Portrait of Erroll Garner

Birthday profile

Erroll Garner

Erroll Garner, American pianist and composer (died 1977)

Born
June 15, 1921
Died
January 2, 1977
Zodiac sign
Gemini
Birth year
1921

About Erroll Garner

Erroll Louis Garner (June 15, 1921 – January 2, 1977) was an American jazz pianist and composer known for his swing playing and ballads. His instrumental ballad "Misty", his best-known composition, has become a jazz standard. It was first recorded in 1956 with Mitch Miller and his orchestra, and played a prominent part in the 1971 motion picture Play Misty for Me. Scott Yanow of AllMusic calls him "one of the most distinctive of all pianists" and a "brilliant virtuoso". Garner received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6363 Hollywood Boulevard. His live album Concert by the Sea, first released in 1955, sold more than 1 million copies by 1958, and Yanow's opinion of the album is that it "made such a strong impression that Garner was considered immortal from then on." Garner sued Columbia Records in 1960 for breach of contract after they released several recordings without his consent.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

Erroll Garner timeline

  1. Erroll Louis Garner (June 15, 1921 – January 2, 1977) was an American jazz pianist and composer known for his swing playing and ballads.
  2. Garner sued Columbia Records in 1960 for breach of contract after they released several recordings without his consent.

The world when Erroll Garner was born

Erroll Garner was born in 1921. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1921

  • #1 song"My Man" – Fanny Brice
  • Top movieThe Kid (Charlie Chaplin)
  • Best-selling bookMain Street – Sinclair Lewis

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentJack Dempsey vs Georges Carpentier — first million-dollar gate
  • Top headlineWarren G. Harding inaugurated as 29th President
  • Technology milestoneAlbert Einstein wins the Nobel Prize in Physics
  • Defining fadOuija boards
  • Notable inventionLie detector (polygraph)
  • World population1.88 billion

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderWarren G. Harding
  • Sports championNew York Giants (World Series)
  • U.S. population108.5M

1921 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Erroll Garner's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19212026
Gas$0.26$3.45/gal
Average home$5,500$435,000
Average income$3,010$67,500
Movie ticket$0.15$11.95
Postage stamp$0.02$0.73
Population108.5M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, MusicBrainz, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.