| 101 | years ago | 1925 | Bill Pinkney of The Drifters is born. |
| 84 | years ago | 1942 | Peter York, drummer for the Spencer Davis Group, is born. |
| 76 | years ago | 1950 | Tommy Aldridge, drummer for Whitesnake, is born. |
| 68 | years ago | 1958 | Buddy Holly and Maria Elena Santiago get married in a private ceremony at his parents’ home in Lubbock, Texas. They had met only two months before. |
| 66 | years ago | 1960 | Elvis Presley starts a fiv- week run at #1 on the singles chart with It's Now Or Never. |
| 62 | years ago | 1964 | Billboard reports MGM has signed the Dave Clark Five to a movie contract. They will go on to star in Having a Wild Weekend. |
| 62 | years ago | 1964 | Actor and singer Dean Martin hits #1 on the singles chart with Everybody Loves Somebody. |
| 61 | years ago | 1965 | The Beatles set a record for having the most attendees at a concert. 56,000 pack Shea Stadium in New York, the largest single crowd to attend a rock & roll concert. It grosses $304,000 dollars, also a record at the time. The Beatles' share is $160,000. |
| 60 | years ago | 1966 | Bobby Darin records If I Were A Carpenter. |
| 57 | years ago | 1969 | The Woodstock Music and Art Fair opens for three days on Max Yasgur's farm in Bethel, New York. Over 400,000 attend, most without tickets, which prompts officials to say the festival is open and free. Those up on stage include Jimi Hendrix, Santana, Sly and the Family Stone, The Who, the Grateful Dead, Joan Baez, Janis Joplin, Joe Cocker, Canned Heat, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and the Jefferson Airplane among others. During the three days there are three deaths, two births, and four miscarriages. |
| 55 | years ago | 1971 | Thomas Wayne dies in a car crash near Memphis at age 29. He had the1959 Top Ten single Tragedy. |
| 53 | years ago | 1973 | The film Jesus Christ Superstar is released. |
| 53 | years ago | 1973 | Cass Elliot Day is declared in Baltimore, Ohio. |
| 46 | years ago | 1980 | Former Beatle George Harrison's book I Me Mine is published in London. |
| 45 | years ago | 1981 | Stevie Wonder, Grover Washington Jr., Evelyn King and others pull in a crowd of over 50,000 to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena for the Black Family Fair. |
| 45 | years ago | 1981 | The Official BBC Album of the Royal Wedding Soundtrack hits #1 on the U. K. chart. |
| 39 | years ago | 1987 | Madonna starts a U. K. tour, appearing at Roundhay Park in Leeds. Meanwhile, Michael Jackson has his third U. K. #1 single with I Can't Stop Loving You. |
| 35 | years ago | 1991 | Paul Simon plays a free concert at New York's Central Park in front of an estimated 750,000 people. |
| 34 | years ago | 1992 | Boyz II Men starts a 13-week run at #1 on the singles chart with End Of The Road, the group’s first #1. It is taken from the Eddie Murphy film Boomerang, and it breaks the 36-year-old record held by Elvis for the longest run at #1. |
| 30 | years ago | 1996 | A woman's shelter on Long Island, New York refuses to accept money from a benefit concert featuring James Brown. Brown's wife had accused him of assaulting her in the past. |
| 23 | years ago | 2003 | A memorial to John Lennon is unveiled in the remote Scottish village of Durness, where Lennon had spent his holidays from age seven to fifteen. The lyrics from In My Life are inscribed on three stones. |
| 18 | years ago | 2008 | Record procducer Jerry Wexler dies at his home in Sarasota, Florida at age 91. Over his decades-long career, he worked with a wide variety of music styles and artists from Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson to his masterful recording of Dusty Springfield to acts like George Michael and Dire Straits. He also helped build one of the most influential labels in pop, Atlantic Records, which was the home of Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Led Zeppelin, and the Rolling Stones. He produced Franklin's Respect, Percy Sledge's deep ballad When A Man Loves A Woman, and Wilson Pickett's In the Midnight Hour. He was named to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. |
| 18 | years ago | 2008 | Annie Lennox of the Eurythmics has surgery after suffering a painful back spasm while attending the international AIDS conference in Mexico City. She had recently recorded a song with 23 women singers including Madonna to raise money for AIDS. The surgery prompts her to delay the release of her greatest hits album, The Annie Lennox Collection until next spring. |