Today in 1964, EMI Records rejected a group called the Hi-Numbers after its audition. Who? That’s the group’s current name:
Today in 1964, EMI Records rejected a group called the Hi-Numbers after its audition. Who? That’s the group’s current name:
The number one song today in 1957 …
… came from a just-opened movie:
The number one song today in 1967:
Today in 1960, Roy Orbison had his first number one single:
Today in 1962, the number one single in the U.S. was a song banned by the BBC:
The number one single today in 1973 …
… which bumped off this classic …
… which made an eight-year-old TV viewer’s eyes nearly pop out of his head.
Today in 1977, four members of Lynyrd Skynyrd and two others were killed when their plane crashed near McComb, Miss.:
We begin with one of the stranger episodes of live radio, Arthur Godfrey’s on-air firing of one of his singers today in 1953:
The number 28 song today in 1959 was customized for sales in 28 markets, including Buffalo, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Detroit, New Orleans, New York, Pittsburgh and San Francisco:
That was 27 positions lower than number one:
The number one British album today in 1967 was not the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”; it was the soundtrack to “The Sound of Music,” two years after the movie was released, on the soundtracks’ 137th week on the charts:
The number one song today in 1969:
Britain’s number one single today in 1979 probably would have gotten no American notice had it not been for the beginning of MTV a year later:
The number one album today in 1986 was Huey Lewis and the News’ “Fore”:
The City of Los Angeles declared today in 1990 “Rocky Horror Picture Show Day” in honor of the movie’s 15th anniversary, so …
The number one song today in 1960:
The number one song today in 1964:
The number one song today in 1970:
What an appropriate number one single today in 1964:
The number one single today in 1966:
Today in 1971, Rick Nelson was booed at Madison Square Garden in New York when he dared to sing new material at a concert. The reaction to his not singing what the crowd wanted to hear prompted him to write …
If I told you the number one British album today in 1983 was “Genesis,” I would have given you the artist and the title:
The number one song today in 1957 was the Everly Brothers’ first number one:
The number one British single today in 1960 was a song originally written in German sung by an American:
The number one album today in 1967 is about an event that supposedly took place on my birthday:
The number one British album today in 1973 was the Rolling Stones’ “Goats Head Soup,” despite (or perhaps because of) the BBC’s ban of one of its songs, “Star Star”:
Who shares a birthday with my brother (who celebrated his sixth birthday, on a Friday the 13th, by getting chicken pox from me)? Start with Paul Simon:
Robert Lamm plays keyboards — or more accurately, the keytar — for Chicago:
Sammy Hagar:
Craig McGregor of Foghat:
John Ford Coley, formerly a duet with England Dan Seals:
Rob Marche played guitar for the Jo Boxers, who …
One death of note: Ed Sullivan, whose Sunday night CBS-TV show showed off rock and roll (plus Topo Gigio and Senor Wences) to millions, died today in 1974: