Author: George Griggs

Births

1895: Oscar Hammerstein II
1927: Conte Candoli
1928: Barbara Cowsill (The Cowsills)
1934: Van Cliburn
1943: Christine McVie (Fleetwood Mac)
1946: Jeff Christie (Christie)
1948: Walter Egan
1949: John Wetton (King Crimson, Asia)
1949: Eric Carr (KISS)
1952: Liz Mitchell (Boney M)
1952: Philip Taylor Kramer (Iron Butterfly)
Deaths

1979: Minnie Riperton
1983: Chris Wood (Traffic)
1983: Jimmy Driftwood
Events

1954: A nineteen-year-old Elvis Presley officially quits his job as a truck driver for Crown Electric in Memphis after signing a one-year contract with Sun Records (and a similar management contract with his bassist, Scotty Moore).
1959: Legendary DJ Alan Freed attempts to capture the magic of Dick Clark’s American Bandstand on ABC by staging his own weekly rock and roll show on the same network, The Big Beat (named after a Fats Domino song). Frankie Lymon, the Everly Brothers and Connie Francis guest star on this first show, but the series is canceled after 13 weeks.
1962: The Rolling Stones make their live debut at the Marquee Club in London (a group name founder Brian Jones picked at random from a Muddy Waters album he spotted while on the phone with the promoter). The band at this point features Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Jones, with Dick Taylor, later of the Pretty Things, on bass and Mick Avory, later of the Kinks, on drums. The band is paid 20 pounds.
1964: George Harrison crashes his E-Type Jaguar on New Kings Road in London while en route to a Beatles concert in Brighton, suffering minor injuries. Fans pick up shards of broken glass from the crime scene as souvenirs.
1968: The Monkees’ Micky Dolenz marries Samantha Juste, a model known as the “disc girl” on the BBC’s longtime series Top Of THe Pops. Dolenz, who met her on the show, wrote the British smash “Randy Scouse Git” in part about her. The couple would divorce in 1975.
1969: The Temptations Show, a Motown special featuring the group, airs in syndication. The group performs, among other hits, “Get Ready,” “Cloud Nine,” and “Runaway Child, Running Wild.”
1979: Gerry Meier and Steve Dahl, DJs at Chicago’s WLUP radio stage a “disco demolition” night at Comiskey Park, with a public bonfire of disco vinyl records taking place between games of a White Sox / Detroit Tigers doubleheader. Unfortunately, fans begin tossing the records around like frisbees during the first game, and by the time of the bonfire, mini-riots (and other fires) had broken out around the stadium, forcing the Sox to forfeit the second game. (Dahl had been fired from a rival station, WDAI, after it switched to an all-disco format.)
2000: Cat Stevens (now Yusuf Islam) publicly denies any financial involvement with the terrorist group Hamas after Israel denies him entry into the country, alleging he gave money to the organization.
2000: London’s Trafalgar Square unveils a sculpture of John Lennon, created by Swedish artist Carl Fredrik Reutersward, which also features a handgun twisted into an unusable shape.
2001: New Orleans’ Moisant Airport, named for an early 20th-century flying daredevil, is renamed Armstrong International in honor of native jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong.
2007: Rod Stewart is awarded the CBE Order of the British Empire by Prince Charles in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace.
Releases

None
Recording

1960: Floyd Cramer, “Last Date”
1965: The Beach Boys, “Sloop John B”
1968: The Beatles: “Revolution,” “Don’t Pass Me By”
1971: The New Seekers, “I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing”
1973: The Hues Corporation, “Rock The Boat”
Charts

1952: Vera Lynn’s’ “Auf Wiederseh’n Sweetheart” hits #1
1958: The Coasters’ “Yakety Yak” hits #1
1969: Zager and Evans’ “In The Year 2525 (Exordium And Terminus)” hits #1
1975: KC and the Sunshine Band’s “Get Down Tonight” enters the charts