Music Trivia Questions and Answers.

Music trivia questions and answers.

What band leader started in show business at age 15 as a concert violinist with Enrico Caruso?
A: Cuban "Rhumba King" Xavier Cugat.

What opera features characters named Ping, Pang and Pong.
A: Turandot by Puccini.

What middle name did Reginald Kenneth Dwight give himself when he legally changed his name to Elton John in 1971?
A: Hercules.

What is the name of the broomstick-riding witch in German composer Engelbert Humperdink's opera Hansel and Gretel?
A: Rosina Daintymouth, or Rosina Sweet Tooth, according to the translation.

How many pipes are there in a typical set of Scottish bagpipes?
A: Five: the intake pipe, a valved tube connecting the bag to the player's mouth; the chanter, a pipe fitted with a double reed and pierced with eight sounding holes, used to play the melody; and three drones, pipes fitted with single reeds that provide the background.

What did Elvis Presley have lining three walls, the floor and the ceiling of his "Jungle Room" at his Memphis mansion, Graceland?
A: Green shag carpeting. The fourth wall of the room was covered with a fieldstone waterfall.

What top band leader was the first to appear before paying audiences with black and white musicians performing side by side?
A: Benny Goodman, in 1936. Helping him break the color barrier while making music were pianist Teddy Wilson and vibraharpist Lionel Hampton.

What song was performed more than any other on TV's The Hit Parade during the show's 24-year run?
A: "White Christmas." It was presented 32 times.

What great pianist served as premier of his native land?
A: Ignacy Jan Paderewski, in 1919. The country was Poland.

What folk song was inspired by Laura Foster's death in North Carolina in 1866?
A: "Tom Dooley." She was the woman ex-Confederate soldier Tom Dula "met up on the mountain" and stabbed with his knife.

What famous songwriter started his career as an accompanist for singer Vic Damone-- and was fired?
A: Burt Bacharach.

What rock group is named after the eighteenth-century English inventor of the seed drill?
A: Jethro Tull.

Antonio Stradivari made 1.116 violins, cellos and violas. How many are believed to still exist?
A: More than half--630 violins, 60 cellos and 15 violas.

What singer, when she was seven years old, won a $200 grand prize on Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour with her renditions of "Too Young," "Because of You," and "Brahms' Lullaby"?
A: Gladys Knight, in 1951.

What rock superstar sang backup on the Carly Simon hit "You're So Vain," the song supposedly written about Warren Beatty?
A: Mick Jagger.

What Elvis Presley hit was based on the Italian folk song, "O Sole Mio"?
A: "It's Now or Never," in 1960.

Whose romance inspired the sixteenth -century song, "A Frog Went A-Courting"?
A: The first Queen Elizabeth's romance with the Duc d' Alencon.

What Beatles song ends with a portion of Shakespeare's "King Lear" ?
A: "I Am the Walrus," recorded in 1967.

How did jazz singer Anita O'Day, who was called Anita Colton at birth, pick her stage name?
A: From what she hoped her career would bring her--a lot of dough, or "ough-day" in Pig Latin.