WA2K Radio is now on the air

Well, folks. I have a song for the Bridges boys:



Spanchill Hill

Last night as I lay dreaming of pleasant days gone by,
my mind it bent on wandering to Ireland I did fly,
I stepped on board a vision I followed with the wind,
when next I came to anchor at the cross at Spanchill Hill,

Been on the 23rd of June the day before the fair,
when Ireland's sons and daughters friends assembled there,
The young the old the sick and the bold in their duty to fulfill,
at the parish church at Clooney a mile from Spanchill Hill,

I paid a flying visit to my 1st and only love,
she's as white as any lily gentle as a dove,
she through her arms around me saying Johney I love you still,
Ahh she's Ned the farmers daughter and the pride of Spanchill Hill,

I dreamt I held and kissed her as in the days of old,
Ahh Johney you're only joking as many time before,
when the cock it crew in the morning it crew both loud and shrill,
when I woke in California many miles from Spanchill Hill

Can't resist, Raggedy. We're gettin' quite a collection on our bulletin board;





We're looking at Beau, Jeff, and Dad.

just got this tune stuck in my head

Sloop John B
Beach Boys

We come on the sloop John B
My grandfather and me
Around Nassau town we did roam
Drinking all night
Got into a fight
Well I feel so broke up
I want to go home

So hoist up the John B's sail
See how the mainsail sets
Call for the Captain ashore
Let me go home, let me go home
I wanna go home, yeah yeah
Well I feel so broke up
I wanna go home

The first mate he got drunk
And broke in the Cap'n's trunk
The constable had to come and take him away
Sheriff John Stone
Why don't you leave me alone, yeah yeah
Well I feel so broke up I wanna go home

So hoist up the John B's sail
See how the mainsail sets
Call for the Captain ashore
Let me go home, let me go home
I wanna go home, let me go home
Why don't you let me go home
(Hoist up the John B's sail)
Hoist up the John B
I feel so broke up I wanna go home
Let me go home

The poor cook he caught the fits
And threw away all my grits
And then he took and he ate up all of my corn
Let me go home
Why don't they let me go home
This is the worst trip I've ever been on

So hoist up the John B's sail
See how the mainsail sets
Call for the Captain ashore
Let me go home, let me go home
I wanna go home, let me go home
Why don't you let me go home

Hey, Canada. The Beach Boys? Wow. I thought that I had heard most of their songs, but that is a new one. Thanks, dj.

Diane had a message about solitude and suddenly this one came to my mind:

Nina and the Duke:

In my solitude you haunt me

With reveries of days gone by

In my solitude you taunt me

With memories that never die



I sit in my chair

Filled with despair

Nobody could be so sad

With gloom evrywhere

I sit and I stare

I know that Ill soon go mad



In my solitude

Im praying

Dear lord above

Send back my love to me.

and here is the answer to Bob's querry about the origin of the expression, "Mum's the Word."

Phrase: mum's the word

Meaning: Keep quiet - say nothing.

Origin: Mum; not mother but 'mmmmm', the humming sound made with a closed mouth. Used by Shakespeare in Henry VI, Part 2. 'Seal up your lips and give no words but mum'.

Shakespeare? Wow.

i'm sure listeners to this station must all look forward to a little refreshment ... so, help yourself ... the coffeepot is on !



(from mrs. beaton's cookbook)

Ah, hamburger, I'm afraid that I will have to pass as I just had some miniature carrot cakes. <smile> and I can't even have espresso now before I go to bed, but all the night owls in our studio will love it.

Goodnight to all of you:


Goodnight, my someone,
Goodnight, my love,
Sleep tight, my someone,
Sleep tight, my love,
Our star is shining it's brightest light
For goodnight, my love, for goodnight.
Sweet dreams be yours, dear,
If dreams there be
Sweet dreams to carry you close to me.
I wish they may and I wish they might
Now goodnight, my someone, goodnight
True love can be whispered from heart to heart
When lovers are parted they say
But I must depend on a wish and a star
As long as my heart doesn't know who you are.
Sweet dreams be yours dear,
If dreams there be
Sweet dreams to carry you close to me.
I wish they may and I wish they might
Now goodnight, my someone, goodnight.
Goodnight,
Goodnight.

From Letty with love

Are you sure about that? I thought the song was much older.

