| 80 years ago (1942) | Singer Barbara George is born in New Orleans. |
| 77 years ago (1945) | Kevin Ayers, singer, songwriter, and bassist for Soft Machine, is born, as is Gary Loizzo of American Breed. |
| 76 years ago (1946) | Gordon Fleet of The Easybeats is born. |
| 74 years ago (1948) | Barry Hay of Golden Earring is born. |
| 73 years ago (1949) | Scott Asheton, drummer for Iggy Pop And The Stooges, is born. |
| 69 years ago (1953) | James “JT” Taylor, a singer with Kool & The Gang, is born. |
| 65 years ago (1957) | Ricky Nelson records Be Bop Baby, and The Everly Brothers record Wake Up Little Susie. Meanwhile, Buddy Holly and the Crickets play the Apollo Theatre in Harlem and are booed. It takes three days to win the audiences over. And Tim Farriss, guitarist for INXS, is born. |
| 63 years ago (1959) | Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone is born. Eventually just her first name is enough. |
| 60 years ago (1962) | Little Stevie Wonder, at age 12, releases his first single, I Call It Pretty Music (But The Old People Call It The Blues) featuring Marvin Gaye on drums. |
| 60 years ago (1962) | Brian Epstein, manager of The Beatles, hands drummer Pete Best his walking papers. Best had been with the group for 2-1/2 years. Ringo Starr (Richard Starkey) is picked to take his place. One month later, the group records Love Me Do. |
| 54 years ago (1968) | The Jackson Five make their formal debut with Diana Ross and The Supremes at the Great Western Forum in California. |
| 53 years ago (1969) | Hippie leader Abbie Hoffman is knocked offstage by Pete Townshend while attempting to make a political statement during The Who's set at Woodstock. Later, Townshend claims he didn't know it was Hoffman at the time. |
| 53 years ago (1969) | Sugar, Sugar by the Archies enters the Billboard charts. It eventually climbs to #1. |
| 53 years ago (1969) | The Guess Who receive their first gold record for These Eyes. |
| 48 years ago (1974) | The Ramones play their first show at CBGB's in New York's Bowery district. |
| 47 years ago (1975) | The Stylistics have their only U. K. #1 single with Can't Give You Anything (But My Love). |
| 47 years ago (1975) | Vocalist and songwriter Peter Gabriel delivers a statement to the press announcing he's leaving Genesis. He made the decision back in December but stuck around until contracted tours were done. He had a desire to be with his family and said, “As an artist, I need to absorb a wide variety of experiences. It's difficult to respond to intuition and impulse within the long-term planning the band needed.” |
| 46 years ago (1976) | Cliff Richards begins an SRO, 20-date tour of the Soviet union at Leningrad's Hall of the October. The crowd's enthusiasm for his performance horrifies Russian officials, who ask him if he wants barricades put up between himself and the audience for later shows. He declines the offer. |
| 45 years ago (1977) | The King is dead. Elvis Presley dies in his Memphis mansion, Graceland. According to Presley's girlfriend, Ginger Alden, she awoke in the afternoon and noticed he was not in bed. She found him lying on the floor of the bathroom. Efforts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful and at 3:30 p.m. he was pronounced dead. According to reports, the death resulted from coronary arrhythmia. Within the next couple of days, the death becomes one of the biggest media events in the past twenty years. |
| 43 years ago (1979) | Hardcore KISS fans are dismayed to hear I Was Made for Lovin' You, a song with a disco beat. Still, the song climbs up to #11 and goes gold on this date. |
| 43 years ago (1979) | The biggest single of the summer is The Knack's My Sharona, which goes gold. The success of the group is the gimmick of Beatle-esque posturing which the group treats as tongue-in-cheek. The Knack disbands less than two years later. |
| 42 years ago (1980) | Appearing at the U. K. Monsters Of Rock are Rainbow, Judas Priest, Scorpions, April Wine, Saxon, and Riot. Tickets are £8.50. |
| 42 years ago (1980) | Keyboard player Jools Holland leaves Squeeze, only to rejoin five years later. |
| 39 years ago (1983) | Paul Simon and actress Carrie Fisher get married. They would divorce in 1985. |
| 38 years ago (1984) | Prince is pictured on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. He is shown with his left armpit exposed. |
| 38 years ago (1984) | Though it doesn’t make the pop music charts, a new single by Elvis Presley is released by RCA Victor Records. The song was originally recorded in 1956 at the Tupelo (Mississippi) Fairgrounds. It’s called Baby, Let's Play House. |
| 37 years ago (1985) | Madonna marries actor Sean Penn in Malibu. She files for divorce the following year. |
| 36 years ago (1986) | Madonna starts a two-week run at #1 on the singles chart with Papa Don't Preach, her fourth #1. Also on this day, her album True Blue hits #1 on the album chart. |
| 27 years ago (1995) | Beach Boy Brian Wilson performs for the first time in concert with his daughters Carnie and Wendy, of Wilson Phillips. |
| 25 years ago (1997) | On the 20th anniversary of Elvis Presley's death over 30,000 fans descend on Memphis, Tennessee for a 10-minute mourning circuit, circling his grave. A poll finds that almost a third of the fans were keeping an eye out for him in the crowd. |
| 25 years ago (1997) | Will Smith starts a four-week run at #1 on the U. K. singles chart with Men In Black from the film of the same name. |
| 22 years ago (2000) | Alan Caddy, guitarist with The Tornados, dies. |
| 17 years ago (2005) | Madonna breaks nine bones in a horse-riding accident at her country home outside London on her 47th birthday. She suffers three cracked ribs, a broken collarbone, and a broken hand. She eventually heals up nicely. |
| 16 years ago (2006) | Barry Manilow stops a performance at the Las Vegas Hilton to say he’s in too much pain from torn hip cartilage to continue. He cancels the remaining three performances, but says he'll make it to the Emmys on August 27, then have surgery. He’ll miss 20 concerts at the Hilton, but reschedule them in 2007. |
| 15 years ago (2007) | David Crosby has to miss a scheduled performance in Aspen, Colorado due to a stomach bug. |
| 4 years ago (2018) | Aretha Franklin, known for having one of the greatest voices in music history, and for hits like Respect, and (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman, dies in her Detroit home after a long battle with cancer. She was 76.
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| 3 years ago (2019) | Peter Fonda, son of actor Henry Fonda, brother of actress Jane Fonda, and most famous as "Captain America" in the classic counterculture film Easy Rider, dies from respiratory failure due to lung cancer. He was 79. |