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….