Author: Jim Feliciano

From the MCRFB music calendar:

Events on this date: APRIL 9

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1962: At tonight’s Academy Awards ceremony in Santa Monica, California, Henry Mancini wins Best Original Song for “Moon River,” his contribution to the film Breakfast At Tifanny’s.

1964: The Vee-Jay record label suffers a fatal blow when it settles out of court with Capitol Records, who charged that nonpayment of royalties invalidated the label’s licensing agreement to sell the Beatles’ first few singles in the United States.

1965: Bruce Johnston replaces Brian Wilson in the touring band of the Beach Boys, Brian having suffered a nervous breakdown while on the band’s recent flight to Houston, Texas.

1966: During a Yardbirds show in Marseilles, France, guitarist Jeff Beck collapses from exhaustion while on stage; eleven years later to the day in 1977, Jimmy Page causes the end of a Led Zeppelin gig in Chicago when he is struck down with stomach cramps.

1966: The Righteous Brothers’ “(You’re My) Soul And Inspiration” hits No. 1 on the charts.

1967: The Doors play before their first large crowd when they appear (along with Jefferson Airplane ) in front of 3,000 at a show in Venice, California.

1973: Queen play their first show since being signed, a “showcase” gig at London’s Marquee Club.

1974: Bruce Springsteen meets rock critic Jon Landau, who would go on to manage the singer and successfully hype him as “rock and roll’s future.

1977: Abba’s “Dancing Queen” hits No. 1 on the Billboard chart.

1979: At tonight’s Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles, Best Original Song goes to Donna Summer’s “Last Dance,” from the flop movie Thank God It’s Friday.

1982: Having revived her career in the UK with a hit cover of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together,” Tina Turner begins a comeback tour in London.

1989: Rolling Stone bassist Bill Wyman, 52, announces his intention to marry model Mandy Smith, 19, further shocking the public by revealing that he’s been dating Mandy for the past six years — with her mother’s permission. The marriage would last just under two years.

2003: Willie Nelson holds public celebrations of his 70th birthday at the Beacon Theater in New York. Featured performers included, among many others, Ray Charles, Eric Clapton, Paul Simon, ZZ Top, Leon Russell, and country singer Ray Price.

 

 

 

 

And that’s a few of the events which took place in pop music history, on this day…. April 9.

From the MCRFB music calendar:

Events on this date: APRIL 7

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1956: The first national rock and roll series, Alan Freed’s Rock ‘N’ Roll Dance Party, debuts on the CBS Radio Network.

1956: The Platters make their television debut on the Dorsey Brothers’ Stage Show, broadcast on CBS.

1958: The Capitol label officially abandons issuing 78 rpm records.

1962: Elvis Presley arrives in Hawaii to begin shooting the ocean shots for his latest film, Blue Hawaii. At his hotel, the Kaiser Hawaiian Village, he is mobbed by over a thousand female fans and sprints away from the frenzied mob, losing several pieces of jewelry in the process. (His ring was returned he next day.)

1962: Teen idol Bobby Rydell is ironically cast as Hugo Peabody in the film version hit of the broadway musical Bye Bye Birdie.

1962: Unknown London musicians Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, attending a performance of Alexis Corner’s Blues Festival at the Ealing Jazz Club, meet a young guitarist named Brian Jones.   

1967: San Francisco’s KMPX becomes the first FM station to play “deep cuts” from albums, rather than merely hit singles, a “free-form” non-format that will soon transform “underground” rock radio.

1967: Sonny and Cher’s ill-faded comedy film, a collection of film spoof skits called Good Times, debuts in Chicago.

1970: B.J. Thomas “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head,” featured in the Paul Newman/Robert Redford film Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid, wins Best Original Song at this year’s Academy Awards.

1975: Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore leaves the group to form Rainbow. He will be replaced by Tommy Bolin.

1981: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band play their first concert outside America. The band open their concert tour at the Congress Centre in Hamburg, Germany.

