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.
