| 73 years ago (1952) | Judas Priest’s Ian Hill is born. |
| 73 years ago (1952) | Paul Stanley, guitarist with KISS, is born. |
| 67 years ago (1958) | St. Louis radio station KWK finishes its “Record Breaking Week.” Orders of station management had all rock & roll music banned from the airwaves. The disc jockeys gave every rock and roll record in the station library a “farewell spin” before smashing it into pieces. The station manager at KWK, Robert Convey, calls the action “a simple weeding out of undesirable music.” |
| 64 years ago (1961) | New Orleans trumpeter Al Hirt plays at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy. |
| 61 years ago (1964) | The album Meet The Beatles is released in the U.S. on Capitol Records. It's the British group's U.S. debut LP. |
| 60 years ago (1965) | Alan Freed dies of uremia in Palm Springs, California. Freed was a disc jockey in the mid-'50s who played as big a role as any one person in helping to promote the rise of rock & roll and R&B. Unfortunately, he saw his career take a beating in the end by the payola scandals. |
| 60 years ago (1965) | The Rolling Stones and the Kinks make their first appearance on ABC-TV's Shindig! Also appearing are the Dave Clark Five, Petula Clark, Bobby Vee, Bobby Sherman, and Gerry & the Pacemakers. |
| 57 years ago (1968) | Judy in Disguise (With Glasses), the parody of Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, hits #1 on the Billboard chart, replacing another Beatles tune, Hello Goodbye. John Fred & His Playboy Band had recorded the song with the Fats Domino band in New Orleans just a month earlier. It spends eight weeks in the Top Ten, and two weeks at #1. |
| 57 years ago (1968) | Despite his much rumored falling out with the New York-Cambridge folk singer circle, Bob Dylan joins Pete Seeger, Judy Collins, Arlo Guthrie, Odetta, Richie Havens, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, and the Band in commemorating the late Woody Guthrie. This is Dylan's first appearance since his motorcycle accident two years ago. |
| 52 years ago (1973) | Jerry Lee Lewis makes his debut at the Grand Ole Opry. Opry officials allowed him to perform only if he agreed to keep his music to country and abstain from using obscenities. Things start well but by the end of the half-hour set, Lewis has played Great Balls of Fire, Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On and Good Golly Miss Molly. He also proclaimed, “I am the rock & rollin', country & western, rhythm & blues singin' motherf***er.” |
| 46 years ago (1979) | Rob Bourdon of Linkin Park is born. |
| 43 years ago (1982) | Metal Monster Ozzy Osbourne is hospitalized with rabies after biting the head off a dead bat that was thrown on stage by a “fan.” |
| 37 years ago (1988) | The Beach Boys, The Beatles, The Drifters, Bob Dylan, Berry Gordy, Jr., Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Les Paul, and The Supremes are inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame during ceremonies at New York's Waldorf Astoria. The festivities are given a bit of color when during the Beach Boys acceptance speech, Mike Love insults just about everybody in the music business, including Paul McCartney, Diana Ross, Bruce Springsteen, and Mick Jagger. |
| 27 years ago (1998) | Chumbawamba singer Alice Nutter appears on ABC's Politically Incorrect, saying that the band advocates fans stealing copies of their album. Virgin Megastores responds by pulling their album from their counters. |
| 26 years ago (1999) | Bill Albaugh, drummer for The Lemon Pipers on their 1967 #1 single Green Tambourine, dies at the age of 53. |
| 16 years ago (2009) | Aretha Franklin belts out My Country 'Tis of Thee at the inauguration of President Barack Obama. |
| 7 years ago (2018) | Jim Rodford, a founding member of Argent and bassist for the Kinks and the Zombies, dies at the age of 76 after “a fall on the stairs.” |