1924
Calloway attracts notice for both his athleticism in basketball and artistic skills. He follows in the footsteps of his older sister, Blanche, who is already a recognized performer. Cab receives a few lucky breaks filling in for important shows and helping hands from established peers, such as Louis Armstrong.

1927
Cab performs his first tour with Plantation Days (1927) in the black theatre circuit with the attendant difficulties.

1929
Calloway manages to make an impression at the Savoy Ballroom despite his orchestra’s failure (his band is kicked out, while he is hired to lead the band that beat them!). He attracts notice from Irving Mills and Duke Ellington’s musicians.

1931-1940
Cab Calloway has a residency at the Cotton Club under a  white manager and plays for predominantly white audiences.

29 December, 1931
Cab plays the Lucky Strike show. This is the first white radio show to welcome a black big band.

1932
Cab Calloway appears in 3 Betty Boop cartoons and from then on is repeatedly caricatured in cartoons of the time.

Summer 1932
Cab Calloway tours through the Jim Crow south becoming the first renowned black big band to tour the segregated southern states.

30s and 40s
Cab Calloway tours and experiences racial troubles. Rioting during concerts, caused by segregated audiences. Cab is obliged to hire a private train.

Poster for Cab Calloway and his Cotton Club Orchestra

1934
Cab takes a European tour (England, Holland, Belgium, France), and experiences the differences between the ways Blacks are treated in America versus in Europe.

1935
Cab attempts to move into a white neighborhood and is rejected by the neighbors, who put racist signs up in his front yard.

1937
Cab writes an article about how white jazz musicians are robbing black orchestras.

1938
Cab Calloway’s dictionary of jazz musicians’ slang, Hepcat Jive Dictionary, is put on the shelves of the New York Public Library.

1939
Cab’s recording 78 rpm, “Jumpin’ Jive,” sells 1 million copies.

1941
Calloway gets involved in the struggle for black jazz musicians’ right to take the bus rather than be obliged to travel by car.

1942
Cab’s radio quiz show Quizzicale is suspended for lack of sponsors.

1942
The “Zazou” fad in France of young people expressing their individuality by wearing big or garish clothing similar to the ‘zoot’ suit in America during the Occupation inspires by Cab Calloway and others to create Zazou photos from France

1943
Cab appears in Stormy Weather, one of the first films with an all-star black cast. Racial problems occur during filming, such as eating and housing arrangements for the cast and black press reactions. The film is censored by a Memphis D.A.

Cab Calloway's 78 rpm "Jumpin' Jive"

1945
Calloway attempts to found a black symphony orchestra and a school of jazz music

1945
Cab Calloway gets in an altercation at a Lionel Hampton concert. He is beaten by a white cop but is charged with assault.

1945
Cab marries Nuffie, a militant black feminist.

1946
Cab throws a benefit concert for Isaac Woodard, a black soldier blinded by a racist policeman.

1948
The FBI starts a file on Cab’s activities.

1952
Cab appears in Porgy and Bess for the US and European tour.

1954
Cab is refused a seat at a bar in Las Vegas, where they’d gone for a drink with Louis Prima after a concert. Prima is so outraged by the incident that it affects the course of his career.

1957
Cab moves to White Plains, an upper-middle-class suburb of New York.

1958
Cat participates in the Nat King Cole Show on TV, which is in danger for ending for the same reasons as the Quizzicale.

1968
Cab appears in Hello Dolly.

1977
Cab Calloway appears on Sesame Street.

1980
Blues Brothers creates a tribute to black culture, and a resurgence in popular interest in Cab Calloway.

1985-1994
Cab performs a world tour and multiple revivals.

1992
Cab is invited to the White House where he is decorated by Bill Clinton.

Gould, the artist as a young man photographed by his close friend John P.L. Roberts. Toronto.

1932 – Glenn Herbert Gold is born in Toronto on September 25 to Florence Greig and Russell Herbert (Bert) Gold. (The family changed its surname to “Gould” around 1939).

1935 – Gould’s prodigious musical gifts, including perfect pitch, become apparent. At age 4, his mother becomes his first piano teacher.

1943 – He begins studying piano with Alberto Guerrero.

1946 – On May 8, Gould makes his orchestral debut with the Toronto Conservatory Symphony Orchestra at Massey Hall as part of the Toronto Conservatory of Music Annual Closing Concert.

1947 – On October 20, Gould gives his first public professional solo recital, held in Eaton Auditorium, Toronto. He is now managed by Walter Homburger. Around this time, the Gould family acquires one of the earliest tape recorders, and Gould begins eagerly to explore the new technology and document his playing.

1949 – Gould decides to become a concert pianist under tutor Alberto Guererro, whom he clashes with over his singing and flamboyant style.

1950 – In a recital at Hart House, Gould offers perhaps the first characteristically “Gouldian” program: Bach’s Italian Concerto, Beethoven’s “Eroica” Variations, and Hindemith’s Third Sonata.

1952 – Gould ends his piano lessons with Guerrero. For the next few years, he spends an increasing amount of time living at his family’s cottage, practicing, thinking, reading, composing, and generally preparing himself for an adult career as a musician.

