Category: Music

Today in 1967, bowing down to popular music, the BBC began its Radio 1:

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Proving that there is no accounting for taste, here is Britain’s number one single today in 1963:

Five years later, record buyers made a much better choice:

The number one U.S. album on the same day was “Time Peace: The Rascals Greatest Hits”:

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The Police had a request today in 1980:

That same day, David Bowie’s “Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)” was Britain’s number one album:

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The number one song today in 1960:

The number one song today in 1964:

Today in 1965, Roger Daltrey was fired from The Who after he punched out drummer Keith Moon. Fortunately for Daltrey and the Who, he was unfired the next day. (Daltrey and Pete Townshend reportedly have had more fistfights than Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier.)

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The number one song today in 1965 was this pleasant-sounding, upbeat ditty:

That was on the same day that ABC-TV premiered a cartoon, “The Beatles”:

The number one British song today in 1968:

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We begin with an odd moment today in 1962: Elvis Presley’s manager, Col. Tom Parker, declined an invitation on Presley’s behalf for an appearance before the Royal Family. Declining wasn’t due to conflicting film schedules (the stated reason) or anti-royalism — it was because Parker was an illegal immigrant to the U.S. from the Netherlands (his real name was  Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk), and he was afraid he wouldn’t be allowed back into the U.S.

Number one in Britain today in 1964:

Number one in Britain …

… and in the U.S. today in 1983:

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The number one song today in 1957:

The number one song today in 1967:

Today in 1969, the Northern Star, the Northern Illinois University student newspaper, passed on the rumor that Paul McCartney had died in a car crash in 1966 and been impersonated in public ever since then.  A Detroit radio station picked up the rumor, and then McCartney himself had to appear in public to report that, to quote Mark Twain, rumors of his death had been exaggerated.

(Thirty-five years to the day later, in 2004, Slipknot’s Corey Taylor issued a statement denying his death after a Des Moines radio station announced he had died from a drug overdose, then correcting to say Taylor had died in a car crash.)

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Britain’s number one song today in 1964:

Today in 1967, a few days after their first and last appearance on CBS-TV’s “Ed Sullivan Show,” the Doors appeared on the Murray the K show on WPIX-TV in New York:

Today in 1969, ABC-TV premiered “Music Scene” against CBS-TV’s “Gunsmoke” and NBC-TV’s “Laugh-In”:

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First, the song of the day …

… whose writer upon hearing the open called it the happiest song of all time.

The number one song today in 1959 was a one-hit wonder …

… as was the number one song today in 1968 …

… as was the number one British song today in 1974 …

… but not over here:

The number one song today in 1985:

Today in 2001, ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC and 31 cable channels all carried “America: A Tribute to Heroes,” a 9/11 tribute and telethon:

The first of the three birthdays today is not from rock and roll, but it is familiar to high school bands across the U.S. and beyond:

Don Felder of the Eagles:

Tyler Stewart, drummer of the Barenaked Ladies: