December 24th

 Musical birthdays today include songwriter & producer Mike Curb (77), Focus guitarist Jan Akkerman (75), rock critic Nick Kent (70), singer-songwriter Diane Tell (63), former Thin Lizzy keyboardist Darren Wharton (59), 10,000 Maniacs lead singer Karen Ramsey (58), Counting Crows bassist Millard Powers (56), blues guitarist & producer Doyle Bramhall II (53), singer-songwriter Will 'Bonnie Prince Billy' Oldham (51), and One Direction vocalist Louis Tomlinson (30). 

Shoutout to the Great Beyond for Cosima Wagner, born on this day in 1837... for jazz drummer Warren 'Baby' Dodds, born in 1898... for pop and R&B singer Lee Dorsey, born in 1924... for jazz pianist Ray Bryant, who would have been 90 today... for Motörhead frontman Ian 'Lemmy' Kilmister, who would have been 76... for composer Alban Berg, who died on this date in 1935... for Hitchcock film score composer Bernard Herrmann, who died in 1975... for former Four Season bassist Nick Massi, who passed away in 2000... and for singer and Frank Zappa sideman Ray Collins, who left us today in 2012.

Also on December 24: The first performance of the carol 'Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht', AKA Silent Night, takes place at the Church of St. Nikolaus in Oberndorf, Austria. Franz Xaver Gruber, the composer of the melody, leads the congregation in singing whilst Father Joseph Mohr, who wrote the words, provides accompaniment on guitar (1818)... Verdi's Aida has its world premiere in Cairo to celebrate the recent opening of the Suez Canal (1871)...  Canadian inventor Reginald Fessenden sends a signal of himself singing 'We Wish You a Merry Christmas' to a collaborator ~ the signal, with a range of approximately one mile, is the first recorded transmission of music over the radio (1900)... Enrico Caruso gives his last public performance at the Met in NYC (1920)... Gian Carlo Menotti's Amal and the Night Visitors, the first opera composed expressly for television, is broadcast from NBC's Studio 8H at Rockefeller Center (1951)... The Beatles have the number one album in the US for the third Christmas in a row. 'Rubber Soul' sits atop the LP chart this year, following 'Beatles For Sale' in 1964 and 'With The Beatles' in 1963. The Fab Four will repeat this feat in 1968 with 'The Beatles' (The White Album) and again in 1969, with 'Abbey Road' (1965)... The Bee Gees perform their Christmas special live from Liverpool Cathedral on BBC TV (1967)... David Bowie appears at the Rainbow Theatre, London giving a special Christmas Eve concert (1972)... The Sex Pistols play their last UK gig before splitting, a charity event at Ivanhoe's in Huddersfield for an audience made up primarily of children (1977)... Poison have the № 1 single in America with 'Every Rose Has Its Thorn'... Nirvana begin recording their debut album Bleach after booking the studio time with a $600 loan from an old school friend of Kurt Cobain's (1988)... Rapper Foxy Brown is handcuffed and threatened with jail after she sticks her tongue out at a New York judge who asked her to stop chewing gum. Judge Melissa Jackson tells the singer that she is being disrespectful to the court. Brown is being arraigned on charges of attacking two nail salon workers during a dispute over payment (2005).