Academy Award honors...

     in the film version.
  • "Dream Lover
    Dream Lover
    "Dream Lover" is a song written and recorded by Bobby Darin on March 5, 1959. It was produced by Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler and engineered by Tom Dowd. It is considered a soulful rock song. The song became a multi-million seller, reaching #2 in US charts and was #1 in UK for three weeks during...

    "     w.m. Bobby Darin
    Bobby Darin
    Bobby Darin , born Walden Robert Cassotto, was an American singer, actor and musician.Darin performed in a range of music genres, including pop, rock, jazz, folk and country...

  • "Early In The Morning"     adapt Bruce Belland & Glen Larson
  • "Edelweiss"     w. Oscar Hammerstein II
    Oscar Hammerstein II
    Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II was an American librettist, theatrical producer, and theatre director of musicals for almost forty years. Hammerstein won eight Tony Awards and was twice awarded an Academy Award for "Best Original Song". Many of his songs are standard repertoire for...

     m. Richard Rodgers
    Richard Rodgers
    Richard Charles Rodgers was an American composer of music for more than 900 songs and for 43 Broadway musicals. He also composed music for films and television. He is best known for his songwriting partnerships with the lyricists Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II...

    . Introduced by Mary Martin
    Mary Martin
    Mary Virginia Martin was an American actress and singer. She originated many roles over her career including Nellie Forbush in South Pacific and Maria in The Sound of Music. She was named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1989...

     in the musical Sound of Music. Sung by Julie Andrews
    Julie Andrews
    Dame Julia Elizabeth Andrews, DBE is an English film and stage actress, singer, and author. She is the recipient of Golden Globe, Emmy, Grammy, BAFTA, People's Choice Award, Theatre World Award, Screen Actors Guild and Academy Award honors...

     and Christopher Plummer
    Christopher Plummer
    Arthur Christopher Orne Plummer, CC is a Canadian theatre, film and television actor. He made his film debut in 1957's Stage Struck, and notable early film performances include Night of the Generals, The Return of the Pink Panther and The Man Who Would Be King.In a career that spans over five...

     in the film version.
  • "El Paso
    El Paso (song)
    "El Paso" is a country and western ballad written and originally recorded by Marty Robbins, and first released on Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs in September 1959. It was released as a single the following month, and became a major hit on both the country and pop music charts, reaching number...

    "     w.m. Marty Robbins
    Marty Robbins
    Martin David Robinson , known professionally as Marty Robbins, was an American singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist...

  • "Endlessly"     w.m. Clyde Otis & Brook Benton
    Brook Benton
    Brook Benton was an American singer and songwriter who was popular with rock and roll, rhythm and blues, and pop music audiences during the late 1950s and early 1960s, when he scored hits such as "It's Just A Matter Of Time" and "Endlessly", many of which he co-wrote.He made a comeback in 1970...

  • "Everything's Coming Up Roses
    Everything's Coming up Roses
    "Everything's Coming Up Roses" is a song from the 1959 Broadway musical Gypsy: A Musical Fable, with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and music by Jule Styne in which it was introduced by Ethel Merman....

    "     w. Stephen Sondheim
    Stephen Sondheim
    Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award...

     m. Jule Styne
    Jule Styne
    Jule Styne was a British-born American songwriter especially famous for a series of Broadway musicals, which included several very well known and frequently revived shows.-Early life:...

    . Introduced by Ethel Merman
    Ethel Merman
    Ethel Merman was an American actress and singer. Known primarily for her powerful voice and roles in musical theatre, she has been called "the undisputed First Lady of the musical comedy stage." Among the many standards introduced by Merman in Broadway musicals are "I Got Rhythm", "Everything's...

     in the musical Gypsy
    Gypsy: A Musical Fable
    Gypsy is a musical with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and a book by Arthur Laurents. Gypsy is loosely based on the 1957 memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee, the famous striptease artist, and focuses on her mother, Rose, whose name has become synonymous with "the ultimate show business...

    . Sung in the film version by Lisa Kirk
    Lisa Kirk
    Lisa Kirk was an American actress and singer noted for her comic talents and rich contralto .-Career:...

     dubbing for Rosalind Russell
    Rosalind Russell
    Rosalind Russell was an American actress of stage and screen, perhaps best known for her role as a fast-talking newspaper reporter in the Howard Hawks screwball comedy His Girl Friday, as well as the role of Mame Dennis in the film Auntie Mame...

    .
  • "Frankie"     w. Howard Greenfield
    Howard Greenfield
    Howard Greenfield was an American lyricist and songwriter, who for several years in the 1960s worked out of the famous Brill Building...

     m. Neil Sedaka
    Neil Sedaka
    Neil Sedaka is an American pop/rock singer, pianist, and composer. His career has spanned nearly 55 years, during which time he has sold millions of records as an artist and has written or co-written over 500 songs for himself and other artists, collaborating mostly with lyricists Howard...

  • "Game Of Poker"     w. Johnny Mercer
    Johnny Mercer
    John Herndon "Johnny" Mercer was an American lyricist, songwriter and singer. He is best known as a lyricist, but he also composed music. He was also a popular singer who recorded his own songs as well as those written by others...

     m. Harold Arlen
    Harold Arlen
    Harold Arlen was an American composer of popular music, having written over 500 songs, a number of which have become known the world over. In addition to composing the songs for The Wizard of Oz, including the classic 1938 song, "Over the Rainbow,” Arlen is a highly regarded contributor to the...

    , from the musical Saratoga
    Saratoga (musical)
    Saratoga is a musical with a book by Morton DaCosta, lyrics by Johnny Mercer, and music by Harold Arlen.Based on Edna Ferber's sprawling novel Saratoga Trunk, it focuses on Clio Dulaine, an "illegitimate" Creole woman who seeks revenge on the New Orleans family who exiled her mother when she became...

  • "Goodbye Jimmy, Goodbye"     w.m. Jack Vaughn
  • "Greenfields"     w.m. Terry Gilkyson
    Terry Gilkyson
    Hamilton H. Gilkyson III , better known as Terry Gilkyson, was an American folk singer, composer, and lyricist.-Biography:...

    , Rich Dehr & Frank Miller
  • "Handy Man"     w.m. Otis Blackwell
    Otis Blackwell
    Otis Blackwell was an American songwriter, singer, and pianist, whose work significantly influenced rock 'n' roll...

     & Jimmy Jones
    Jimmy Jones (singer)
    Jimmy Jones is an African American singer-songwriter, who moved to New York while a teenager. According to Allmusic journalist, Steve Huey, "best known for his 1960 R&B smash, "Handy Man," Jones sang in a smooth yet soulful falsetto modeled on the likes of Clyde McPhatter and Sam...

  • "The Hanging Tree"     w. Mack David
    Mack David
    Mack David was an American lyricist and songwriter, best known for his work in film and television, with a career spanning from the early 1940s through the early 1970s. Mack was credited with writing lyrics and/or music for over one thousand songs...

     m. Jerry Livingston
    Jerry Livingston
    Jerry Livingston was an American songwriter, and dance orchestra pianist.-Biography:...

    , Introduced by Marty Robbins
    Marty Robbins
    Martin David Robinson , known professionally as Marty Robbins, was an American singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist...

     in the film The Hanging Tree
    The Hanging Tree
    The Hanging Tree is a 1959 movie directed by Delmer Daves. Karl Malden took over directing duties for several days when Daves fell ill. The film stars Gary Cooper, Maria Schell, George C...

  • "Happy Anniversary
    Happy Anniversary (1959 song)
    "Happy Anniversary" is a popular song with music written by Robert Allen and lyrics by Al Stillman and published in 1959. It was introduced in the movie of the same name. Recordings have been made by The Four Lads, Jane Morgan, Maureen Evans and Joan Regan....

    "     w. Al Stillman
    Al Stillman
    Al Stillman was an American lyricist.-Biography:Stillman was born in New York City. His name was originally Albert Silverman, but changed it to that of a well-known New York banking family. He was Jewish. He attended New York University. After graduation, he contributed to Franklin P...

     m. Robert Allen
  • "The Happy Organ"     w.m. Ken Wood, David Clowney & James Kreigsmann
  • "Heartaches By The Number
    Heartaches by the Number
    "Heartaches by the Number" is a popular and country song written by Harlan Howard and published in 1959.The biggest hit version was recorded by Guy Mitchell on August 24, 1959. It reached the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 for the weeks of December 14 and December 21, 1959. The recording was...

    "     w.m. Harlan Howard
    Harlan Howard
    Harlan Perry Howard was a prolific American songwriter, principally in country music. In a career spanning six decades, Howard wrote a large number of popular and enduring songs, recorded by a variety of different artists...

  • "He'll Have To Go
    He'll Have to Go
    "He'll Have to Go" is an American country and pop hit recorded on October 15, 1959 by Jim Reeves. The song, released in the fall of 1959, went on to become a massive hit in both genres early in 1960.-Background:...

    "     w.m. Joe Allison
    Joe Allison
    Joe Marion Allison was an American Hall of Fame songwriter, a radio and television personality, a record producer, and a country music business executive....

     & Audrey Allison
  • "High Hopes
    High Hopes (1959 song)
    "High Hopes" is a popular song first popularized by Frank Sinatra, with music written by Jimmy Van Heusen and lyrics by Sammy Cahn. It was introduced in the 1959 film A Hole in the Head, nominated for a Grammy and won an Oscar for Best Original Song at the 32nd Academy Awards.-Description:The song...

    "     w. Sammy Cahn
    Sammy Cahn
    Sammy Cahn was an American lyricist, songwriter and musician. He is best known for his romantic lyrics to films and Broadway songs, as well as stand-alone songs premiered by recording companies in the Greater Los Angeles Area...

     m. Jimmy Van Heusen. Introduced by Frank Sinatra
    Frank Sinatra
    Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...

     and Eddie Hodges
    Eddie Hodges
    Eddie Hodges is a United States former child actor and recording artist who left show business as an adult.-Early life and career:Hodges was born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, U.S. Hodges traveled to New York City with his family in 1952...

     in the film A Hole in the Head
    A Hole in the Head
    A Hole in the Head is a comedy film released by United Artists. It was directed by Frank Capra and featured Frank Sinatra, Edward G. Robinson, Eleanor Parker, Keenan Wynn, Carolyn Jones, Thelma Ritter, Dub Taylor and Joi Lansing. The film introduced the song "High Hopes", a Sinatra standard used...

    .
  • "I Ain't Never"     w.m. Mel Tillis
    Mel Tillis
    Lonnie Melvin Tillis , known professionally as Mel Tillis, is an American country music singer. Although he recorded songs since the late 1950s, his biggest success occurred in the 1970s, with a long list of Top 10 hits....

  • "I Feel Sorry For The Girl"     w.m. Glenn Paxton, Robert Goldman & George Weiss
  • "I Know"     w.m. Carl Stutz & Edith Lindeman
  • "I Need Your Love Tonight"     w.m. Sid Wayne & Bix Reichner
  • "I Wanna Be Around
    I Wanna Be Around
    "I Wanna Be Around" is a popular song. In the lyrics, the singer declares that he "wants to be around" when the woman who spurned him inevitably gets her heart broken....

    "     w.m. Johnny Mercer
    Johnny Mercer
    John Herndon "Johnny" Mercer was an American lyricist, songwriter and singer. He is best known as a lyricist, but he also composed music. He was also a popular singer who recorded his own songs as well as those written by others...

     & Sadie Vimmerstedt
  • "If I Ever Fall In Love Again"     w. Peter Wildeblood m. Peter Greenwell
  • "I'll Never Fall In Love Again"     Johnnie Ray
    Johnnie Ray
    Johnnie Ray was an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. Popular for most of the 1950s, Ray has been cited by critics as a major precursor of what would become rock and roll, for his jazz and blues-influenced music and his animated stage personality.-Early life:John Alvin Ray was born in...

  • "I'm Gonna Get Married"     w.m. Lloyd Price
    Lloyd Price
    Lloyd Price is an American R&B vocalist. Known as "Mr. Personality", after the name of one of his biggest million-selling hits...

     & Harold Logan
  • "I'm Looking Out The Window"     John Jacob Niles, Don Raye
  • "I'm Never Gonna Tell"     Hoffman, Manning, Markwell
  • "In A Little While"     w. Marshall Barer m. Mary Rodgers
  • "It Doesn't Matter Anymore"     w.m. Paul Anka
    Paul Anka
    Paul Albert Anka, is a Canadian singer, songwriter, and actor.Anka first became famous as a teen idol in the late 1950s and 1960s with hit songs like "Diana'", "Lonely Boy", and "Put Your Head on My Shoulder"...

  • "Kansas City"     w.m. Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller
  • "Kookie, Kookie (Lend Me Your Comb)"     w.m. Irving Taylor
    Irving Taylor (songwriter)
    Irving Taylor , was a Jewish-American composer, lyricist, and screenwriter. He enlisted in the US Navy the day after Pearl Harbor...

  • "Let Me Entertain You"     w. Stephen Sondheim
    Stephen Sondheim
    Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award...

     m. Jule Styne
    Jule Styne
    Jule Styne was a British-born American songwriter especially famous for a series of Broadway musicals, which included several very well known and frequently revived shows.-Early life:...

    . Introduced by Sandra Church
    Sandra Church
    Sandra Church is an American actress in films and theatre, primarily known for her performance as Gypsy Rose Lee in the 1959 musical Gypsy: A Musical Fable, for which she was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical.- Early life :Church was born and raised in San...

     and chorus in the musical Gypsy
    Gypsy: A Musical Fable
    Gypsy is a musical with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and a book by Arthur Laurents. Gypsy is loosely based on the 1957 memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee, the famous striptease artist, and focuses on her mother, Rose, whose name has become synonymous with "the ultimate show business...

    .
  • "Like Young"     m. Andre Previn
    André Previn
    André George Previn, KBE is an American pianist, conductor, and composer. He is considered one of the most versatile musicians in the world, and is the winner of four Academy Awards for his film work and ten Grammy Awards for his recordings. -Early Life:Previn was born in...

  • "Lipstick On Your Collar"     w. Eddie Lewis m. George Goehring
  • "Little Donkey"     w.m. Eve Boswell
  • "The Little Drummer Boy"     w.m. adapt. Henry Onorati, Katherine Davis & Harry Simeone
    Harry Simeone
    Harry Moses Simeone was a distinguished music arranger, conductor and composer, best known for arranging the famous Christmas song "The Little Drummer Boy", for which he received co-writing credit.-Early years:Harry grew up listening to stars performing at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City,...

  • "Little Tin Box"     w. Sheldon Harnick m. Jerry Bock
    Jerry Bock
    Jerrold Lewis "Jerry" Bock was an American musical theater composer. He received the Tony Award for Best Musical and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama with Sheldon Harnick for their 1959 musical Fiorello! and the Tony Award for Best Composer and Lyricist for the 1964 musical Fiddler on the Roof with...

  • "The Little White Bull"     Lionel Bart
    Lionel Bart
    Lionel Bart was a writer and composer of British pop music and musicals, best known for creating the book, music and lyrics for Oliver!-Early life:...

    , Michael Pratt, Jimmy Bennett
  • "Living Doll
    Living Doll (song)
    "Living Doll" is a song written by Lionel Bart made popular by Cliff Richard and the Shadows in 1959. It has topped the UK charts twice; in its original version and a new version recorded in 1986 in aid of Comic Relief....

    "     w.m. Lionel Bart
    Lionel Bart
    Lionel Bart was a writer and composer of British pop music and musicals, best known for creating the book, music and lyrics for Oliver!-Early life:...

  • "Lock Up Your Daughters"     w. Lionel Bart
    Lionel Bart
    Lionel Bart was a writer and composer of British pop music and musicals, best known for creating the book, music and lyrics for Oliver!-Early life:...

     m. Laurie Johnson
  • "Lonely Blue Boy"     F & B Wiseman
  • "Lonely Boy"     w.m. Paul Anka
    Paul Anka
    Paul Albert Anka, is a Canadian singer, songwriter, and actor.Anka first became famous as a teen idol in the late 1950s and 1960s with hit songs like "Diana'", "Lonely Boy", and "Put Your Head on My Shoulder"...

  • "Lonely Goatherd"     w. Oscar Hammerstein II
    Oscar Hammerstein II
    Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II was an American librettist, theatrical producer, and theatre director of musicals for almost forty years. Hammerstein won eight Tony Awards and was twice awarded an Academy Award for "Best Original Song". Many of his songs are standard repertoire for...

     m. Richard Rodgers
    Richard Rodgers
    Richard Charles Rodgers was an American composer of music for more than 900 songs and for 43 Broadway musicals. He also composed music for films and television. He is best known for his songwriting partnerships with the lyricists Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II...

    . Introduced by Mary Martin
    Mary Martin
    Mary Virginia Martin was an American actress and singer. She originated many roles over her career including Nellie Forbush in South Pacific and Maria in The Sound of Music. She was named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1989...

     and the children in the musical Sound of Music. Performed by Julie Andrews
    Julie Andrews
    Dame Julia Elizabeth Andrews, DBE is an English film and stage actress, singer, and author. She is the recipient of Golden Globe, Emmy, Grammy, BAFTA, People's Choice Award, Theatre World Award, Screen Actors Guild and Academy Award honors...

     in the film version.
  • "Lonely Street"     w.m. Carl Belew, Kenny Sowder & W. S. Stevenson
  • "Love Potion No. 9
    Love Potion No. 9 (song)
    "Love Potion No. 9" is a song written in 1959 by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. It was originally performed by The Clovers.-Story:The song describes a man seeking help finding love, so he talks to a Gypsy, who determines through palm reading that he needs "love potion number 9"...

    "     w.m. Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller
  • "Love Will Find Out The Way"     w.m. Glenn Paxton, Robert Goldman & George Weiss
  • "Lullaby In Ragtime"     w.m. Sylvia Fine
    Sylvia Fine
    Sylvia Fine was an American lyricist, composer, producer and the wife of the comedian Danny Kaye...

    . Introduced by Danny Kaye
    Danny Kaye
    Danny Kaye was a celebrated American actor, singer, dancer, and comedian...

     in the film The Five Pennies
    The Five Pennies
    The Five Pennies was a semi-biographical 1959 film starring Danny Kaye as cornet player and bandleader Red Nichols. Other cast members included Barbara Bel Geddes, Harry Guardino, Bob Crosby, Louis Armstrong, Susan Gordon, and Tuesday Weld...

    .
  • "The M.T.A."     w.m. adapt. Jacqueline Steiner & Bess Hawes
  • "Maria
    Maria (1959 song)
    "Maria", sometimes known as "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?" is a show tune from the 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, The Sound of Music....

    "     w. Oscar Hammerstein II
    Oscar Hammerstein II
    Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II was an American librettist, theatrical producer, and theatre director of musicals for almost forty years. Hammerstein won eight Tony Awards and was twice awarded an Academy Award for "Best Original Song". Many of his songs are standard repertoire for...

     m. Richard Rodgers
    Richard Rodgers
    Richard Charles Rodgers was an American composer of music for more than 900 songs and for 43 Broadway musicals. He also composed music for films and television. He is best known for his songwriting partnerships with the lyricists Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II...

    . Introduced by Patricia Neway
    Patricia Neway
    Patricia Neway is an American operatic soprano and musical theatre actress who had an active international career during the mid-1940s through the 1970s. She is particularly remembered for creating roles in the world premieres of several contemporary American operas, most notably Magda Sorel in...

    , Muriel O'Malley, Elizabeth Howell and Karen Shepard in the musical Sound of Music.
  • "Marina"     w.(Eng) Ray Maxwell m. Rocco Granata
  • "The Mating Game" w. Lee Adams m. Charles Strouse. Theme song from the film The Mating Game
    The Mating Game (film)
    The Mating Game is an MGM color film made in 1959 and starring Debbie Reynolds, Tony Randall and Paul Douglas in his final screen appearance. Reynolds sings the title song during the opening credits....