Well, that may be so: seems I'm in a kind of sceptical mood today, here so far from home.
I know a "mummer" is a kind of mediaeval mime, an actor in a play without words. What they were used for I can't remember, something to do with plays about religion and gloom, I think.
So "keeping mum" might also be to do with that.

Well, an European with a sceptical mood and another here with a grumpy mood...

What's up with this d.....d Europeans?

Good morning, WA2K listeners and contributors. It's going to be a dark and overcast day here in my part of the earth.

Well, McTag, it pays to be sceptical this time of year. Santa Claus ain't real, you know<smile>. Actually, Brit, I got that etymology from St. Google, so maybe you should take it up with him.

Well, my goodness, here's our Francis. Don't be grumpy now; let Charles Dickens' antagonist do it for you.

Bad news:


BAGHDAD, Iraq - Unidentified gunmen abducted a French engineer as he was on his way to work Monday in Baghdad, police said, the latest in a wave of recent kidnappings of Westerners.





The kidnapping came as Saddam Hussein's trial resumed after a week's recess.

The gunmen surrounded the man in three cars as the Frenchman was getting into a car outside his home in the wealthy Mansour district of Baghdad, police Capt. Qassim Hussein said. The man was on his way to work at a water plant in the downtown Baghdad, he added.

and, listeners, here is a wonderful carol for the day:

Good King Wenceslas looked out
On the feast of Stephen
When the snow lay round about
Deep and crisp and even
Brightly shone the moon that night
Though the frost was cruel
When a poor man came in sight
Gath'ring winter fuel

"Hither, page, and stand by me
If thou know'st it, telling
Yonder peasant, who is he?
Where and what his dwelling?"
"Sire, he lives a good league hence
Underneath the mountain
Right against the forest fence
By Saint Agnes' fountain."

"Bring me flesh and bring me wine
Bring me pine logs hither
Thou and I will see him dine
When we bear him thither."
Page and monarch forth they went
Forth they went together
Through the rude wind's wild lament
And the bitter weather

"Sire, the night is darker now
And the wind blows stronger
Fails my heart, I know not how,
I can go no longer."
"Mark my footsteps, my good page
Tread thou in them boldly
Thou shalt find the winter's rage
Freeze thy blood less coldly."

In his master's steps he trod
Where the snow lay dinted
Heat was in the very sod
Which the Saint had printed
Therefore, Christian men, be sure
Wealth or rank possessing
Ye who now will bless the poor
Shall yourselves find blessing.

The words to the carol "Good King Wenceslas" were written by John Mason Neale and published in 1853, the music originates in Finland 300 years earlier. This Christmas carol is unusual as there is no reference in the lyrics to the nativity. Good King Wenceslas was the king of Bohemia in the 10th century. Good King Wenceslas was a Catholic and was martyred following his assassination by his brother Boleslaw and his supporters, his Saint's Day is September 28th, and he is the Patron Saint of the Czech Republic. St. Stephen's feast day was celebrated on 26th December which is why this song is sung as a Christmas carol.

Fritz Lang
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.


Friedrich Anton Christian Lang (December 5, 1890 - August 2, 1976) was an Austrian film director, screenwriter and occasional film producer, one of the best known emigrés from Germany's school of expressionism to work in Hollywood. His most famous films are probably the groundbreaking Metropolis (the world's most expensive silent film at the time of its release) and M, made before he moved to the United States.



Early life and career

Born in Vienna, Lang grew up the son of an architect. Both his father and his mother were practising Roman Catholics, as was Lang himself; indeed he was baptized in the Schottenkirche near his family's home. However, his mother Paula Schlesinger Lang was born Jewish and was a convert to Catholicism. Lang took up civil engineering at the Technical University of Vienna but was not enthusiastic about it and switched studies to art in 1908. In 1910 and 1911 he left Vienna to see the world, traveling to Africa and later Asia and the Pacific area. At the outbreak of the First World War he was drafted into service in the Austrian-Hungarian army and fought in World War I, where he was wounded several times. After recovering from injuries and shell shock he was discharged as lieutenant from the army.

After the war he joined Germany's Ufa studio just as the Expressionist movement was waxing. In this first phase of his career, Lang alternated between art films such as Der Müde Tod (The Weary Death) and populist thrillers such as Die Spinnen (The Spiders) (a two-part film), combining popular genres with Expressionist techniques to create an unprecedented synthesis of popular entertainment with art cinema, culminating in his most famous silent works: Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler (Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler) (1922), a crime epic (running four hours in two parts in its original version, recently restored by the Munich Filmmuseum) focusing on the psychological conflict between the master criminal Mabuse and detective Von Wenk; Die Nibelungen (1924), and his most famous film, Metropolis (1927).

The Goebbels myth

Many of the stories about Lang's life and career are hard to verify, including perhaps the most famous Lang story of all. The legend has it that Joseph Goebbels called Lang to his offices for a meeting in which he gave Lang two pieces of news: the first was that his most recent film, Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (The Testament of Dr. Mabuse) was being banned as an incitement to public disorder. The second was that he was nevertheless so impressed by Lang's abilities as a filmmaker, he was offering Lang a position as the head of German film. Lang had been, unbeknownst to Goebbels, already planning to leave Germany for Paris, but the meeting with Goebbels ran so long that the banks were closed by the time it finished, and Lang fled that night without his money, not to return until after the war.

The problem is that many portions of the story cannot be checked, and of those that can, most are contradicted by the evidence. Lang actually left Germany with most of his money, unlike most refugees, and made several return trips later in the same year. There were of course no witnesses to the meeting besides Goebbels and Lang, but Goebbels's appointment books, when they refer to the meeting, mention only the banning of Testament. No evidence has been discovered in any of Goebbels's writings to affirm the suggestion that he was planning to offer Lang any position. Whatever the truth of this legend, it is known that Lang did in fact leave Germany in 1934 and moved to Paris and later to the United States. His wife Thea von Harbou had started to symphathize with the Nazis in the early 1930s and stayed behind. She joined the NSDAP (Nazi Party) in 1932, leading to a divorce the following year.

Metropolis, M and his life in America

Although some consider Lang's work to be simple melodrama, he produced a coherent oeuvre that helped to establish the characteristics of film noir, with its recurring themes of psychological conflict, paranoia, fate and moral ambiguity. His work influenced filmmakers as disparate as Jacques Rivette and William Friedkin.

In 1931, between Metropolis and Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse, Lang directed what many film scholars consider to be his masterpiece: M, a disturbing story of a child murderer (Peter Lorre in his first starring role) who is hunted down and brought to trial by Berlin's criminal underworld. M remains a powerful work; it was remade in 1951 by Joseph Losey, but this version had little impact on audiences, and has become harder to see than the original film.

Upon his arrival in Hollywood, Lang joined the MGM studio and directed the impressive crime drama Fury. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1939. Lang made twenty-one features in the next twenty-one years, working in a variety of genres at every major studio in Hollywood, occasionally producing his films as an independent. These films, often compared unfavourably by contemporary critics to Lang's earlier works, have since been reevaluated as being integral to the emergence and evolution of American genre cinema, film noir in particular. During this period, his visual style simplified (owing in part to the constraints of the Hollywood studio system) and his worldview became increasingly pessimistic, culminating in the cold, geometric style of his last American films, While the City Sleeps (1956) and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1957).

Lang as a director

Lang epitomized the stereotype of the tyrannical Teutonic film director such as Erich von Stroheim and Otto Preminger; he was known for being hard to work with. During the climactic final scene in M, he allegedly threw Peter Lorre down a flight of stairs in order to give more authenticity to Lorre's battered look. He wore a monocle that added to the stereotype (though film historians say this particular cliché began with von Stroheim), and his image has been parodied in a number of media, including GWAR's long form video Phallus in Wonderland.


Late work and death

During the 1950s, Lang found it harder to find congenial production conditions in Hollywood and his advancing age left him less inclined to grapple with American backers. The German producer, Artur Brauner, was expressing interest in remaking not only The Indian Tomb (a story that Lang had developed in the twenties that was ultimately taken from him by studio heads and directed instead by Joe May) but Lang's earlier Doctor Mabuse pictures. Fearing that Brauner would proceed with or without his assent, Lang abandoned his plans for retirement and returned to Germany in order to make his Indian Epic, which regarded as a masterpiece by a number of film scholars today. Following the production, Brauner was ready to proceed with his remake of Das Testament des Doctor Mabuse when Lang approached him with the idea of adding another original film to the series. The result was Die Tausend Augen des Dr. Mabuse (The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse), made in a hurry and with a relatively small budget. It can be viewed as the marriage between the director's early experiences with expressionist techniques in Germany as well as the spartan style already visible in his late American work. Lang was approaching blindness during the production, making it his final project.

Returning to the United States in retirement, he continued collecting research material and drafting screenplays, though he never made another film. While his career had ended without fanfare, his work went through a reappraisal in later years following Jean-Luc Godard's decision to cast him in his film Le Mépris in addition to considerable critical adulation in the US from the likes of Peter Bogdanovich.

He died in 1976 and was interred in the Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Lang

Grace Moore
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.


Mary Willie Grace Moore (December 5, 1898 - January 26, 1947) was an American operatic soprano and actress.

Born in Slabtown, Tennessee, she and her parents relocated to Chattanooga, Tennessee when she was a child. She later earned fame as an opera, Broadway and Hollywood star, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1935 for One Night of Love.

She reportedly made racist comments and refused to appear on the same stage as an African-American performer.

She was at one point chosen by Florenz Ziegfeld as one of the most beautiful women in the world. Moore's life story was made into a movie, So This is Love, in 1953, starring North Carolina-born fellow Southerner and singer Kathryn Grayson.

Grace Moore died in a plane crash near the Copenhagen, Denmark airport on January 26, 1947, at the age of 48. She had been planning to convert to Catholicism, but did not do so by the time she got on the plane, so she died a Protestant. Among the other victims was also Prince Gustaf Adolf of Sweden, then heir to the Swedish throne and father of the present Swedish king, King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Moore

While we are waiting for our Bob of Boston to complete his bios. Someone is having a birthday:

http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1707882#1707882

Back later, listeners, with a comment about Walt Disney.

Little Richard
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Little Richard (born Richard Wayne Penniman, December 5, 1932 in Macon, Georgia) is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist, and an early African-American pioneer of rock and roll.

One of twelve children, Little Richard says he "came from a family where my people didn't like rhythm and blues. Bing Crosby - 'Pennies From Heaven' - Ella Fitzgerald, was all I heard." (Hamm 1979, p.391) Raised in the Seventh Day Adventist church, he learned gospel music in Pentecostal churches of the U.S. South. His early recording career in the 1950s was a mix of blues music and rhythm and blues, heavily steeped in gospel music, but with a driving beat and breathlessly delivered lyrics that marked a decidedly new kind of music.


Biography

Early years

Richard Penniman had begun his career singing with Johnny Otis, but had little success until he sent a demo tape to Specialty Records in 1955, and met for a recording session in New Orleans. During a break in that session, Richard began singing an impromptu recital of "Tutti Frutti", an obscene, lusty song he had been singing on stage. The lyrics were changed from "Tutti-frutti loose booty" to "Tutti frutti all rooty" because record producer Bumps Blackwell felt they were over the line. (Tutti-frutti was a slang term meaning a "gay male" and booty means "buttocks").


The song, with its introductory "Womp-bomp-a-loom-op-a-womp-bam-boom!" which became the model for many future Little Richard songs, with its driving piano, saxophone solo by Lee Allen and its unrelenting beat. In the next few years, Richard had several more hits, including "Long Tall Sally", "Slippin' and Slidin'", "Jenny, Jenny" and "Good Golly, Miss Molly". His frantic performing style can be seen in such period films as Don't Knock the Rock (1956) and The Girl Can't Help It (1956), for which he sang the title song, written by Bobby Troup.

Despite the raw sound of his music, the singles were carefully put together, as documented on the three-volume album The Specialty Sessions, which include many false starts and variations. As an example of Richard's craftsmanship, he and Blackwell rehearsed the line from "Long Tall Sally", "He saw Aunt Mary coming and he ducked back in the alley" for a full day until he achieved machine-gun precision.


Gospel years and later career

Little Richard quit the music business suddenly in 1957, while in the middle of an Australian tour; he reportedly renounced his rock and roll lifestyle, removed four diamond rings worth $8,000 from his fingers and threw them into Sydney's Hunter River. Richard then enrolled in a Christian university in Alabama and became a Pentecostal minister. While Specialty Records released a few new songs based on past sessions, Richard did little musically, releasing some gospel songs in the early 1960s.

In 1962, Little Richard returned with an enthusiastically received tour of the United Kingdom. The Rolling Stones and The Beatles, long-time fans, supported him. Richard took the Beatles with him on a tour of Hamburg, and they performed with him at the Star Club. The Rolling Stones opened for Richard and the Everly Brothers before they ever had a recording contract.

