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January 3, 1926 Beatles producer George Martin is born in London. He signs the group to EMI in 1962 and his expertise as an arranger helps shape the band's unique sound. Upon Martin's death in 2016, Paul McCartney states: "If anyone earned the title of the fifth Beatle it was George."

December 13, 1925 Actor/entertainer Dick Van Dyke is born in West Plains, Missouri, but grows up in Danville, Illinois. He stars and sings in the hit musicals Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, featuring the famous title song.

December 8, 1925 Sammy Davis, Jr. is born in New York City. By the age of 3, he is a vaudeville performer alongside his father in the Will Mastin Trio. An all-around entertainer, he excels as a singer, actor and comedian, often performing with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin as part of The Rat Pack. His most famous song is "The Candy Man," a #1 hit in 1972.

August 18, 1925 Sonny Til (lead singer for The Orioles) is born in Baltimore, Maryland.

July 22, 1924 Margaret Whiting is born in Detroit, Michigan, but is raised in Los Angeles, California, where her dad, Richard, composes popular tunes such as "Hooray For Hollywood" and "On The Good Ship Lollipop." Modern listeners know her for her holiday duet with Johnny Mercer, "Baby It's Cold Outside."

February 4, 1924 Louis Armstrong marries Lillian Hardin, a pianist with King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, of which he is also a member. Lil encourages her husband's rising career, but the marriage falls apart, ending in a 1938 divorce.

April 5, 1923 Joe Oliver and King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, featuring a young Louis Armstrong, make the first jazz recordings by an African American band at Gennett Records in rural Richmond, Indiana.More

December 5, 1922 Songwriter Don Robertson is born in Beijing, China. Aside from his own 1956 hit, "The Happy Whistler," he penned songs for several artists, including Elvis Presley ("Anything That's Part of You," "Love Me Tonight," among others), The Chordettes ("Born to Be with You") and Les Paul and Mary Ford ("Hummingbird").

October 7, 1922 Actress Martha Stewart (not to be confused with the TV personality Martha Stewart) is born Martha Haworth in Bardwell, Kentucky, but would be raised in Brooklyn, New York.

April 3, 1922 Actress and singer Doris Day is born Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff in Cincinnati, Ohio. She turns to singing when a car accident wrecks her dreams of becoming a professional dancer.More

June 1, 1921 Nelson Riddle is born in Oradell, New Jersey. He'll become famous as the orchestrator and arranger behind countless hits for Capitol Records artists like Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Dean Martin, Peggy Lee, and - decades later - Linda Ronstadt.

May 17, 1921 Bob Merrill, a prolific songwriter whose hits include "(How Much Is) That Doggie In The Window?" and "Mambo Italiano," is born in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

June 7, 1917 Dean Martin is born Dino Paul Crocetti in Steubenville, Ohio. After teaming with Jerry Lewis in the popular comedy act Martin & Lewis, he becomes a top entertainer of the 1950s and 1960s, known for hits like "Memories Are Made Of This" and "That's Amore."

April 7, 1917 Jazz percussionist Mongo Santamaria, known for composing the jazz standard "Afro Blue," is born Ramon Santamaria Rodriguez in Havana, Cuba.

December 5, 1912 Blues legend Sonny Boy Williamson, author of "Eyesight To The Blind" and "One Way Out," is born Alex "Rice" Miller in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi. This is the date he claims he was born, but his headstone (erected 12 years after his death) reads March 11, 1908. He became Sonny Boy Williamson after impersonating another blues musician with that name, and is often referred to as Sonny Boy Williamson II so they don't get mixed up.

October 31, 1912 Western singer-songwriter Dale Evans is born Lucille Wood Smith (changed to Frances Octavia Smith soon after) in Uvalde, Texas. She meets screen partner Roy Rogers in 1944 and the pair marry in 1947.

July 17, 1912 20-year-old Dorothy Goetz, the first wife of Irving Berlin, dies of typhoid fever in New York. They had been married less than 6 months. Berlin writes his first ballad: "When I Lost You."

May 13, 1911 Jazz singer Maxine Sullivan, known for her 1937 swing version of the Scottish folk song "Loch Lomond," is born Marietta Williams in Homestead, Pennsylvania.

July 30, 1892 John Philip Sousa, director of the President's Own Marine Band, conducts a farewell concert at the White House the day before his discharge from the Marine Corps. Sousa became famous for his "Washington Post" march a few years earlier and wanted to explore a civilian music career.

June 15, 1889 John Philip Sousa leads the Marine Corps Band in a performance of "The Washington Post" at an awards ceremony held by the eponymous newspaper. The march, written especially for the occasion, becomes a worldwide sensation and earns Sousa the title of March King. More

November 8, 1887 Emile Berliner is granted the first patent for the gramophone. In the 1890s, he starts manufacturing gramophone players and discs, but in the early 1900s the Victor Talking Machine company becomes the market leader.

December 29, 1880 The opera La Mascotte opens in Paris, introducing the word "mascot."More

December 6, 1877 With his new invention, the phonograph, Thomas Edison records "Mary Had A Little Lamb," what was believed for over a century to be the first known recording of the human voice. In February 2008, an earlier recording of "Au Clair De La Lune" came to light.

November 24, 1868 Scott Joplin, Ragtime composer and pianist, is born in Northeast Texas.More

November 6, 1854 John Philip Sousa is born in Washington, DC. He serves as the director of the President's Own Marine Corps band from 1880 to 1892 before touring the world with his own Sousa Band and earns the title of March King thanks to famous compositions like "The Liberty Bell," "Semper Fidelis," "The Washington Post" and "Stars And Stripes Forever."

July 31, 1846 France's army gives legitimacy to Belgian Adolphe Sax's latest invention, the saxophone, by including it in their marching band.

June 16, 1792 Francis Johnson, an African American musician and composer during the Antebellum era, is born in Martinique in the West Indies.

March 24, 1786 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart completes his Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491. Beethoven hears the work in rehearsal and remarks in admiration to a colleague that "[we] shall never be able to do anything like that."

August 1, 1779 Francis Scott Key is born in Carroll County, Maryland.

March 24, 1721 Johann Sebastian Bach dedicates his Brandenburg Concertos to Christian Ludwig, the margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt. Bach wrote the pieces for the margrave to gain extra support for his work.