1955 – Gould gives his New York debut recital in Town Hall on January 11. The following day, he is offered an exclusive recording contract with Columbia.

1956 – In January, Columbia releases Gould’s recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. It is released to almost universal critical and popular acclaim, launching his international career as a recording and concert artist.

1957 – On May 7, he begins his first European tour and becomes the first North American pianist to perform in the Soviet Union since WWII.

1959 – At age 27, Gould finally moves out of his parents’ home, at first, into the Windsor Arms Hotel. On August 31, he gives his last public performance in Europe at the L.

1960 – Gould spends the first half of the year living at the Algiers Apartments on Avenue Road, and then moves into a penthouse (No. 902) at The Park Lane Apartments, 100 St. Clair Avenue West – his home for the rest of his life.

1962 – Gould meets Cornelia Foss, a painter and the wife of Lukas Foss, a composer and pianist Gould greatly admires. He befriends the couple. By 1964, his friendship with Cornelia has evolved into the most important romance of his life. Gould performs a controversial Brahms concert with Leonard Bernstein in New York with very slow tempi. His performance, and the conductor Leonard Bernstein’s pre-concert speech alluding to their differences over interpretation, provokes criticism in the press.

1964 – On April 10, Gould gives a recital at Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles — his last live public performance.

1968 – The performer-manager relationship between Glenn Gould and Walter Homburger ends.

1968 – Cornelia Foss leaves her husband Lukas and brings her two children to live in Toronto to be close to Gould. They intend to marry.

1971 – On January 10, Gould records his first session in Eaton Auditorium, Toronto, where he will make most of his recordings for the rest of his life. Around this time, he also hires a personal assistant, Ray Roberts, who becomes a close friend.

1972 – Gould creates musical arrangements for the film Slaughterhouse Five distributed by Universal Pictures.

ca. 1973 – Cornelia Foss leaves Gould and returns to live with her husband, conductor Lukas Foss in New York.

1975 – On July 26, Gould’s mother dies.

1979 – “Glenn Gould’s Toronto” (part of the series “Cities”) appears on CBC-TV on September 27. The program receives two ACTRA awards and is nominated for a GENIE award in 1980.

1982 – CBS releases Gould’s new recording of the Goldberg Variations. The album wins two GRAMMY awards and a JUNO award in 1983, as well as a Gold Disc from the Canadian Recording Industry Association in 1984. In the summer, he conducts a recording of the chamber version of Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll for CBS.

On October 4, 1982, Gould dies at age 50 after suffering a stroke a week prior. Some 3,000 attend his memorial service on October 15.

Sources:
Library and Archives Canada: The Glenn Gould Archive,
http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/glenngould/028010-309-e.html
Kevin Bazzana, Biographer, http://www.glenngould.com/

November 9, 1966 – John and Yoko meet for the first time at the Indica Gallery in Mason’s Yard, Duke Street, London S.W.1 for a preview of Yoko’s upcoming exhibition entitled Unfinished Paintings and Objects.

John and Yoko walking with the NYC skyline. ©Ben Ross

March 20, 1969 – John and Yoko are married in Gibraltar. For their honeymoon the couple stage Bed Ins in Amsterdam and in Montreal, where “Give Peace a Chance” is recorded on May 31, 1969.

August 1971 – John and Yoko get an apartment on Bank Street in New York City’s Greenwich Village.

December 11, 1971 – John and Yoko perform at the Ten for Two Concert, a benefit rally in Ann Arbor, Michigan to get John Sinclair out of jail.

March 6, 1972 – John and Yoko are served with deportation orders. The couple’s four year battle against deportation begins.

June 12, 1972 – Some Time in New York City is released in the United States.

August 30, 1972 – John, Yoko and the Plastic Ono Elephant’s Memory Band host the One to One concert at Madison Square Garden, a benefit concert for the children of Willowbrook State School.

John and Elton on stage at Madison Square Garden. ©Bob Gruen/www.bobgruen.com

November 1973 – John and Yoko separate. John goes to Los Angeles, California.

November 2, 1973 – Mind Games is released in the United States.

September 26, 1974 – Walls and Bridges is released in the United States.

November 28, 1974 – After losing a bet that “Whatever Gets You Thru the Night” would never go to number one (it did), John Lennon accompanied his good friend Elton John onstage at Madison Square Garden. John and Yoko claim this concert to be the catalyst for their reconciliation.

January, 1975 – John officially returns to the Dakota and is re-united with Yoko.

February 17, 1975 – The Rock ‘n’ Roll album is released in the United States.

John and baby Sean. ©Bob Gruen/www.bobgruen.com

October 7, 1975 – The New York State Supreme Court votes to reverse John’s deportation order. John wins his battle to stay in the country.

October 9, 1975 – On John’s 35th birthday, Yoko gives birth to Sean Taro Ono Lennon. John begins his ‘househusband years’.

August 4, 1980 – John and Yoko enter the recording studio, New York’s Hit Factory, for the first time in six years to begin work on a new album.

November 17, 1980 – Double Fantasy is released in the United States.

December 8, 1980 – John Winston Ono Lennon is murdered outside of his home in New York City.