The Funniest People in Music: 250 Anecdotes

This is a short, quick, and easy read.

Most of these anecdotes are probably just OK (humor is hard!), but there should be at least one or two that you will want to tell your friends.

Anecdotes are retold in my own words to avoid plagiarism.

Most of these anecdotes are meant to be funny, but some are meant to be thought-provoking.

Some samples:

1) Blues singer Muddy Waters first heard his voice on a recording in the early 1940s. His impression of his voice was positive; afterward, he said, "I thought, man, this boy can sing the blues. And I was surprised because I didn't know I sang like that."

2)At age 13, William F. Buckley was sent to an English boarding school, where his piano teacher offered to teach him the first movement of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata." However, William's old piano teacher had warned him that playing the "Moonlight Sonata" before one was ready was simply wrong; therefore, he wrote her for permission to learn to play its first movement. Quickly, he received a letter from her in reply, and she did not give him permission to learn the first movement. She explained that if one was unable to learn the third and difficult movement, then one should not learn the first movement. She also explained that the first movement required a "maturity" that William was too young to have acquired. Mr. Buckley writes that this letter helped teach him that "good music is a very serious business."

3) Herman's Hermits was a very popular pop group in the 1960s, recording such hits as "Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter," "Dandy," and "I'm Henry VIII, I Am." These days, they perform before nostalgic audiences often consisting of women in their 40s and 50s. According to lead singer Peter Noone, "Girls used to throw underwear at us. We still get some, but it's bigger than it used to be."

4) World-renowned conductor Pierre Monteux was once denied a room at a hotel, but when the manager discovered that Mr. Monteux was famous, he said that he could arrange a room for him because Mr. Monteux was "somebody." Mr. Monteux refused the room and departed, saying, "Everybody is somebody."