| 82 | years ago | 1944 | Jack Cassady, bassist with Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna, is born. |
| 80 | years ago | 1946 | Soul singer Al Green is born. |
| 75 | years ago | 1951 | Max Weinberg, drummer for the E Street Band, and leader of the Max Weinberg 7 on NBC’s Late Night with Conan O'Brien, is born. |
| 74 | years ago | 1952 | JD Nicholas of The Commodores is born |
| 72 | years ago | 1954 | Jimmy Destri of Blondie is born. |
| 61 | years ago | 1965 | Winners of the seventh annual Grammy Awards are announced. Record of the Year is The Girl from Ipanema by Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto. The Beatles win Best Performance by a Vocal Group for A Hard Day’s Night and the group is voted Best New Artists. |
| 59 | years ago | 1967 | The Rolling Stones perform their first concert behind the Iron Curtain at the Palace of Culture in Warsaw, Poland. Police with batons and tear gas bombs are required to subdue 2,000 fans hoping to get into the sold-out show. |
| 59 | years ago | 1967 | Catch My Soul closes after grossing over half a million dollars. Jerry Lee Lewis portrayed the villain Iago in the modernized version of Shakespeare's Othello and received the best reviews. He played it straight, except he brought a new approach when he once ad-libbed “Great Balls of Fire My Friend Roderigo!” in Act V. |
| 59 | years ago | 1967 | The Temptations' All I Need is released. |
| 56 | years ago | 1970 | Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love and the album Chicago Transit Authority both go gold. |
| 55 | years ago | 1971 | The Rolling Stones release Brown Sugar, the first record on their own label, Rolling Stones Records, which introduces the infamous licking-tongue-and-lips logo. On May 29, the song becomes the #1 single. |
| 53 | years ago | 1973 | When the J. Geils Band appear on ABC-TV's In Concert to sing their hit Give It to Me, they're censored because of the song's lyric Get it up. The same thing happens to Curtis Mayfield on Soul Train when he performs Pusherman. |
| 53 | years ago | 1973 | The Who's Roger Daltrey releases his first solo album. The material is composed by songwriters Leo Sayer and David Courtney and is produced by Adam Faith. Daltry makes it to #45. |
| 47 | years ago | 1979 | Five days into Van Halen's latest tour, David Lee Roth collapses from exhaustion on stage in Spokane, Washington. |
| 46 | years ago | 1980 | The Broadway '50s musical Grease finally closes its run of 3,883 performances -- which made it the longest running show on Broadway, thus far, and along the way earning a gross over $8-million. |
| 27 | years ago | 1999 | Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers release their album Echo. |
| 22 | years ago | 2004 | A New York Daily News gossip column reports that “America's oldest teenager” and former American Bandstand host Dick Clark has type 2 (adult onset) diabetes. The then 74-year-old Clark becomes a spokesman for the American Association of Diabetes Educators. |
| 21 | years ago | 2005 | The Arkansas Legislature votes $5,000 to erect a monument in Twist, Arkansas marking the small town with the dance hall where B. B. King’s guitar “Lucille” got her name. B. B. was playing acoustic guitar in the hall when some men fighting over a woman named Lucille knocked over a space heater, starting a fire which burned down the dance hall. King evacuated with everybody else, but then realized he left his guitar inside. He rushed back into the burning building and nearly died retrieving the guitar, which he decided to name after the woman who caused the fight. All his Gibson guitars have been named Lucille ever since. |
| 21 | years ago | 2005 | Johnnie Johnson, a rock 'n' roll pioneer who teamed with Chuck Berry for hits like Roll Over Beethoven and No Particular Place to Go, dies in St. Louis at age 80. Though he was never a household name, Johnson and Berry's long collaboration helped define early rock 'n' roll. Johnson often composed the music on piano, then Berry converted it to guitar and wrote the lyrics. In fact, Berry's Johnny B. Goode was a tribute to Johnson. |
| 20 | years ago | 2006 | Kentwood, Louisiana native Britney Spears guest stars as a Christian conservative sidekick to Sean Hayes’ character Jack on NBC-TV’s Will & Grace. Jack’s fictional network, Out TV, is bought by a Christian TV network, leading to Spears contributing a cooking segment called “Cruci-fixin’s.” |
| 20 | years ago | 2006 | Boomtown Rat and Live Aid producer Bob Geldorf has been claiming recently that Bejiing is responsible for the continuing civil war in Sudan, but when asked about Bob’s comments, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman asks, “Who?” |