Today in 1987, a Kentucky teacher lost her U.S. Supreme Court appeal over her firing for showing Pink Floyd’s movie “The Wall” to her class over its language and sexual content.
The number 14 single today in 1958 was this singer’s first entry on the charts, and certainly not his last:
Today in 1967, the Beatles’ “Hello Goodbye” promotional film (now called a “video”) was shown on CBS-TV’s Ed Sullivan Show. It was not shown in Britain because of a musicians’ union ban on miming:
One death of odd note, today in 1973: John Rostill, former bass player with the Shadows (with which Cliff Richard got his start), was electrocuted in his home recording studio. A newspaper headline read: “Pop musician dies; guitar apparent cause.”
Today in 1969, John Lennon returned his Member of the Order of the British Empire medal as, in his accompanying note, “a protest against Britain’s involvement in the Nigeria-Biafra thing, against our support of America in Vietnam and against ‘Cold Turkey’ slipping down the charts.”
Today in 1976, The Band gave its last performance, commemorated in Martin Scorsese’s film “The Last Waltz”:
The only birthday worth mentioning today is Percy Sledge:
There is no record I can find for the specific birthday, other than November, for Dennis Coffey. But Coffey wrote a ’70s instrumental that deserves his mention sometime this month:
One death of odd note today in 1974: Nick Drake, a 26-year-old singer/songwriter, of an overdose of an antidepressant. Two years before his death, Drake recorded an album, “Pink Moon,” that is apparently considered a classic in Britain. Twenty-six years after Drake’s death, Volkswagen used the title track, “Pink Moon,” in a TV ad, and within a month Drake had posthumously sold more records than he sold in the previous 30 years.