Since then, Little Richard has had a periodic career in movies, as well as releasing occasional singles and enduring as one of the legendary flamboyant pioneers of rock and roll. In 1986, when the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame opened, Little Richard was among the first inductees. His pioneering contribution to the genre has been recognized by the Rockabilly Hall of Fame.

He appeared in the movie Down and Out in Beverly Hills in 1986 and scored his first major hit in years with "Great Gosh-a-Mighty!" which led to a resurgence in popularity. A made-for-TV film, Little Richard (2000), starred Leon in the title role.

Most recently, Little Richard has been working with other R&B and Soul greats and contemparies on a charity single written and produced by singer/songwriter Michael Jackson titled, "I Have A Dream". Proceeds from the single, set for a Christmas release, will go to victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Sexuality

Little Richard was famously quoted as once saying "Rock n Roll is evil, because Rock n Roll makes you take drugs, and drugs turn you into a homosexual." This is after Richard's controversial renunciation of his own homosexuality, which some attribute to the pressures of public scrutiny and the prevalence of homophobia among black communities. His homegrown views on religion may have also influenced this, as he later became more conservative and devoted his life to evangelical Christianity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Richard


Tutti Frutti :: Little Richard

A-Wop-bop-a-loo-lop a-lop-bam-boo
Tutti Frutti, all over rootie,.....
A-wop-bop-a-loo-lop a-lop bam boo

I got a gal, named Sue,
She knows just what to do. .....
I've been to the east, I'vebeen to the west, but
she's the gal
That I love the best.

Tutti Frutti, all over rootie,....
A-wop-bop-a-loo-lop a-lop bam boo

I got a gal, named Daisy,
She almost drives me crazy ....
She knows how to love me ,
Yes indeed
Boy you don't know,
What she's doing to me

Tutti Frutti, all over rootie,.....
A-wop-bop-a-loo-lop a-lop bam boo

I got a gal, named Daisy...

José Carreras
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.


The Catalan tenor José Carreras (born December 5, 1946) is a famous opera singer much admired for his Verdi and Puccini roles. He enjoys great fame through his participation in "The Three Tenors" concerts with Luciano Pavarotti and Plácido Domingo.

Carreras was born in Barcelona and exhibited musical talent from a young age. At age eight, he also gave his first public performance, singing "La Donna e Mobile" on Spanish national radio. At eleven, he appeared at the Liceu as a boy soprano in the role of the narrator in Falla's El retablo de Maese Pedro and an urchin in the second act of La bohème.

In his teens, Carreras studied at the Conservatorio Superior de Música del Liceo. He made his debut at the Liceu as Flavio in Norma, coming to the attention of the famous soprano Montserrat Caballé, who sang the title role. She invited him to sing in a production of Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia, his first major breakthrough.

Carreras also sang with Caballé in his 1971 London stage debut at age 24, a concert performance of Maria Stuarda. In subsequent years, the two singers sang in more than fifteen different operas together.

In 1972, he made his American debut as Pinkerton in Madame Butterfly. In 1974, he made his debut at the Vienna State Opera as the Duke of Mantua, as Alfredo in La Traviata at the Royal Opera House and as Cavaradossi in Tosca at the Metropolitan Opera. The following year, Carreras made his debut at La Scala as Riccardo in Un Ballo in Maschera. By the age of 28, Carreras had sung the lead tenor in twenty-four different operas.

In 1987, at the height of his career, Carreras was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia and was given a 1 in 10 chance of survival. After enduring almost a year of treatment including radiation, chemotherapy, and an autologous bone marrow transplant, he was able to resume his singing career.

In 1988, he founded the José Carreras International Leukaemia Foundation, a charity which gives financial support to leukemia research and the registration of bone marrow donors.

In 1990, hundreds of millions of people around the world watched the Three Tenors give a concert at the opening of the World Cup in Rome. It was originally conceived to raise money for Carreras' foundation and also as a way for his colleagues, Domingo and Pavarotti, to welcome their colleague back to the world of opera.

In addition to opera, Carreras also performs lighter genres such as zarzuela. He also recorded West Side Story with conductor Leonard Bernstein.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Carreras

Good Morning WA2K.

