| 97 | years ago | 1928 | Barbara Cowsill, The Cowsills “mini-mom,” is born. |
| 87 | years ago | 1938 | Comedian, actor, TV star, recording artist, and record label owner Bill Cosby is born. |
| 82 | years ago | 1943 | Christine McVie, keyboardist for Fleetwood Mac, is born. |
| 79 | years ago | 1946 | Jeff Christie of Christie is born. His band will have one U.S. Top 40 hit in 1970, Yellow River, which was originally offered to the Tremeloes. |
| 77 | years ago | 1948 | Walter Egan is born. His one hit will come in 1978: Magnet and Steel. |
| 76 | years ago | 1949 | John Wetton, bassist for Uriah Heep and supergroup Asia, is born. |
| 75 | years ago | 1950 | Kiss' late drummer Eric Carr, is born. |
| 73 | years ago | 1952 | Liz Mitchell of Boney M is born. Rivers of Babylon will be a hit for her group in 1978. It's also the birthday of Iron Butterfly’s Philip Taylor Kramer. After playing bass for the group through the 70's, he gets a night school degree in aerospace engineering, and works on the MX missile guidance system for a contractor of the US Department of Defense. Even later, he works in the computer industry on fractal compression, facial recognition systems, and advanced communications. He forms a company with Michael Jackson's brother Randy to work on video compression for CD-ROMs. His disappearance on February 12, 1995 causes a mystery lasting for years. Turns out to be a probable suicide when his skeleton is found in a car wreck at the bottom of Decker Canyon near Malibu, California on May 29, 1999. |
| 73 | years ago | 1952 | Vera Lynn’s Auf Wiederseh'n Sweetheart hits #1. |
| 71 | years ago | 1954 | A nineteen-year-old Elvis Presley officially quits his job as a truck driver for Crown Electric in Memphis after signing a one-year contract with Sun Records (and a similar management contract with his bassist, Scotty Moore). |
| 68 | years ago | 1957 | Alan Freed begins a 13-week Rock & Roll show on ABC-TV with guest Frankie Lymon, the Everly Brothers, Buddy Knox, Connie Francis, and others. |
| 67 | years ago | 1958 | The Coasters’ Yakety Yak tops the chart. |
| 65 | years ago | 1960 | Floyd Cramer’s Last Date is released. |
| 64 | years ago | 1961 | Pat Boone begins a 10-day tour of South Africa at the Ice Dome in Durban. When he returns to California, he will begin filming State Fair. |
| 63 | years ago | 1962 | The Rolling Stones, featuring Mick Jagger, Keith Richard, and Brian Jones, make their performing debut at the Marquee Club in London. |
| 63 | years ago | 1962 | Dan Murphy of Soul Asylum is born. |
| 62 | years ago | 1963 | Alan Duval of UB40 is born. |
| 61 | years ago | 1964 | George Harrison crashes his Jaguar on New Kings Road in London heading to a Beatles concert in Brighton, suffering minor injuries. A few fans gather wreckage as souvenirs. |
| 60 | years ago | 1965 | The Beach Boys release Sloop John B. |
| 57 | years ago | 1968 | Micky Dolenz of The Monkees marries the model Samantha Juste, who is the “disc girl” on the BBC show Top Of The Pops. Dolenz, who met her on the show, wrote one of The Monkees songs, Randy Scouse Git about her. They divorce in 1975. |
| 56 | years ago | 1969 | The Beatles' The Ballad of John and Yoko hits #8 on the singles chart. The song was banned or edited on many radio stations because of the lyrics, “Christ, you know it ain't easy …” Meanwhile, Zager and Evans' In The Year 2525 hits #1. |
| 56 | years ago | 1969 | Blind Faith begin their one and only tour with a sold-out show at New York's Madison Square Garden. |
| 56 | years ago | 1969 | The Temptations Show, a Motown special featuring the group, airs in syndication. The group performs, among other hits, Get Ready, Cloud Nine, and Runaway Child, Running Wild. |
| 55 | years ago | 1970 | Janis Joplin performs her first live gig with her new backing group, the Full Tilt Boogie Band. |
| 54 | years ago | 1971 | The New Seekers’ I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing is released. |
| 52 | years ago | 1973 | The Hues Corporation releases Rock the Boat. It appears to stiff until it becomes a New York disco favorite and radio finally starts playing it. It tops the charts in July, 1974, almost a year after its release. |
