| 81 | years ago | 1945 | Bryan Ferry, vocalist for Roxy Music, is born. |
| 70 | years ago | 1956 | Fats Domino's Blueberry Hill enters the pop charts where it will top out at #4. |
| 70 | years ago | 1956 | It's Elvis Presley Day in his hometown of of Tupelo, Mississippi. |
| 65 | years ago | 1961 | Bob Dylan starts a two week stay as the opening act for the Greenbriar Boys at Gerde's Folk City in New York's Greenwich Village. |
| 62 | years ago | 1964 | The Kinks release You Really Got Me. |
| 62 | years ago | 1964 | Roy Orbison's Oh, Pretty Woman hits #1 on the singles chart. |
| 62 | years ago | 1964 | The Shangri-Las' Remember (Walking In The Sand) peaks at #5 on the singles chart. |
| 61 | years ago | 1965 | Queen Elizabeth decorates The Beatles with the Order of the British Empire. |
| 58 | years ago | 1968 | Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones is fined $150 after a judge finds him guilty of marijuana possession. |
| 57 | years ago | 1969 | The Beatles release their 13th album in the U.K., Abbey Road. It's released a week later in the U.S. and is the last album they make together as a group. Within a month the album begins an eleven week run in the #1 spot. |
| 57 | years ago | 1969 | San Francisco's Fillmore West opens. |
| 57 | years ago | 1969 | You Never Give Me Your Money is released from The Beatles’ Abbey Road album. |
| 56 | years ago | 1970 | Tamla-Motown Records reveals the Jackson 5 have sold 10 million singles world wide in nine months (I Want You Back, ABC & The Love You Save) an unsurpassed record for a while. |
| 56 | years ago | 1970 | Free's Fire and Water enters the LP chart. It contains the song, All Right Now. |
| 53 | years ago | 1973 | The Dutch instrumental group Focus receive a gold record for Focus 3. It comes on the heels of their lone hit, Hocus Pocus. |
| 52 | years ago | 1974 | John Lennon releases what will be his last album of new material for nearly six years. Walls and Bridges climbs up to #1. |
| 51 | years ago | 1975 | The Rocky Horror Picture Show opens in theatres. |
| 51 | years ago | 1975 | The Allman Brothers Band's Win, Lose Or Draw enters the album chart. |
| 47 | years ago | 1979 | The Clash release their first U.S. single, a remake of The Bobby Fuller Four's I Fought The Law. |
| 45 | years ago | 1981 | Prince finally finds as much success with audiences as with critics, as the title cut of his new album Controversy eneters the soul chart. It peaks at #3. Meanwhile on the pop charts, the single and album hit #70 and #21 respectively. |
| 45 | years ago | 1981 | The Kinks' Give The People What They Want enters the LP chart. |
| 45 | years ago | 1981 | The Go-Go's Beauty and the Beat enters the LP chart. The double platinum album hit #1 for 6 weeks and contains the hits Our Lips Are Sealed and We Got The Beat. |
| 45 | years ago | 1981 | Hall & Oates' Private Eyes LP enters the chart. The platinum album contains two #1 hits: Private Eyes and I Can't Go For That. |
| 40 | years ago | 1986 | Mick Jagger's long-form home video Running Out Of Luck is finally released by CBS-Fox Video after over a one year delay. |
| 39 | years ago | 1987 | The Grateful Dead's Touch Of Grey peaks at #9 on the singles chart, thus becoming their biggest chart hit ever. |
| 39 | years ago | 1987 | The Cars' Door To Door enters the LP chart. |
| 38 | years ago | 1988 | Keith Richards releases his first solo album, Talk Is Cheap. |
| 35 | years ago | 1991 | Southside Johnny films the It's Been A Long Time video at The Stone Pony in Asbury Park, New Jersey with the help of Bruce Springsteen and Little Steven Van Zandt. Following the recording of the video, Jon Bon Jovi joins the band and an hour long jam ensues. |
| 34 | years ago | 1992 | Patty Smyth and Don Henley's duet, Sometimes Love Just Ain't Enough peaks at #2 on the pop singles chart. |
| 22 | years ago | 2004 | Interviewed by the London Sunday Telegraph, Bob Dylan says he moved to rural New York in the late 60's to escape ravenous fans, but they followed him there. He kept guns in the house as protection against possible attack by a crazed fan. Dylan admits he may have come close to a nervous breakdown. Chronicles: Volume One, Dylan's autobigraphy, goes on sale in Britain October 12. |
| 20 | years ago | 2006 | Paul McCartney’s Ecce Cor Meum (Behold My Heart), a new clasiical work for chorus and orchestra, is released. The same performers on the record will perform it in November at London’s Royal Albert Hall. |
| 20 | years ago | 2006 | The Associated Press reports the death of a 68-year-old man named Paul Van Valkenburgh of Ormond Beach, Florida who claimed to have written the song, Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini under the name Paul Vance. But the real Paul Vance is 76 years old, and still alive and well at the time in Coral Springs, Florida. Van Valkenburgh apparently had some sort of musical career in his younger days, and his widow is devastated to learn that his claim of writing the hit is untrue. |
| 14 | years ago | 2012 | The always-casual Andy Williams dies of bladder cancer at age 84. He put 27 hits in the Top 40. The biggest were Butterfly in 1958, and Can't Get Used to Losing You in 1963. Oddly, his Moon River never charted except as an LP track, when the Henry Mancini song from the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's won a Grammy for Song of the Year in 1962. He sang the first eight bars of it at the beginning of his weekly 1962-1971 TV show. |