Today's Birthdays

Art Tatum (1910-1956)
Hugo Weisgall (1912-1997)
Gustav Winckler (1925-1979)
Paul Simon (1941)
Leona Mitchell (1949)
Kristine Ciesinski (1950)
Melvyn Tan (1956)
Mark Applebaum (1967)

and

Arna Bontemps (1902-1973)

and from The Writer's Almanac:


It’s the birthday of singer and songwriter Paul Simon, born in Newark, New Jersey (1941). Simon and Garfunkel recorded their first folk album, Wednesday Morning, 3 AM, in 1964, but it only sold a few thousand copies. They figured their career was probably over, but, unbeknown to Simon and Garfunkel, their record label had added electric guitars to the song “The Sounds of Silence” and released it as a single. They had just moved back in with their parents and were sitting in Simon’s car, wondering what to do next, when they heard the song come on the radio, and the DJ said it had gone to No. 1. Simon turned to Garfunkel and said, “That Simon and Garfunkel, they must be having a great time.”