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"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein

John Fahey Was Born On February 28, 1939

John Fahey:

John Aloysius Fahey (February 28, 1939 – February 22, 2001) was an American fingerstyle guitarist and composer who played the steel-string acoustic guitar as a solo instrument. His style has been greatly influential and has been described as the foundation of American Primitive Guitar, a term borrowed from painting and referring mainly to the self-taught nature of the music and its minimalist style. Fahey borrowed from the folk and blues traditions in American roots music, having compiled many forgotten early recordings in these genres. He would later incorporate classical, Portuguese, Brazilian, and Indian music into his œuvre. He spent many of his later years in poverty and poor health, but enjoyed a minor career resurgence with a turn towards the more explicitly avant-garde, and created a series of abstract paintings during the last years of his life. He died in 2001 from complications from heart surgery. In 2003, he was ranked 35th in the Rolling Stone "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" list.

Race For The White House

If You Were A Jazz Tune Running For President, What Would You Sound Like?:

Presidential campaigns may inspire people to vote, but they rarely inspire people to compose music. Jazz pianist Marcus Roberts takes up the challenge on a new EP called Race for the White House, which explores the personas of four different candidates from this year's election cycle.

One of those candidates is Donald Trump; you can hear the song Roberts wrote to represent him below. It features a whistle, which he says is meant to express a particular vision of Trump.

"That symbolizes Donald just looking over his vast estate and just chilling and just having a great time," Roberts says. "And then the trumpet interrupts him just to make a bold statement of, 'I'm going to make America great again, all by myself.'"

Roger McGuinn Is Being Honored

The Byrds' Roger McGuinn To Be Honored by UNC for Folk Music Preservation Work:

As a founding member of the Byrds, Roger McGuinn helped shape the sound of the sixties with lysergic guitar solos, bewitching harmonies, and the meshing of country and rock into a lasting hybrid. For that, he holds an esteemed place in the firmament of rock and membership in its Hall of Fame, too.

And on March 1, the seventy-three-year-old rocker will be honored by UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Information and Library Sciences with its first-ever Digital Preservation Under the Radar Award—for pioneering work that does not involve a compressed 12-string Rickenbacker but rather archivist and curatorial work in the area of folk music.

While he’s best known for his unmistakable electric jangle, McGuinn began as a folk player. His fascination with the music, learned at the Chicago Old Town School of Folk Music and played in coffeehouses, caught up with him later in life. In November 1995, he transposed the lyrics, chords, tablature, and history of the traditional cowboy song “Old Paint” and posted it online to share with others. He decided to keep doing this, once per month, and called his project The Folk Den.

He has now amassed 250 songs, organized by categories like “Seafaring,” “Cowboy,” and “Love.” The most popular category is “Mountain/Southern U.S.” which includes seventy-four songs, spanning everything from “Nine Pound Hammer” to child ballads to “Cold Rain and Snow.” McGuinn is methodical; he hasn’t missed a post in twenty years.

Dexter Gordon Was Born On February 27, 1923

Dexter Gordon Quartet Dexter Gordon - Tenor Sax. George Cables - piano, Rufus Reid - bass, Eddie Gladden -drums

Dexter Gordon:

Dexter Gordon (February 27, 1923 – April 25, 1990) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. He was among the earliest tenor players to adapt the bebop musical language of people such as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Bud Powell to the instrument. Gordon's height was 6 feet 6 inches (198 cm), so he was also known as "Long Tall Dexter" and "Sophisticated Giant". His studio and live performance career spanned over 40 years.

Gordon's sound was commonly characterized as being "large" and spacious and he had a tendency to play behind the beat. He was famous for humorously inserting musical quotes into his solos. One of his major influences was Lester Young. Gordon, in turn, was an early influence on John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins. Rollins and Coltrane, in turn, influenced Gordon's playing as he explored hard bop and modal playing during the 1960s.

Laura (1945 song):

"Laura" is a 1945 popular song. The music was composed by David Raksin for the 1944 movie Laura starring Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews, and is heard frequently in the movie. The lyrics were written by Johnny Mercer after the film had made the tune popular. According to Mercer, he had not yet seen the movie when he wrote the lyrics, but was aware that it was a romantic, somewhat haunting story.

The song has become a jazz standard, with more than 400 known recordings. Some of the best-known versions are by Woody Herman, Johnny Johnston, Emil Newman, David Rose, Billy Eckstine, Charlie Parker, J. J. Johnson, Frank Sinatra and Julie London (included on her 1955 debut album Julie Is Her Name, Vol. 1). The first 10 notes of the song are sometimes "quoted" during jazz solos, especially since Dizzy Gillespie did it during his "Perdido" solo at the famous Massey Hall concert in 1953.

Johnny Cash Was Born On February 26, 1932

Johnny Cash:

Johnny "J.R." Cash (February 26, 1932 – September 12, 2003) was an American singer-songwriter, guitarist, actor, and author, who was widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century and one of the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold more than 90 million records worldwide. Although primarily remembered as a country music icon, his genre-spanning songs and sound embraced rock and roll, rockabilly, blues, folk, and gospel. This crossover appeal won Cash the rare honor of multiple inductions in the Country Music, Rock and Roll and Gospel Music Halls of Fame.

Much of Cash's music echoed themes of sorrow, moral tribulation and redemption, especially in the later stages of his career. His best-known songs included "I Walk the Line", "Folsom Prison Blues", "Ring of Fire", "Get Rhythm" and "Man in Black". He also recorded humorous numbers like "One Piece at a Time" and "A Boy Named Sue"; a duet with his future wife, June Carter, called "Jackson" (followed by many further duets after their marriage); and railroad songs including "Hey, Porter" and "Rock Island Line". During the last stage of his career, Cash covered songs by several late 20th century rock artists, most notably "Hurt" by Nine Inch Nails.

George Harrison Was Born On February 25, 1943

It's been a long, long, long time
How could I ever have lost you
When I loved you?

It took a long, long, long time
Now I'm so happy I found you
How I love you

So many tears I was searching
So many tears I was wasting, oh oh

Now I can see you be you
How can I ever misplace you?
How I want you
Oh, I love you
You know that I need you
Oh, I love you

Songwriters
George Harrison

Published by
HARRISONGS LIMITED

George Harrison:

George Harrison, (25 February 1943 – 29 November 2001) was an English guitarist, singer, songwriter, and music and film producer who achieved international fame as the lead guitarist of the Beatles. Often referred to as "the quiet Beatle", Harrison embraced Indian mysticism and helped broaden the horizons of his fellow Beatles as well as their Western audience by incorporating Indian instrumentation in their music. Although the majority of the Beatles' songs were written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, most Beatles albums from 1965 onwards contained at least two Harrison compositions. His songs for the group included "Taxman", "Within You Without You", "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", "Here Comes the Sun" and "Something", the last of which became the Beatles' second-most covered song.