| 91 | years ago | 1935 | Sam Moore of Sam & Dave is born. |
| 84 | years ago | 1942 | The late Melvin Franklin of the Temptations is born. |
| 69 | years ago | 1957 | After a concert in Sydney, Australia, Little Richard announces he wants to give up rock and roll. “If you want to live for the Lord, you can't take rock and roll too. God doesn't like it.” When his sax player, Clifford Burks, dares Richard to prove his “faith in God,” Little Richard tosses four diamond rings, valued at $8,000, into Sydney's Hunter River. Richard flies to Los Angeles the next day to be baptized as a Seventh Day Adventist and “to prepare for the end of the world.” |
| 67 | years ago | 1959 | Neil Sedaka's Oh! Carol enters the pop chart at #73. The song was written by Sedaka for his friend and Brill Building songwriting colleague Carole King. The tune spends 18 weeks on the charts, topping at #9. |
| 64 | years ago | 1962 | Little Richard headlines a concert at New Brighton Towne, Liverpool. One opening act is The Beatles. The once peerless rocker and the soon-to-be peerless stars reportedly get along well. |
| 63 | years ago | 1963 | Billboard observes hot-rodding songs are the latest teen fad, replacing surfing songs. Foremost among the souped-up tunes is the Beach Boys' Little Deuce Coupe, #15 on the pop charts. Capitol Records is supplying DJ's and record retailers with a book of hot-rod terms. |
| 60 | years ago | 1966 | The Jimi Hendrix Experience is formed in London. |
| 58 | years ago | 1968 | John Sebastian leaves the Lovin' Spoonful to begin his solo career. |
| 57 | years ago | 1969 | A mysterious phone caller urges DJ Russ Gibb, at Detroit underground radio station WKNR, to listen to The Beatles' Revolution #9 backwards. He does and listeners think they hear a voice saying, “Turn me on, dead man.” Thus the “Paul is Dead” craze approaches Orson Welles' War of the Worlds radio broadcast as a great media hoax. |
| 56 | years ago | 1970 | Jesus Christ Superstar is released with a presentation at St. Peter's Lutheran Church in New York where rock-opera composers Anrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice explain their project. |
| 56 | years ago | 1970 | Bill Graham holds an auction of rock Memorabilia and artifacts at New York's Fillmore East to benefit peace candidates. Among the items on the block are a guitar smashed to bits by The Who's Pete Townshend, Ian Anderson's flute, a multi-colored bra tossed to the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia by an audience member, and a spiral notebook with the original scrawled lyrics to Joni Mitchell's first album, Songs to a Seagull. |
| 55 | years ago | 1971 | Gene Vincent, who had a monster hit with Be-Bop-a-Lula, dies of a bleeding ulcer. He is 36. Sadly, no one in his family had any money and the City of Los Angeles had to bury him. |
| 53 | years ago | 1973 | Elton John gets a gold record for his two record set, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. It's his third straight #1 album. |
| 51 | years ago | 1975 | Rod Stewart and the Faces play their last gig together. The split occurs because of Stewart's solo success and his wanting to further it. |
| 50 | years ago | 1976 | Veteran soul group The Spinners earns another gold record. Off their sixth album, Happiness Is Being with The Spinners, comes their big hit single, The Rubberband Man. It goes up to #2 on the pop chart and #1 on the R&B chart. |
| 48 | years ago | 1978 | Ex-Sex Pistol Sid Vicious' girlfriend Nancy Spungen is found dead of abdominal knife wounds in their room at Chelsea Hotel in New York. Vicious, nearly unconscious due to the effects of several different drugs, is charged with her murder, jailed, and then released. Months later, he dies of a heroin overdose before the case ever comes to trial. |
| 47 | years ago | 1979 | At a Madison Square Garden concert, Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull suffers a minor eye injury when a fan throws a rose at him and one of the thorns pierces his eye. Two shows have to cancelled before Tull resumes the tour. |
| 44 | years ago | 1982 | The Clash open for The Who at Shea Stadium for the first of two New York City shows on what The Who calls their “Farewell Tour.” |
| 30 | years ago | 1996 | The film documentary The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus is released. It had been filmed in December, 1968 but was put on the shelf for nearly 28 years, supposedly because the Stones were afraid that The Who upstaged them. |
| 29 | years ago | 1997 | Singer/songwriter John Denver is killed in a plane crash, when the 2-seater he was piloting crashes into Monterey Bay. |
| 22 | years ago | 2004 | Comedian Steve Harvey interviews Michael Jackson on a Los Angeles radio station. Jackson says he's angered by his depiction in the recently released Eminem music video, Just Lose It. In it, Eminem is dressed as Jackson with a group of boys in the background, and sings about the child molestation allegations against Jackson. “I feel that it is outrageous and disrespectful. It is one thing to spoof, but it is another to be demeaning and insensitive,” says Michael. The next year, a jury acquits him on all charges. |
| 20 | years ago | 2006 | Singer-actress Hillary Duff and boyfriend Joel Madden, a singer for the group Good Charlotte, seek a restraining order against two men they claim are stalking them. One of them, Max, is a 19-year-old Russian immigrant who they claim came to Los Angeles “for the sole purpose of meeting and becoming romantically involved” with Duff. |
| 20 | years ago | 2006 | Sun Records reaches an agreement with the estate of Elvis Presley for release of several commemorative retail products. Sun was the King’s first record label until the company sold its Presley catalog to RCA Victor records in 1955. |
| 7 | years ago | 2019 | George “Pops” Chambers’ time has come today. The singer and bassist for the influential Sixties psych-soul outfit the Chambers Brothers, dies at age 88. |