Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was an English composer and conductor. Born in London in 1875, his mother was English and his father, a descendant of African-American slaves, was from Sierra Leone. He was named by his mother after the romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Monkee Mike Nesmith died last month. The Monkees might have been manufactured (The American Beatles) and might have made a silly if loveable tv series, but they produced some great songs helped by songwriters like Neil Diamond who wrote this one.
Nesmith went on to a successful solo career and was one of the early pioneers of music video. Talented family, as his mother invented typewriter correction fluid which earned them all a lot of money.
Okay, it's not a song and Tom can sound stilted to the modern ear - he was actually from Missouri - but there is a real music to Eliot's musing on time which perhaps sits well at this time of year. This is the first part of Burnt Norton (1936) the first poem in the Four Quartets (published in 1944).
Brinsley Schwarz were part of the pub rock scene of the 1970s in the UK, hardly the most glamorous of descriptions, conjuring up images of warm beer on warm afternoons in some dive in South London. However, they proved influential (though not until after they had disbanded) and this song, one of their best, has been covered by various artists including Elvis Costello and Bruce Springsteen.
Clara Schumann (1819-1896) was a prodigious pianist and composer until family life intervened in her mid-thirties. Much of her work was not performed until recently. The title translates as "I stood darkly dreaming".
Australian by birth, Percy Grainger spent the early years of the 20th Century collecting and, in some cases, arranging traditional English Folk songs. Brigg Fair took place on 5 August every year, in Lincolnshire, and was primarily a place for trading horses. Grainger's arrangment was later adapted for orchestra by Frederick Delius.
There aren't that many songs from the Punk and New Wave era that have lasted, possibly because a lot of the bands couldn't play their instruments which is a bit of a barrier to great songwriting. However, the Only Ones managed it with 'Another Girl, Another Planet', helped by such lines as "Space travels in my blood/There ain't nothing I can do about it/Long journeys wear me out/But I know, I can't live without it."
Time we had some swing and a tinkle of jazz courtesy of Count Basie and the band.