Interesting bios, Bob. Wow! I see I missed quite a few birthdays when I posted on this date last year, including our friend NODDY. So:

Today's birthdays:

1377 - Jianwen Emperor of China (d. 1402)
1443 - Pope Julius II (d. 1513)
1495 - Nicolas Cleynaerts, Flemish grammarian (d. 1542)
1537 - Ashikaga Yoshiaki, Japanese shogun (d. 1597)
1539 - Fausto Paolo Sozzini, Italian theologian (d. 1604)
1547 - Ubbo Emmius, Dutch historian and geographer (d. 1625)
1595 - Henry Lawes, English composer (d. 1662)
1661 - Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, English statesman (d. 1724)
1687 - Francesco Geminiani, Italian violinist and composer (d. 1762)
1782 - Martin Van Buren, 8th President of the United States (d. 1862)
1803 - Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev, Russian lyric poet (d. 1873)
1820 - Afanasy Fet, Russian poet (d. 1892)
1822 - Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, American president of Radcliffe College (d. 1907)
1830 - Christina Rossetti, British poet (d. 1894)
1839 - George Armstrong Custer, American general (d. 1876)
1841 - Marcus Daly, American mining tycoon (d. 1900)
1850 - Alexander Girardi, Austrian actor (d. 1918)
1855 - Clinton Hart Merriam, American ornithologist (d. 1942)
1859 - John Jellicoe, British Royal Navy admiral (d. 1935)
1867 - Józef Piłsudski, Polish revolutionary and statesman (d. 1935)
1868 - Arnold Sommerfeld, German physicist (d. 1951)
1869 - Ellis Parker Butler, American author (d. 1937)
1870 - Vítězslav Novák, American composer (d. 1949)
1871 - Bill Pickett, American rodeo performer (d. 1932)
1872 - Harry Nelson Pillsbury, American chess player (d. 1906)
1875 - Sir Arthur Currie, Canadian soldier (d. 1933)
1879 - Clyde Cessna, American airplane manufacturer (d. 1954)
1886 - Rose Wilder Lane, American writer and reporter (d. 1968)
1890 - David Bomberg, British painter (d. 1957)
1890 - Fritz Lang, Austrian-born American film director (d. 1976)
1896 - Carl Ferdinand Cori, Austria-Hungarian-born American biochemist and Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1984)
1898 - Grace Moore, American soprano (d. 1947}
1901 - Walt Disney, American animated film producer (d. 1966)
1901 - Milton H. Erickson, American psychiatrist (d. 1980)
1901 - Werner Heisenberg, German physicist and Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1976)
1902 - Strom Thurmond, American politician (d. 2003)
1903 - Johannes Heesters, Dutch singer and actor
1903 - Cecil Frank Powell, British physicist and Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1969)
1906 - Otto Preminger, Austrian-born American director, producer and actor (d. 1986)
1911 - Władysław Szpilman, Polish pianist
1914 - Hans Hellmut Kirst, German author (d. 1989)
1927 - Bhumibol Adulyadej, King of Thailand
1932 - Sheldon Lee Glashow, American physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
1932 - Little Richard (Richard Wayne Penniman), American singer and pianist
1934 - Joan Didion, American writer
1935 - Calvin Trillin, American writer
1940 - Peter Pohl, Swedish writer
1943 - Eva Joly, Norwegian-born French magistrate
1944 - Jeroen Krabbé, Dutch actor
1946 - José Carreras, Spanish tenor
1947 - Jim Messina, American musician (Buffalo Springfield)
1947 - Jim Plunkett, American football player
1950 - Camarón de la Isla, Spanish flamenco singer (d. 1992)
1953 - Larry Zbyszko (Larry Whistler), American professional wrestler
1956 - Brian Backer, American actor
1956 - Krystian Zimerman, Polish pianist
1957 - Art Monk, American football player
1958 - Dean Erickson, American actor
1960 - Jack Russell, American singer (Great White)
1962 - José Cura, Argentine tenor
1963 - Eddie 'the Eagle' Edwards, British Olympic skier
1965 - Johnny Rzeznik American singer (Goo Goo Dolls)
1967 - Gary Allan, American country music singer
1968 - Margaret Cho, American comedian and actress
1968 - Lisa Marie, American model and actress
1968 - Glen Graham, American Musician (Blind Melon)
1970 - Marko Saaresto, World famous pop singer and writer from the band Poets of the Fall
1973 - Lubos Motl, Czech physicist
1975 - Ronnie O'Sullivan, British snooker player
1979 - Matteo Ferrari, Italian international footballer
1982 - Eddy Curry, American basketball player
1985 - Josh Smith, American basketball player
1985 - Frankie Muniz, American actor
1988 - Ross Bagley, American actor
and
NODDY

And here's Little Richard: