Died On This Date (October 16, 1973) Gene Krupa / Jazz Icon
themusicsover Gene Krupa
January 15, 1909 – October 16, 1973
Gene Krupa was arguably the most influential jazz drummer of all time. Krupa learned to play drums as a youngster, and by his late teens he was playing his first professional gigs with bands throughout Wisconsin. He graduated to the Chicago scene in the late ’20s when he was selected to back the popular Thelma Terry and her Playboys. He played on six recordings by Terry. Krupa moved to New York City in 1929 to play with Red Nichols and eventually Benny Goodman, with whom he became a household name. In 1938, he formed his own band which featured such greats as Anita O’Day and Roy Eldridge. The next year, the band appeared as themselves in Some Like It Hot, in which they performed the hit song of the same name. Movie fans may also recognize Krupa playing himself in 1954’s The Glenn Miller Story which starred Jimmy Stewart and June Allyson. Krupa was also the subject of a Hollywood film, The Gene Krupa Story, which starred Sal Mineo as the drummer. He retired from performing to open a school in the late ’60s. Future Kiss drummer, Peter Criss was one of his students. Gene Krupa died of leukemia and heart failure at the age of 64.
What You Should Own
Doug Bennett was the founder and lead singer of Canadian new wave band, Doug & the Slugs, whose biggest hit, “Too Bad,” appeared on their 1980 debut album, Cognac and Bologna. That song found a second life when it was featured as the theme song in comedian Norm MacDonald’s 1999 sitcom, The Norm Show. Doug & the Slugs’ brand of bar room pop had been likened to those of such bands as Huey Lewis & the News. Although very popular in their home country and having released a half-dozen albums, four of which reaching gold status, they never got much beyond their one-almost-hit-wonder status in the U.S. Outside of the band, Bennett produced and directed several music videos by such Canadian bands as Trooper, Zappacosta and Headpins. Bennett had been suffering from a long term, though publicly unknown, illness when he fell into a coma after being admitted to a local hospital. He never regained consciousness and passed away at the age of 52.
Born in Poland, a young (and not yet called) Leonard Chess moved with his family to Chicago in 1928. Leonard and his brother Phil got into the music business by way of the Macomba Lounge, a popular Black club they took over in 1946. Shortly thereafter, Leonard began working with a local jazz and black label called Aristocrat Records. He and his brother eventually took it over and began changing its focus to the down and dirty sound of the blues they had fallen in love with. By the time they were done, they had made seminal records with the likes of 
Art Blakey was a drummer and band leader whose Jazz Messengers, a band he led for an astonishing thirty years, was the onetime home of such future legends as Horace Silver, Lou Donaldson, Donald Byrd, 