I present the number one single today in 1977 to demonstrate that popularity and quality are not always synonymous:
The number one single today in 1983:
Today in 2004, the Lord Mayor of Melbourne officially opened AC/DC Lane, named for the band, to the bagpipes from …
Birthdays begin with actor Richard Harris, who “sang” …
My high school political science teacher posted on his blog:
In “A Cheap, Easy High—With No Side Effects” Patrick Kurp refers to Terry Teachout’s “post devoted to the music he listens to whenever he feels ‘the urgent need to upgrade my mood.’ He writes, ‘I’ve always found music to be one of the most potent means of attitude adjustment known to man,’ and his experience jibes with mine. …. Music’s impact is prompt and unambiguous. In contrast, literature is an oral ingestion of medicine compared to the intravenous immediacy of music.” Kurp goes on to list some of the works of literature that invariably lift his mood. For instance:
- Most anything by…P.G. Wodehouse
- Thomas Traherne’s Centuries of Meditation
- Tristram Shandy, especially the scenes with Uncle Toby and the Widow Wadman
- The essays of Joseph Epstein and Guy Davenport
- Jonathan Swift’s “A Description of a City Shower” and “The Lady’s Dressing Room”
Teachout’s list of music that provides “a cheap, easy high” is long. A few of the many he listed:
- Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Lookin’ Out My Back Door”
- The Band’s “Up on Cripple Creek”
- Elgar’s Cockaigne Overture
- Gershwin’s An American in Paris
- Copland’s “Buckaroo Holiday” (from Rodeo)
- The Who’s “Shakin’ All Over” (from Live at Leeds)
- Sidney Bechet’s 1932 recording of “Maple Leaf Rag”
- Mendelssohn’s Rondo capriccioso
- The first movement of Mozart’s A Major Piano Concerto, K. 488
- Steely Dan’s “My Old School”
- Flatt and Scruggs’ “Farewell Blues”
- Bill Monroe’s “Rawhide”
- The first movement of Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony
- Johann Strauss’s Fledermaus Overture
- Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Three little maids from school are we” (from The Mikado)
- Pretty much anything by Count Basie, Erroll Garner, Fats Waller, Haydn, or John Philip Sousa
In case you haven’t heard of them, I linked to them up to the last bullet point:
(Side note: A lot of Wisconsin high schools use “On Wisconsin,” when they could use a Sousa march as their fight song.)
Teachout also listed (and I have linked to):
The number eight song today in 1958:
Today in 1967, the Beatles mixed “I Am the Walrus,” which combined three songs John Lennon had been writing. The song includes the sounds of a radio going up and down the dial, ending at a BBC presentation of William Shakespeare’s “King Lear.” Lennon had read that a teacher at his primary school was having his students analyze Beatles lyrics, Lennon reportedly added one nonsensical verse, although arguably none of the verses make much sense:
The number 71 …
… number 51 …
… number 27 …
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… number eight …
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… number three …
… and number one singles today in 1973:
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”:
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:
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.)
The number one song today in 1965 was this pleasant-sounding, upbeat ditty guaranteed to leave a smile on your face:
That was on the same day that ABC-TV premiered a cartoon, “The Beatles”:
The number one British song today in 1968:
Today in 1970 was the premiere of a sitcom based on the Cowsills:
Unlike the Cowsills, only two members of the on-camera Partridge Family performed with the Partridge Family band (which were a group of session musicians): David Cassidy, who sang lead, and Shirley Jones, who sang backup vocals.
Today in 1975, singer Jackie Wilson suffered a heart attack while singing “Lonely Teardrops” in a casino in New Jersey. The heart attack caused brain damage, and Wilson died in 1984.
Today in 1982, viewers of NBC-TV’s “Saturday Night Live” got to see Queen:
Today in 1989, viewers of “Saturday Night Live” got to see Neil Young:
Britain’s number one single today in 2006 wasn’t from a British act (though the song was written by Elton John):
Birthdays start with John Locke (not the philosopher) of Spirit:
Owen “Onnie” McIntyre of the Average White Band:
Burleigh Drummond played, what else, drums for Ambrosia:
Two deaths of note: today in 1980, John “Bonzo” Bonham, drummer for Led Zeppelin, died of a vodka overdose:
Today in 1999, Stephen Canaday of the Ozark Mountain Daredevils died when his World War II plane stalled and crashed into a tree:
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:
Would Buddy Holly have a number one song? Some might have said before 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.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 