Aug 31, 1928: Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera premieres in Berlin

Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera) receives its world premiere in Berlin on August 31, 1928.

"I think I've written a good piece and that several numbers in it, at least musically, have the best prospects for becoming popular very quickly." This was the assessment offered by the German composer Kurt Weill in a letter to his publisher 10 days before the premiere of his latest work. Created in partnership with the revolutionary dramatist Bertolt Brecht, that work would, in fact, prove to be the most significant and successful of Weill's career and one of the most important works in the history of musical theater: Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera). In addition to running for 400-plus performances in its original German production, Brecht and Weill's masterpiece would go on to be translated into 18 languages and receive more than 10,000 performances internationally.

The premiere of The Threepenny Opera on this day in 1928 came almost exactly 200 years after the premiere of the work on which it was based: John Gay's The Beggar's Opera. In Gay's satirical original, the thieves, pickpockets and prostitutes of London's Newgate Prison competed for power and position in the accents and manners of the English upper classes. It was Bertolt Brecht's idea to adapt The Beggar's Opera into a new work that would serve as a sharp political critique of capitalism and as a showcase for his avant-garde approach to theater. Much of The Threepenny Opera's historical reputation rests on Brecht's experimental dramaturgical techniques—such as breaking "the fourth wall" between audience and performers—but the music of Kurt Weill was just as important in turning it into a triumph.

The drama critic for The New York Times said of Weill in 1941, "He is not a song writer but a composer of organic music that can bind the separate elements of a production and turn the underlying motive into song." While this comment was intended as praise of Weill, who had by then fled his native Germany for the United States, it nevertheless sold Weill's songwriting somewhat short. By 1959, Weill's opening song from The Threepenny Opera, "The Ballad of Mackie Messer" would be one of the biggest pop hits of all time for Bobby Darin in a jazzy variation inspired by Louis Armstrong and renamed "Mack The Knife."

Aug 30, 1980: Christopher Cross has his first of two #1 hits with "Sailing"

The music video that famously played during MTV's first minutes on the air was "Video Killed The Radio Star," by the British synth-pop duo The Buggles. Four weeks later, a young American singer-songwriter named Christopher Cross completed a meteoric rise from obscurity when his hit ballad "Sailing" reached the top of the Billboard pop chart on August 30, 1980. In the years since, many observers have linked the first of these two events to the eventual decline of the man who accomplished the second. But even if MTV is what "killed" the radio star Christopher Cross, it did so only after he accomplished a run of success as great and unexpected as any in pop history.

Released in January 1980, Cross's self-titled debut album was one of the biggest soft-rock hits of all time. The first single was "Ride Like The Wind," which featured a memorable backup vocal by Doobie Brothers singer Michael McDonald and rose to #2 on the pop charts the following summer. "Sailing" was the follow-up single, and it rose even faster and higher, hitting #1 on this day in 1980. It also transformed Christopher Cross from a complete unknown to the biggest name in pop almost overnight, propelling him to a still-unmatched sweep at the 1981 Grammy Awards, where "Sailing" won Grammys for Best Record and Best Song, Christopher Cross won for Best Album and Cross himself won for Best New Artist. Cross would have another #1 pop hit later that year with "Arthur's Theme (The Best That You Can Do)," co-written with Burt Bacharach and Carol Bayer Sager and winner of the 1982 Oscar for Best Song. But Cross's next top-10 hit, "Think Of Laura" (1983), would be his last.

Some say that the extremely talented but not terribly telegenic Christopher Cross was undone by the esthetic imperatives brought on by the dawning of the MTV era. But it is just as reasonable to suggest musical fashions were already shifting away from Cross's "lite" Adult Contemporary sound without the help of MTV. In any event, Cross disappeared from the pop scene almost as quickly as he entered it.

"Would I have rather had a career like Peter Gabriel's or Sting's or somebody that grows over a long period of years and sustains like they have?" Cross asked himself in an interview 20 years after his heyday. "I'd prefer that as opposed to the sort of meteoric curve of my career...[but] I hear my music in grocery stores and people do know who I am, and I continue to tour so it's great. Given the options, I wouldn't change a thing."

Aug 29, 1958: Michael Jackson is born

Pop sensation Michael Jackson is born on this day in Gary, Indiana.

Jackson began performing with his four brothers in the pop group the Jackson 5 when he was a child. The group scored its first No. 1 single in 1969, with "I Want You Back." By age 11, Jackson was appearing on TV, and by age 14 he had released his first solo album. A Jackson 5 TV cartoon series appeared in the early '70s, and in 1976 the Jackson family, including sister Janet Jackson, launched a TV variety show called The Jacksons that ran for one season. Throughout the 70s, media attention focused on Michael, who piped vocals in his high voice for "ABC," "I'll Be There," and many other Top 20 hits.

