| 95 | years ago | 1930 | Thurston Harris, whose 1957 hit was Little Bitty Pretty One, is born. |
| 94 | years ago | 1931 | Tab Hunter is born. His Young Love will go to #1 in 1957. |
| 81 | years ago | 1944 | Myra Brown, the cousin and child bride of Jerry Lee Lewis, is born. |
| 79 | years ago | 1946 | Dean Martin begins his recording career mere weeks before teaming up with nightclub comic Jerry Lewis. |
| 78 | years ago | 1947 | Jeff Hanna of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band is born. |
| 75 | years ago | 1950 | Bonnie Pointer, one of the Pointer Sisters, is born. |
| 74 | years ago | 1951 | On WJW in Cleveland, Alan Freed broadcasts his first “Moondog House Rock and Roll Party,” marking the first radio show with the phrase “Rock and Roll” and giving Freed a claim on the origin of the term. More importantly, Freed plays R&B music, which introduces the sound to a new (and mostly white) audience. |
| 72 | years ago | 1953 | Peter Brown is born. He'll have a hit in 1977 called Do Ya Wanna Get Funky With Me. |
| 71 | years ago | 1954 | Benny DiFranco of The DeFranco Family is born. |
| 66 | years ago | 1959 | Joan Baez makes her first recording, a duet with Bob Gibson, recorded live at the Newport Folk Festival. |
| 65 | years ago | 1960 | Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora is born. |
| 65 | years ago | 1960 | Singer/songwriter Suzanne Vega is born. |
| 65 | years ago | 1960 | The Hollywood Argyles’ Alley Oop hits #1 on the chart. |
| 63 | years ago | 1962 | The Telstar satellite, the first active communications satellite, is launched by AT&T, inspiring the Tornadoes' instrumental hit of the same name later that year. |
| 61 | years ago | 1964 | Dean Martin’s Everybody Loves Somebody enters the charts. |
| 61 | years ago | 1964 | The Supremes' Where Did Our Love Go? is released and enters the Hot 100. It stays on the charts for 14 weeks and becomes the group's first #1 hit. |
| 61 | years ago | 1964 | Bobby Freeman's last big hit, C'mon and Swim makes it into the Hot 100. It will peak at #5. |
| 60 | years ago | 1965 | Scott Shriner of Weezer is born. |
| 59 | years ago | 1966 | Elvis Presley begins filming his 24th motion picture, Double Trouble. |
| 58 | years ago | 1967 | A day after leaving the New Christy Minstrels, Kenny Rogers forms his own band, The First Edition. |
| 56 | years ago | 1969 | David Bowie's single, Space Oddity, is released to coincide with the first lunar landing. It won’t be a U. S. hit until 1973. |
| 56 | years ago | 1969 | The Rolling Stones’ Honky Tonk Women is released. |
| 55 | years ago | 1970 | The Who's Summertime Blues is released. |
| 55 | years ago | 1970 | The triple album soundtrack to the film Woodstock hits #1 on the album chart. And Three Dog Night's Mama Told Me Not To Come tops the singles chart. |
| 54 | years ago | 1971 | The first stage performance of the so-called rock opera Jesus Christ, Superstar is in Pittsburgh. |
| 51 | years ago | 1974 | The Grateful Dead receive two gold records for albums they released in 1970, Workingman's Dead and American Beauty. |
| 51 | years ago | 1974 | The Mac Davis Show summer TV series premieres. |
| 50 | years ago | 1975 | Lil' Kim is born. She'll have hits with No Time and Not Tonight, both in 1997. |
| 49 | years ago | 1976 | Andy Gibb marries girlfriend Kim Reeder in Australia. And Frank Sinatra marries for the fourth time, this time to Barbara Marx, former wife of the Marx Brothers' Zeppo Marx. |
| 48 | years ago | 1977 | Gregg Allman and Cher become parents to Elijah Blue. |
| 46 | years ago | 1979 | Neil Young's concert film, Rust Never Sleeps, debuts at the Bruin Theatre in Westwood, CA. The movie is a documentary of his last U.S. tour. The LP of the same name is released simultaneously. |
| 46 | years ago | 1979 | The space station Skylab crashes to Earth after 6 years in space. Leading up to the event, Electric Light Orchestra takes out ads in trade magazines dedicating its new single, Don’t Bring Me Down, to Skylab. |
| 44 | years ago | 1981 | Longtime songwriting team Burt Bacharach and Carole Bayer Sager are divorced. |
| 44 | years ago | 1981 | Hubert Johnson of The Contours dies. |
| 38 | years ago | 1987 | Heart's Alone hits #1 for the first of three weeks. |
| 35 | years ago | 1990 | Steven Adler is fired from Guns N' Roses because of his drug use. He is replaced by Matt Sorum, who was previously with The Cult. |
| 33 | years ago | 1992 | Jerry Garcia, who has a passion for painting and studied at the San Francisco Art Institute, introduces a line of neckties he designed. |
| 31 | years ago | 1994 | Michael Jackson's spokesperson publicly denies rampant rumors that the singer has married Lisa Marie Presley. |
| 30 | years ago | 1995 | R.E.M. bass player Mike Mills undergoes emergency intestinal surgery in Germany. R.E.M. was in the midst of a European tour and had to cancel seven shows. |
| 29 | years ago | 1996 | Dr. Louis Gottlieb, bassist and comic spokesman for The Limeliters, dies at age 72. |
| 25 | years ago | 2000 | Lars Ulrich of Metallica testifies before a Senate panel to testify against websites like Napster that allow people to trade music for free over the Internet. |
| 23 | years ago | 2002 | Over 200 people attend the funeral for The Who bassist John Entwistle in St. Edward’s Church in Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire, England. Entwistle was found dead in his Las Vegas hotel room on June 27th. |
| 21 | years ago | 2004 | In an attempt to recapture Elvis’ record of most UK Number Ones, his first single, 1954’s That's Alright, is re-released on its 50th anniversary. |
| 20 | years ago | 2005 | Luther Vandross dies. |
| 20 | years ago | 2005 | Robin Thicke ties the knot with high-school sweetheart and Precious star Paula Patton. Their first son is born Julian Fuego Thicke on April 6, 2010, just shy of their 5th wedding anniversary. |
| 18 | years ago | 2007 | Rod Lauren falls to his death from a second-floor hotel room balcony in Tracy, California. Lauren was a one-hit wonder who hit #31 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart with the song If I Had a Girl in 1960 and performed twice on The Ed Sullivan Show that year. |
| 16 | years ago | 2009 | Boom Boom Pow, after spending 12 weeks at #1, is replaced by another Black Eyed Peas song, I Gotta Feelin’. |
| 14 | years ago | 2011 | Rob Grill of The Grass Roots dies. |
| 14 | years ago | 2011 | Jewel and her rodeo star husband Ty Murray have their first child, Kase Townes Murray. |
| 13 | years ago | 2012 | Florence Welch, lead woman for Florence + the Machine, faces ill health and a failing voice, causing the group to cancel two European concerts. She's forced to cancel on doctor's orders to avoid permanent damage to her famous contralto voice. |