  • "May You Always"     w.m. Larry Markes & Dick Charles
  • "Memphis"     w.m. Chuck Berry
    Chuck Berry
    Charles Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter, and one of the pioneers of rock and roll music. With songs such as "Maybellene" , "Roll Over Beethoven" , "Rock and Roll Music" and "Johnny B...

  • "Milord
    Milord (song)
    "Milord" or "Ombre de la Rue" is a 1959 song , famously sung by Édith Piaf. It is a chanson that recounts the feelings of a lower-class "girl of the port" who develops a crush on an elegantly attired apparent upper-class British traveller , whom she has seen walking the streets of the...

    "     w. (Eng) B. G. Lewis (Fr) Joseph Mustacchi m. Marguerite Monnot
    Marguerite Monnot
    Marguerite Monnot was a French songwriter and composer best known for having written many of the songs performed by Édith Piaf and for the music in the stage musical Irma La Douce....

  • "Morgen"     w. (Eng) Noel Sherman (Ger) Peter Mosser m. Peter Mosser
  • "Mr. Blue
    Mr. Blue
    "Mr. Blue" is a popular song written by and first recorded by DeWayne Blackwell in 1959. It became a hit for The Fleetwoods, reaching #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in November 1959 and giving the group its second chart-topping hit of the year.-Cover versions:...

    "     w.m. Dewayne Blackwell
  • "My Favourite Things"     w. Oscar Hammerstein II
    Oscar Hammerstein II
    Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II was an American librettist, theatrical producer, and theatre director of musicals for almost forty years. Hammerstein won eight Tony Awards and was twice awarded an Academy Award for "Best Original Song". Many of his songs are standard repertoire for...

     m. Richard Rodgers
    Richard Rodgers
    Richard Charles Rodgers was an American composer of music for more than 900 songs and for 43 Broadway musicals. He also composed music for films and television. He is best known for his songwriting partnerships with the lyricists Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II...

    . Introduced by Patricia Neway
    Patricia Neway
    Patricia Neway is an American operatic soprano and musical theatre actress who had an active international career during the mid-1940s through the 1970s. She is particularly remembered for creating roles in the world premieres of several contemporary American operas, most notably Magda Sorel in...

     and Mary Martin
    Mary Martin
    Mary Virginia Martin was an American actress and singer. She originated many roles over her career including Nellie Forbush in South Pacific and Maria in The Sound of Music. She was named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1989...

     in the musical Sound of Music. Performed in the film version by Julie Andrews
    Julie Andrews
    Dame Julia Elizabeth Andrews, DBE is an English film and stage actress, singer, and author. She is the recipient of Golden Globe, Emmy, Grammy, BAFTA, People's Choice Award, Theatre World Award, Screen Actors Guild and Academy Award honors...

    .
  • "My Heart Is An Open Book"     w. Hal David
    Hal David
    Harold Lane "Hal" David is an American lyricist. He grew up in Brooklyn, New York. David is best known for his collaborations with composer Burt Bacharach.-Career:...

     m. Lee Pockriss
    Lee Pockriss
    Lee Julian Pockriss was an American songwriter who wrote many well-known popular songs and several scores for films and Broadway shows.-Early life and career:...

  • "My Wish Came True"     w.m. Ivory Joe Hunter
    Ivory Joe Hunter
    Ivory Joe Hunter was an American rhythm and blues singer, songwriter, and pianist. After a series of hits on the US R&B chart starting in the mid 1940s, he became more widely known for his hit recording, "Since I Met You Baby" . He was billed as The Baron of the Boogie, and also known as The...

  • "Oh! Carol
    Oh! Carol
    "Oh! Carol", sometimes just "Oh Carol" is an international hit written by Neil Sedaka in 1958 about his then-girlfriend, Carol Klein, later to become Carole King. The song was co-written with Howard Greenfield. The song reached #9 in the American charts in 1959. It also earned Sedaka his first #1...

    "     w. Howard Greenfield
    Howard Greenfield
    Howard Greenfield was an American lyricist and songwriter, who for several years in the 1960s worked out of the famous Brill Building...

     m. Neil Sedaka
    Neil Sedaka
    Neil Sedaka is an American pop/rock singer, pianist, and composer. His career has spanned nearly 55 years, during which time he has sold millions of records as an artist and has written or co-written over 500 songs for himself and other artists, collaborating mostly with lyricists Howard...

  • "Only Love Me"     w. (Eng) Mann Curtis (Ital) Pinchi m. V. Panzuti
  • "Only Sixteen"     w.m. Barbara Campbell
  • "Personality"     w.m. Lloyd Price
    Lloyd Price
    Lloyd Price is an American R&B vocalist. Known as "Mr. Personality", after the name of one of his biggest million-selling hits...

     & Harold Logan
  • "Pick Me Up On Your Way Down"     w.m. Harlan Howard
    Harlan Howard
    Harlan Perry Howard was a prolific American songwriter, principally in country music. In a career spanning six decades, Howard wrote a large number of popular and enduring songs, recorded by a variety of different artists...

  • "Pillow Talk"     w.m. Buddy Pepper & Inez James. Introduced by Doris Day
    Doris Day
    Doris Day is an American actress, singer and, since her retirement from show business, an animal rights activist. With an entertainment career that spanned through almost 50 years, Day started her career as a big band singer in 1939, but only began to be noticed after her first hit recording,...

     and Rock Hudson
    Rock Hudson
    Roy Harold Scherer, Jr., later Roy Harold Fitzgerald , known professionally as Rock Hudson, was an American film and television actor, recognized as a romantic leading man during the 1950s and 1960s, most notably in several romantic comedies with Doris Day.Hudson was voted "Star of the Year",...

     in the film of the same name.
  • "La Plume De Ma Tante"     w.m. Al Hoffman & Dick Manning
  • "Poison Ivy
    Poison Ivy
    Poison Ivy is a fictional character, a DC Comics supervillainess who is primarily an enemy of Batman. Created by Robert Kanigher and Sheldon Moldoff, she first appeared in Batman #181 ....

    "     w.m. Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller
  • "Promise Me A Rose"     w.m. Bob Merrill
    Bob Merrill
    Bob Merrill was an American songwriter, theatrical composer, lyricist, and screenwriter.Merrill was born Henry Merrill Levan in Atlantic City, New Jersey and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Following a stint with the Army during World War II, he moved to Hollywood, where he worked as a...

    , introduced by Eileen Herlie
    Eileen Herlie
    Eileen Herlie was a Scottish-American actress.-Life and career:Eileen Herlie was born Eileen Isobel Herlihy to a Catholic father and a Protestant mother in Glasgow, Scotland, and was one of five children. Herlie was trained as a theatre actress. Among her West End London theatre successes were The...

     in the musical Take Me Along
    Take Me Along
    Take Me Along is a musical based on the Eugene O'Neill play Ah, Wilderness, with music and lyrics by Bob Merrill and book by Joseph Stein and Robert Russell.-Background:...

  • "Put Your Head On My Shoulder"     w.m. Paul Anka
    Paul Anka
    Paul Albert Anka, is a Canadian singer, songwriter, and actor.Anka first became famous as a teen idol in the late 1950s and 1960s with hit songs like "Diana'", "Lonely Boy", and "Put Your Head on My Shoulder"...

  • "Quiet Village"     m. Les Baxter
    Les Baxter
    Les Baxter was an American musician and composer.Baxter studied piano at the Detroit Conservatory before moving to Los Angeles for further studies at Pepperdine College. Abandoning a concert career as a pianist, he turned to popular music as a singer...

  • "Running Bear"     w.m. J. P. Richardson
    The Big Bopper
    Jiles Perry "J. P." Richardson, Jr. also commonly known as The Big Bopper, was an American disc jockey, singer, and songwriter whose big voice and exuberant personality made him an early rock and roll star...

  • "The Same Old Me"     F. Owen
  • "Sea Of Love"     w.m. George Khoury & Phil Baptiste
  • "See You In September"     w. Sid Wayne m. Sherman Edwards
  • "Seven Little Girls Sitting In The Back Seat"     w. Bob Hilliard
    Bob Hilliard
    Bob Hilliard was an American lyricist. He wrote the words for the songs; "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning", "Any Day Now", "Dear Hearts and Gentle People", "Our Day Will Come", "My Little Corner of the World", and "Seven Little Girls ".-Career:Born in New York City, New York, and after...

     m. Lee Pockriss
    Lee Pockriss
    Lee Julian Pockriss was an American songwriter who wrote many well-known popular songs and several scores for films and Broadway shows.-Early life and career:...

  • "Shout"     O'Kelly Isley, Ronald Isley
    Ronald Isley
    Ronald Isley is an American singer and is known as the lead singer and founding member of the family music group The Isley Brothers.-Career:...

    , Rudolph Isley
    Rudolph Isley
    Rudolph Bernard Isley , better known as Rudy Isley, is an American singer-songwriter and is one of the founding members of the legendary family group, The Isley Brothers.-Biography:...

  • "Side Saddle"     m. Trevor H. Stanford
  • "Sleep Walk"     m. Ann Farina, Johnny Farina & Santo Farina
    Santo & Johnny
    Santo & Johnny were an Italian-American rock and roll duo from Brooklyn, New York, comprising brothers Santo and Johnny Farina.They are best known for their instrumental "Sleep Walk", which became a regional hit and eventually reached the top of the Billboard pop chart when it was released...

  • "Small World"     w. Stephen Sondheim
    Stephen Sondheim
    Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award...

     m. Jule Styne
    Jule Styne
    Jule Styne was a British-born American songwriter especially famous for a series of Broadway musicals, which included several very well known and frequently revived shows.-Early life:...

    . Introduced by Ethel Merman
    Ethel Merman
    Ethel Merman was an American actress and singer. Known primarily for her powerful voice and roles in musical theatre, she has been called "the undisputed First Lady of the musical comedy stage." Among the many standards introduced by Merman in Broadway musicals are "I Got Rhythm", "Everything's...

     and Jack Klugman
    Jack Klugman
    Jacob Joachim "Jack" Klugman is an American stage, film and television actor known for his roles in sitcoms, movies, and television and on Broadway...

     in the musical Gypsy
    Gypsy: A Musical Fable
    Gypsy is a musical with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and a book by Arthur Laurents. Gypsy is loosely based on the 1957 memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee, the famous striptease artist, and focuses on her mother, Rose, whose name has become synonymous with "the ultimate show business...

  • "Sorry, I Ran All The Way Home"     w.m. Harry Giosasi & Artie Zwirn
  • "The Sound Of Music
    The Sound of Music (song)
    “The Sound of Music” is the title song from The Sound of Music, composed by Richard Rodgers to lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It was originally sung by Mary Martin in the 1959 stage musical of the same name. It was sung by Julie Andrews in the 1961 film, with a reprise by the Von Trapp family...

    "     w. Oscar Hammerstein II
    Oscar Hammerstein II
    Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II was an American librettist, theatrical producer, and theatre director of musicals for almost forty years. Hammerstein won eight Tony Awards and was twice awarded an Academy Award for "Best Original Song". Many of his songs are standard repertoire for...

     m. Richard Rodgers
    Richard Rodgers
    Richard Charles Rodgers was an American composer of music for more than 900 songs and for 43 Broadway musicals. He also composed music for films and television. He is best known for his songwriting partnerships with the lyricists Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II...

    . Introduced by Mary Martin
    Mary Martin
    Mary Virginia Martin was an American actress and singer. She originated many roles over her career including Nellie Forbush in South Pacific and Maria in The Sound of Music. She was named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1989...

     in the musical Sound of Music.
  • "Strange Are The Ways Of Love"     w. Ned Washington
    Ned Washington
    Ned Washington was an American lyricist.-Biography:Washington was nominated for eleven Academy Awards from 1940 to 1962...

     m. Dimitri Tiomkin
    Dimitri Tiomkin
    Dimitri Zinovievich Tiomkin was a Russian-born Hollywood film score composer and conductor. He is considered "one of the giants of Hollywood movie music." Musically trained in Russia, he is best known for his westerns, "where his expansive, muscular style had its greatest impact." Tiomkin...

    , from the film western The Young Land
    The Young Land
    The Young Land is a 1959 American Western drama film directed by Ted Tetzlaff starring Patrick Wayne and Dennis Hopper. The cinematography was by Technicolor developer Winton C. Hoch and Henry Sharp. The film was distributed by Columbia Pictures Corporation.It is the third and final of only 3 films...

  • "Summertime Love"     w.m. Frank Loesser
    Frank Loesser
    Frank Henry Loesser was an American songwriter who wrote the lyrics and scores to the Broadway hits Guys and Dolls and How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, among others. He won separate Tony Awards for the music and lyrics in both shows, as well as sharing the Pulitzer Prize for...

  • "Sweet Nothin's"     Ronnie Self
    Ronnie Self
    Ronnie Self was a United States rockabilly singer and songwriter. His solo career was unsuccessful, despite being signed to contracts with Columbia and then Decca from the late 1950s through the early 1960s. His only charted single was "Bop-A-Lena"; recorded in 1957 and released in 1958, it...

  • "Take Me Along"     w.m. Bob Merrill
    Bob Merrill
    Bob Merrill was an American songwriter, theatrical composer, lyricist, and screenwriter.Merrill was born Henry Merrill Levan in Atlantic City, New Jersey and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Following a stint with the Army during World War II, he moved to Hollywood, where he worked as a...

    . Introduced by Jackie Gleason
    Jackie Gleason
    Jackie Gleason was an American comedian, actor and musician. He was known for his brash visual and verbal comedy style, especially by his character Ralph Kramden on The Honeymooners, a situation-comedy television series. His most noted film roles were as Minnesota Fats in the drama film The...

     and Walter Pidgeon
    Walter Pidgeon
    Walter Davis Pidgeon was a Canadian actor, who starred in many motion pictures, including Mrs...

     in the musical Take Me Along
    Take Me Along
    Take Me Along is a musical based on the Eugene O'Neill play Ah, Wilderness, with music and lyrics by Bob Merrill and book by Joseph Stein and Robert Russell.-Background:...

    .
  • "Tall Paul"     w.m. Bob Roberts, Bob Sherman
    Robert B. Sherman
    Robert Bernard Sherman is an American songwriter who specializes in musical films with his brother Richard Morton Sherman...

     & Dick Sherman
  • "Tallahassee Lassie"     w.m. Frank C. Slay Jr, Bob Crewe & Frederick A. Picariello
    Freddy Cannon
    Frederick Anthony Picariello Jr. , known as Freddy Cannon, is an American rock and roll singer, whose biggest international hits included "Tallahassee Lassie", "Way Down Yonder In New Orleans", and "Palisades Park".-Biography:...

  • "Teen Angel"     w.m. Jean Surrey & Red Surrey
  • "A Teenager In Love"     w.m. Jerome "Doc" Pomus
    Doc Pomus
    Jerome Solon Felder, better known as Doc Pomus , was a twentieth-century American blues singer and songwriter. He is best known as the lyricist of many rock and roll hits. Pomus was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the category of non-performer in 1992. He was also inducted into...

     & Mort Shuman
    Mort Shuman
    Mort Shuman was an American singer, pianist and songwriter, best known as co-writer of many 1960s rock and roll hits, including "Viva Las Vegas"...

  • "There Goes My Baby"     w.m. Benjamin Nelson, Lover Patterson, George Treadwell
  • "This Magic Moment"     w.m. Doc Pomus
    Doc Pomus
    Jerome Solon Felder, better known as Doc Pomus , was a twentieth-century American blues singer and songwriter. He is best known as the lyricist of many rock and roll hits. Pomus was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the category of non-performer in 1992. He was also inducted into...

     & Mort Shuman
    Mort Shuman
    Mort Shuman was an American singer, pianist and songwriter, best known as co-writer of many 1960s rock and roll hits, including "Viva Las Vegas"...

  • "Three Steps to Heaven
    Three Steps to Heaven (song)
    "Three Steps to Heaven" is a 1960 single by Eddie Cochran. It became a posthumous UK number-one hit for Cochran following his death in a car crash. In the US it didn't reach the Billboard Hot 100...

    "     Eddie Cochran
    Eddie Cochran
    Eddie Cochran , was an American rock and roll pioneer who in his brief career had a small but lasting influence on rock music through his guitar playing. Cochran's rockabilly songs, such as "C'mon Everybody", "Somethin' Else", and "Summertime Blues", captured teenage frustration and desire in the...

  • "The Tijuana Jail"     w.m. Denny Thompson
  • " ('Til) I Kissed You
    (Till) I Kissed You
    " I Kissed You" is a song written by Don Everly of The Everly Brothers. It was released as a single in 1959 and peaked at number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100.-Connie Smith version:...

    "     w.m. Don Everly
  • "Time And The River"     w.m. Aaron Schroeder
    Aaron Schroeder
    Aaron Schroeder was an American songwriter and music publisher.-Biography:Born Aaron Harold Schroder , he graduated from the school now known as the Fiorello H...

     & Wally Gold
    Wally Gold
    Wally Gold was an American musician, singer, songwriter, record producer, and music business executive from Teaneck, New Jersey.-Personal life:...

  • "Tomboy"     w.m. Joe Farrell & Jim Conway
  • "Too Long At The Fair"     w.m. Billy Barnes
  • "Tucumcari"     Olofson, McIntyre
  • "The Untouchables"     m. Nelson Riddle
    Nelson Riddle
    Nelson Smock Riddle, Jr. was an American arranger, composer, bandleader and orchestrator whose career stretched from the late 1940s to the mid 1980s...

    .
  • "Venus"     w.m. Ed Marshall
  • "Waterloo"     w.m. John D. Loudermilk
    John D. Loudermilk
    John D. Loudermilk is an American singer and songwriter.-Biography:Born in Durham, North Carolina, Loudermilk grew up in a family who were members of the Salvation Army faith and was influenced by the church singing. His cousins Ira and Charlie Loudermilk were known professionally as the Louvin...

     & Marijohn Wilkin
  • "We Got Love"     w. Kal Mann m. Bernie Lowe
  • "What Do You Want?
    What Do You Want?
    "What Do You Want?" was a 1959 song which became a number one hit in the United Kingdom for Adam Faith. It was written by Les Vandyke and produced by John Burgess and arranged by John Barry. It first appeared on the charts on 20 November 1959 and spent 19 weeks there...

    "     Les Vandyke
    Les Vandyke
    Les Vandyke was a popular music singer and later songwriter in the 1950s and 1960s. He was also known as Johnny Worth and John Worsley...

  • "What'd I Say
    What'd I Say
    According to Charles' autobiography, "What'd I Say" was accidental when he improvised it to fill time at the end of a concert in December 1958. He asserts that he never tested songs on audiences before recording them, but "What'd I Say" is an exception...

    "     w.m. Ray Charles
    Ray Charles
    Ray Charles Robinson , known by his shortened stage name Ray Charles, was an American musician. He was a pioneer in the genre of soul music during the 1950s by fusing rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues styles into his early recordings with Atlantic Records...

  • "Why"     w. Bob Marcucci m. Peter De Angelis
  • "The Wonder Of You"     w.m. Baker Knight
  • "Wonderful You"     Stallman, Jacobson
  • "A Worried Man"     w.m. Dave Guard & Tom Glazer
    Tom Glazer
    Thomas Zachariah "Tom" Glazer was an American folk singer and songwriter known primarily as a composer of ballads, including: "Because All Men Are Brothers", recorded by The Weavers and Peter, Paul and Mary, "Talking Inflation Blues", recorded by Bob Dylan, and "A Dollar Ain't A Dollar Anymore"...

  • "You're Starting To Get To Me"     Sammy Cahn
    Sammy Cahn
    Sammy Cahn was an American lyricist, songwriter and musician. He is best known for his romantic lyrics to films and Broadway songs, as well as stand-alone songs premiered by recording companies in the Greater Los Angeles Area...

    , James Van Heusen
    James Van Heusen
    Jimmy Van Heusen , was an American composer. He wrote songs mainly for films and television , and won an Emmy and four Academy Awards for Best Original Song.-Life and career:...

    , from the film Say One for Me
    Say One for Me
    Say One For Me is a film directed by Frank Tashlin and starring Bing Crosby and Debbie Reynolds.-Cast:*Bing Crosby as Father Conroy*Debbie Reynolds as Holly LeMaise aka Conroy*Robert Wagner as Tony Vincent*Ray Walston as Phil Stanley...


