Music History

Ugg Boot

It's time now for music history. What happened this week in music?

1791, Mozart's The Magic Flute premieres in Vienna... Pure Genius.

1880, John Philip Sousa - composer of "Semper Fidelis" and dozens of other frozen-weekday-mornings-on-the-high-school-football-field hits - is promoted to director of the United States Marine Corps Band...

1935, Porgy and Bess is performed in public for the first time in Boston...

1943, Louis Jordan and His Tympani Five release "Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby?"... Do you remember on Tom & Jerry.... Tom playing an upright bass with his tail while singing this to a female cat?

1945, Señor Pelvis logs his first paying gig when he brings down five bucks cold cash for second place at the Mississippi-Alabama Dairy Show talent contest ... the future King is 10 years old when he wins by singing "Old Shep"...

1956, Elvis is so huge that his "Love Me Tender" has sold 856,327 copies before it's even released...

1961, folkie Caroline Hester's first album on Columbia features young Bob Dylan on harmonica ... the producer, John Hammond, likes Dylan's style and promptly signs him to a solo record deal ... Dylan will start recording within a few weeks...

1962, the Beatles release their first single, "Love Me Do" ... the whole world responds to their command... If you don't like the Beatles, get off of my site and don't come back.

1963, Eric Clapton is asked to replace "Top" Topham in the Yardbirds ... Topham is only 16 years old and his parents have pressured him out of the band after a very brief tenure ... Clapton is a classmate of vocalist Keith Relf in art college ... already known as "Slowhand," Clapton will develop the distinguished Yardbirds guitar chair that will later be inhabited by Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page...

1967, though she doesn't actually lose her mind, this is the week that Gladys Knight releases "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" ... written by Motown writers Barret Strong and Norman Whitfield, the tune reaches #2 on the pop charts and #1 on the R&B charts ... it will be covered by literally hundreds of artists over the years, most notably Marvin Gaye, who will take it to #1 on the pop charts in 1968 ... also this week in 1967 out on the psychedelic West Coast Mickey Hart takes up stick duties with the Grateful Dead ... it proves to be a bad week to join, as the entire band is busted for pot at their house in the Haight ... it's also the week that "Brown Eyed Girl" tops out at #10 for Van Morrison...

1969, tragedy strikes David Crosby on the day Crosby, Stills & Nash goes gold ... Crosby's honey, Christine Gail Hinton, is killed in a head-on auto crash north of San Francisco...

1970, Jack Bruce joins Tony Williams and fellow Miles Davis veterans John McLaughlin and Larry Young to form the monster fusion group, Lifetime ... also this week in 1970, Janis Joplin, who has just finished recording the album Pearl is found dead of an apparent heroin overdose in a Hollywood hotel room ... this is also the week in which Led Zeppelin III is released ... the album features "Since I Been Loving You," perhaps the spine-tinglingest rock blues tune ever recorded...

1975 drummer Al Jackson Jr. is shot to death in his Memphis home ... the pulse of Booker T. & The MGs--the Stax Records house band--Jackson played on dozens of soul hits ... police initially suspect Jackson's wife who had shot him the previous July ... the case remains unsolved and Memphis police refuse to discuss it...

1976, Jerry Lee Lewis proves that coolness and common sense are not necessarily positively correlated when he supposedly opens fire on a soda bottle with a .357 magnum and hits his bass player, Norman Owens, twice - seriously wounding him in the chest ... Lewis is later charged with discharging a firearm within city limits... You know, he was known as "The Killer".

1977, the hardest working man in show business is apparently also the hardest slave driver in the business, inspiring his entire band to walk out on him just before a scheduled concert in Hallandale, Florida ... their beefs are the usual - too much work and too little money from boss James Brown...

1980, One Trick Pony, Paul Simon's film about a world-weary touring club musician, premieres in New York ... like Capeman - his later attempt at a Broadway show - the film itself bombs but the soundtrack kills ... this despite celluloid appearances by Lou Reed, Sam & Dave, and the Lovin' Spoonful...

1982, the first CD players hit the market in Japan...

1989, while on a motorcycle trip from LA to the Grand Canyon, Bruce Springsteen stops in a honky tonk in Prescott, Arizona, and plays a full set with the house band ... while the Boss is slumming with the real people, he overhears barmaid Brenda Techanec bemoaning her difficulty meeting hospital expenses ... a week later he sends her a check for $100,000...

1991, following the theft of Michael Jackson's crystal-beaded glove, rapper M.C. Hammer offers a $50,000 reward for the relic's return... M.C. who?

1996, Van Halen can't seem to get along with his lead vocalists ... this week he finds David Lee Roth intolerable again, having brought the dynamic singer back to record some greatest hits 11 years after he was originally kicked out of the band ... Sammy Hagar has already been booted earlier in '96 ... in retaliation Roth tells the press that the band only asked him back as a publicity stunt and never planned to actually let him back in... One Rocks and one sucks. Which one is it? Please leave a comment for everyone to read.

1997, a Wu-Tang fan files suit after Method Man leaps off the stage and lands on her, knocking her unconscious ... the suit blames band members Method Man, RZA, and Redman, as well as the student government that sponsored the show, saying the fan, Juanita L. Evans, was distracted by rapper Redman and didn't see the flying Method Man...

BIRTHDAYS:
Buddy Rich (1917)
Cissy Houston (1933)
Johnny Mathis (1935)
Frankie Lymon (1942)
Dewey Martin of Buffalo Springfield (1942)
producer Gus Dudgeon (1942)
Marilyn McCoo of The 5th Dimension (1943)
Sylvia Peterson of The Chiffons (1946)
Mark Bolan of T. Rex (1947)
Patrice Rushen (1954)
Basia (1956)
Trey Anastasio of Phish (1964)
Robby Takac of The Goo Goo Dolls (1964)