JANUARY 3

CONNEE BOSWELL + VICTOR BORGE + MAXENE ANDREWS + GEORGE MARTIN

 1907 Constance Foore "Connee" Boswell was born in Kansas City, Missouri (Death: October 11, 1976, New York). American female vocalist raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. With her sisters, Martha and Helvetia "Vet" Boswell, performed in the 1930s as The Boswell Sisters and became a highly influential singing group during this period via recordings and radio. Connee herself is widely considered one of the greatest jazz female vocalists and was a major influence on Ella Fitzgerald who said, "My mother brought home one of her records, and I fell in love with it....I tried so hard to sound just like her." In 1936, Connee's sisters retired and Connee continued on as a solo artist. She recorded many solos during her years with the group.

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1909 Victor Borge (Death: December 23, 2000), born Børge Rosenbaum, was a Danish comedian, conductor and pianist, affectionately known as The Clown Prince of Denmark, The Unmelancholy Dane, and The Great Dane. While hosting The Victor Borge Show on NBC beginning in 1946, he developed many of his trademarks, including repeatedly announcing his intent to play a piece but getting "distracted" by something or other, making comments about the audience, or discussing the usefulness of Chopin's "Minute Waltz" as an egg timer. Or he would start out with some well-known classical piece like Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" and suddenly move into a harmonically suitable pop or jazz tune like Cole Porter's "Night and Day".

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1918 Maxene Angelyn, (Death: October 21, 1995) was a member of the popular singing trio The Andrews Sisters. The successful close harmony singing group of the swing and boogie-woogie eras, were actual sisters: LaVerne, Maxene and "Patty" Andrews. Their harmonies and songs are still influential today, and have been covered by entertainers such as Bette Midler, the Puppini Sisters and Christina Aguilera. Throughout their long career, the sisters sold well over 75 million records. The group was inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 1998. Their hit "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" can be considered an early example of rhythm and blues or jump blues.

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1926 Sir George Henry Martin CBE, is an English record producer, arranger, composer and musician. He is sometimes referred to as "the Fifth Beatle"—a title that he owes to his work as producer of all but one of The Beatles' original albums. He is considered one of the greatest record producers of all time, with 23 number one hits, an unmatched achievement. In 1965 he established the Associated Independent Recording (AIR) Studios.

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