Day: April 6, 2012

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….