1988: While rehearsing a morbid “hanging” stunt for his upcoming tour, Alice Cooper is nearly killed when the safety rope breaks, leaving him swinging in the air for a few moments. Fortunately, tragedy was averted when a roadie quickly steps in and brings him down.

1990: As famed child AIDS victim Ryan White lays dying in his hospital bed, Elton John, who has taken up his cause, performs “Candle In The Wind” for him during Farm Aid IV in Indianapolis, Indiana.

1994: Percy Sledge pleads guilty to evading taxes on $260,000 on his income and is sentenced to six months in prison (which he is allowed to serve in a “half-way house”).

2006: Bob Dylan is awarded an honorary Pulitzer prize for “profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical composition of extraordinary poetic power.”

2008: Olivia Newton-John begins her walk across the entire length of China’s Great Wall in order to raise funds for and awareness of the ongoing battle to help find a cure for breast cancer. The walk will take three weeks and will cover 141 miles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And that’s just a few of the events which took place in pop music history, on this day…. April 7.

From the MCRFB music calendar:

Events on this date: APRIL 6

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1956: Having impressed Paramount Studios with his screen test five days earlier, Elvis Presley is signed to a seven-year, three-picture deal worth nearly a half-million dollars.

1960: The Everly Brothers begin their first European tour at London’s New Victoria Theater.

1962: The U.S.S.R’s official newspaper, Pravda, warns Soviet teens of the decadent dangers of the new “twist” dance craze.

1963: Fats Domino leaves Imperial Records and signs with ABC-Paramount Records.

1965: The Beach Boys commence studio session recordings for “California Girls.”

 

1968: Founding member Syd Barrett, already in a mental downward spiral from LSD abuse, leaves Pink Floyd.

1969: Bassist Pete Quaife announces that he’s quitting the Kinks.

1971: The Rolling Stones unveil their new custom record label, Rolling Stones Records, which also features the group’s new logo, the infamous tongue-and-lips “pop art” drawing created by London graphic artist John Pasche.

1971: Carly Simon is introduced to James Taylor backstage after her performance at Los Angeles’ famous Troubadour nightclub. Instantly smitten, they would marry in November of 1972.

1974: Columbia Record’s Billy Joel cracks the Top 40 for the first time with “Piano Man.”

1974: California’s biggest annual rock concert, the California Jam, has its debut in Ontario, CA, featuring stage acts by the Eagles, Earth, Wind, and Fire, Seals and Croft, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Rare Earth and Black Oak Arkansas performing for a crowd estimated well over 200,000 who attends.

1974: The Rolling Stones premier their concert film Ladies And Gentleman: The Rolling Stones, the first-ever such film with a quadrophonic soundtrack. The event premiers at the Ziegfeld Theater in NYC.

1979: Rod Stewart marries George Hamilton’s ex-wife, Alana Collins, in Beverley Hills, California. They would divorce in 1984.

1984: Guitarist Steve Van Zandt announces that he’s amicably leaving the E Street Band to pursue a solo career. He will return to the E. Street Band in 1995.

1992: To benefit the Natural Law Party, George Harrison plays his first full-length live concert in London. It was his first live performance since the Beatles’s final performance in 1969.

1998: Chubby Checker, Lesley Gore, Fabian, and Dick Clark all guest-star as themselves in tonight’s “Opus One” episode of CBS-TV’s Murphy Brown.

Deaths: Ral Donner, 1984; Tammy Wynette, 1998; Niki Sullivan (band member of the Crickets); 2004.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And that’s just a few of the events which took place in pop music history, on this day….

 

 

 

From the MCRFB music calendar:

Events on this date: APRIL 5

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1955: Ray Charles marries his second wife, Della Beatrice Howard, in Houston, Texas.

1958: Johnny Mathis’ compilation album Johnny’s Greatest Hits, the first “greatest hits” LP, enters the Billboard charts, where it will stay for almost nine and a half years. Its a record that would only be broken in 1982 by Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon LP.

1964: The Beatles film the famous opening scene from their first movie, A Hard Day’s Night, running away from several rabid female fans in pursuit of the Fab Four while at London’s Marylebone train station.

