1955 - Music

Music

Hollywood musicals: Charles Vidor's Love Me or Leave Me with Doris Day (as Ruth Etting), James Cagney; Fred Zinnemann's Oklahoma! with Gordon MacRae, Pennsylvania-born actress Shirley Jones, 21, Charlotte Greenwood; Richard Quine's My Sister Eileen with Betty Garrett, Janet Leigh, Jack Lemmon, Bob Fosse.

Songwriter Gus Arnheim dies of a heart attack at his Beverly Hills home January 19 at age 56; singer Carmen Miranda of a heart attack at her Beverly Hills home August 5 at age 42.

Broadway musicals: Silk Stockings 2/24 at the Imperial Theater, with German actress Hildegarde Neff (originally Knef), 29, as Ninotchka, George Tobias, Julie Newmar, Don Ameche, David Opatashu, music and lyrics by Cole Porter, songs that include "All of You," 478 perfs.; Damn Yankees 5/5 at the 46th Street Theater, with Gwen Verdon, music and lyrics by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, songs that include "Whatever Lola Wants," "You've Got to Have Heart," "Two Lost Souls," 1,019 perfs.; Pipe Dream 11/3 at the Sam S. Shubert Theater, with operatic diva Helen Traubel, now 56, music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, based on the John Steinbeck novel Sweet Thursday, songs that include "All at Once You Love Her," 246 perfs.

Former Broadway and London musical comedy star Trixie Friganza dies at Flintridge, Calif., February 27 at age 84; Broadway songwriter Jerry Ross of a chronic lung infection at New York November 11 at age 29.

Opera: Marian Anderson makes her Metropolitan Opera debut 1/7 singing the role of Ulrica in the 1859 Verdi opera Un Ballo in Maschera—the first black to sing at the Met; Renata Tebaldi makes her Metropolitan Opera debut 1/31 singing the role of Desdemona in the 1887 Verdi opera Otello; the Vienna State Opera House (Staatsoper) reopens after having been nearly completely destroyed by wartime bombing and gunfire.

Ballet: London-born accountant and musician Rudolf Benesh, 39, introduces the Benesh Movement Notation system for choreography, defining "choreology" as "the scientific and aesthetic study of all forms of human movement by movement notation." His wife, Joan, was a dancer for the Sadler's Wells Ballet in the late 1940s, and her efforts to write down and then decipher dance steps inspired Benesh to invent a reliable way of notating them. The Benesh Institute (initially called The Institute of Choreology) that Benesh will found in 1962 will amalgamate in mid-April 1997 with the Royal Academy of Dance.

First performances: Symphony No. 8 by Heitor Villa-Lobos 1/14 at Philadelphia's Academy of Music; Symphony No. 5 (Sinfonia Sacra) by Howard Hanson 2/18 at Philadelphia's Academy of Music; Symphony No. 6 by Walter Piston 11/25 at Boston's Symphony Hall.

Composer Georges Enesco dies at Paris May 4 at age 73; composer Arthur Honegger at Paris November 27 at age 63.

The Merengue introduced to U.S. dance floors by New York teacher Albert Butler, 61, and his wife, Josephine, is an adaptation of a Dominican one-step combining the rumba and paso doble.

Popular songs: "Rock Around the Clock" by William "Bill" Haley; "Maybellene" by St. Louis-born guitarist-blues singer-songwriter Charles Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry, 28, Russ Frato, and Alan Freed. Berry went to prison for armed robbery while attending high school but scores an immediate hit; Count Basie Swings, Joe Williams Sings (album) includes a new version of "Every Day (I Have the Blues)" arranged by Ernie Wilkins; "Something's Gotta Give" by Johnny Mercer (for the film Daddy Long Legs); "Memories Are Made of This" by Terry Gilkyson, Richard Debny, and Frank Miller; "Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing" by Sammy Fain, lyrics by Paul Francis Webster (title song for Henry King's film); California-born singer Julie London (originally Julie Peck), 28, records "Cry Me a River" by Arthur Hamilton and includes it in her first album, Julie Is Her Name; "Love and Marriage" by Jimmy Van Heusen, lyrics by Sammy Cahn (for a TV production of Thornton Wilder's Our Town); "Domani" by Italian composer Ulpio Minucci, lyrics by Tony Velona; "Dance with Me, Henry" and "The Wallflower" by Los Angeles-born rhythm & blues singer Etta James (Etta Hawkins), 17; Tennessee-born country-and-western singer Ernest Jennings "Tennessee Ernie" Ford, 36, records the coal-mining ballad "16 Tons" and it has sales of 2 million copies in its first 9 weeks (it will ultimately have sales of more than 20 million worldwide); "Nearer to Thee" by Clarksdale, Miss.-born soul singer-songwriter Sam Cooke, 24.

Country music impresario Owen Bradley, 40, opens the first Nashville recording studio. He will be credited with creating the "Nashville sound."

Charlie Parker makes his final appearance at New York's Birdland and dies of a heart attack March 12 at age 53 in the Fifth Avenue apartment of Baroness Nica Rothschild de Koenigswater; songwriter Al Piantadosi dies at Encino, Calif., April 8 at age 71; Tin Pan Alley lyricist Andrew B. Sterling at his Stanford, Conn., home August 11 at age 80; "Charleston" songwriter Jimmy Johnson of a stroke at New York November 17 at age 61; Charles "Cow Cow" Davenport at Cleveland December 2 at age 63.