Google Celebrates Harmonica Legend Toots Thielemans’ 100th Birthday on The Homepage

On Friday, April 29th, Google will display a doodle featuring Toots Thielemans at the top of the page. Today is the 100th birthday of the Belgian harmonica player. Doodles are very popular in the United States.

Huguette Thielemans, Toots Thielemans’ widow, is attracting search engine interest. “I believe it is a wonderful honor for my husband Tots to have my whole attention on his 100th birthday,” she stated.

Toots Thielemans gave the harmonica, an undervalued instrument, a soulful tone, and transformed it into a real voice of jazz, in the opinion of one jazz historian.

The Belgian jazz artist was also noted for his guitar talents, whistling, and writing, although it was his chromatic harmonica playing that propelled him to the top of the jazz harmonica rankings.

Thielemans collaborated alongside jazz and blues superstars like as Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, and Quincy Jones throughout the course of a seven-decade tenure, the latter of whom termed Thielemans one of the finest musicians of our time.

To honor Thielemans’ impact on music, Google devoted its Doodle to him on his 100th birthday on Friday. Thielemans, born Jean-Baptiste Frédéric Isidor, Baron Thielemans in Brussels in 1922, began performing music at a young age, beginning with a handmade accordion at the age of three.

He began playing guitar and harmonica as a youngster, which he taught himself to perform during in the German occupation of Belgium.

After performing in Europe with Benny Goodman, Thielemans came to the United States in 1952, where he worked with Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Frank Sinatra, and fellow harmonica great Stevie Wonder. Read more: Google celebrated winter season.

He has appeared on the soundtracks of films such as Midnight Cowboy and The Getaway, as well as bringing recognizable tunes to 4 decades of Sesame Street adventures.

The National Endowment for the Arts bestowed upon him the title of Jazz Master in 2009. Thielemans, who was 94 at the time of his death, passed away in 2016. Jones paid tribute to Thielemans with a concert in London’s Royal Albert Hall after his death.