| 87 | years ago | 1939 | Isley Brother Rudolph Isley is born. |
| 80 | years ago | 1946 | Ronnie Lane, bass player with Small Faces, is born. |
| 74 | years ago | 1952 | Billy Currie of Ultravox is born. |
| 72 | years ago | 1954 | The late Toto drummer Jeff Porcaro is born. |
| 71 | years ago | 1955 | Elvis Presley's fourth single, a cover of Arthur Gunter's Baby, Let's Play House. backed with I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone, is released. Later in the month, Presley heads off to New York with Bill Black and Scotty Moore to audition for Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts, as does Pat Boone. Presley is rejected, but Boone wins first place. |
| 69 | years ago | 1957 | Cadence Records releases the Everly Brothers' Bye Bye Love, a song rejected by 30 labels before Cadence pickS it up. It will go to #2 on the pop chart and #1 on the Country & Western chart. |
| 66 | years ago | 1960 | In Miami's Fontainebleau Hotel, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Elvis Presley, Dean Martin, and Mitch Miller tape Sinatra's Timex Special for ABC-TV. |
| 60 | years ago | 1966 | Britain's Pye Records releases David Bowie's first solo single, Do Anything You Say backed with Good Morning Girl. Bowie has previously recorded as David Jones and the Lower Third. |
| 58 | years ago | 1968 | Dick Clark appears at an outdoor San Francisco concert by the Siegel Schwall Band to promote his new hippie film, Psyche-Out. The movie stars Jack Nicholson and Dean Stockwell. |
| 57 | years ago | 1969 | The Beach Boys announce they are suing their record label, Capitol, for $2,041,446.64 in royalties and producer's fees for Brian Wilson. The band also announces it's starting its own label, Brothers Records, which will be distributed by Warner/Reprise. |
| 57 | years ago | 1969 | The three-day Atlantic City Pop Festival opens in, where else, Atlantic City, New Jersey. Among the performers: Jefferson Airplane, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Little Richard, and Joe Cocker. |
| 55 | years ago | 1971 | Six months after his death, Jimi Hendrix's The Cry of Love goes gold. It is the last LP on which the guitarist was a willing participant and some say it might have gone higher than #3 had it not been for an LP by another deceased rock star, Pearl, by Janis Joplin. |
| 54 | years ago | 1972 | The three-day Mar y Sol (sea and sun) festival opens in Vega, Baja, attracting 30,000 people. Such acts set to perform include, Black Sabbath, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, The J. Geils Band, and The Allman Brothers. The festival goes on despite efforts by Puerto Rico's Secretary of Health to prevent it. The secretary fears there will be a plague of drug abuse. |
| 54 | years ago | 1972 | WIXO signs on in New Orleans at 98.5 FM. After a minute or so of elevator music played as an April Fool’s joke, Johnny Winter screams “Rock ’n’ roll!” and the station launches into its format, supposedly a cross between the AM Top 40 of the then #1 station WTIX, and WRNO, the album-oriented FM rocker. Thus, the call letters, WIXO. But with only 54 kilowatts of power from atop the short WVOG antenna tower near the Huey Long Bridge, signal coverage suffers, and the station goes dark less than 2-1/2 years later. |
| 50 | years ago | 1976 | Paul McCartney and Wings' Silly Love Songs is released from the Wings at the Speed of Sound album. The album comes out just prior to the group's first U.S. tour -- “Wings Over America.” |
| 50 | years ago | 1976 | Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville is released. |
| 48 | years ago | 1978 | Paul Simon and Peter Frampton go to Philadelphia to see the Philadelphia Fury -- the North American Soccer League team of which they and Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman own parts -- open its season against the Washington Diplomats. |
| 48 | years ago | 1978 | Blondie's Denis a remake of Randy and the Rainbows' 1963 hit Denise, tops the New Musical Express British pop chart. |
| 47 | years ago | 1979 | The Who's The Kids Are Alright LP is released. |
| 45 | years ago | 1981 | John Lennon's Woman, from Double Fantasy, turns gold. The 45 is the third Top Ten hit from the LP. |
| 42 | years ago | 1984 | Marvin Gaye is killed by a gunshot wound in Los Angeles in an argument with his father. He was 44 years old. Gaye's father receives probation after pleading guilty to voluntary manslaughter. |
| 41 | years ago | 1985 | David Lee Roth leaves Van Halen to pursue a solo career. |
| 34 | years ago | 1992 | Billy Idol pleads no contest to punching a woman in the face. He is fined and told to make public service announcements against alcohol and drug use. |
| 33 | years ago | 1993 | Thousands of people stand in the rain at a pro-environment rally in Portland, Oregon. Neil Young, David Crosby, Kenny Loggins, and the Wilson sisters are among the performers. |
| 22 | years ago | 2004 | A Tennessee judge rules New Orleans-based rapper Tab “Turk” Virgil can't be charged with attempted first degree murder in the shooting of a Shelby County sheriff's deputy in January of 2004. Virgil allegedly fired four times from inside a closet in his Memphis apartment when police were executing a search warrant for drugs. The charge is reduced to attempted second degree murder. He had already been convicted in Louisiana of heroin possession. |
| 11 | years ago | 2015 | John Lennon's first wife, Cynthia Lennon, dies of cancer at age 75. She's the mother of Julian Lennon. |