1939 - OK folks, we just featured Glenn Miller, I know, but for different reasons, but this was the day when he recorded what would become his theme song, Moonlight Serenade. Even though he scored huge hits with many songs, such as Chatanooga Choo Choo and In The Mood, this was the one that history has aligned with his beautiful style. This song gives me goose bumps. Here's an excerpt from the movie about his life featuring the Glenn Miller orchestra playing Moonlight Serenade, featuring American president FDR's famous 'Day of Infamy' speech, a clip of the Pearl Harbor attack, and U.S. Eighth Air Force B-17 Hevey Bombers taking off.
1954 - It's 57 years since the highly acclaimed Maestro Arturo Toscanini conducted his final concert with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, at Carnegie Hall in New York City, ending a 17-year association with the orchestra.
1959 - Moving right along, five years later, and rock'n'roll truly made its presence known when Buddy Holly's song, It Doesn't Matter Anymore hit #13 on the music sales charts, making it a posthumous hit. Holly died two months earlier, almost to the day, on February 3, in a plane crash. The single was a two-sided hit, backed with Raining In My Heart. Ironically, it was the only song not written by Holly, but instead written by song writer and singer, Paul Anka. RIP.
1960 - Written by Roy Turk and Lou Handman in 1926, Love Me Tender was a song recorded by Elvis Presley exactly 51 years ago today. It entered Billboards Hot 100 chart at #35; it was #2 in the second week, the biggest one week jump within the Top 40 history. It stayed #1 for six weeks, reached #22 on the country chart, and #3 on the rhythm & blues chart. Worldwide sales have been estimated at over five million copies. Presley received three Grammy Award nominations for the song, Record of the Year, Best Vocal Performance, Male, and Best Performance by a Pop Singles Artist, but it didnt a single one. On August 26, 1969, Elvis performed the song at the International Hotel in Las Vegas, where he messed up the lyrics and laughs uncontrollably.
1964 - Four years after the Prez made history, so too did The Beatles, by holding the top five places in the singles charts with Can't Buy Me Love, Twist and Shout, She Loves You, I Want to Hold Your Hand and Please Please Me. No act has ever equalled that phenomenon, and I doubt they ever will, it's a huge achievement. here's the band performing Twist And Shout in Melbourne, the same year. Amazing group, live, they really were, and a big part of their sound was the drumming sound and style of the great, totally underrated drumming of Ringo Starr.
1968 - James Brown made a national TV appeal for calm following the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. This is a very small portion of King's final, prophetic speech. He was assassinated the very next day. RIP. Has mankind learned anything at all in the past 43 years since his murder?
1970 - Janis Joplin held a reunion concert with Big Brother & the Holding Company in San Francisco, CA. Like so many others, I cried and cried when I heard that Janis Joplin had died. She was a queen of soul. RIP.
1977 - Major record companies realised they were out of whack with a new generation's music by the latter part of the seventies - as they are with every new form of music and generation - and all of them scrambled to sign anything that looked new, including British CBS, who released the Clash's self-titled first album. But the Clash had other ideas about their music, and it all came together when they first went to New York. This is how they explained their first encounters with hip hop, rap, beat boxes and graffiti.
1996 - This was the day when the continually troubled Wilson Pickett was arrested for cocaine possession while on probation from drunken driving, which eventually ran concurrently with a 12-month jail term. One of the most exciting performers of his era, Pickett - along with Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, James Brown and Smokey Robinson - helped define the sound of classic soul music of the 1960s. He often punctuated his songs with shouts, screams and grunts, giving his music a visceral quality that few other performers could match. The impassioned, raw-voiced soul singer first rose to fame with his hard-edged, sensuous urgency to a string of rhythm-and-blues hits during the 1960s. Picket remains, a major figure in the development of American soul music, recording more than 50 songs which made the US R&B charts, and frequently crossed over to the US Billboard Hot 100. Among his best known hits are In the Midnight Hour (which he co-wrote), Land of 1,000 Dances, Mustang Sally. His songs were covered by many rock acts, including Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, The Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, the Grateful Dead, Booker T. & the MGs, Genesis, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Hootie & the Blowfish, Echo & the Bunnymen, Roxy Music, Bruce Springsteen, Los Lobos, The Jam, and many more. The impact of Pickett's songwriting and recording led to his 1991 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He died in January 2006 of a heart attack. Here he is singing live, Mustang Sally, and then from Atlantic Records' 40th anniversary 1988, Land Of A Thousand Dances, featuring the legendary Steve Cropper and Donald 'Duck'.
1998 - To many of his fans, Eric Clapton's first album of regular studio material since 1989 was his best, the title track being an absolute blaster. Here he is live performing the song 13 years ago, the year of its release.
2000 - Its now 11 years since diva Ms. Diana Ross announced that she would reunite with the Supremes. The two members of the Supremes at the time had joined after Ross had left the trio. Of course it wasn't the original Supremes. Here they are in front of New York's 2000 Rockefeller Summer Stage. And tell me what those dancers were thinking. She sounds good, though.
