| 85 | years ago | 1941 | Jan Berry of Jan & Dean fame is born. |
| 84 | years ago | 1942 | Wayne Newton is born |
| 82 | years ago | 1944 | Tony Orlando is born |
| 80 | years ago | 1946 | Dee Murray, guitarist for Elton John, is born. |
| 70 | years ago | 1956 | Elvis Presley makes the first of two appearances on The Milton Berle Show, Presley sings Heartbreak Hotel, Money, Honey and Blue Suede Shoes and earns $5,000. It's estimated one out of every four Americans sees his performance. |
| 70 | years ago | 1956 | Mick Mars of Mötley Crüe is born. |
| 67 | years ago | 1959 | The BBC bans the Coasters song Charlie Brown because of the word spitball. Two weeks later the uptight Brits change their decision and plays the single. |
| 66 | years ago | 1960 | The Everly Brothers later named by The Beatles and Rolling Stone Keith Richards as prime influences, make their British concert debut, kicking off their first U.K. tour. |
| 62 | years ago | 1964 | Bob Dylan makes his first entry into the U.K. pop chart with The Times They Are A-Changin'. |
| 61 | years ago | 1965 | She's About a Mover by the Sir Douglas Quintet enters the Hot 100 where it stays for 12 weeks, making it up to #13. |
| 61 | years ago | 1965 | One of the great all-time party classics, Sam the Sham and the Pharaoh's Wooly Bully is released. |
| 60 | years ago | 1966 | Folk singer Peter Tork opens a solo stint at the most prestigious folk club in Hollywood, the Troubadour. Tork has all ready auditioned for NBC-TV's The Monkees, which will premiere in September with Tork as one of its four stars. |
| 58 | years ago | 1968 | Skid Row's Sebastian Bach is born. |
| 54 | years ago | 1972 | The Mar y Sol festival ends. The final tally: four persons dead, a general lack of sufficient food supply, hot Puerto Rico sun, and after the event a big problem in which hundreds of Americans are stranded at the San Juan airport. The promoter calls it a success, but Richard Kimball of radio station KMET, Los Angeles sums it up, “It was a fu**ing drag.” |
| 53 | years ago | 1973 | To combat the multitude of Beatle bootlegs, the group's label, Capitol, issues The Beatles 1962-1966 and The Beatles 1967-1970, both two-record greatest hits packages. They respectively make #3 and #1 on the album chart. |
| 51 | years ago | 1975 | Steve Miller is charged with setting fire to the clothes and personal effects of a friend, Benita DiOrio. When police arrive at Miller's place, DiOrio is putting out the flames. In the late night confusion, Miller tussles with some of the policemen and is also charged with resisting arrest. The incident is quickly forgotten as the next day, DiOrio asks to drop the charges and Miller jokes with reporters that the publicity might “rekindle” his career. |
| 48 | years ago | 1978 | Blues guitar giant B.B. King joins famed defense lawyer F. Lee Bailey for a rap session and concert for inmates at Norfolk Prison in Boston as part of their ongoing duties as co-chairmen of FAIRR (Foundation for the Advancement of Inmate Rehabilitation and Recreation). |
| 47 | years ago | 1979 | Van Halen's Van Halen II goes gold just five days before the band takes off on a triumphant ten-month tour. The long trip is the opposite of the way Van Halen records. For their second LP, they took a mere six days in the studio, one-third the time required for their first album. |
| 36 | years ago | 1990 | Singer Sarah Vaughan dies of lung cancer in Los Angeles. She was 66 years old. |
| 30 | years ago | 1996 | Rapper Hammer (formerly known as M.C. Hammer) files for bankruptcy. |
| 14 | years ago | 2012 | The Rolling Stones release LA Friday (Live 1975), the third album in their bootleg series. Remastered by Bob Clearmountain, the album was recorded on Sunday, July 13th, 1975 at the band's show at the Forum in Los Angeles. Although the album was recorded on a Sunday, it was mistitled by bootleggers as the Friday show. |
| 11 | years ago | 2015 | Lynyrd Skynrd’s drummer Robert Burns dies in a one-car crash near his Cartersvlle, Georgia home at age 64. |