J S Bach was a mathematician who took time off from lecturing at the University of Brandenburg to compose and perform a repertoire of comic songs, jigs (which he spelt Gigues - well, he did Maths not English, after all), and reels.
His most popular song, ironically, turned out to be Air on a G string, which was adopted by the Irish as their national anthem until the country went Catholic and stopped mentioning things like G strings.
(Curiously, it is nearly impossible to play Air on a G string on a G string. Mostly because the elastic keeps going out of tune, but also because very few G strings are actually long enough to provide the necessary range.)
Born at an early age, Bach was a musical genius. Sadly, he was a dummy when it came to contraception and ended up with eleven kids. To feed these spurious offspring he did gigs in the evening.
Initially he just did covers of numbers by Gabrielli and Vivaldi, but later he started writing his own songs.
His song St Mathew's Passion was only prevented from reaching number one by Handel's Messiah, but with the instrumental Toccata and Fugue in D minor, he finally hit the top spot.
He followed this success with a string of classic hit albums.
Bach's career almost ended when most of the music he had written for the film Fantasia was replaced by other people's work.
Shattered by this experienced he fell to writing muzak for the Duke of Brandenburg and playing with his organ.
Possibly the most curious fact about Bach is that, in order to avoid paying death duty, he changed his name to C F Bach in 1750. Later he changed his name again. This time to C F Martin.
Finally, he emigrated to America and began making guitars as a hobby.
In his final years he started the band Procol Harem, but disenchanted, and only able to recycle old hits, he soon gave it up.
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