| 98 | years ago | 1928 | Tony Williams, lead singer of The Platters, is born. |
| 68 | years ago | 1958 | Irvin Feld's Greatest Show of Stars opens its 80-day North American tour in Norfolk, Virginia. Headlining are Sam Cooke, the Silhouettes, Royal Teens, Everly Brothers, Jimmy Reed and Clyde McPhatter. The bill is expanded with the addition of Paul Anka, Roy Hamilton, LaVern Baker, Frankie Avalon and others. The tour is expected to gross over one million dollars. |
| 63 | years ago | 1963 | Martha and the Vandellas make their chart debut with Come and Get These Memories. |
| 62 | years ago | 1964 | The Searchers appear on The Ed Sullivan Show, becoming the first British Invasion group to appear on the show after The Beatles. |
| 61 | years ago | 1965 | Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready is born. |
| 56 | years ago | 1970 | A New York Times article defends rock music as “the most popular of creative arts today.” |
| 55 | years ago | 1971 | As reported by the Los Angeles Times, the New School for Social Research in New York City is one of the first institutions to offer a course on rock & roll music. |
| 50 | years ago | 1976 | At a three-day rally billed as Japan Celebrates the Whale and Dolphin in Tokyo, Jackson Browne, Richie Havens, John Sebastian and other performers help to raise $150,000 for the effort to save whales and dolphins from the nets of the international fishing industry. |
| 46 | years ago | 1980 | EMI Records announce a 28-million pound loss for the second half of 1979. The company had seen an 18-million pound profit for the same time period a year earlier. The stats show the hard times the record industry is currently experiencing. |
| 45 | years ago | 1981 | Canned Heat vocalist Bob “the Bear” Hite dies of a heart attack in Venice, California. He was 36 years old. |
| 42 | years ago | 1984 | The second annual MTV Video Music Awards are broadcast. Winners include Michael Jackson for Beat It, the Police for Every Breath You Take and Cyndi Lauper for Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. |
| 28 | years ago | 1998 | Legendary rock drummer Cozy (Collin) Powell is killed in a high-speed car crash near Bristol, England. Powell was one of Britain's best players, playing with Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Jeff Beck, Brian May and Whitesnake. He was 50. |
| 26 | years ago | 2000 | The Doors' Ray Manzarek and Robbie Krieger play at the Whisky in Los Angeles. Manzarek reminisced about The Doors' days at the club. |
| 21 | years ago | 2005 | The daughter of Elvis Presley and ex-wife of Michael Jackson, Lisa Marie Presley, releases her Now What? CD. It includes a collaboration with Pink and a cover of Don Henley's Dirty Laundry. She doesn't expect much radio play for it, saying, “There’s not a large market for this kind of music on the radio going on right now.” |
| 21 | years ago | 2005 | Kentwood, Louisiana’s Britney Spears and hubby Kevin Federline say “I do” to star in a UPN reality series that documents their courtship, engagement, and wedding. Featuring what UPN bills as “exclusive, never-before-seen private home videos” of their “personal love story,” the six-episode series is scheduled to premiere later in the year. It picks up shortly after the pair met in Los Angeles and headed to Europe on tour, where Federline performed as a backup dancer for Spears. |
| 19 | years ago | 2007 | Elton John’s 60th performance at Madison Square Garden in New York City on his 60th birthday a couple of weeks earlier on March 25th is aired as a two-hour special on MyNetworkTV - a mini-network on Fox. Since October 2001, John has held a record for the most performances at the legendary Garden. Rock icons the Grateful Dead held the previous record with 52 performances. |
| 10 | years ago | 2016 | Mike Gibbons, the lead singer for Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods dies. He was 71. The group had a #1 hit with Billy Don’t Be a Hero in 1974. |