Other notable songs

  • "Chiclete com banana
    Chiclete com banana (song)
    "Chiclete com banana" is a song written by Gordurinha and Almira Castilho and recorded in 1959 by Jackson do Pandeiro, who popularized the song. The title means "chewing gum and banana," which refers to American and Brazilian music....

    " w.m. Gordurinha and Almira Castilho
  • "Jin-go-lo-ba
    Jin-Go-Lo-Ba
    Jin-Go-Lo-Ba is a 1995 compilation album by Santana.-Track listing:# "Persuasion" # "La Puesta De Sol" # "El Corazon Manda" # "Jin-go-lo-ba" # "As The Years Go By"...

    " w.m. Babatunde Olatunji
    Babatunde Olatunji
    Babatunde Olatunji was a Nigerian drummer, educator, social activist and recording artist.- Biography :Olatunji was born in the village of Ajido, a small town near Badagry, Lagos State, in southwestern Nigeria. A member of the Yoruba people, Olatunji was introduced to traditional African music at...

  • "Ne me quitte pas
    Ne me quitte pas
    "Ne me quitte pas" is a song written and sung in French and in Dutch by the Belgian chansonnier Jacques Brel in 1959. It has been covered in the original French by many artists and has also been translated into and performed in many other languages...

    " w. m. Jacques Brel
    Jacques Brel
    Jacques Brel was a Belgian singer-songwriter who composed and performed literate, thoughtful, and theatrical songs that generated a large, devoted following in France initially, and later throughout the world. He was widely considered a master of the modern chanson...

  • "Piove (Ciao, ciao bambina)
    Piove (Ciao, Ciao Bambina)
    "Piove " is an Italian song written by Domenico Modugno and Eduardo Verde. It won first prize at the 1959 Sanremo Music Festival, where it was performed twice, once by Modugno and once by Johnny Dorelli...

    " w. Dino Verde m. Domenico Modugno
    Domenico Modugno
    Domenico Modugno was an Italian singer, songwriter, actor, and later in life, a member of the Italian Parliament. He is known for his 1958 international hit song "Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu "...

  • "Satchan
    Satchan
    ' is a Japanese children's song composed in 1959 and is well known there. Its lyrics were written by and the music was composed by .The name Satchan is a diminutive form of the name Sachiko and is used mostly for young girls as opposed to older ones...

    " w. Hiroo Sakata m. Megumi Ōnaka

Classical music

  • Juhan Aavik
    Juhan Aavik
    Juhan Aavik was an Estonian composer.Aavik studied music composition at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory...

     – Requiem
  • Jean Absil
    Jean Absil
    Jean Absil was a Belgian modernist music composer, organist, and professor at the Brussels Conservatory.- Biography :...

     –
    • Danses bulgares, op. 103, for piano
    • Passacaglia in memoriam Alban Berg, op. 101, for piano
    • Rhapsody No. 5, op. 102, for 2 pianos
  • Murray Adaskin
    Murray Adaskin
    -External links:*...

     – Saskatchewan Legend, for orchestra
  • Samuel Adler
    Samuel Adler (composer)
    Samuel Hans Adler is an American composer and conductor.-Biography:Adler was born to a Jewish family in Mannheim, Germany, the son of Hugo Chaim Adler, a cantor and composer, and Selma Adler. The family fled to the United States in 1939, where Hugo became the cantor of Temple Emanuel in...

     – Toccata, Recitation, and Postlude, for organ
  • Stephen Albert
    Stephen Albert
    Stephen Albert was an American composer.-Biography:Born in New York City, Albert began his musical training on the piano, French horn, and trumpet as a youngster. He first studied composition at the age of 15 with Elie Siegmeister, and enrolled two years later at the Eastman School of Music, where...

     – Toccatas (2), for piano
  • William Alwyn
    William Alwyn
    William Alwyn, CBE, born William Alwyn Smith was an English composer, conductor, and music teacher.-Life and music:...

     –
    • Symphony No. 4
    • Trio for strings
  • Hendrik Andriessen
    Hendrik Andriessen
    Hendrik Franciscus Andriessen was a Dutch composer and organist. He is remembered most of all for his improvisation at the organ and for the renewal of Catholic liturgical music in the Netherlands. Andriessen composed in a musical idiom that revealed strong French influences...

     –
    • Missa populi, for solo voice, congregation, and organ
    • Signum Magnum, for soprano, choir, and organ
    • Suite, for flute or recorder and piano
    • Tota pulchra, anima mea, for 2 voices and organ
  • Jurriaan Andriessen
    Jurriaan Andriessen
    Jurriaan Hendrik Andriessen was a Dutch composer, whose father, Hendrik, brother Louis, and uncle Willem have also been notable composers...

     – Sonata da camera, for flute, viola, and guitar
  • Louis Andriessen
    Louis Andriessen
    Louis Andriessen is a Dutch composer and pianist based in Amsterdam. He teaches composition at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague...

     –
    • Nocturnen, for soprano and chamber orchestra
    • Percosse, for flute, trumpet, bassoon, and percussion
  • István Anhalt
    István Anhalt
    István Anhalt, is a Canadian composer.-Biography:Anhalt was born into a Jewish family in Budapest in 1919 and studied with Zoltan Kodaly before being conscripted into a forced labor camp during World War II...

     –
    • Electronic Composition No. 1 "Sine nomine I"
    • Electronic Composition No. 2 "Sine nomine II"
  • Hans Erich Apostel
    Hans Erich Apostel
    Hans Erich Apostel was a German-born Austrian composer of classical music....

     –
    • Fantasie, op. 31b, for piano
    • Österreichische Miniaturen (5), for orchestra
    • Vier kleine Klavierstücke, op. 31a, for piano
  • Malcolm Arnold
    Malcolm Arnold
    Sir Malcolm Henry Arnold, CBE was an English composer and symphonist.Malcolm Arnold began his career playing trumpet professionally, but by age thirty his life was devoted to composition. He was ranked with Benjamin Britten as one of the most sought-after composers in Britain...

     –
    • Concerto, for guitar and chamber orchestra, op. 67
    • Song of Simeon, op. 69 (nativity masque), for mimes, solo voices, and chamber orchestra
    • Sweeney Todd, op. 68 (ballet)
    • William Blake Songs, op. 66, for alto and strings
  • Claude Arrieu
    Claude Arrieu
    Claude Arrieu was a prolific French composer.-Biography:Claude Arrieu was a classically trained musician from an early age. She became particularly interested in works by Bach and Mozart, and later, Igor Stravinsky...

     –
    • Fantaisie lyrique, for ondes martenot and piano
    • Suite, for string orchestra
  • Robert Ashley
    Robert Ashley
    Robert Ashley , is a contemporary American composer, best known for his operas and other theatrical works, many of which incorporate electronics and extended techniques. Along with Gordon Mumma, Ashley was also a major pioneer of audio synthesis.Ashley was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan...

     – Piano Sonata ("Christopher Columbus crosses to the New World in the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria using only dead reckoning and a crude astrolabe")
  • Larry Austin
    Larry Austin
    Larry Austin is a United States composer noted for his electronic and computer music works. He was a co-founder and editor of the avant-garde music periodical Source: Music of the Avant Garde...

     – Homecoming, cantata for soprano and jazz quintet
  • Jan Bach
    Jan Bach
    Jan Bach is an American composer. He taught at the University of Tampa from 1965 to 1966 and at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois from 1966 to 2002. His primary performing instrument is the horn, and he is especially renowned for his horn pieces and especially well-known among...

     – Toccata, for orchestra
  • Sven-Erik Bäck
    Sven-Erik Bäck
    Sven-Erik Bäck was a Swedish composer of classical music. He was born in Stockholm.Bäck studied from 1939 until 1943 in the King's Music-Academy and from 1940 until 1945, was a composition student of Hilding Rosenberg...

     – A Game around a Game, for orchestra
  • Henk Badings
    Henk Badings
    Henk Badings was a Dutch composer.Born in Bandung, Java, Dutch East Indies, as the son of Herman Louis Johan Badings, an officer in the Dutch East Indies army, Badings became an orphan at an early age...

     –
    • Capriccio, for violin, 2 tapes, and "elektromagnetische Klangfiguren"
    • Die Frau von Andros, ballet, electronic music
    • Jungle, ballet, electronic music
    • Languentibus in purgatorio, for mixed choir
    • Psalm 147, for children’s chorus, chamber chorus, chorus, and orchestra
  • Claude Baillif
    Claude Baillif
    Claude Baillif was a well known builder in New France during the 17th-century.There is little personal information on this early Canadian and we need to examine his historical contributions through his building contracts...

     – Mouvements pour deux, op. 27, for flute and piano
  • Tadeusz Baird
    Tadeusz Baird
    Tadeusz Baird was a Polish composer.He was born in Grodzisk Mazowiecki, to Scottish immigrant parents. He studied composition, piano and musicology in Warsaw with, among others, Kazimierz Sikorski. In 1956, with Serocki, he founded the Warsaw Autumn international contemporary music festival...

     – Espressioni varianti, for violin and orchestra
  • Leonardo Balada
    Leonardo Balada
    Leonardo Balada , is a Catalan American composer, now teaching and composing in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.-Life:...

     – Musica en cuatro tiempos, for piano
  • Samuel Barber
    Samuel Barber
    Samuel Osborne Barber II was an American composer of orchestral, opera, choral, and piano music. His Adagio for Strings is his most popular composition and widely considered a masterpiece of modern classical music...

     – Nocturne (Homage to John Field), op. 33, for piano
  • Jean Barraqué
    Jean Barraqué
    Jean-Henri-Alphonse Barraqué was a French composer and writer on music who developed an individual form of serialism which is displayed in a small output of highly complex but passionate works.-Life:...

     – … au-delà du hasard, for soprano, SA choir, 20 instruments in 4 groups including piano and clarinet soloists
  • Leslie Bassett
    Leslie Bassett
    Leslie Bassett is an American composer of classical music, and the University of Michigan’s Albert A. Stanley Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Composition...

     –
    • Duets, for 2 cellos
    • For City, Nation, World. cantata, for tenor, SATB choir, children’s choir ad lib, congregation, 4 trombones, and organ
    • Sonata, for violin and piano
  • Jürg Baur
    Jürg Baur
    Jürg Baur was a German composer of classical music.-Education:Baur was born in Düsseldorf, where he achieved early recognition as a composer at the age of 18, when his First String Quartet was premiered at the Düsseldorf Hindenburg Secondary School by the then-famous Prisca Quartet...

     –
    • Chorale Preludes (4), for organ
    • Concertino, for flute, oboe, clarinet, string orchestra, and timpani
    • Metamorphosen, for piano, violin, and cello
  • Gustavo Becerra-Schmidt
    Gustavo Becerra-Schmidt
    Gustavo Becerra-Schmidt was a Chilean composer.Becerra-Schmidt lived in Germany since 1973 and taught at Oldenburg University since 1974. Becerra was the most prolific Chilean composer...

     – String Quartet No. 5
  • John J. Becker
    John J. Becker
    John Joseph Becker was an American composer of contemporary classical music. He is grouped together with Charles Ives, Carl Ruggles, Henry Cowell, and Wallingford Riegger as a member of the "American Five" composers of "ultra-modern" music.The John J...

     –
    • At Dieppe, for voice and piano
    • String Quartet no. 3 (unfinished)
  • John Beckwith
    John Beckwith
    John Beckwith may refer to:*John Christmas Beckwith English organist and composer.*John Charles Beckwith , English organist*John Charles Beckwith...

     – Music for Dancing, for orchestra (second orchestration)
  • Jack Beeson
    Jack Beeson
    Jack Beeson was an American composer. He was known particularly for his operas, the best known of which are Lizzie Borden, Hello Out There! and The Sweet Bye and Bye.-Biography:...

     –
    • Against Idleness and Mischief and in Praise of Labor, for high voice and piano
    • "Fire, Fire, Quench Desire", for high voice and piano
    • Lullaby, for alto and piano (revised version)
    • Round and Round, for piano, four-hands
    • Symphony No. 1, in A major
    • Three Love Songs, for alto and piano (revised version)
    • Transformations, for large orchestra
  • Paul Ben-Haim
    Paul Ben-Haim
    Paul Ben-Haim was an Israeli composer. Born Paul Frankenburger in Munich, Germany, he studied composition with Friedrich Klose and he was assistant conductor to Bruno Walter and Hans Knappertsbusch from 1920 to 1924...

     –
    • Hazono shel navi [The Vision of a Prophet], for tenor, SATB choir, and orchestra
    • Poème, for harp
  • Arthur Benjamin
    Arthur Benjamin
    Arthur Leslie Benjamin was an Australian composer, pianist, conductor and teacher. He is best known as the composer of Jamaican Rhumba, composed in 1938.-Biography:...

     – String Quartet No. 2
  • Richard Rodney Bennett
    Richard Rodney Bennett
    Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, CBE is an English composer renowned for his film scores and his jazz performance as much as for his challenging concert works...

     – Music for an Occasion, for orchestra
  • Niels Viggo Bentzon
    Niels Viggo Bentzon
    Niels Viggo Bentzon was a Danish composer and pianist.Bentzon was descended from Johan Ernst Hartmann and the great-grandson of J.P.E. Hartmann. From 1938 to 1942, he studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen under Knud Jeppesen and Christian Christiansen...

     – Piano Sonata No. 7, op. 121
  • Gunnar Berg –
    • Gaffkys I–X, for piano
    • Pour clarinette et violon, for clarinet and violin
    • Pour piano et orchestre, for piano and orchestra
    • 37 Aspects (Spoon River) , for ensemble
  • Arthur Berger
    Arthur Berger
    Arthur Victor Berger was an American composer who has been described as a New Mannerist.-Biography:Born in New York City, of Jewish descent, Berger studied as an undergraduate at New York University, during which time he joined the Young Composer's Group, as a graduate student under Walter Piston...

     – Chamber Concerto, for small orchestra
  • Luciano Berio
    Luciano Berio
    Luciano Berio, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian composer. He is noted for his experimental work and also for his pioneering work in electronic music.-Biography:Berio was born at Oneglia Luciano Berio, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (October 24, 1925 – May 27, 2003) was an Italian...

     –
    • Allez Hop!, "racconto mimico"
    • Quaderni I, for orchestra
  • Lennox Berkeley
    Lennox Berkeley
    Sir Lennox Randal Francis Berkeley was an English composer.- Biography :He was born in Oxford, England, and educated at the Dragon School, Gresham's School and Merton College, Oxford...

     –
    • Overture, for light orchestra
    • "So sweet love seemed", for mezzo-sopran or baritone and piano
    • Sonatina, op. 52, no. 2, for 2 pianos
  • Boris Blacher – Musica giocosa, op. 59, for orchestra
  • Easley Blackwood, Jr. –
    • Concertino, op. 5, for 5 instruments
    • String Quartet No. 2, op. 6
  • Arthur Bliss
    Arthur Bliss
    ‎Sir Arthur Edward Drummond Bliss, CH, KCVO was an English composer and conductor.Bliss's musical training was cut short by the First World War, in which he served with distinction in the army...

     – Birthday Song for a Royal Child, SATB choir
  • Augustyn Bloch
    Augustyn Bloch
    Augustyn Bloch was a Polish composer and organist, student of Feliks Rączkowski and Tadeusz Szeligowski...

     –
    • Espressioni, for soprano and orchestra
    • Impressioni poetiche, for male choir and orchestra
  • Konrad Boehmer
    Konrad Boehmer
    Konrad Boehmer is a Dutch composer and writer of German birth.Boehmer was born in Berlin. His music reflects his Marxist political agenda, which is made explicit in many of his writings from the late 1960s and 1970s...

     – Variation, for orchestra
  • William Bolcom
    William Bolcom
    William Elden Bolcom is an American composer and pianist. He has received the Pulitzer Prize, the National Medal of Arts, two Grammy Awards, the Detroit Music Award and was named 2007 Composer of the Year by Musical America. Bolcom taught composition at the University of Michigan from 1973–2008...

     – Romantic Pieces, for piano
  • Margaret Bonds
    Margaret Bonds
    Margaret Allison Bonds was an American composer and pianist. One of the first black composers and performers to gain recognition in the United States, she is best remembered today for her frequent collaborations with Langston Hughes.-Life:...

     –
    • Dream Portraits (3), for voice and piano
    • "Ezekiel saw the wheel", for voice and piano
    • "I Got a Home in That Rock", for voice and orchestra or piano
    • Mass in D Minor, for choir and organ
  • Narcís Bonet – Choral, for organ
  • Pierre Boulez
    Pierre Boulez
    Pierre Boulez is a French composer of contemporary classical music, a pianist, and a conductor.-Early years:Boulez was born in Montbrison, Loire, France. As a child he began piano lessons and demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics...

     –
    • Improvisation sur Mallarmé III: A la nue accablante tu, for soprano and orchestra
    • Tombeau, for soprano and orchestra
  • Paul Bowles
    Paul Bowles
    Paul Frederic Bowles was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator.Following a cultured middle-class upbringing in New York City, during which he displayed a talent for music and writing, Bowles pursued his education at the University of Virginia before making various trips to Paris...

     – Sweet Bird of Youth, incidental music for the play by Tennessee Williams
  • Henry Brant
    Henry Brant
    Henry Dreyfuss Brant was a Canadian-born American composer. An expert orchestrator with a flair for experimentation, many of Brant's works featured spatialization techniques.- Biography :...

     – The Crossing, for tenor, oboe or soprano saxophone, glockenspiel, violin, and cello
  • Havergal Brian
    Havergal Brian
    Havergal Brian , was a British classical composer.Brian acquired a legendary status at the time of his rediscovery in the 1950s and 1960s for the many symphonies he had managed to write. By the end of his life he had completed 32, an unusually large number for any composer since Haydn or Mozart...

     – Symphony No. 13 in C major
  • Benjamin Britten
    Benjamin Britten
    Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...

     –
    • Cantata academica, carmen basiliense, op. 62, for SATB chorus and orchestra
    • Fanfare for St Edmundsbury, for 3 trumpets
    • Missa brevis in D, op. 63, for boys’ voices and organ
    • Oliver Cromwell, for unison voices and piano
  • Earle Brown
    Earle Brown
    Earle Brown was an American composer who established his own formal and notational systems...

     – Hodograph I, for flute, piano + celesta, and percussion
  • Alan Bush
    Alan Bush
    Alan Dudley Bush was a British composer and pianist. He was a committed socialist, and politics sometimes provided central themes in his music.-Personal life:...

     – Dorian Passacaglia and Fugue, op. 52, for orchestra
  • Geoffrey Bush
    Geoffrey Bush
    Geoffrey Bush was a British composer, organist and scholar of 20th century English music.Geoffrey Bush was born in London, became a chorister at Salisbury Cathedral at the age of 8 and studied informally with the composer John Ireland...

     – Songs of Wonder, for soprano or tenor and string orchestra or piano
  • Sylvano Bussotti
    Sylvano Bussotti
    Sylvano Bussotti is an Italian composer of contemporary music whose work is unusually notated and often creates special problems of interpretation.Born in Florence, Bussotti learned to play the violin as a child, becoming a prodigy...

     – Piano Pieces for David Tudor
  • Nigel Butterley
    Nigel Butterley
    Nigel Henry Cockburn Butterley AM is an Australian composer and pianist.-Life and career:Butterley learnt to play the piano at the age of five. He attended Sydney Grammar School, but as music wasn't taught at the school at that time, he also sought training from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music....

     – Joseph and Mary, for soprano and flute
  • Cornelius Cardew
    Cornelius Cardew
    Cornelius Cardew was an English experimental music composer, and founder of the Scratch Orchestra, an experimental performing ensemble. He later rejected the avant-garde in favour of a politically motivated "people's liberation music".-Biography:Cardew was born in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire...

