From the MCRFB music calendar:
Events on this date: MARCH 24
1956: Elvis Presley visits friend and fellow Sun label mate Carl Perkins in a Dover, Delaware hospital, where he is recovering from his near-fatal crash.
1958: At 6:35 AM, Elvis Presley reports to the offices of Memphis’ local Draft Board 86, accompanied by his parents and longtime friend Lamar Fike, then is bused with twelve other new recruits to Kennedy Veterans Memorial Hospital.
There, Elvis is inducted into the U.S. Army, a Private with serial number 53 310 761. Dozens of photographers and reporters attend the event. He will serve two years, and his monthly payment for military service will be $78.00 per month.
1962: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards first perform together in Ealing, England on stage for the first time, with their first band, as Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys.
1965: While playing in Odense, Denmark, Rolling Stone bassist Bill Wyman is instantly knocked unconscious by a poorly grounded microphone stand while on stage.
1966: The first major U.S. bootleg law is passed in New York State, a bill that makes the processing of unlicensed recordings a misdemeanor. Twelve-years later to the day, Great Britain grants all their record companies the right to confiscate unauthorized recording duplicates, officially by law as illegal property of copyrighted materials.
1973: An overly-zealous male fan climbs onstage during a Lou Reed concert in Buffalo, New York, and plants a bite on one of Reed’s buttocks. The attendee-culprit who performed this unusual behavior was, not surprisingly, tossed out of the event immediately by the band’s security unit. Reed later remarked that, “America seems to breed real animals.”
2001: Macon, Georgia’s Hwy 19 is renamed Duane Allman Boulevard. The renaming of the stretch of highway running through Macon is in remembrance of the famed band member guitarist who was killed in a motorcycle accident there some thirty-years earlier.
2002: After a record fifteen nominations, Randy Newman wins his first Oscar for The Monster, Inc. composition “If I Didn’t Have You.” The number was awarded for Best Song.
Deaths: Harold Melvin (of the Blue Notes) 1997; Rod Price (Foghat) 2005; Henson Cargill (Country singer, 1968 “Skip A Rope” fame) 2007; Uriel Jones (Drummer, Funk Brothers) 2009.
And that’s just a few of the events which took place in pop music history, on this day . . . . M A R C H 2 4
