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November 7, 1951 Frank Sinatra marries his second wife, actress Ava Gardner. The marriage, her third, lasts six years and is credited for moving Sinatra into his "mature" phase as a singer, with Nelson Riddle stating: "It was Ava who did that, who taught him how to sing a torch song. That's how he learned. She was the greatest love of his life and he lost her."

October 7, 1951 John Mellencamp is born in Seymour, Indiana. He has Spina bifida, but survives thanks to an experimental surgery performed at Riley Children's Hospital in Indianapolis.More

May 13, 1950 Stevie Wonder is born Stevland Morris in Saginaw, Michigan.More

May 9, 1949 Billy Joel is born in The Bronx, New York, raised in Hicksville on Long Island.More

August 22, 1948 Guitarist David Marks is born in New Castle, Washington. When he is 7, his family moves to Hawthorne, California across the street from the Wilson family, which forms The Beach Boys. Marks joins the band in 1961, but is replaced two years later by Al Jardine.

May 15, 1948 Ambient composer Brian Eno is born in Woodbridge, Suffolk, England.More

February 5, 1948 Actor Christopher Guest, known as Alan Barrows of the fictional folk trio The Folksmen and Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap, is born in New York City. The mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap tells us Tufnel was born in Squatney, London.

July 8, 1947 New Mexico's Roswell Daily Record reports an alien aircraft has crashed near a local ranch with the headline "RAAF Captures Flying Saucer In Roswell Region." In the coming decades, extraterrestrials and flying saucers invade several songs, including David Bowie's "Starman," Megadeth's "Hangar 18," and Radiohead's "Subterranean Homesick Alien."More

December 30, 1946 Punk rock icon Patti Smith is born in Chicago. Never all that popular (her big hit is a reworking of "Because The Night," written by Bruce Springsteen), she's one of the most influential singer-songwriter-poets of her time.More

December 25, 1946 Jimmy Buffett is born in Pascagoula, Mississippi. He's raised in Mobile, Alabama, but his true home will always be in "Margaritaville."More

September 18, 1945 Blind Willie Johnson, singer of "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground," dies at 48 years old from malarial fever.

December 11, 1944 Brenda Lee is born Brenda Mae Tarpley in Atlanta, Georgia. Her small stature and big voice inspire the nickname "Little Miss Dynamite," which she lives up to by blowing up the charts with rockabilly bops ("Sweet Nothin's"), pop ballads ("I'm Sorry"), and Christmas tunes ("Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree") throughout the '60s. More

April 16, 1944 On shore leave from the Merchant Marines, Woody Guthrie arrives at Folkway Records' studios in New York City, where he starts recording with the label's founder, Moses Asch, in what becomes known as the "Asch recordings." Among the songs recorded during these sessions is "This Land Is Your Land," which becomes an iconic populist protest anthem, covered by countless artists including Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen.More

December 18, 1943 Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards is born in Dartford, Kent, England.More

November 26, 1942 Casablanca, starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, premieres at the Hollywood Theatre in New York City. The World War II-era romance revives an old love song - "As Time Goes By" - and inspires the Al Stewart hit "Year of the Cat."More

June 18, 1942 Paul McCartney is born James Paul McCartney in Allerton, Liverpool, England. McCartney's father and great-grandfather also were named James, although his dad was informally known as Jim. When Paul's father was younger, he'd led a local jazz band, and could play piano and the trumpet. Jim McCartney passed down his love for music to his son.

April 24, 1942 Barbra Streisand is born in Brooklyn, New York City.More

July 10, 1941 Jazz icon Jelly Roll Morton, whose "Jelly Roll Blues" was the first published jazz composition, dies at age 50.

February 20, 1941 Singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie is born. According to her birth certificate, she's born Beverly Jean Santamaria in Stoneham, Massachusetts, but she claims to be Native-Canadian, born Beverly Sainte-Marie in Qu'Appelle Valley, Saskatchewan and adopted by a couple in Stoneham.More

November 13, 1940 Justine "Baby" Washington is born in Bamberg, South Carolina, but would be raised in Harlem, New York. Known for her biggest hit, "That's How Heartaches Are Made," in 1963.

May 19, 1940 Mickey Newbury, who penned a record-breaking string of hits across four different charts in 1968, including The First Edition's "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)," is born in Houston, Texas.

January 6, 1940 Van McCoy is born in Washington, D.C. Known for the 1975 disco hit "The Hustle," he also writes a string of '60s hits, including "Giving Up" (Gladys Knight & the Pips and, later, Donny Hathaway) and "I Get the Sweetest Feeling" (Jackie Wilson).

November 10, 1938 On her radio show, Kate Smith sings the Irving Berlin song "God Bless America" for the first time, introducing it to the country. Berlin composed the song for a 1918 musical he wrote, but decided not to use it.More

October 15, 1938 R&B singer Marv Johnson is born in Detroit, Michigan. His song "Come to Me" was the first record on the Tamla label, which would later become Motown.

August 13, 1938 Robert Johnson, famous for his song "Crossroads," where he sings about making a deal with the Devil to attain his musical prowess, is poisoned during a gig in Greenwood, Mississippi. Most accounts claim the guy who owned the club put the poison in Johnson's whiskey bottle because Johnson was having an affair with his wife. He dies three days later at age 27.

January 25, 1938 Blues singer Etta James, known for the enduring ballad "At Last," is born Jamesetta Hawkins in Los Angeles, California.More

September 26, 1937 Bessie Smith dies of severe injuries she sustained in a late-night car accident near Clarksdale, Mississippi, at age 43. The story goes that she was refused admission to a whites-only hospital, and she bled to death. In actuality, two ambulances showed up at the scene - one for the white hospital, one for the black hospital - and being in the Deep South during segregation, she was taken to the latter, where her arm was amputated before she died. Had she been taken to the white hospital, however, she would not have been treated.

September 10, 1937 Country singer Tommy Overstreet is born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He would be raised in Texas. His first hit was "Gwen (Congratulations)" in 1970.

July 10, 1936 Billie Holiday becomes the first major artist to record the classic song "Summertime," which was featured in the musical Porgy and Bess a year earlier.

March 4, 1934 Singer/actress Barbara McNair is born in Chicago, Illinois. She releases her debut single, "Till There Was You," in 1958 and goes on to tour with Nat King Cole.