     – Piano Piece 1959
  • Elliott Carter
    Elliott Carter
    Elliott Cook Carter, Jr. is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer born and living in New York City. He studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris in the 1930s, and then returned to the United States. After a neoclassical phase, he went on to write atonal, rhythmically complex music...

     – String Quartet No. 2
  • Niccolo Castiglioni
    Niccolò Castiglioni
    Niccolò Castiglioni was an Italian composer, pianist, and writer on music.Castiglioni was born and raised in Milan, where he began studying piano at the age of 7. He received his performer's diploma from the Milan Conservatory in 1952, and graduated there in composition in 1953...

     – Cangiati, for piano
  • Chen Gang & He Zhanhao - Butterfly Lovers' Violin Concerto
    Butterfly Lovers' Violin Concerto
    The Butterfly Lovers' Violin Concerto is one of the most famous works of Chinese music and certainly one of the most famous outside of China. It is an orchestral adaptation of an ancient legend, the Butterfly Lovers...

  • Aldo Clementi
    Aldo Clementi
    -Life:Aldo Clementi was born in Catania, Italy. He studied the piano, graduating in 1946. His studies in composition began in 1941, and his teachers included Alfredo Sangiorgi and Goffredo Petrassi. After receiving his diploma in 1954, he attended the Darmstadt summer courses from 1955 to 1962...

     –
    • Ideogrammi No. 1, for 16 instruments
    • Ideogrammi No. 2, for flute and 17 instruments
  • Aaron Copland
    Aaron Copland
    Aaron Copland was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers"...

     –
    • Dance Panels, for orchestra
    • Paisaje mexicana and Danza de Jalisco, as Two Mexican Pieces, for orchestra; later became part of Three Latin American Sketches (1971)
  • John Corigliano
    John Corigliano
    John Corigliano is an American composer of classical music and a teacher of music. He is a distinguished professor of music at Lehman College in the City University of New York.-Biography:...

     –
    • Kaleidoscope, for 2 pianos
    • Petits Fours, for violin and piano
  • Paul Creston
    Paul Creston
    Paul Creston was an Italian American composer of classical music.Born in New York City to Sicilian immigrants, Creston was self‐taught as a composer. He was an honorary member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia music fraternity, initiated into the national honorary Alpha Alpha chapter...

     –
    • Janus, op. 77, for orchestra
    • Prelude and Dance, op. 76, for band
  • George Crumb
    George Crumb
    George Crumb is an American composer of contemporary classical music. He is noted as an explorer of unusual timbres, alternative forms of notation, and extended instrumental and vocal techniques. Examples include seagull effect for the cello , metallic vibrato for the piano George Crumb (born...

     – Variazioni for large orchestra
    • Halim El-Dabh
      Halim El-Dabh
      Halim Abdul Messieh El-Dabh is an Egyptian-born American composer, performer, ethnomusicologist, and educator, who has had a career spanning six decades...

       –
    • Elements, Beings and Primevals, for tape
    • Juxtaposition No. 1, for percussion ensemble
    • Juxtaposition No. 2, for percussion and harp
    • Juxtaposition No. 3, for mezzo-soprano, 2 harps, and percussion
    • Leiyla and the Poet, for tape
    • Meditation on White Noise, for tape
    • The Word, for tape,
  • Mario Davidovsky
    Mario Davidovsky
    Mario Davidovsky is an Argentine-American composer. Born in Argentina, he emigrated in 1960 to the US, where he lives today...

     – Serie sinfonica 1959 for orchestra
  • Paul Dessau
    Paul Dessau
    Paul Dessau was a German composer and conductor.- Biography :Dessau was born in Hamburg into a musical family...

     –
    • Flug zur Sonne, dance scenes
    • Hymne auf den Beginn einer neuen Geschichte der Menschheit, for speakr, soprano, chorus, 3 pianos, 2 harps, double bass, timpani, and percussion
  • David Diamond
    David Diamond
    David Diamond is the name of:* David Diamond , American composer* David Diamond * David Diamond , American screenwriter* David Diamond, frontman and songwriter with Canadian band The Kings...

     –
    • A Private World, for piano
    • Sonata, for solo cello
    • Sonata, for solo violin
    • Symphony No. 7
  • Henri Dutilleux
    Henri Dutilleux
    Henri Dutilleux is one of the most important French composers of the second half of the 20th century, producing work in the tradition of Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, and Albert Roussel, but in a style distinctly his own...

     – Symphony No. 2 (Le Double)
  • Werner Egk
    Werner Egk
    Werner Egk , born Werner Joseph Mayer, was a German composer.-Early career:He was born in the Swabian town of Auchsesheim, today part of Donauwörth, Germany. His family, of Catholic peasant stock, moved to Augsburg when Egk was six. He studied at a Benedictine Gymnasium and entered the municipal...

     –
    • Furchtlosigkeit und Wohlwollen, oratorio for tenor, mixed chorus, and orchestra (revised version)
    • Variationen über ein karibisches Thema, for orchestra
  • Gottfried von Einem
    Gottfried von Einem
    Gottfried von Einem was an Austrian composer. He is known chiefly for his operas influenced by the music of Stravinsky and Prokofiev, as well as by jazz. He also composed pieces for piano, violin and organ.-Biography:...

     – Tanz-Rondo, op. 27, for orchestra
  • Hanns Eisler
    Hanns Eisler
    Hanns Eisler was an Austrian composer.-Family background:Eisler was born in Leipzig where his Jewish father, Rudolf Eisler, was a professor of philosophy...

     –
    • Brandverse, for voice and piano
    • Motto (Auf einer chinesischen Theewurzellöwen), for voice and piano
    • Musik zu ‘Schweyk im zweiten Weltkrieg’, for voice and small orchestra
    • Trommellied, for voice and piano
    • Rezitativ und Fuge auf 60. Geburtstag von J. R. Becher, for voice and piano
    • Um meine Weisheit unbekümmert, for voice and piano
  • Kenneth Gaburo
    Kenneth Gaburo
    -Life:Gaburo was born in Somerville, New Jersey. He served as a professor of music at the University of Illinois, the University of California, San Diego, and the University of Iowa. His notable students include James Tenney and Allen Strange...

     – Stray Birds, for soprano and piano
  • Robert Gerhard –
    • Asylum Diary, incidental music for the play by Lavant
    • Chaconne, for solo violin
    • Coriolanus, incidental music for the play by Shakespeare
    • Don Carlos, incidental music for the play by Schiller
    • Lament on the Death of a Bullfighter, for speaker and tape
  • Ottmar Gerster –
    • Concerto, for horn and orchestra
    • Vorwärts!, for baritone, speaker, SATB choir, and chamber orchestra
  • Peggy Glanville-Hicks
    Peggy Glanville-Hicks
    Peggy Glanville-Hicks was an Australian composer.- Biography :Peggy Glanville-Hicks was born Melbourne in 1912. At age 15 she began studying composition with Fritz Hart in Melbourne...

     –
    • Drama for Orchestra, for clarinet, trumpet, piano, 3 percussionists, strings
    • Saul and the Witch of Endor, ballet for television
  • Roger Goeb
    Roger Goeb
    -Life:Roger Goeb was born in Cherokee, Iowa. Although he had studied piano, trumpet, French horn, viola, violin, and woodwind instruments from an early age , he turned to the profession of music comparatively late. He studied agriculture at the University of Wisconsin, earning a BS degree in 1936...

     –
    • Concertino no. 2, for orchestra
    • Iowa Concerto, for chamber orchestra
  • Alexander Goehr
    Alexander Goehr
    Alexander Goehr is an English composer and academic.Goehr was born in Berlin in 1932, the son of the conductor and Schoenberg pupil Walter Goehr. In his early twenties he emerged as a central figure in the Manchester School of post-war British composers. In 1955–56 he joined Oliver Messiaen's...

     –
    • Fantasia, op. 4 (revised version), for orchestra
    • Songs from the Japanese, op. 9, for mezzo-soprano and piano or orchestra
    • Variations, op. 8, for flute and piano
  • Henryk Górecki
    Henryk Górecki
    Henryk Mikołaj Górecki was a composer of contemporary classical music. He studied at the State Higher School of Music in Katowice between 1955 and 1960. In 1968, he joined the faculty and rose to provost before resigning in 1979. Górecki became a leading figure of the Polish avant-garde during...

     – Symphony No. 1 1959
  • Fernando Lopes Graça –
    • Canções populares portuguesas (24), book 4, for voice and piano
    • História trágico-marítima, second version, for baritone, alto chorus, and orchestra
    • A menina do mar, for chamber orchestra
    • Nocturnos (5), for piano
    • As predicações de Adamastor contra os portugueses, for voice and piano
    • Prelúdio e dança burlesca, for 2 pianos
    • Rondes et complaintes des provinces de France, for choir
    • Tres peças, for violin and piano
    • Tres velhos fandangos portugueses, version for piano
  • Camargo Guarnieri
    Camargo Guarnieri
    Mozart Camargo Guarnieri was a Brazilian composer.-Name:He was registered at birth as Mozart Guarnieri, but when he began a musical career, he decided his first name was too pretentious and subject to puns. Thus he adopted his mother's maiden name Camargo as a middle name, and thenceforth signed...

     –
    • "O amor de agora", for voice and piano
    • "Onde andará", for voice and piano
    • Ponteios, volume 5, for piano
    • Sonata No. 5, for violin and piano
    • Valsa No. 10, for piano
  • Cristóbal Halffter
    Cristóbal Halffter
    Cristóbal Halffter Jiménez-Encina is a Spanish composer. He is the nephew of two other composers, Rodolfo and Ernesto Halffter.-Life:...

     –
    • Sonata, for violin solo
    • Three Pieces, for flute solo
  • Rodolfo Halffter
    Rodolfo Halffter
    Rodolfo Halffter Escriche was a Spanish composer.-Life:Born in Madrid, Spain into a family of musicians, he was the brother of Ernesto Halffter and uncle of Cristóbal Halffter, also composers. His father Ernesto Halffter Hein came from Königsberg, Germany...

     – Tripartita, op. 25, for orchestra
  • Iain Hamilton
    Iain Hamilton (composer)
    Iain Ellis Hamilton was a Scottish composer.He was educated in London where he became an apprentice engineer, and remained in that profession for the next seven years. He undertook the study of music in his spare time...

     – Sinfonia, for two orchestras
  • Roman Haubenstock-Ramati
    Roman Haubenstock-Ramati
    Roman Haubenstock-Ramati was a composer and music editor who worked in Kraków, Tel Aviv and Vienna.Haubenstock-Ramati studied composition, music theory, violin and philosophy in Kraków and Lemberg from 1937 to 1940. Among his teachers were Artur Malawski and Józef Koffler. From 1947 to 1950 he was...

     – Interpolation: Mobile pour flûte
  • Bernhard Heiden
    Bernhard Heiden
    Bernhard Heiden was a German and American composer and music teacher, who studied under and was heavily influenced by Paul Hindemith...

     – Viola Sonata
  • Hans Werner Henze
    Hans Werner Henze
    Hans Werner Henze is a German composer of prodigious output best known for "his consistent cultivation of music for the theatre throughout his life"...

     –
    • Sonata for piano
    • L’usignolo dell’imperatore, balletto-pantomima, after Hans Christian Andersen
  • Paul Hindemith
    Paul Hindemith
    Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...

     –
    • Festmarsch, for 3 male voices and tuba
    • Joseph, lieber Joseph mein, canon for 4 voices
    • Six songs from Das Marienleben, op. 27, arranged for soprano and orchestra
  • Karel Horký –
    • Jan Hus, tastura, ballet (revised version)
    • Symphony No. 1
  • Alan Hovhaness
    Alan Hovhaness
    Alan Hovhaness was an Armenian-American composer.His music is accessible to the lay listener and often evokes a mood of mystery or contemplation...

     –
    • Bardo Sonata, op. 192, for piano
    • Concerto for Accordion and Orchestra, op. 174
    • Lake of Van Sonata, op. 175, for piano (revised version)
    • Symphony No. 6 "Celestial Gate", op. 173, for chamber orchestra
    • Symphony No. 7 "Nanga Parvat", op. 175, for wind ensemble
  • Andrew Imbrie
    Andrew Imbrie
    Andrew Welsh Imbrie was an American composer of contemporary classical music.-Career:Imbrie was born in New York on April 6, 1921, and began his musical training as a pianist when he was 4. In 1937, he went to Paris to study briefly with Nadia Boulanger...

     – Legend, for orchestra
  • Maki Ishii
    Maki Ishii
    was a Japanese composer of contemporary classical music, and brother of composer Kan Ishii.-Biography:Born in Tokyo, Ishii studied composition privately and conducting with Watanabe from 1952 to 1958 in Tokyo, then moved to Berlin, where he continued his studies under Boris Blacher and Josef Rufer...

     – Prelude and Variations, for flute, clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, viola, cello, piano, and percussion
  • Jānis Ivanovs
    Janis Ivanovs
    Jānis Ivanovs was a Soviet Latvian classical music composer.In 1931, he graduated from the Latvian State Conservatory in Riga. In 1944, he joined the conservatory's faculty, becoming a full professor in 1955. He is regarded as being the most distinguished Latvian symphonist...

     – Piano Concerto in G minor
  • Francis Jackson – Diversion for Mixtures
  • Miloslav Kabeláč
    Miloslav Kabelác
    Miloslav Kabeláč was a prominent Czech composer and conductor. Miloslav Kabeláč belongs to the foremost Czech symphonists, whose work can be compared with Antonín Dvořák or Bohuslav Martinů...

     –
    • Cizokrajné motivy [Motifs from Foreign Countries], op. 38, for piano
    • Suite from Master of Nine Songs’, op. 34a, for baritone and orchestra
    • Suite, op. 39, for saxophone and piano*Dmitri Kabalevsky
      Dmitri Kabalevsky
      Dmitry Borisovich Kabalevsky was a Russian composer.He helped to set up the Union of Soviet Composers in Moscow and remained one of its leading figures. He was a prolific composer of piano music and chamber music; many of his piano works have been performed by Vladimir Horowitz. He is probably...

       –
    • Preludes and Fugues, op. 61
    • The Leninists, cantata after Y. Dolmatovski for three choruses and large symphony orchestra, op. 63
  • Mauricio Kagel
    Mauricio Kagel
    Mauricio Kagel was a German-Argentine composer. He was notable for his interest in developing the theatrical side of musical performance .-Biography:...

     – Transición II, for piano, percussion, and two tape recorders
  • Aram Khachaturian
    Aram Khachaturian
    Aram Ilyich Khachaturian was a prominent Soviet composer. Khachaturian's works were often influenced by classical Russian music and Armenian folk music...

     –
    • Lermontov: Suite, for orchestra
    • Sonatina, for piano
  • Tikhon Khrennikov
    Tikhon Khrennikov
    Tikhon Nikolayevich Khrennikov was a Russian and Soviet composer, pianist, leader of the Union of Soviet Composers, who was also known for his political activities...

     – Violin Concerto No. 1, op. 14
  • Gottfried Michael Koenig
    Gottfried Michael Koenig
    Gottfried Michael Koenig is a contemporary German-Dutch composer.-Biography:Koenig studied church music in Braunschweig, composition, piano, analysis and acoustics in Detmold, music representation techniques in Cologne and computer technique in Bonn. He attended and later lectured at the...

     –
    • Quintet for Winds, for flute, oboe, cor anglais, clarinet, and bassoon
    • String Quartet 1959
  • Ernst Krenek
    Ernst Krenek
    Ernst Krenek was an Austrian of Czech origin and, from 1945, American composer. He explored atonality and other modern styles and wrote a number of books, including Music Here and Now , a study of Johannes Ockeghem , and Horizons Circled: Reflections on my Music...

     –
    • Flötenstück neunphasig, op. 171, for flute and 6 pianos
    • Hausmusik, op. 172, for various instruments
    • Quaestio temporis, op. 170, for small orchestra
    • Six Motets, op. 169, for 4 voices
  • György Kurtág
    György Kurtág
    György Kurtág is a Hungarian composer of contemporary music.- Biography :György Kurtág was born in Lugoj in the Banat region, Romania.In 1946, he began his studies at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, where he met his wife, Márta, and also György Ligeti, who became a close friend...

     –
    • String Quartet, op. 1
    • Wind Quintet, op. 2
  • John La Montaine
    John La Montaine
    John La Montaine is an American composer, born in Oak Park, Illinois, who won the 1959 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his Piano Concerto no. 1, Op. 9, "In Time of War" , which was premiered by Jorge Bolet....

     – Fragments from the Song of Songs, op. 29, for soprano and orchestra
  • Ingvar Lidholm
    Ingvar Lidholm
    Ingvar Natanael Lidholm is a Swedish composer.Ingvar Lidholm was born in Jönköping. He was a pupil of Hilding Rosenberg from 1943 to 1945, becoming a viola player with the Royal Swedish Opera Orchestra. Having been awarded the Jenny Lind Fellowship for 1946–7, he travelled to France, Switzerland...

     – Mutanza, for orchestra
  • György Ligeti
    György Ligeti
    György Sándor Ligeti was a composer of contemporary classical music. Born in a Hungarian Jewish family in Transylvania, Romania, he briefly lived in Hungary before becoming an Austrian citizen.-Early life:...

     – Apparitions, for orchestra (1958–59)
  • Otto Luening
    Otto Luening
    Otto Clarence Luening was a German-American composer and conductor, and an early pioneer of tape music and electronic music....

     – Fantasia, for string quartet and orchestra
  • Witold Lutosławski –
    • Dance Preludes, version for 9 instruments
    • Piosenki dziecinne (3), for voice and piano
  • Elizabeth Maconchy
    Elizabeth Maconchy
    Dame Elizabeth Violet Maconchy Le Fanu DBE was an English composer, most noted for her cycle of thirteen string quartets.-Biography:...

     – A Hymn to God the Father, for tenor and piano
  • Bruno Maderna
    Bruno Maderna
    Bruno Maderna was an Italian conductor and composer. For the last ten years of his life he lived in Germany and eventually became a citizen of that country.-Biography:...

     –
    • L’altro mondo, ovvero Gli stati e imperi della luna, music for a radio play by A. Brissoni, after Jonathan Swift's Gulliver’s Travels
    • Piano Concerto
  • Donald Martino
    Donald Martino
    Donald Martino was a Pulitzer Prize winning American composer.Born in Plainfield, New Jersey, Martino studied composition with Ernst Bacon, Roger Sessions, Milton Babbitt, and Luigi Dallapiccola...

     – Trio, for violin, clarinet, and piano
  • Bohuslav Martinů
    Bohuslav Martinu
    Bohuslav Martinů was a prolific Czech composer of modern classical music. He was of Czech and Rumanian ancestry. Martinů wrote six symphonies, 15 operas, 14 ballet scores and a large body of orchestral, chamber, vocal and instrumental works. Martinů became a violinist in the Czech Philharmonic...

     –
    • The Burden of Moab, cantata, for male voices and piano
    • Impromptus (2), for harpsichord
    • Madrigaly, for mixed voices
    • Mikeš z hor, chamber cantata, for solo voices, chorus, 2 violins, viola, and piano
    • Musique de chambre no. 1, for clarinet, violin, viola, cello, harp, and piano
    • Nonet, for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, viola, cello, and double bass
    • Pièce, for 2 cellos
    • Písničky pro dětský sbor, for children’s choir
    • The Prophecy of Isaiah, cantata, for solo voices, male chorus, trumpet, viola, piano, and timpani
    • Ptačí hody, for children’s voices and trumpet
    • Variations on a Slovak Folksong, for cello and piano
    • Vigilie, for organ
    • Znělka, for children’s voices
  • Yoritsune Matsudaira
    Yoritsune Matsudaira
    was a Japanese composer of contemporary classical music.Matsudaira was descended, on his father's side of the family, from the Matsudaira clan, related to the Tokugawa clan who ruled Japan as shogun during the Edo Period , and on his mother's side of the family from the Fujiwara family, who were...

     –
    • Danse sacrée et Danse finale, for orchestra
    • Katsura, for soprano, flute, guitar, harp, harpsichord, and percussion
  • Toshirō Mayuzumi
    Toshiro Mayuzumi
    Toshiro Mayuzumi was a Japanese composer.-Biography:...

     –
    • Campanology, electronic music
    • Sange, for male choir
    • Shukukon-ka [Wedding Song], for chorus and orchestra
    • U so ri, oratorio
  • Peter Mennin
    Peter Mennin
    Peter Mennin was an American composer and teacher. He directed the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, then for many years ran the Juilliard School, succeeding William Schuman in this role...

     – Sonata concertante, for violin and piano
  • Darius Milhaud
    Darius Milhaud
    Darius Milhaud was a French composer and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—also known as The Group of Six—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions are influenced by jazz and make use of polytonality...

     –
    • Burma Road, op. 375, incidental music for television
    • Mother Courage, op. 379, incidental music for the play by Bertolt Brecht
    • Sonatina, op. 378, for viola and piano
    • Symphonie concertante, op. 376, for bassoon, horn, trumpet, double bass, and orchestra
    • Symphony No. 9, op. 380
  • Federico Mompou
    Federico Mompou
    Frederic Mompou i Dencausse was a Catalan Spanish composer and pianist. He is best known for his solo piano music and his songs.-Life:...

     – Impresiones intimas, for piano (revised version)
  • Makoto Moroi
    Makoto Moroi
    is a Japanese composer.Makoto Moroi was born in Tokyo, and is the son of Saburō Moroi. He studied composition with Tomojirō Ikenouchi at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, graduating in 1952. He also studied Gregorian chant privately with Paul Anouilh, and Renaissance and Baroque...

     –
    • Chamber Cantata No. 2
    • Pitagoras no hoshi [Stars of Pythagoras], music drama, for solo voice, instruments, and tape
  • Thea Musgrave
    Thea Musgrave
    Thea Musgrave CBE is a Scottish composer of opera and classical music.-Biography:Born in Barnton, Edinburgh, Thea Musgrave studied at the University of Edinburgh and in Paris as a pupil of Nadia Boulanger...

     –
    • Scottish Dance Suite, for orchestra
    • Triptych, for tenor and orchestra
  • Bo Nilsson
    Bo Nilsson
    Bo Nilsson , is a Swedish composer and lyricist.Bo Nilsson first drew notice as a composer at the age of 18 when his "Zwei Stücke" were performed in a 1956 West German Radio “Musik der Zeit” concert in Cologne...

     –
    • Ett blocks timme, cantata for soprano and chamber orchestra
    • Stenogram, for organ
    • Brief an Gösta Oswald, cantata trilogy
      • Ein irrender Sohn, for alto, alto flute, and chamber ensemble
      • Mädchentotenlieder, for soprano, alto flute, and chamber ensemble
      • Und die Zeiger seiner Augen wurden langsam zurückgedreht, for alto or soprano and orchestra
  • Luigi Nono
    Luigi Nono
    Luigi Nono was an Italian avant-garde composer of classical music and remains one of the most prominent composers of the 20th century.- Early years :Born in Venice, he was a member of a wealthy artistic family, and his grandfather was a notable painter...

     – Composizione no. 2 (Diario polacco ‘58), for orchestra
  • Andrzej Panufnik
    Andrzej Panufnik
    Sir Andrzej Panufnik was a Polish composer, pianist, conductor and pedagogue. He became established as one of the leading Polish composers, and as a conductor he was instrumental in the re-establishment of the Warsaw Philharmonic orchestra after World War II...

     –
    • Pieśni ludowych (5) unison choir, 2 flutes, 2 clarinets, and bass clarinet (revised version)
    • Polonia, suite for orchestra
  • Arvo Pärt
    Arvo Pärt
    Arvo Pärt is an Estonian classical composer and one of the most prominent living composers of sacred music. Since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked in a minimalist style that employs his self-made compositional technique, tintinnabuli. His music also finds its inspiration and influence from...

     –
    • Meie aed, op. 3, for children’s chorus and orchestra
    • Sonatine, op. 1, no. 2, for piano
  • Vincent Persichetti
    Vincent Persichetti
    Vincent Ludwig Persichetti was an American composer, teacher, and pianist. An important musical educator and writer, Persichetti was a native of Philadelphia...

     –
    • Song of Peace, op. 82, for TTBB/SATB choir and piano
    • String Quartet No. 3, op. 81
  • Michel Philippot
    Michel Philippot
    Michel Paul Philippot was a French composer, mathematician, acoustician, musicologist, aesthetician, broadcaster, and educator.-Life:...

     – Composition No. 1, for string orchestra
  • Walter Piston
    Walter Piston
    Walter Hamor Piston Jr., , was an American composer of classical music, music theorist and professor of music at Harvard University whose students included Leroy Anderson, Leonard Bernstein, and Elliott Carter....

     –
    • Concerto, for 2 pianos and orchestra
    • Three New England Sketches
      Three New England Sketches
      Three New England Sketches by Walter Piston is a symphonic suite dating from 1959.-History:The Sketches were commissioned by the Worcester County Musical Association for its 100th Annual Music Festival, and is dedicated to the conductor Paul Paray...

      , for orchestra
  • Quincy Porter
    Quincy Porter
    Quincy Porter was an American composer and teacher of classical music.Born in New Haven, Connecticut, he went to Yale University where his teachers included Horatio Parker and David Stanley Smith. Porter received two awards while studying music at Yale: the Osborne Prize for Fugue, and the...

     –
    • Concerto for harpsichord and orchestra
    • Concerto (Concertino), for wind orchestra
  • Henri Pousseur
    Henri Pousseur
    Henri Pousseur was a Belgian composer.-Biography:Pousseur studied at the Academies of Music in Liège and in Brussels from 1947 to 1953. He was closely associated with Pierre Froidebise and André Souris...

     –
    • Préhistoire du cinéma, 1–track tape
    • Rimes pour différentes sources sonores, for 3 orchestral groups and 2-track tape
  • Juan Orrego-Salas
    Juan Orrego-Salas
    Juan Antonio Orrego Salas is a Chilean composer of contemporary classical music and musicologist.He was a student of Randall Thompson and Aaron Copland in the United States, and later he settled in that country in the early 1960s to work at Indiana University, where he co-founded the Latin...

     –
    • Alabanzas a la Virgen, op. 49, for soprano or tenor and piano
    • Garden Songs, op. 47, for soprano, flute, viola, and harp
  • Angelo Paccagnini – Canti brevi: secondo libro, for voice and soprano
  • George Perle
    George Perle
    George Perle was a composer and music theorist. He was born in Bayonne, New Jersey. Perle was an alumnus of DePaul University...

     – Wind Quintet No. 1
  • Allan Pettersson
    Allan Pettersson
    Gustav Allan Pettersson was a Swedish composer. Today he is considered one of the most important Swedish composers of the 20th century...

     – Symphony No. 4 (1958–59)
  • H. Owen Reed
    H. Owen Reed
    Herbert Owen Reed is an American composer, conductor, and author.-Education:Reed was raised in rural Odessa, Missouri, where his first exposure to music was his father's playing of the old-time fiddle...

     –
    • Che-Ba-Kun-Ah (Road of Souls), for band, or for winds and string quartet
    • Renascence, for band
  • George Rochberg
    George Rochberg
    George Rochberg was an American composer of contemporary classical music.-Life:Rochberg was born in Paterson, New Jersey. He attended the Mannes College of Music, where his teachers included George Szell and Hans Weisse, and the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Rosario Scalero and...

     – Bartókiana, for piano
  • Ned Rorem
    Ned Rorem
    Ned Rorem is a Pulitzer prize-winning American composer and diarist. He is best known and most praised for his song settings.-Life:...

     –
    • "Memory", for voice and piano
    • Miracles of Christmas, for SATB choir and organ
    • "My Papa's Waltz", for voice and piano
    • "Night Crow", for voice and piano
    • "Root Cellar", for voice and piano
    • Two Poems of Theodore Roethke, for voice and piano
    • "The Waking", for voice and piano
  • Hilding Rosenberg
    Hilding Rosenberg
    Hilding Rosenberg , was the first Swedish modernist composer, and one of the most influential figures in Swedish 20th century classical music....

     –
    • Glaukes sånger (revised version), for voice and piano
    • Quintet for winds
    • Riflessioni No. 1, for string orchestra
    • Sonata, for solo flute
    • Songs (4), for voice and piano
  • Frederic Rzewski
    Frederic Rzewski
    Frederic Anthony Rzewski is an American composer and virtuoso pianist.- Biography :Rzewski began playing piano at age 5. He attended Phillips Academy, Harvard and Princeton, where his teachers included Randall Thompson, Roger Sessions, Walter Piston and Milton Babbitt...

     – Poem, for piano
  • Vadim Salmanov
    Vadim Salmanov
    The composer Vadim Nikolayevich Salmanov is perhaps best known for his Symphony No...

     – Symphony No. 2 in G
  • Domingo Santa Cruz – String Quartet No. 3, op. 31
  • Giacinto Scelsi
    Giacinto Scelsi
    Giacinto Scelsi , Count of Ayala Valva was an Italian composer who also wrote surrealist poetry in French....

     – Quattro pezzi su una nota sola ["Four pieces each on a single note"]
  • Bogusław Schaeffer – Concerto breve for cello
  • Pierre Schaeffer
    Pierre Schaeffer
    Pierre Henri Marie Schaeffer was a French composer, writer, broadcaster, engineer, musicologist and acoustician of the 20th century. His innovative work in both the sciences —particularly communications and acoustics— and the various arts of music, literature and radio presentation after the end...

     – Etudes aux objets
  • R. Murray Schafer
    R. Murray Schafer
    Raymond Murray Schafer is a Canadian composer, writer, music educator and environmentalist perhaps best known for his World Soundscape Project, concern for acoustic ecology, and his book The Tuning of the World...

     – In memoriam: Alberto Guerrero, for string orchestra
  • Hermann Schroeder
    Hermann Schroeder
    Hermann Schroeder was a German composer and a Catholic church musician.He spent the greatest part of his life’s work in the Rheinland...

     –
    • Missa figuralis, for choir, instruments, and organ
    • Partita Veni Creator Spiritus', for organ
    • Quartet No. 3, for oboe, violin, viola, and cello
  • Heino Schubert –
    • Missa "unanimi voce", for chorus and organ
    • Stücke (4), for piano 4-hands
  • Gunther Schuller
    Gunther Schuller
    Gunther Schuller is an American composer, conductor, horn player, author, historian, and jazz musician.- Biography and works :...

     –
    • Abstraction, for nine instruments
    • Concertino, for jazz quartet and orchestra
    • Conversations, for jazz qartet and string quartet
  • William Schuman
    William Schuman
    William Howard Schuman was an American composer and music administrator.-Life:Born in Manhattan in New York City to Samuel and Rachel Schuman, Schuman was named after the twenty-seventh U.S. president, William Howard Taft, although his family preferred to call him Bill...

     – Violin Concerto (revised version)
  • Makoto Shinohara
    Makoto Shinohara
    is a Japanese composer.- Biography :Shinohara studied at the Tokyo University of the Arts from 1952 to 1954, studying composition with Tomojiro Ikenouchi, piano with Kazuko Yasukawa, and conducting with Akeo Watanabe and Kurt Woess. From 1954 to 1960, he studied in Paris with Tony Aubin, Olivier...

     –
    • Kassouga, for flute and piano
    • Pièces concertantes (3), for trumpet and piano
  • Dmitri Shostakovich
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....

     – Cello Concerto No. 1
    Cello Concerto No. 1 (Shostakovich)
    The Cello Concerto No. 1 in E Flat Major, Opus 107, was composed in 1959 by Dmitri Shostakovich. He wrote the work for his friend Mstislav Rostropovich, who committed it to memory in four days and gave the premiere on October 4, 1959, with Yevgeny Mravinsky conducting the Leningrad Philharmonic...

  • Karlheinz Stockhausen
    Karlheinz Stockhausen
    Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...

     –
    • Refrain, for three players
    • Zyklus
      Zyklus
      Zyklus für einen Schlagzeuger is a composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen, assigned Number 9 in the composer's catalog of works. It was composed in 1959 at the request of Wolfgang Steinecke as a test piece for a percussion competition at the Darmstadt Summer Courses, where it was premièred on 25...

      , for a percussionist
  • Igor Stravinsky
    Igor Stravinsky
    Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....

     –
    • Double Canon: Raoul Dufy in memoriam, for four instruments
    • Epitaphium für das Grabmal des Prinzen Max Egon zu Fürstenberg, for flute, clarinet, and harp
  • Carlos Surinach
    Carlos Surinach
    Carlos Surinach was a Catalan Spanish-born composer and conductor.He was born in Barcelona, where he held conducting posts at the Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona and the Gran Teatre del Liceu...

     – Concerto for Orchestra
  • Tōru Takemitsu
    Toru Takemitsu
    was a Japanese composer and writer on aesthetics and music theory. Largely self-taught, Takemitsu possessed consummate skill in the subtle manipulation of instrumental and orchestral timbre...

     –
    • Ikari wo komete furikaereba [Looking Back with Rage], incidental music
    • Kaizoku [A Pirate], incidental music
    • Saegirarenai kyūsoku [Uninterrupted Rest] I–III, for piano
    • Scene, for cello and string orchestra
    • Shiseru ōjo [A Dead Princess], incidental music
  • Randall Thompson
    Randall Thompson
    Randall Thompson was an American composer, particularly noted for his choral works.-Career:He attended Harvard University, became assistant professor of music and choir director at Wellesley College, and received a doctorate in music from the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music...

     –
    • Frostiana, for 3–7 voices and piano or orchestra
    • The Gate of Heaven, 4-part choir
  • Virgil Thomson
    Virgil Thomson
    Virgil Thomson was an American composer and critic. He was instrumental in the development of the "American Sound" in classical music...

     –
    • Bertha (incidental music for the play by K. Koch)
    • Collected Poems (K. Koch), for soprano, baritone, and orchestra
    • Fugues and Cantilenas for orchestra
    • Lamentations, for accordion
    • Mostly about Love (Four Songs for Alice Estey), for voice and piano
  • Michael Tippett
    Michael Tippett
    Sir Michael Kemp Tippett OM CH CBE was an English composer.In his long career he produced a large body of work, including five operas, three large-scale choral works, four symphonies, five string quartets, four piano sonatas, concertos and concertante works, song cycles and incidental music...

     – Lullaby, for 6 solo voices: alto, two sopranos, two tenors, and bass
  • Erich Urbanner
    Erich Urbanner
    Erich Urbanner is an Austrian composer and teacher.-Biography:Urbanner studied from 1955 to 1961 at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, in the composition classes of Karl Schiske and Hanns Jelinek, as well as studying piano with Grete Hinterhofer and conducting with Hans Swarowsky...

     – Concertino, for flute and orchestra
  • Vladimir Ussachevsky
    Vladimir Ussachevsky
    Vladimir Kirilovitch Ussachevsky was a composer, particularly known for his work in electronic music.-Biography:...

     –
    • The Boy Who Saw Through, film score
    • Studies in Sound, Plus, for tape
  • David Van Vactor
    David Van Vactor
    David Van Vactor was an American composer of contemporary classical music.He was born in Plymouth, Indiana, and received Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees from Northwestern University...

     – Symphony No. 3
  • Santiago Velasco Llanos – "O salutaris hostia", motet for chorus
  • Heitor Villa-Lobos
    Heitor Villa-Lobos
    Heitor Villa-Lobos was a Brazilian composer, described as "the single most significant creative figure in 20th-century Brazilian art music". Villa-Lobos has become the best-known and most significant Latin American composer to date. He wrote numerous orchestral, chamber, instrumental and vocal works...

     –
    • Concerto Grosso, for wind quartet and wind ensemble
    • Suite No. 1, for chamber orchestra
    • Suite No. 2, for chamber orchestra
  • William Walton
    William Walton
    Sir William Turner Walton OM was an English composer. During a sixty-year career, he wrote music in several classical genres and styles, from film scores to opera...

     –
    • Anon in Love, 6 songs for tenor and guitar or orchestra
    • March: A History of the English-speaking Peoples, incidental music for ABC TV
    • A Queen’s Fanfare, for brass
  • Egon Wellesz
    Egon Wellesz
    Egon Joseph Wellesz was an Austrian-born British composer, teacher and musicologist, notable particularly in the field of Byzantine music.- Life :...

     –
    • Lieder aus Wien, op. 82, for voice and piano
    • Quintet, op.81 for clarinet and string quartet
    • Rhapsodie, op. 87, for viola
  • Healey Willan
    Healey Willan
    Healey Willan, was an Anglo-Canadian organist and composer. He composed more than 800 works including operas, symphonies, chamber music, a concerto, and pieces for band, orchestra, organ, and piano...

     –
    • Passacaglia and Fugue no. 2 in E minor, op. 178, for organ
    • Poem for Strings, op. 82, version for string orchestra
  • Grace Williams
    Grace Williams
    -Biography:Williams was born in Barry, near Cardiff, Wales.She was educated at Barry County School, and won a scholarship to Cardiff University . She then went to the Royal College of Music, London, where she was taught by Ralph Vaughan Williams...

     – All Seasons Shall Be Sweet
  • Charles Wuorinen
    Charles Wuorinen
    Charles Peter Wuorinen is a prolific Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer born and living in New York City. His catalog of more than 250 compositions includes works for orchestra, opera, chamber music, as well as solo instrumental and vocal works...

     –
    • Musica duarum partium ecclesiastica, for brass quintet, timpani, piano, and organ
    • Symphony No. 3
    • Trio concertante, for oboe, violin, and piano
  • La Monte Young
    La Monte Young
    La Monte Thornton Young is an American avant-garde composer, musician, and artist.Young is generally recognized as the first minimalist composer. His works have been included among the most important and radical post-World War II avant-garde, experimental, and contemporary music. Young is...

     –
    • Sarabande, for any instruments
    • Studies I, II, and III, for piano
    • Vision, for piano, 2 brass, recorder, 4 bassoons, violin, viola, cello, and double bass
  • Jōji Yuasa
    Joji Yuasa
    is a Japanese composer of contemporary classical music.-Biography:Born in Kōriyama, Fukushima, he is self-taught as a composer.In 1951 or 1952, together with the composer Tōru Takemitsu and other contemporary artists and musicians, he founded Jikken Kobo , an organization dedicated to the...

     – Projection Topologic, for piano
  • Iannis Xenakis
    Iannis Xenakis
    Iannis Xenakis was a Romanian-born Greek ethnic, naturalized French composer, music theorist, and architect-engineer. He is commonly recognized as one of the most important post-war avant-garde composers...

     –
    • Analogique B, for 2-track tape
    • Duel for Two Small Orchestras
    • Syrmos, for 12 violins, 3 cellos, and 3 double basses
  • Çesk Zadeja
    Çesk Zadeja
    Çesk Zadeja was an Albanian composer. A native of Shkodër, he studied in Moscow and did much to promote the arts in Tirana.He is also called "The Father of the Albanian Music".-Discography:...

     – Atdheu im, cantata for tenor and mixed chorus

Opera

  • Samuel Adler
    Samuel Adler (composer)
    Samuel Hans Adler is an American composer and conductor.-Biography:Adler was born to a Jewish family in Mannheim, Germany, the son of Hugo Chaim Adler, a cantor and composer, and Selma Adler. The family fled to the United States in 1939, where Hugo became the cantor of Temple Emanuel in...

     – The Outcast of Poker Flat
  • Jurriaan Andriessen
    Jurriaan Andriessen
    Jurriaan Hendrik Andriessen was a Dutch composer, whose father, Hendrik, brother Louis, and uncle Willem have also been notable composers...

     – Kalchas
  • Claude Arrieu
    Claude Arrieu
    Claude Arrieu was a prolific French composer.-Biography:Claude Arrieu was a classically trained musician from an early age. She became particularly interested in works by Bach and Mozart, and later, Igor Stravinsky...

     – La cabine téléphonique (March 15, 1959, RTF)
  • Henk Badings
    Henk Badings
    Henk Badings was a Dutch composer.Born in Bandung, Java, Dutch East Indies, as the son of Herman Louis Johan Badings, an officer in the Dutch East Indies army, Badings became an orphan at an early age...

     – Salto mortale (TV chamber opera), Nederlandse Televisie Sichting, June 19, 1959
  • Samuel Barber
    Samuel Barber
    Samuel Osborne Barber II was an American composer of orchestral, opera, choral, and piano music. His Adagio for Strings is his most popular composition and widely considered a masterpiece of modern classical music...

     – A Hand of Bridge
    A Hand of Bridge
    A Hand of Bridge, opus 35, is an opera composed by Samuel Barber with libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti, is possibly the shortest opera that is regularly performed - it lasts about ten minutes. It consists of two couples playing a hand of bridge, during which each character has a short arietta in...

  • Grażyna Bacewicz
    Grazyna Bacewicz
    Grażyna Bacewicz was a Polish composer and violinist. She is only the second Polish female composer to have achieved national and international recognition, the first being Maria Szymanowska in the early 19th century.- Life :Bacewicz was born in Łódź...

     – Przygoda króla Artura
  • Karl-Birger Blomdahl
    Karl-Birger Blomdahl
    Karl-Birger Blomdahl was a Swedish composer and conductor born in Växjö. He was educated in biochemistry, but was primarily active in music and by his experimental compositions he became one of the big names in Swedish modernism. His teachers included Hilding Rosenberg...

     – Aniara
    Aniara (opera)
    Aniara is an opera in two acts by Karl-Birger Blomdahl, with a libretto by Erik Lindegren based on the poem Aniara by Harry Martinson, that was premiered in 1959. The opera was described by the composer as a "review about Man in Time and Space"....

  • Carlos Chávez
    Carlos Chávez
    Carlos Antonio de Padua Chávez y Ramírez was a Mexican composer, conductor, music theorist, educator, journalist, and founder and director of the Mexican Symphonic Orchestra. He was influenced by native Mexican cultures. Of his six Symphonies, his Symphony No...

     – Love Propitiated October 28, 1959, Mexico City (revised version of Panfilo e Lauretta)
  • Paul Dessau
    Paul Dessau
    Paul Dessau was a German composer and conductor.- Biography :Dessau was born in Hamburg into a musical family...

     – Puntila
  • Ferenc Farkas
    Ferenc Farkas
    Ferenc Farkas was a Hungarian composer.Farkas began his studies in composition at the Budapest Academy of Music , where his teachers were Leo Weiner and Albert Siklós. He later studied with Ottorino Respighi in Rome...

     – Paradies der Schwiegersöhne
  • Nicolas Flagello
    Nicolas Flagello
    Nicolas Flagello , was an American composer of classical music.Flagello was born in New York City, into a very musical family. His brother Ezio Flagello was a bass who sang at the Metropolitan Opera. One of his first music teachers was the composer Vittorio Giannini, and he then studied at the...

     – The Judgment of St Francis
  • Lukas Foss
    Lukas Foss
    Lukas Foss was a German-born American composer, conductor, and pianist.-Music career:He was born Lukas Fuchs in Berlin, Germany in 1922. His father was the philosopher and scholar Martin Fuchs...

     – Introductions and Goodbyes (a nine-minute opera, libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti
    Gian Carlo Menotti
    Gian Carlo Menotti was an Italian-American composer and librettist. Although he often referred to himself as an American composer, he kept his Italian citizenship. He wrote the classic Christmas opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors, among about two dozen other operas intended to appeal to popular...

    )
  • Peggy Glanville-Hicks
    Peggy Glanville-Hicks
    Peggy Glanville-Hicks was an Australian composer.- Biography :Peggy Glanville-Hicks was born Melbourne in 1912. At age 15 she began studying composition with Fritz Hart in Melbourne...

     – The Glittering Gate (New York, May 15, 1959)
  • Jakov Gotovac
    Jakov Gotovac
    Jakov Gotovac was a Croatian composer and conductor of classical music. He is the author of the most famous Croatian opera, the comic Ero s onoga svijeta , which first played in Zagreb in 1935....

     – Stanac
  • Alan Hovhaness
    Alan Hovhaness
    Alan Hovhaness was an Armenian-American composer.His music is accessible to the lay listener and often evokes a mood of mystery or contemplation...

     – Blue Flame, op. 172
  • Sven-Eric Johanson – Kunskapens vin
  • Elizabeth Maconchy
    Elizabeth Maconchy
    Dame Elizabeth Violet Maconchy Le Fanu DBE was an English composer, most noted for her cycle of thirteen string quartets.-Biography:...

     – The Sofa
  • Carl Orff
    Carl Orff
    Carl Orff was a 20th-century German composer, best known for his cantata Carmina Burana . In addition to his career as a composer, Orff developed an influential method of music education for children.-Early life:...

     – Oedipus der Tyrann (Stuttgart, December 11, 1959)
  • Francis Poulenc
    Francis Poulenc
    Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc was a French composer and a member of the French group Les six. He composed solo piano music, chamber music, oratorio, choral music, opera, ballet music, and orchestral music...

     – La Voix humaine
    La voix humaine
    La voix humaine is a one-act opera for one character, with music by Francis Poulenc to a libretto by Jean Cocteau, based on his 1930 play. La voix humaine was first performed at the Opéra-Comique, Salle Favart in Paris on 6 February 1959...


Musical theater

  • Aladdin
    Aladdin (musical)
    Aladdin, is a musical/pantomime written by Sandy Wilson for the inaugural Christmas Pantomime at the newly refurbished Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith...

     (Cole Porter) London
    West End theatre
    West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...

     production opened at the Coliseum on December 17.
  • Destry Rides Again
    Destry Rides Again
    Destry Rides Again is a western starring Marlene Dietrich and James Stewart. The supporting cast includes Mischa Auer, Charles Winninger, Brian Donlevy, Allen Jenkins, Irene Hervey, Billy Gilbert, Bill Cody, Jr., and Una Merkel. The original Max Brand novel was translated into an "oater" with the...

         Broadway production opened at the Imperial Theatre on April 23 and ran for 472 performances
  • Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be
    Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be
    Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'be is a play with music, rather than a musical. The play, by Frank Norman, himself a Cockney, has music and lyrics by Lionel Bart, who also grew up in London's East End.-Production background:...

     (Lionel Bart
    Lionel Bart
    Lionel Bart was a writer and composer of British pop music and musicals, best known for creating the book, music and lyrics for Oliver!-Early life:...

    ) – Stratford production opened at the Theatre Royal
    Theatre Royal Stratford East
    The Theatre Royal Stratford East is a theatre in Stratford in the London Borough of Newham. Since 1953, it has been the home of the Theatre Workshop company.-History:...

     on April 17 and ran for 63 performances
  • Fiorello!
    Fiorello!
    Fiorello! is a musical about New York City mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia, a reform Republican who took on Tammany Hall. The book is by Jerome Weidman and George Abbott, drawn substantially from the 1955 volume Life With Fiorello by Ernest Cuneo, with lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, and music by Jerry Bock...

         Broadway production opened at the Broadhurst Theatre
    Broadhurst Theatre
    The Broadhurst Theatre is a legitimate Broadway theatre located at 235 West 44th Street in midtown Manhattan.It was designed by architect Herbert J. Krapp, a well-known theatre designer who had been working directly with the Shubert brothers; the Broadhurst opened 27 September 1917...

     on November 23 and ran for 795 performances
  • Gypsy
    Gypsy: A Musical Fable
    Gypsy is a musical with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and a book by Arthur Laurents. Gypsy is loosely based on the 1957 memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee, the famous striptease artist, and focuses on her mother, Rose, whose name has become synonymous with "the ultimate show business...

     (Jule Styne
    Jule Styne
    Jule Styne was a British-born American songwriter especially famous for a series of Broadway musicals, which included several very well known and frequently revived shows.-Early life:...

     and Stephen Sondheim
    Stephen Sondheim
    Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award...

    ) – Broadway production opened at the Broadway Theatre on May 21 and ran for 702 performances
  • Hooray for Daisy London production opened at the Lyric Opera House, Hammersmith on December 20 and ran for 51 performances
  • Juno
    Juno (musical)
    Juno is a Broadway musical with music and lyrics by Marc Blitzstein and book by Joseph Stein, based closely on the 1924 play Juno and the Paycock by Sean O'Casey. The original Broadway production opened at the Winter Garden Theatre, New York, on March 9, 1959.Despite light moments, the musical,...

     (Marc Blitzstein
    Marc Blitzstein
    Marcus Samuel Blitzstein, better known as Marc Blitzstein , was an American composer. He won national attention in 1937 when his pro-union musical The Cradle Will Rock, directed by Orson Welles, was shut down by the Works Progress Administration...

    ) – opened at the Winter Garden Theatre, New York, March 9, 1959
  • Kawaii onna (Toshirō Mayuzumi
    Toshiro Mayuzumi
    Toshiro Mayuzumi was a Japanese composer.-Biography:...

    ), Osaka
  • Lend An Ear
    Lend an Ear
    Lend an Ear is a musical revue with a book, music, and lyrics by Charles Gaynor and additional sketches by Joseph Stein and Will Glickman.-Background:Lend an Ear was commissioned by Frederick Burleigh, and...

         Broadway revival opened at the Renata Theatre on September 24 and ran for 94 performances
  • Little Mary Sunshine
    Little Mary Sunshine
    Little Mary Sunshine is a musical that parodies old-fashioned operettas and musicals. The book, music, and lyrics are by Rick Besoyan. The musical should not be confused with the 1916 silent film of the same name ....

         Broadway production opened at the Orpheum Theatre on November 18 and ran for 1143 performances.
  • Lock Up Your Daughters
    Lock Up Your Daughters
    Lock Up Your Daughters is a musical based on an 18th century comedy, Rape Upon Rape, by Henry Fielding and adapted by Bernard Miles. The lyrics were written by Lionel Bart and the music by Laurie Johnson...

     (Lionel Bart
    Lionel Bart
    Lionel Bart was a writer and composer of British pop music and musicals, best known for creating the book, music and lyrics for Oliver!-Early life:...

    ) – London production opened at the Mermaid Theatre
    Mermaid Theatre
    The Mermaid Theatre was a theatre at Puddle Dock, in Blackfriars, in the City of London and the first built there since the time of Shakespeare...

     on May 28 and ran for 328 performances
  • The Love Doctor London
    West End theatre
    West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...

     production opened at the Piccadilly Theatre
    Piccadilly Theatre
    The Piccadilly Theatre is a West End theatre located at 16 Denman Street, behind Piccadilly Circus and adjacent to the Regent Palace Hotel, in the City of Westminster, England.-Early years:Built by Bertie Crewe and Edward A...

     on October 12 and ran for only 16 performances.
  • On the Town     Broadway revival opened at the Carnegie Hall Playhouse on January 15 and ran for 70 performances
  • Redhead
    Redhead (musical)
    Redhead is a musical with music composed by Albert Hague and lyrics by Dorothy Fields, who with her brother, Herbert, along with Sidney Sheldon and David Shaw wrote the book/libretto...

     Broadway production opened at the 46th Street Theatre on February 5 and ran for 405 performances
  • Shakespeare in Harlem (Margaret Bonds
    Margaret Bonds
    Margaret Allison Bonds was an American composer and pianist. One of the first black composers and performers to gain recognition in the United States, she is best remembered today for her frequent collaborations with Langston Hughes.-Life:...

    ) – Westport, CT
  • The Sound of Music
    The Sound of Music
    The Sound of Music is a musical by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and a book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. It is based on the memoir of Maria von Trapp, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers...

     (Richard Rodgers
    Richard Rodgers
    Richard Charles Rodgers was an American composer of music for more than 900 songs and for 43 Broadway musicals. He also composed music for films and television. He is best known for his songwriting partnerships with the lyricists Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II...

     and Oscar Hammerstein II
    Oscar Hammerstein II
    Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II was an American librettist, theatrical producer, and theatre director of musicals for almost forty years. Hammerstein won eight Tony Awards and was twice awarded an Academy Award for "Best Original Song". Many of his songs are standard repertoire for...

    ) – Broadway production opened at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre
    Lunt-Fontanne Theatre
    The Lunt-Fontanne Theatre is a legitimate Broadway theatre located at 205 West 46th Street in midtown-Manhattan.Designed by the architectural firm of Carrere and Hastings, it was built by producer Charles Dillingham and opened as the Globe Theatre, in honor of London's Shakespearean playhouse, on...

     on November 16 and ran for 1443 performances.
  • Take Me Along
    Take Me Along
    Take Me Along is a musical based on the Eugene O'Neill play Ah, Wilderness, with music and lyrics by Bob Merrill and book by Joseph Stein and Robert Russell.-Background:...

     Broadway production opened at the Shubert Theatre
    Shubert Theatre (Broadway)
    The Shubert Theatre is a Broadway theatre located at 225 West 44th Street in midtown-Manhattan, New York, United States.Designed by architect Henry Beaumont Herts, it was named after Sam S. Shubert, the second oldest of the three brothers of the theatrical producing family...

     on October 22 and ran for 448 performances

Musical film
Musical film
The musical film is a film genre in which songs sung by the characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing. The songs usually advance the plot or develop the film's characters, though in some cases they serve merely as breaks in the storyline, often as elaborate...

s

  • Expresso Bongo
    Expresso Bongo
    Expresso Bongo, a 1958 West End musical and a 1959 film, was a satire of the music industry. It was first produced on the stage at the Saville Theatre, London on 23 April 1958. Its book was written by Wolf Mankowitz and Julian More, with music by David Heneker and Monty Norman, also the...

  • Char Dil Char Rahein, with music by Anil Biswas
    Anil Biswas (composer)
    Anil Biswas was a famous Indian film music composer from 1935 to 1965, who apart from being one of pioneers of playback singing, is also credited for the first Indian orchestra of twelve pieces and introducing orchestral music and full-blooded choral effects, into Indian cinema...

  • Dil Deke Dekho
    Dil Deke Dekho
    Dil Deke Dekho, a 1959 Indian Hindi romantic comedy film, was Nasir Hussain's second film as director. His first directorial venture was Tumsa Nahin Dekha , which became a big hit and which gave star Shammi Kapoor a new image as a comedic, dancing hero. Husain and Kapoor reteamed here. Asha...

    , with soundtrack by Usha Khanna
    Usha Khanna
    Usha Khanna is an Indian music director. Regarded as the first established female music director in the Indian film industry, she remained active for more than 3 decades from 1960s to 1980s. She is still active making some music for some movies and television-serials, more than 40 years after her...

    , starring Asha Parekh
    Asha Parekh
    Asha Parekh is a Bollywood actress, director, and producer. She was one of the top stars in Hindi films from 1959 to 1973.-Early life:...

  • The Five Pennies
    The Five Pennies
    The Five Pennies was a semi-biographical 1959 film starring Danny Kaye as cornet player and bandleader Red Nichols. Other cast members included Barbara Bel Geddes, Harry Guardino, Bob Crosby, Louis Armstrong, Susan Gordon, and Tuesday Weld...

     starring Danny Kaye
    Danny Kaye
    Danny Kaye was a celebrated American actor, singer, dancer, and comedian...

  • Go, Johnny, Go starring Jimmy Clanton
    Jimmy Clanton
    Jimmy Clanton is an American singer who became known as the "swamp pop R&B teenage idol". His band recorded a hit song "Just A Dream" which Clanton had written in 1958 for the Ace Records label. It reached number four on the Billboard chart and sold a million copies...

     and Sandy Stewart
    Sandy Stewart (singer)
    Sandy Stewart is an American singer of popular songs. She was a regular guest on 1950s TV variety series including shows hosted by Perry Como and Eddie Fisher....

    , and featuring Chuck Berry
    Chuck Berry
    Charles Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter, and one of the pioneers of rock and roll music. With songs such as "Maybellene" , "Roll Over Beethoven" , "Rock and Roll Music" and "Johnny B...

    , Jackie Wilson
    Jackie Wilson
    Jack Leroy "Jackie" Wilson, Jr. was an American singer and performer. Known as "Mr. Excitement", Wilson was important in the transition of rhythm and blues into soul. He was known as a master showman, and as one of the most dynamic singers and performers in R&B and rock history...

    , Ritchie Valens
    Ritchie Valens
    Ritchie Valens was a Mexican-American singer, songwriter and guitarist....

    , The Cadillacs
    The Cadillacs
    The Cadillacs were an American rock and roll and doo-wop group from Harlem, New York; active from 1953 to 1962. The group was noted for their 1955 hit "Speedoo", which was instrumental in attracting White audiences to Black rock and roll performers.-History:...

    , Jo-Ann Campbell, The Flamingos
    The Flamingos
    The Flamingos were a doo wop group from the United States, most popular in the mid to late 1950s and best known for their 1959 cover version of "I Only Have Eyes for You".-Early quintet:...

     and Eddie Cochran
    Eddie Cochran
    Eddie Cochran , was an American rock and roll pioneer who in his brief career had a small but lasting influence on rock music through his guitar playing. Cochran's rockabilly songs, such as "C'mon Everybody", "Somethin' Else", and "Summertime Blues", captured teenage frustration and desire in the...

    .
  • Li'l Abner
    Li'l Abner (musical)
    Li'l Abner is a musical with a book by Norman Panama and Melvin Frank, music by Gene De Paul, and lyrics by Johnny Mercer.Based on the comic strip Li'l Abner by Al Capp, the show is, on the surface, a broad spoof of hillbillies but is also a pointed satire taking on any number of topics, ranging...

  • The Lady is a Square
    The Lady Is a Square
    The Lady Is a Square is a 1959 British comedy musical film directed by Herbert Wilcox and featuring Anna Neagle, Frankie Vaughan and Janette Scott. An aspiring singer goes to work as a butler in the house of a classical music patron...

     starring Anna Neagle
    Anna Neagle
    Forming a professional alliance with Wilcox, Neagle played her first starring film role in the musical Goodnight Vienna , again with Jack Buchanan. With this film Neagle became an overnight favourite...

    , Frankie Vaughan
    Frankie Vaughan
    Frankie Vaughan, CBE, DL was an English singer of traditional pop music, who issued more than 80 recordings in his lifetime. He was known as "Mr. Moonlight" after one of his early hits.-Life and career:...

    , Janette Scott
    Janette Scott
    Thora Janette Scott is an English actress. She was born in Morecambe, England. She is the daughter of actors Jimmy Scott and Thora Hird. She started her acting career as a child actress, known as Janette Scott, and became a popular leading lady...

    , Anthony Newley
    Anthony Newley
    Anthony George Newley was an English actor, singer and songwriter. He enjoyed success as a performer in such diverse fields as rock and roll and stage and screen acting.-Early life:...

     and Wilfrid Hyde-White
    Wilfrid Hyde-White
    Wilfrid Hyde-White was an English character actor.-Early life and career:Wilfrid Hyde White was born at the rectory in Bourton-on-the-Water in Gloucestershire, the son of William Edward White, canon of Gloucester Cathedral, and his wife, Ethel Adelaide Drought...

  • Porgy And Bess
    Porgy and Bess
    Porgy and Bess is an opera, first performed in 1935, with music by George Gershwin, libretto by DuBose Heyward, and lyrics by Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward. It was based on DuBose Heyward's novel Porgy and subsequent play of the same title, which he co-wrote with his wife Dorothy Heyward...

  • Say One for Me
    Say One for Me
    Say One For Me is a film directed by Frank Tashlin and starring Bing Crosby and Debbie Reynolds.-Cast:*Bing Crosby as Father Conroy*Debbie Reynolds as Holly LeMaise aka Conroy*Robert Wagner as Tony Vincent*Ray Walston as Phil Stanley...

     starring Bing Crosby
    Bing Crosby
    Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby was an American singer and actor. Crosby's trademark bass-baritone voice made him one of the best-selling recording artists of the 20th century, with over half a billion records in circulation....

  • Tommy the Toreador
    Tommy the Toreador
    Tommy the Toreador is a 1959 British musical comedy film directed by John Paddy Carstairs and starring Tommy Steele, Janet Munro, Sid James, Bernard Cribbins, Noell Purcell and Kenneth Williams...

     starring Tommy Steele
    Tommy Steele
    Tommy Steele OBE , is an English entertainer. Steele is widely regarded as Britain's first teen idol and rock and roll star.-Singer:...

  • Sleeping Beauty
    Sleeping Beauty (1959 film)
    Sleeping Beauty is a 1959 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and based on the fairy tale "La Belle au bois dormant" by Charles Perrault...

     from Walt Disney Pictures
    Walt Disney Pictures
    Walt Disney Pictures is an American film studio owned by The Walt Disney Company. Walt Disney Pictures and Television, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Studios and the main production company for live-action feature films within the Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group, based at the Walt Disney...

     (animated)

Births

  • January 3 – Curt Bisquera
    Curt Bisquera
    Curt Bisquera is a studio drummer known for his glasses and long dreadlocks. He has worked with Josh Groban, Mick Jagger, Seal, Elton John, Johnny Hallyday and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers among others. He states that his biggest thrill was playing in Madison Square Garden with Elton...

    , drummer
  • January 6 – Kathy Sledge
    Kathy Sledge
    Kathy Sledge , the youngest of five sisters, Carol,Debra,Joni and Kim. She is an American singer who has had several hits on the International Pop and Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart, including "Take Me Back To Love Again," which hit #1 in 1992. She is the granddaughter of former opera singer...

    , vocalist (Sister Sledge
    Sister Sledge
    Sister Sledge is an American musical group from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, formed in 1972 and consisting of four sisters: Kim Sledge Debbie Sledge , Joni Sledge , and Kathy Sledge . They are granddaughters of the former opera singer Viola Williams. The sisters used to perform under the name of "Mrs...

    )
  • January 7 – Kathy Valentine
    Kathy Valentine
    Kathy Valentine is the American bass guitarist for the all-girl rock band, The Go-Go's....

     (The Go-Go's
    The Go-Go's
    The Go-Go’s are an all-female American rock band formed in 1978. They made history as the first all-female band that both wrote their own songs and played their own instruments to top the Billboard album charts....

    )
  • January 8 – Paul Hester
    Paul Hester
    Paul Newell Hester was an Australian musician and television personality; he was the drummer for the related bands Split Enz and Crowded House.-The early years:...

    , drummer (Crowded House
    Crowded House
    Crowded House are a rock band, formed in Melbourne, Australia and led by New Zealand singer-songwriter Neil Finn. Finn is the primary songwriter and creative director of the band, having led it through several incarnations, drawing members from New Zealand , Australia and the United States...

    ) (died 2005)
  • January 10 – Curt Kirkwood
    Curt Kirkwood
    Curtis Matthew Kirkwood is an American singer, guitarist, and songwriter. He grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, but currently resides in Austin, Texas....

     (Meat Puppets
    Meat Puppets
    The Meat Puppets are an American rock band formed in January 1980, in Phoenix, Arizona. The group's original lineup was Curt Kirkwood , his brother Cris Kirkwood , and Derrick Bostrom . The Kirkwood brothers met Bostrom while attending Brophy Prep High School in Phoenix...

    )
  • January 12
    • Per Gessle
      Per Gessle
      Per Håkan Gessle is a Swedish pop singer-songwriter, guitarist, and harmonicist. He is the lead singer of the Swedish pop group Gyllene Tider and formed Roxette with Marie Fredriksson...

       (Roxette
      Roxette
      Roxette are a Swedish pop music duo, consisting of Marie Fredriksson and Per Gessle . Formed in 1986, the duo became an international act from the late 1980s, when they released their breakthrough album Look Sharp!...

      )
    • Blixa Bargeld
      Blixa Bargeld
      Blixa Bargeld is a composer, author, actor, singer, musician, performer and lecturer in a number of artistic fields...

       (Einstürzende Neubauten
      Einstürzende Neubauten
      Einstürzende Neubauten is a German post-industrial band, originally from West Berlin, formed in 1980. The group currently comprises Blixa Bargeld , Alexander Hacke , N.U...

      )
  • January 14
    • Chas Smash
      Chas Smash
      Cathal Smyth, also known as Chas Smash is an English musician, best known as the backing singer and dancer in the ska/pop band Madness. He also plays trumpet, acoustic guitar and various percussion instruments...

       (Madness
      Madness (band)
      In 1979, the band recorded the Lee Thompson composition "The Prince". The song, like the band's name, paid homage to their idol, Prince Buster. The song was released through 2 Tone Records, the label of The Specials founder Jerry Dammers. The song was a surprise hit, peaking in the UK music charts...

      )
    • Geoff Tate
      Geoff Tate
      Geoff Tate is an American singer and musician, who rose to fame in the 1980s with the progressive metal band, Queensrÿche...

       (Queensrÿche
      Queensrÿche
      thumb|250px|right|Queensrÿche's classic line-up performing at the [[Sauna Open Air Metal Festival]] 2011 in [[Tampere]], [[Finland]]. Left to right: bass Eddie Jackson, lead vocals Geoff Tate, drums Scott Rockenfield and guitars Michael Wilton....

      )
  • January 16 – Sade
    Sade (band)
    Sade is a British smooth jazz band that formed in 1983, named for Nigerian lead singer Sade Adu. Their music features elements of R&B, soul, jazz, and soft rock....

    , singer
  • January 17 – Susanna Hoffs
    Susanna Hoffs
    Susanna Lee Hoffs is an American vocalist, guitarist and actress. She is best known as a member of the all-female pop band The Bangles.-Early life:...

    , singer (The Bangles
    The Bangles
    The Bangles are an American all-female band that originated in the early 1980s, scoring several hit singles during the decade.-Formation and early years :...

    )
  • January 28 – Dave Sharp
    Dave Sharp
    Dave Sharp is an English guitarist who co-founded, along with Mike Peters, the Welsh punk rock band The Alarm.-Early career:...

     (The Alarm
    The Alarm
    The Alarm are an alternative rock band that emerged from North Wales in the late 1970s. They started as a mod band and stayed together for over ten years. As a rock band, they displayed marked influences from Welsh language and culture...

    )
  • January 30 – Jody Watley
    Jody Watley
    Jody Vanessa Watley is an American, singer, songwriter, record producer, and founder of Avitone Records whose music crosses genres from Pop, R&B, Jazz, Dance and Electronic Soul....

    , singer
  • February 3 – Lol Tolhurst, The Cure
    The Cure
    The Cure are an English rock band formed in Crawley, West Sussex in 1976. The band has experienced several line-up changes, with frontman, vocalist, guitarist and principal songwriter Robert Smith being the only constant member...

  • February 14 – Renée Fleming
    Renée Fleming
    Renée Fleming is an American soprano specializing in opera and lieder. Fleming has a full lyric soprano voice.Fleming has performed coloratura, lyric, and lighter spinto soprano repertoires. She has sung roles in Italian, German, French, Czech, and Russian, aside from her native English. She also...

    , operatic soprano
  • February 15 – Ali Campbell
    Ali Campbell
    Ali Campbell, , is a British singer, solo artist and songwriter and was the lead singer and founding member of UB40. As part of UB40, Campbell sold over 70 million records world wide and toured the globe for 30 years. In 2008 Campbell left UB40 and embarked on a successful solo career.-Personal...

    , ska musician (UB40
    UB40
    UB40 are a British reggae/pop band formed in 1978 in Birmingham. The band has placed more than 50 singles in the UK Singles Chart, and has also achieved considerable international success. One of the world's best-selling music artists, UB40 have sold over 70 million records.Their hit singles...

    )
  • February 25 – Mike Peters
    Mike Peters (musician)
    Mike Peters is a Welsh musician, best known as the lead singer of The Alarm. He currently lives in Dyserth, North Wales with his family. After The Alarm split up in 1991, Peters wrote and released solo work, which he has been releasing under the name "The Alarm" since 2000...

    , singer and songwriter (The Alarm
    The Alarm
    The Alarm are an alternative rock band that emerged from North Wales in the late 1970s. They started as a mod band and stayed together for over ten years. As a rock band, they displayed marked influences from Welsh language and culture...

    )
  • March 7 – Andy Diagram
    Andy Diagram
    Andy Diagram is a British musician and trumpet player. He has worked with the instrument in a variety bands and contexts ranging from pop and rock to experimental jazz, art rock and dance music...

    , trumpet player
  • March 16 – Flavor Flav
    Flavor Flav
    William Jonathan Drayton, Jr. , better known by his stage name Flavor Flav, is an American rapper and television personality who rose to prominence as a member of the rap group Public Enemy...

     (Public Enemy)
  • March 17 – Mike Lindup
    Mike Lindup
    Mike Lindup is best known as the keyboard player and falsetto voiced singer, who joined with Mark King and brothers Phil and Boon Gould to form the 1980s - 1990s British funk/rock/pop band, Level 42....

    , keyboard player and vocalist (Level 42
    Level 42
    Level 42 are an English pop rock and jazz-funk band who had a number of worldwide and UK hits during the 1980s and 1990s.The band gained fame for their high-calibre musicianship—in particular that of Mark King, whose percussive slap-bass guitar technique provided the driving groove of many of the...

    )
  • March 27 – Andrew Farriss
    Andrew Farriss
    Andrew Charles Farriss is a rock musician , best known as the keyboardist and main composer for the Australian band INXS.-Career:...

     (INXS)
  • March 29 – Perry Farrell
    Perry Farrell
    Perry Farrell is the frontman for the alternative rock band Jane's Addiction. Farrell created the touring festival Lollapalooza as a farewell tour for Jane's Addiction in 1991; it has since evolved into an annual destination festival. Farrell continues to produce Lollapalooza with partners William...

     (Jane's Addiction
    Jane's Addiction
    Jane's Addiction is an American alternative rock band formed in Los Angeles, California in 1985. The band's original line-up featured Perry Farrell , Dave Navarro , Eric Avery and Stephen Perkins . After breaking up in 1991, Jane's Addiction briefly reunited in 1997 and again in 2001, both times...

    )
  • April 10
    • Babyface, musician and record producer
    • Brian Setzer
      Brian Setzer
      Brian Setzer is an American guitarist, singer and songwriter. He first found widespread success in the early 1980s with the 1950s-style rockabilly revival group The Stray Cats, and revitalized his career in the late 1990s with a jazz-oriented big band.-Career:Setzer was born in Massapequa, New York...

      , guitarist and singer (The Stray Cats)
  • April 21
    • Michael Timmins (Cowboy Junkies
      Cowboy Junkies
      Cowboy Junkies are a Canadian alternative country/blues/folk rock band. The group was formed in Toronto in 1985 by Margo Timmins , Michael Timmins , Peter Timmins and Alan Anton ....

      )
    • Robert Smith
      Robert Smith (musician)
      Robert James Smith is an English musician. He is the lead singer, guitar player and principal songwriter of the rock band The Cure, and its only constant member since its founding in 1976...

      , singer (The Cure
      The Cure
      The Cure are an English rock band formed in Crawley, West Sussex in 1976. The band has experienced several line-up changes, with frontman, vocalist, guitarist and principal songwriter Robert Smith being the only constant member...

      )
  • April 27
    • Marco Pirroni
      Marco Pirroni
      Marco Francesco Andrea Pirroni is an English guitarist, songwriter and record producer...

      , guitarist (Adam and the Ants
      Adam and the Ants
      Adam and the Ants were a British rock band active during the late 1970s and early 1980s. The original group, which existed from 1977 to 1980, became notable as a cult band marking the transition from the late-1970s punk rock era to the post-punk and New Wave era...

      , Siouxsie and the Banshees (founder member), The Models
      The Models
      The Models was a short-lived punk band formed in Harrow, London, England. It consisted in Cliff Fox on vocals and guitar, Marco Pirroni on guitar, Mick Allen on bass and Terry Day on drums....

      , The Wolfmen
      The Wolfmen
      The Wolfmen are a rock music band formed in 2004 and centres around Marco Pirroni and Chris Constantinou...

      )
    • Sheena Easton
      Sheena Easton
      Sheena Easton is a Scottish recording artist. Easton became famous for being the focus of an episode in the British television programme The Big Time, which recorded her attempts to gain a record contract and her eventual signing with EMI Records.Easton rose to fame in the early 1980s with the pop...

      , singer
  • May 3 – David Ball, Soft Cell
    Soft Cell
    Soft Cell are an English synthpop duo who came to prominence in the early 1980s. They consist of vocalist Marc Almond and instrumentalist David Ball. The duo is most widely known for their 1981 worldwide hit version of "Tainted Love" and platinum debut Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret...

  • May 4 – Randy Travis
    Randy Travis
    Randy Travis is an American country music singer and actor. Since 1985, he has recorded 20 studio albums and charted more than 30 singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts, 22 of which were number one hits...

    , country singer
  • May 5 – Ian McCulloch
    Ian McCulloch (singer)
    Ian Stephen McCulloch is an English singer, born in Liverpool, and is best known as the frontman for the rock group Echo & the Bunnymen.-Career:...

    , singer (Echo & the Bunnymen
    Echo & the Bunnymen
    Echo & the Bunnymen are an English post-punk band, formed in Liverpool in 1978. The original line-up consisted of vocalist Ian McCulloch, guitarist Will Sergeant and bass player Les Pattinson, supplemented by a drum machine. By 1980, Pete de Freitas had joined as the band's drummer, and their debut...

    )
  • May 20 – Susan Cowsill
    Susan Cowsill
    Susan Claire Cowsill is a musician, vocalist and songwriter. She is the youngest member of The Cowsills and the only daughter of parents Bud and Barbara Cowsill.-The Cowsills:...

     (The Cowsills
    The Cowsills
    The Cowsills are an American singing group from Newport, Rhode Island. They specialized in harmonies and the ability to sing and play music at an early age. The band was formed in the spring of 1965 by brothers Bill, Bob, and Barry, then shortly thereafter added John...

    , Continental Drifters
    Continental Drifters
    The Continental Drifters was an American rock band, formed in Los Angeles, California in 1991 and dissolved in New Orleans, Louisiana about a decade later...

    )
  • May 22 – Morrissey
    Morrissey
    Steven Patrick Morrissey , known as Morrissey, is an English singer and lyricist. He rose to prominence in the 1980s as the lyricist and vocalist of the alternative rock band The Smiths. The band was highly successful in the United Kingdom but broke up in 1987, and Morrissey began a solo career,...

    , singer-songwriter
  • June 1 – Alan Wilder
    Alan Wilder
    Alan Charles Wilder is a British musician, formerly of Depeche Mode. His current musical project is called Recoil, started as a side project to Depeche Mode. When he left the latter in 1995, it became Wilder's primary project...

     (Depeche Mode
    Depeche Mode
    Depeche Mode are an English electronic music band formed in 1980 in Basildon, Essex. The group's original line-up consisted of Dave Gahan , Martin Gore , Andy Fletcher and Vince Clarke...

    )
  • June 11 – Kathinka Pasveer
    Kathinka Pasveer
    -Biography:Kathinka Pasveer was born in Zaandam, North Holland, the daughter of a conductor who also taught at the Amsterdam Conservatory . She studied with Frans Vester at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, where she received her performer's diploma, with the distinction of the Nicolai Prize in...

    , flautist
  • June 12 – John Linnell
    John Linnell
    John Sidney Linnell is an American musician, is known primarily as one half of Brooklyn, New York alternative rock duo They Might Be Giants...

     (They Might Be Giants
    They Might Be Giants
    They Might Be Giants is an American alternative rock band formed in 1982 by John Flansburgh and John Linnell. During TMBG's early years Flansburgh and Linnell were frequently accompanied by a drum machine. In the early 1990s, TMBG became a full band. Currently, the members of TMBG are...

    )
  • June 18 – Sean Terrington Wright
    Sean Terrington Wright
    Sean Terrington Wright is a British songwriter, singer, guitarist, record producer, artist, writer, and poet. He has collaborated with Kim Fowley, Najam Sheraz, Mark Linkous, Mark Tinley, Enrico Coniglio, Yvalian, Josh Woodward, & many indie artists...

    , English singer-songwriter
  • June 19 – Mark DeBarge
    Mark DeBarge
    Mark "Marty" DeBarge is an American R&B/soul singer-songwriter, trumpeter and flugelhorn player best known for his work as member of 1980s Motown singing family group DeBarge...

     (DeBarge
    DeBarge
    DeBarge was a sibling music group of American origin whose repertoire included R&B, soul, funk, and later gospel. Active as a professional recording group from 1979 and 1989, the group was one of the few recording acts to bring success to the Motown label during the 1980s.-Background:Hailing from...

    )
  • June 22 – Alan Anton (Cowboy Junkies
    Cowboy Junkies
    Cowboy Junkies are a Canadian alternative country/blues/folk rock band. The group was formed in Toronto in 1985 by Margo Timmins , Michael Timmins , Peter Timmins and Alan Anton ....

    )
  • June 24 – Andy McCluskey
    Andy McCluskey
    George Andrew "Andy" McCluskey is the lead singer, bass guitarist, and primary songwriter for the band Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark ....

     (Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
    Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
    Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark are a synthpop group whose founding members are originally from the Wirral Peninsula, England...

    )
  • July 3 – Stephen Pearcy
    Stephen Pearcy
    Stephen Erica Pearcy is the lead singer of the 80's metal band Ratt. He has also been in the bands Arcade, Vicious Delite, Vertex, Nitronic, and Band From Hell...

     (Ratt
    Ratt
    Ratt is an American heavy metal band that had significant commercial success in the 1980s. The band is best known for songs such as "Round and Round," "Wanted Man," "Lay It Down," "You're in Love", "Slip of the Lip", "Back For More", "Dance", "Body Talk", "I Want a Woman", and "Way Cool Jr." Ratt...

    )
  • July 5 – Marc Cohn
    Marc Cohn
    Marc Craig Cohn is an American folk rock singer-songwriter and musician.- Personal life :Cohn was born in Cleveland, Ohio. He graduated from Beachwood High School in Beachwood, a Cleveland suburb. He then attended Oberlin College....

    , singer-songwriter
  • July 9
    • Jim Kerr
      Jim Kerr
      James "Jim" Kerr is a Scottish musician and singer-songwriter, best known for his work with the band Simple Minds who achieved five UK #1 albums and a #1 single "Ballad of the Streets EP". He released his first solo album, Lostboy! AKA Jim Kerr, on the 27 May 2010.- Simple Minds :Kerr attended...

      , singer (Simple Minds
      Simple Minds
      Simple Minds are a Scottish rock band who achieved worldwide popularity from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s. The band produced a handful of critically acclaimed albums in the early 1980s and best known for their #1 US, Canada and Netherlands hit single "Don't You ", from the soundtrack of the...

      )
    • Marc Almond
      Marc Almond
      Marc Almond is an English singer-songwriter and musician, who originally found fame as half of the seminal synthpop/New Wave duo Soft Cell...

      , singer
  • July 11
    • Richie Sambora
      Richie Sambora
      Richard Stephen "Richie" Sambora is an American rock guitarist, producer, musician, singer, and songwriter who is the longtime lead guitarist of the rock band, Bon Jovi. He and frontman Jon Bon Jovi form the primary songwriting unit of the band...

       (Bon Jovi
      Bon Jovi
      Bon Jovi is an American rock band from Sayreville, New Jersey. Formed in 1983, Bon Jovi consists of lead singer and namesake Jon Bon Jovi , guitarist Richie Sambora, keyboardist David Bryan, drummer Tico Torres, as well as current bassist Hugh McDonald...

      )
    • Suzanne Vega
      Suzanne Vega
      Suzanne Nadine Vega is an American songwriter and singer known for her eclectic folk-inspired music.Two of Vega's songs reached the top 10 of various international chart listings: "Luka" and "Tom's Diner"...

      , singer-songwriter
  • July 16 – James MacMillan, composer and conductor
  • August 1 – Joe Elliott
    Joe Elliott
    Joseph Thomas "Joe" Elliott Jr is an English singer-songwriter, and musician, best known as the lead vocalist and occasional rhythm guitarist of the British rock band Def Leppard. He has also been the lead singer of David Bowie cover band, the Cybernauts and the Mott the Hoople cover band, Down...