1964: The Searchers make their U.S. television debut, singing “Needles And Pins” and “Ain’t That Just Like Me” on the Ed Sullivan Show on CBS-TV.

1967: Monkees fans march in London in protest of band member Davy Jones’ announced induction into the Army. The teen heartthrob is eventually exempted from duty for being his family’s main provider.

 

1967: Elvis Presley’s 24th movie, Double Trouble, premieres in Hollywood.

1982: Marvin Gaye’s funeral takes place at Forest Lawn cemetery in Los Angeles, drawing some very notable mourners, including Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder, Quincy Jones, and Berry Gordy. Gaye had been shot to death three days earlier by his father after he intervened in an argument between his parents.

1987: Buddy Rich’s funeral in Los Angeles also draws some very notable mourners, including Frank Sinatra, Artie Shaw, and Johnny Carson, just to name a few.

1990: After serving months of his sentence for drug possession, resisting arrest, and other related charges, James Brown is put on a work-release program. Brown is moved from his jail to South Carolina’s Lower Savannah Work Center, where he provides counseling for drug addicts. For his services there, James Brown is paid four dollars an hour.

Deaths: Bob “The Bear” Hite, member of Canned Heat; 1981; Cozy Powell, Black Sabbath, Rainbow; 1998; Gene Pitney; 2006.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And that’s just a few of the events which took place in pop music history, on this day….

From the MCRFB music calendar:

Events on this date: APRIL 4

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1960: RCA Victor decides to release all future singles — starting with Elvis Presley’s “Stuck On You” — in both mono and stereo versions.

1960: At tonight’s Academy Awards, Frank Sinatra’s “High Hopes” (from the comedy A Hole In The Head) wins an Oscar for Best Original Song.

1961: Former teen idol Fabian graduates from Philadelphia’s South Side High.

1964: The Beatles break all American chart records when the latest Billboard chart shows them with the Top Five records in the country simultaneously (#5: “Please Please Me,” #4: “I Want To Hold Your Hand,” #3: “She Loves You,” #2: “Twist And Shout,” #1: “Can’t Buy Me Love”). Even more incredibly, nine other singles are scattered in various other positions around the Hot 100.

1964: A court orders the Trashmen of “Surfin’ Bird” fame to pay royalties to Beechwood Music, holder of the copyright for the Rivington’s 1962 hit, “Papa Oom Mow Mow,” which the Trashmen borrows heavily from.

1967: Paul McCartney advises Beatles PR man Derek Taylor, currently producer of the upcoming Monterey Pop Festival, to consider this new guitar phenomenon he’s seen who goes by the name Jimi Hendrix.

1968: After hearing about the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in Memphis, riots break out in several major cities across the nation. In Boston, where James Brown is scheduled to perform, city mayor Kevin White asks the singer to call for calm on stage and ask Bostonians not to riot. Meanwhile, at new York City’s New Generation club, Jimi Hendrix, B.B. King, Al Kooper, Buddy Guy, Ted Nugent and Joni Mitchell respond by gathering for an all-night jam in tribute to the slain civil rights leader.

1970: Janis Joplin reunites with Big Brother and the Holding Company in San Francisco for a one-off reunion concert.

1973: A taped Elvis Presley concert entitled: Elvis: Aloha From Hawaii is telecast from NBC television and proves to be a huge success. The total worldwide audience for the show, the first commercial worldwide satellite broadcast, amounts to over a billion viewers who witnessed the telecast event from around the world.

1996: While on parole, Wilson Pickett is arrested for possession of two grams of cocaine at his home in Englewood, New Jersey.

1996: Grateful Dead leader Jerry Garcia’s ashes are scattered in the Ganges river in India by Dead guitarist Bob Weir and Garcia’s widow, Deborah.

2007: Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones retracts a statement he made to British music magazine New Musical Express a few days earlier to the effect he once snorted his dad’s ashes. Richards smugly calls the remark “an April Fool’s joke.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And that’s just a few of the events which took place in pop music history, on this day….