Jackson released several solo albums in the '70s, but his great breakthrough came in 1979 with Off the Wall. He became the first solo artist to score four Top 10 hits from one album, including "She's Out of My Life" and "Rock with You." His next album, Thriller (1983), became the biggest selling album up to that time, selling some 45 million copies around the world. This time, he scored seven Top 10 singles, and the album won eight Grammies. Although his next album, Bad (1987), sold only about half as many copies as Thriller, it was still a tremendous best-seller. In 1991, Jackson signed an unprecedented $65 million record deal with Sony. That year, he released Dangerous.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Jackson developed a reputation as an eccentric recluse. He moved to a 2,700-acre ranch called Neverland, which he outfitted with wild animals and a Ferris wheel. He underwent a facelift and nose job and was rumored to have lightened his skin through chemical treatment, though he claimed his increasing pallor was due to a skin disease. In 1993, scandal broke when Jackson was publicly accused of child molestation and underwent investigation. The case settled out of court. In 1994, Jackson married Lisa Marie Presley; the couple later divorced. Jackson married Deborah Rowe in 1996, and the couple had two sons, Prince and Paris, before divorcing in 1999.

On June 13, 2005, Jackson was acquitted of sexual molestation of a young boy, Gavin Arvizo, in criminal court.

Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009, in Los Angeles, California, just weeks before a planned concert tour billed as his "comeback." He was 50 years old.

Aug 28, 1963: Mahalia Jackson, the Queen of Gospel, puts her stamp on the March on Washington

If the legendary gospel vocalist Mahalia Jackson had been somewhere other than the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on this day in 1963, her place in history would still have been assured purely on the basis of her musical legacy. But it is almost impossible to imagine Mahalia Jackson having been anywhere other than center stage at the historic March on Washington on August 28, 1963, where she not only performed as the lead-in to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his "I Have a Dream" speech, but she also played a direct role in turning that speech into one of the most memorable and meaningful in American history.

By 1956, Mahalia Jackson (1911-1972) was already internationally famous as the Queen of Gospel when she was invited by the Reverend Ralph Abernathy, director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), to appear in Montgomery, Alabama, in support of the now-famous bus boycott that launched the modern Civil Rights Movement and made Rosa Parks a household name. It was in Alabama that Jackson first met and befriended the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whom she would support throughout his career.

Indeed, if Martin Luther King, Jr., had a favorite opening act, it was Mahalia Jackson, who performed by his side many times. On August 28, 1963, as she took to the podium before an audience of 250,000 to give the last musical performance before Dr. King's speech, Dr. King himself requested that she sing the gospel classic "I've Been 'Buked, and I've Been Scorned." Jackson was just as familiar with Dr. King's repertoire as he was with hers, and just as King felt comfortable telling her what to sing as the lead-in to what would prove to be the most famous speech of his life, Jackson felt comfortable telling him in what direction to take that speech.

The story that has been told since that day has Mahalia Jackson intervening at a critical junction when she decided King's speech needed a course-correction. Recalling a theme she had heard him use in earlier speeches, Jackson said out loud to Martin Luther King, Jr., from behind the podium on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, "Tell them about the dream, Martin." And at that moment, as can be seen in films of the speech, Dr. King leaves his prepared notes behind to improvise the entire next section of his speech—the historic section that famously begins "And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream...."

Aug 27, 1967: Beatles manager Brian Epstein dies

On August 27, 1967, Brian Epstein, manager of the Beatles, was found dead of an accidental drug overdose in his Sussex, England, home. The following day, the headline in the London Daily Mirror read "EPSTEIN (The Beatle-Making Prince of Pop) DIES AT 32." Brian Epstein was, by all accounts, the man who truly got the Beatles off the ground, and in John Lennon's estimation, it was difficult to see how they'd manage to go on without the man who had managed every aspect of the Beatles' business affairs up until his unexpected death. "I knew that we were in trouble then," John later recalled. "I didn't really have any misconceptions about our ability to do anything other than play music. I was scared. I thought, 'We've ******* had it.'"

The relationship between Brian Epstein and the Beatles dated back to Liverpool in late 1961. Entirely self-managed and without a recording contract, the Beatles had just recently returned from Hamburg and begun playing Liverpool's Cavern Club. Epstein was then running his family's record and musical instrument shop on Walton Road, just blocks away from the Cavern, but as he would later tell the story, he hadn't heard of the Beatles until he had two young customers in quick succession enter his store looking for a copy of a record they'd made in Hamburg as the backing group for vocalist Pete Sheridan. Based on this rather modest "buzz," Epstein arranged to go see the future Fab Four several weeks later.

The band that Epstein saw the first time he laid eyes on the Beatles was very different from the one that would soon conquer the world. They dressed in black leather, they played only cover tunes and they would freely eat and drink onstage during and between songs. Yet Epstein was immediately taken with their charisma and the crowd's response to it. On January 24, 1962, he was officially hired by John, Paul, George and drummer Pete Best in a deal that gave Epstein a 25 percent cut of the band's gross earnings for the next five years.