     (Def Leppard
    Def Leppard
    Def Leppard are an English rock band formed in 1977 in Sheffield as part of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal movement. Since 1992, the band have consisted of Joe Elliott , Rick Savage , Rick Allen , Phil Collen , and Vivian Campbell...

    )
  • August 9 – Kurtis Blow
    Kurtis Blow
    Kurt Walker , better known by his stage name Kurtis Blow, is an American rapper and record producer. He is one of the first commercially successful rappers and the first to sign with a major record label...

    , rapper
  • August 31 – Tony DeFranco
    The DeFranco Family
    The DeFranco Family featuring Tony DeFranco was a 1970s pop music group and family from Port Colborne, Ontario, Canada. The group, all siblings, consists of Benny DeFranco , the guitarist; Marisa DeFranco , the keyboardist; Nino DeFranco , the second guitarist; Merlina DeFranco , the...

    , singer (The DeFranco Family
    The DeFranco Family
    The DeFranco Family featuring Tony DeFranco was a 1970s pop music group and family from Port Colborne, Ontario, Canada. The group, all siblings, consists of Benny DeFranco , the guitarist; Marisa DeFranco , the keyboardist; Nino DeFranco , the second guitarist; Merlina DeFranco , the...

    )
  • September 8 – Daler Nazarov
    Daler Nazarov
    Daler Nazarov is a Tajik/Pamiri songwriter, singer and actor.Nazarov was born in the Former Soviet Republic of Tajikistan. He has lived in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan for most of his life, but had to leave the country in the early 90's due to a civil war that ended around 1997...

    , Tajik composer, singer, and actor
  • September 14 – Morten Harket
    Morten Harket
    Morten Harket is a Norwegian musician, best known as the lead singer of the Norwegian synthpop/rock band A-ha, which released nine studio albums and topped the charts in several countries after their breakthrough hit "Take on Me" in 1985. A-ha disbanded in 2010. Harket has also released four solo...

    , singer (a-ha
    A-ha
    A-ha were a Norwegian pop band formed in Oslo in 1982. The band was founded by Morten Harket , Magne Furuholmen , and Pål Waaktaar...

    )
  • October 1 – Youssou N'Dour
    Youssou N'Dour
    Youssou N'Dour is a Senegalese singer, percussionist and occasional actor. In 2004, Rolling Stone described him as, in Senegal and much of Africa, "perhaps the most famous singer alive." He helped develop a style of popular music in Senegal, known in the Serer language as mbalax, a type of music...

    , Senegalese singer
  • October 4 – Chris Lowe
    Chris Lowe
    Chris Lowe is an English musician, who, with colleague Neil Tennant, makes up the pop duo Pet Shop Boys.-Childhood:...

    , keyboardist (Pet Shop Boys
    Pet Shop Boys
    Pet Shop Boys are an English electronic dance music duo, consisting of Neil Tennant, who provides main vocals, keyboards and occasional guitar, and Chris Lowe on keyboards....

    )
  • October 10 – Kirsty MacColl
    Kirsty MacColl
    Kirsty Anna MacColl was an English singer-songwriter.MacColl scored several pop hits from the early 1980s to the early 1990s...

    , English singer (d. 2000)
  • October 13 – Marie Osmond
    Marie Osmond
    Olive Marie Osmond is an American singer, actress, doll designer, and a member of the show business family The Osmonds. Although she was never part of her family's singing group, she gained success as a solo country music artist in the 1970s and 1980s...

    , singer
  • October 16 –
    • Gary Kemp
      Gary Kemp
      Gary Kemp is an English pop musician and actor who is the guitar player and chief songwriter for the 1980s Synthpop band Spandau Ballet. His brother, Martin Kemp, plays bass guitar in the band...

       (Spandau Ballet
      Spandau Ballet
      Spandau Ballet are a British band formed in London in the late 1970s. Initially inspired by, and an integral part of, the New Romantic fashion, their music has featured a mixture of funk, jazz, soul and synthpop. They were one of the most successful bands of the 1980s, achieving ten Top Ten singles...

      )
    • Erkki-Sven Tüür
      Erkki-Sven Tüür
      Erkki-Sven Tüür is an Estonian composer.Tüür was born in Kärdla on the Estonian island of Hiiumaa. He studied flute and percussion at the Tallinn Music School from 1976 to 1980 and composition with Jaan Rääts at the Tallinn Academy of Music and privately with Lepo Sumera from 1980 to 1984...

      , composer
  • October 23 – "Weird Al" Yankovic
    "Weird Al" Yankovic
    Alfred Matthew "Weird Al" Yankovic is an American singer-songwriter, music producer, accordionist, actor, comedian, writer, satirist, and parodist. Yankovic is known for his humorous songs that make light of popular culture and that often parody specific songs by contemporary musical acts...

    , parodist
  • October 25 – Christina Amphlett
    Christina Amphlett
    Christine Joy Amphlett was the lead singer of Australian rock band Divinyls. She is also known as Chrissy Amphlett.She grew up in Geelong as a singer and dancer...

    , Australian rock singer
  • November 1 – Eddie MacDonald (The Alarm
    The Alarm
    The Alarm are an alternative rock band that emerged from North Wales in the late 1970s. They started as a mod band and stayed together for over ten years. As a rock band, they displayed marked influences from Welsh language and culture...

    )
  • November 5 – Bryan Adams
    Bryan Adams
    Bryan Adams, is a Canadian rock singer-songwriter, guitarist, bassist, producer, actor and photographer. Adams has won dozens of awards and nominations, including 20 Juno Awards among 56 nominations. He has also received 15 Grammy Award nominations including a win for Best Song Written...

    , singer/guitarist
  • November 27 – Charlie Burchill
    Charlie Burchill
    Charles "Charlie" Burchill is a Scottish musician and composer. He was one of the founders of Scottish rock group Simple Minds. He plays guitar, keyboard, saxophone, drums and violin.-Style:...

     (Simple Minds
    Simple Minds
    Simple Minds are a Scottish rock band who achieved worldwide popularity from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s. The band produced a handful of critically acclaimed albums in the early 1980s and best known for their #1 US, Canada and Netherlands hit single "Don't You ", from the soundtrack of the...

    )
  • November 29 – Steve Hindalong
    Steve Hindalong
    Steve Hindalong is an American drummer, percussionist, songwriter and producer best known for his work with the alternative rock band The Choir...

    , record producer
  • December 4 – Bob Griffin (The BoDeans)
  • December 30 – Tracey Ullman
    Tracey Ullman
    Tracey Ullman is a British stage and television actress, comedienne, singer, dancer, screenwriter and author ....

    , comedienne and singer
  • December 31
    • Baron Waqa
      Baron Waqa
      Baron Divavesi Waqa is a Nauruan politician.-Policial role:He was elected in the May 2003 elections to the Parliament of Nauru, representing the constituency of Boe. Under president Ludwig Scotty he served as Minister of the Interior and of Education; he had, however, to leave the post upon...

      , Nauruan politician and composer
    • Paul Westerberg
      Paul Westerberg
      Paul Westerberg is an American musician, best known as the former lead singer, rhythm guitarist, and songwriter of The Replacements, one of the seminal alternative rock bands of the 1980s. He launched a solo career after the dissolution of that band...

      , singer, guitarist and songwriter (The Replacements)

Deaths

  • January 6 – José Enrique Pedreira
    José Enrique Pedreira
    José Enrique Pedreira was a Puerto Rican composer noted for danzas.-Early years:Pedreira was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, into a family that belonged to San Juan's "High Society". The family sent him to the best private schools on the island at the time and at a young age had him take private...

    , composer, 54
  • February 3, in a plane crash (see Events)
    • Buddy Holly
      Buddy Holly
      Charles Hardin Holley , known professionally as Buddy Holly, was an American singer-songwriter and a pioneer of rock and roll...

      , singer, songwriter and guitarist, 22
    • Ritchie Valens
      Ritchie Valens
      Ritchie Valens was a Mexican-American singer, songwriter and guitarist....

      , singer, songwriter and guitarist, 17
    • The Big Bopper
      The Big Bopper
      Jiles Perry "J. P." Richardson, Jr. also commonly known as The Big Bopper, was an American disc jockey, singer, and songwriter whose big voice and exuberant personality made him an early rock and roll star...

      , disc jockey, singer, and songwriter, 28
  • February 12 – George Antheil
    George Antheil
    George Antheil was an American avant-garde composer, pianist, author and inventor. A self-described "Bad Boy of Music", his modernist compositions amazed and appalled listeners in Europe and the US during the 1920s with their cacophonous celebration of mechanical devices.Returning permanently to...

    , pianist and composer, 58 (heart attack)
  • February 13 – William Axt
    William Axt
    William Axt was an American composer of nearly two hundred film scores.Born in New York City, Axt graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in The Bronx and studied at the National Conservatory of Music of America...

    , film composer, 70
  • February 14 – Baby Dodds
    Baby Dodds
    Warren "Baby" Dodds was a jazz drummer born in New Orleans, Louisiana."Baby" Dodds was the younger brother of clarinetist Johnny Dodds. He is regarded as one of the very best jazz drummers of the pre-big band era, and one of the most important early jazz drummers...

    , jazz musician, 60
  • February 18 – Erich Zeisl
    Erich Zeisl
    Erich Zeisl was an Austrian-born Jewish American composer.-Life and music:Born to a middle class Jewish family in Vienna, Zeisl's musical precocity enabled him to gain a place at the Vienna State Academy when he was 14, at which age his first song was published...

    , composer, 53 (heart attack)
  • February 28 – Maxwell Anderson
    Maxwell Anderson
    James Maxwell Anderson was an American playwright, author, poet, journalist and lyricist.-Early years:Anderson was born in Atlantic, Pennsylvania, the second of eight children to William Lincoln "Link" Anderson, a Baptist minister, and Charlotte Perrimela Stephenson, both of Scots and Irish descent...

    , lyricist, 70
  • March 1 – Mack Gordon
    Mack Gordon
    Mack Gordon was an American composer and lyricist of songs for the stage and film. He was nominated for the best original song Oscar nine times, including six consecutive years between 1940 and 1945, and won the award once, for "You'll Never Know"...

    , songwriter, 54
  • March 15 – Lester Young
    Lester Young
    Lester Willis Young , nicknamed "Prez", was an American jazz tenor saxophonist and clarinetist. He also played trumpet, violin, and drums....

    , jazz musician, 49 (liver disease and malnutrition)
  • March 25 – Billy Mayerl
    Billy Mayerl
    Billy Joseph Mayerl , was an English pianist and composer who built a career in music hall and musical theatre and became an acknowledged master of light music. Best known for his syncopated novelty piano solos, he wrote over 300 piano pieces, many of which were named after flowers and trees,...

    , English pianist and composer, 56 (heart attack)
  • April 20 - Edward Johnson
    Edward Johnson (tenor)
    Edward Patrick Johnson CBE was a Canadian operatic tenor who was billed outside North America as Edoardo Di Giovanni, and became director of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.- Early life :...

    , operatic tenor, 80
  • May 14 – Sidney Bechet
    Sidney Bechet
    Sidney Bechet was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer.He was one of the first important soloists in jazz , and was perhaps the first notable jazz saxophonist...

    , jazz musician, 62
  • May 29 – Frank Marshall
    Frank Marshall (pianist)
    Frank Marshall King , was a Spanish, Catalan pianist and pedagogue born to parents of English heritage....

    , pianist and teacher, 75
  • June 9 – Sonnie Hale
    Sonnie Hale
    Sonnie Hale was an English theatre and cinema actor and director.John Robert Hale-Monro was born in London, the son of Robert Hale and Belle Reynolds. His father and sister, Binnie Hale were actors. He worked chiefly in musical and revue theatre, but also acted in several films with occasional...

    , English actor and singer, 57 (myelofibrosis)
  • July 15
    • Ernest Bloch
      Ernest Bloch
      Ernest Bloch was a Swiss-born American composer.-Life:Bloch was born in Geneva and began playing the violin at age 9. He began composing soon afterwards. He studied music at the conservatory in Brussels, where his teachers included the celebrated Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe...

      , composer, 78
    • Billie Holiday
      Billie Holiday
      Billie Holiday was an American jazz singer and songwriter. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and musical partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing...

      , jazz and blues singer, 44 (liver and heart disease)
  • August 15 – Blind Willie McTell
    Blind Willie McTell
    Blind Willie McTell , was an influential Piedmont and ragtime blues singer and guitarist. He played with a fluid, syncopated fingerstyle guitar technique, common among many exponents of Piedmont blues, although, unlike his contemporaries, he used exclusively a twelve-string guitar...

    , blues singer, 61
  • August 16 – Wanda Landowska
    Wanda Landowska
    Wanda Landowska was a Polish harpsichordist whose performances, teaching, recordings and writings played a large role in reviving the popularity of the harpsichord in the early 20th century...

    , harpsichordist, 80
  • August 17 – Pedro Humberto Allende
    Pedro Humberto Allende
    Pedro Humberto Allende Sarón , was one of the most important Chilean composers of the twentieth century. He obtained the prestigious Premio Nacional de Arte in 1945.- Biography :...

    , composer and ethnomusicologist, 74
  • August 28 – Bohuslav Martinů
    Bohuslav Martinu
    Bohuslav Martinů was a prolific Czech composer of modern classical music. He was of Czech and Rumanian ancestry. Martinů wrote six symphonies, 15 operas, 14 ballet scores and a large body of orchestral, chamber, vocal and instrumental works. Martinů became a violinist in the Czech Philharmonic...

    , composer, 68
  • September 1 – Jack Norworth
    Jack Norworth
    Jack Norworth was a U.S. songwriter, singer and vaudeville performer.Norworth is credited as co-writer of a number of Tin Pan Alley hits. He wrote the lyrics of the song "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" in 1908, his most long lasting hit. But it wasn't until 1940 that he actually witnessed a Major...

    , singer and songwriter, 80
  • September 6 – Kay Kendall
    Kay Kendall
    Kay Kendall was an English actress.Kendall began her film career in the 1946 musical London Town. Though the film was a financial failure, Kendall continued to work regularly until her appearance in the comedy Genevieve brought her widespread recognition...

    , musical comedy actress, 33 (leukaemia)
  • September 8 - Mohammed El-Bakkar
    Mohammed El-Bakkar
    Mohammed El-Bakkar was a Lebanese tenor, oud player, and conductor.El-Bakkar was a noted tenor and appeared in several Arabic-language films. He moved to the United States in 1952 and lived in Brooklyn. He released several LPs of Arabic music in the United States...

    , Lebanese tenor, oud player, and conductor, 46 (cerebral hemorrhage)
  • September 11 - Ann Drummond-Grant
    Ann Drummond-Grant
    Ann Drummond-Grant was a British singer and actress, best known for her performances in contralto roles of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.Drummond-Grant began her career as a soprano...

    , operatic contralto, 54
  • September 17 – Omer Simeon
    Omer Simeon
    Omer Victor Simeon was an American jazz clarinetist. He also played soprano, alto, and baritone saxophone and bass clarinet....

    , jazz musician, 57 (throat cancer)
  • September 21 – Agnes Nicholls
    Agnes Nicholls
    Agnes Nicholls was one of the greatest English sopranos of the 20th century, both in the concert hall and on the operatic stage....

    , operatic soprano, 83
  • September 22
    • Josef Matthias Hauer
      Josef Matthias Hauer
      Josef Mattias Hauer was an Austrian composer and music theorist. He is most famous for developing, independent of and a year or two before Arnold Schoenberg, a method for composing with all 12 notes of the chromatic scale.Hauer "detested all art that expressed ideas, programmes or feelings,"...

      , composer, 76
    • Jane Winton
      Jane Winton
      Jane Winton was a movieactress, dancer, opera soprano, writer, and painter. She was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.During the 1920s she began her stage career as a dancer with the Ziegfeld Follies.-Film actress:...

      , actress, dancer, operatic soprano, writer, and painter, 53
  • September 25
    • Helen Broderick
      Helen Broderick
      Helen Broderick was an American film and stage actress known for her comic roles, especially as a wisecracking sidekick.-Career:...

      , Broadway star, 68
    • Gerard Hoffnung
      Gerard Hoffnung
      Gerard Hoffnung was an artist and musician, best known for his humorous works.- Early years :Born in Berlin, and named Gerhard, he was the only child of a well-to-do Jewish couple, Hildegard and Ludwig Hoffnung...

      , artist, comedian, and musician, 34 (cerebral haemorrhage)
  • October 7 – Mario Lanza
    Mario Lanza
    right|thumb|[[MGM]] still, circa 1949Mario Lanza was an American tenor and Hollywood movie star of the late 1940s and the 1950s. The son of Italian emigrants, he began studying to be a professional singer at the age of 16....

    , operatic tenor, 38 (pulmonary embolism)
  • November 7 – Alberto Guerrero
    Alberto Guerrero
    Antonio Alberto García Guerrero was a Chilean-Canadian composer, pianist, and teacher. While he is most famously remembered as the mentor of Canadian pianist Glenn Gould, Guerrero influenced several generations of musicians through his many years of teaching at the Toronto Conservatory of...

    , pianist and composer, 73
  • November 17 – Heitor Villa-Lobos
    Heitor Villa-Lobos
    Heitor Villa-Lobos was a Brazilian composer, described as "the single most significant creative figure in 20th-century Brazilian art music". Villa-Lobos has become the best-known and most significant Latin American composer to date. He wrote numerous orchestral, chamber, instrumental and vocal works...

    , composer, 72
  • November 22 – Sam M. Lewis
    Sam M. Lewis
    Sam M. Lewis was a Jewish-American singer and lyricist, born in New York City, New York as Samuel Levine-Biography:...

    , lyricist, 74
  • November 26 – Albert Ketèlbey
    Albert Ketèlbey
    Albert William Ketèlbey , born Ketelbey, was an English composer, conductor and pianist.-Biography:...

    , composer, conductor and pianist, 84
  • November 29 – Fritz Brun
    Fritz Brun
    Fritz Brun was a Swiss conductor and composer of classical music.Brun was born in Lucerne. He was a student of Franz Wüllner at the conservatory at Köln, and studied piano and theory there until 1902. The following year he became a piano teacher at the music school in Bern...

    , Swiss composer and conductor, 81
  • December 20 – Gilda Gray
    Gilda Gray
    Gilda Gray was a Polish born American actress and dancer who became famous in the US for popularizing a dance called the "shimmy" which became fashionable in 1920s films and theater productions....

    , dancer, 58 (heart attack)
  • date unknown
    • Clotilde Arias
      Clotilde Arias
      Lyricist and composer Clotilde Arias was born in Iquitos, Perú, on the shores of the Amazon, and went to the USA in 1923 to study music and with aspirations of a promising future. She is most known for her composition of the song Huiracocha, popular in Peru and sung worldwide, and her translation...

      , songwriter
    • Susan Metcalfe Casals
      Susan Metcalfe Casals
      Susan Metcalfe Casals, born Susan S. Metcalfe was an American mezzo-soprano singer active in the early part of the twentieth century, who had a stormy marriage to the cellist Pablo Casals. She was highly respected in Lieder and concert recital.-Origins:Susan Metcalfe was born in Florence, the...

      , operatic mezzo-soprano
    • Camilla Pasini
      Camilla Pasini
      Camilla Pasini was an Italian operatic soprano. Her sister Lina Pasini-Vitale was a well known Wagnerian soprano and her other sister, Enrica Pasini, had a short career as an operatic mezzo-soprano...

      , operatic soprano

Pulitzer Prize for Music
Pulitzer Prize for Music
The Pulitzer Prize for Music was first awarded in 1943. Joseph Pulitzer did not call for such a prize in his will, but had arranged for a music scholarship to be awarded each year...

  • John La Montaine
    John La Montaine
    John La Montaine is an American composer, born in Oak Park, Illinois, who won the 1959 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his Piano Concerto no. 1, Op. 9, "In Time of War" , which was premiered by Jorge Bolet....

     – Piano Concerto
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