| 50 | years ago | 1975 | K.C. & the Sunshine Band make their pop chart debut with Get Down Tonight. It's the first of four singles by the band to make it to the #1 spot. |
| 49 | years ago | 1976 | Tracie Spencer, who will have a hit in 1999 with It’s All About You (Not About Me), is born. |
| 46 | years ago | 1979 | The incredible five-and-a-half octave range coloratura soprano voice of Minnie Ripperton goes silent forever from breast cancer. Her Lovin’ You had topped the charts in 1975. Earlier, she had sung with Rotary Connection, a psychedelic soul/jazz fusion band formed by Marshall Chess of Chess records. |
| 46 | years ago | 1979 | A “disco demolition” between a baseball double header at Chicago's Comiskey Park gets out of hand forcing the cancellation of the second game. |
| 42 | years ago | 1983 | Traffic’s Chris Wood dies of pneumonia in Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, England. And Jimmy Driftwood dies the same day. Jimmy wrote and recorded The Battle of New Orleans in the 50’s, but got no air play because of the words "hell" and "damn" in the lyrics. Driftwood said that at the time those words could be preached but not sung in secular contexts for broadcast. Driftwood was asked to make a shorter censored version of the song for a live radio performance. Singer Johnny Horton told Driftwood he wanted to record his own version. Horton’s recording spent 6 weeks at #1 in 1959. |
| 33 | years ago | 1992 | A memorial to Buddy Holly is unveiled in Dallas, Texas. |
| 33 | years ago | 1992 | Guns N' Roses singer Axl Rose is arrested at New York's JFK airport on a warrant from St. Louis. Rose is wanted on charges stemming from a riot during a 1991 Guns N' Roses concert. |
| 29 | years ago | 1996 | Smashing Pumpkins tour keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin is found dead in a New York City hotel of a heroin overdose. Pumpkins drummer Jimmy Chamberlain is charged with possession of a controlled substance and fired by the band, which has always taken a hard anti-drug stance. |
| 28 | years ago | 1997 | Red Hot Chili Peppers lead singer Anthony Kiedis suffers a badly broken wrist in a motorcycle accident in L.A. Kiedis was injured when the car in front of him made an unexpected U-turn in order to score a parking space. |
| 25 | years ago | 2000 | A statue erected in the memory of John Lennon is unveiled in London's Trafalgar Square. The sculpture features a revolver with a knotted barrel created by Swedish artist Carl Fredrik Reutersward. |
| 25 | years ago | 2000 | Cat Stevens (now Yusuf Islam) publicly denies any financial involvement with the terrorist group Hamas after Israel denies him entry into the country, alleging he gave money to the organization. |
| 24 | years ago | 2001 | New Orleans’ Moisant Airport, named for an early 20th-century flying daredevil, is renamed Armstrong International in honor of native jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong. |
| 21 | years ago | 2004 | Sugarland's debut single, Baby Girl, is released. It will go on to peak at #2 on the US country music charts. The song will spend a total of 46 weeks on the charts, setting a record for the longest chart run ever. |
| 21 | years ago | 2004 | New Orleans native, CEO of No Limit Records, and pro basketball wannabe Percy “Master P” Miller, is cut from the Denver Nuggets' summer league team. In 1999, the rapper was waived by the Toronto Raptors, and by the Charlotte Hornets the year before. |
| 20 | years ago | 2005 | A real policeman arrests former Village People policeman Victor Edward Willis after stopping his Corvette and finding a .45-caliber handgun, rock cocaine, and drug paraphernalia. Traces of cocaine are also found in his smobile home in Daly City, California. The felony counts total six. He posts $100,000 bail the next day. |
| 18 | years ago | 2007 | Rod Stewart is awarded the CBE Order of the British Empire by Prince Charles in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace. |
| 11 | years ago | 2014 | The last survivor of the original punk rockers The Ramones, Tommy Ramone, dies of cancer. |