As a business deal, that management contract may seem to have been tilted very much in Epstein's favor, but it is fair to say that the world might never have heard of the Beatles were it not for their manager and good friend. Epstein put the Beatles in suits, had them bow in unison after each number and, just a few months after being hired, got them their first recording contract with Parlophone Records.

Aug 26, 1978: Grease movie soundtrack earns its second #1 hit

The 1960s was the final decade in which the musical hits of Broadway were routinely and successfully adapted by Hollywood into big-budget screen versions. West Side Story (1961), My Fair Lady (1964), The Sound Of Music (1965), Funny Girl (1968)—all of these movie musicals were among the biggest critical and commercial hits of their era. But while the early part of the subsequent decade brought successful adaptations of Fiddler on the Roof (1971) and Cabaret (1972), Hollywood had all but given up Broadway by the middle of the 1970s. And then, in 1978, Paramount Pictures placed a big bet on a small musical called Grease and came up with not just an enormous hit movie, but a true pop-cultural phenomenon that included one of the most successful original motion picture soundtrack albums in music history. On August 29, 1978, that album earned its second chart-topping hit when its third single—Frankie Valli's "Grease"—reached the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100.

The two Grease numbers that preceded Frankie Valli's title tune as singles were the #1 hit "You're the One That I Want," a duet by the film's co-stars John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, and the #3 hit "Hopelessly Devoted to You," by Newton-John alone. The cast ensemble performance of the song "Summer Nights" would also become a Top 10 single, making it the only one of the Grease soundtrack's four hit songs that actually came from the original Broadway show. Musically, the original Broadway show Grease hewed very close to its 1950s setting, featuring songs that were clear nods to period styles and stars—songs like "Greased Lightnin,'" "Beauty School Dropout" and "Hand Jive." When it came time to film the movie version, however, a whole new slate of songs was added, including "You're The One That I Want," "Hopelessly Devoted to You" and the song that hit #1 on this day in 1978, "Grease."

"Grease" was the second solo chart-topper for Frankie Valli, who made his name in the early 1960s as the lead vocalist of the Four Seasons and later scored several major hits as a solo artist, including the #2 hit "Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You" (1967) and the #1 "My Eyes Adored You" (1975). "Grease" was written for Valli by Barry Gibb, who accomplished a remarkable feat of his own with the song. When "Grease" completed its second weeks at #1, it was the 26th week at #1 for Barry Gibb as a songwriter in 1978. In addition to "Grease," the other #1 hits of 1978 written by Gibb were: "How Deep Is Your Love," "Stayin' Alive" and "Night Fever," all performed by the Bee Gees; "(Love Is) Thicker Than Water" and "Shadow Dancing," performed by brother Andy Gibb; and "If I Can't Have You," performed by Yvonne Elliman on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack.

Aug 25, 1962: Little Eva earns a #1 hit with "Loco-Motion"

Just as pop stardom most often depends on possessing abundant talent and a great capacity for hard work, it also can require being in the right place at the right time. This was certainly true for the diminutive, 17-year-old singer named Eva Narcissus Boyd, who scored her first and only #1 hit on this day in 1962 with "The Loco-Motion."

Eva Boyd was newly arrived in New York City from her native North Carolina and looking for work when a neighbor in Brooklyn pointed her toward the job that would end up changing her life: working as a nanny for a young, professional Manhattan couple. It just so happened that the couple looking for a new babysitter were Gerry Goffin and Carole King, future members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame then working for the legendary Don Kirshner as salaried songwriters at Aldon Music. In the early 1960s, Goffin and King were busy cranking out tunes they hoped would be hits for the likes of Bobby Vee and the Shirelles. When it came time to cut a demo of a brand-new song they'd written about a nonexistent dance craze, Gerry and Carole decided to reward Eva's hard work running their household and caring for their infant daughter by letting her pick up a few bucks for recording the demo vocals. It turned out to be the biggest tip ever given in the history of the American childcare industry.

As fate would have it, "The Loco-Motion" was turned down by the singer Goffin and King had in mind when they wrote it: Dee Dee Sharp of "Mashed Potato Time" fame. When Aldon boss Don Kirshner heard the demo version of the song with Eva's vocals, he pronounced it a hit in as-is condition and made it the very first release on his new label, Dimension. Soon enough, the song that opens with the lyric "Everybody's doo-oo-in' a brand-new dance now..." was climbing the pop charts and spawning a short-lived dance craze based on the truly brand-new dance Little Eva made up herself to fit the song.

While "The Loco-Motion" would make a second trip to #1 thanks to an unlikely cover by 1970s rockers Grand Funk, it was the only smash hit in the short singing career of Little Eva.