The number one British album today in 1968 was the Beatles’ “White Album”:
The number one single today in 1974:
Today in 1983, Dennis Wilson dived under a friend’s boat for the third time moored in Marina Del Rey, Calif., to retrieve items he’d thrown overboard years earlier. Unlike the first two times, Wilson didn’t survive the third dive.
Today in 2005, the British radio station Planet Rock released the results of its poll of 58,000 listeners of the greatest rock acts of all time, counted down from 10 to one:
Birthdays begin with Roebuck “Pop” Staples, founder of the Staple Singers:
Today in 1963, the London Times’ music critics named John Lennon and Paul McCartney Outstanding Composers of 1963. Two days later, Sunday Times music critic Richard Buckle named Lennon and McCartney “the greatest composers since Beethoven.”
The number one album today in 1969 was “Led Zeppelin II” …
… the same day that the number one single was this group’s last:
The number one single today in 1975:
The number one British album today in 1975 was Queen’s “A Night at the Opera,” then the most expensive rock album ever produced:
The number one album today in 1975 for the third consecutive week was “Chicago IX,” which was actually “Chicago’s Greatest Hits”:
The number one album today in 1980 was John Lennon’s “Double Fantasy”:
And now for Today’s Ironic Moment in Rock History: Today in 1983, Walter Scott, lead singer of Bob Kuban and the In-Men, was seen alive for the last time.
Scott’s decomposed, tied-up body was found floating in a cistern in April 1987. Scott’s wife’s boyfriend was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Scott’s wife was convicted of hindering prosecution and was sentenced to five years in prison.
Birthdays begin with Scotty Moore, Elvis Presley’s first guitarist and the man said to be the first lead guitarist of rock and roll:
Mike Pinder of the Moody Blues:
Mick Jones of Foreigner:
Larry Byrom of Steppenwolf:
One death of note today in 2008: Delaney Bramlett of Delaney and Bonnie and Friends:
Today in 1963, Capitol Records, which had previously rejected the U.S. rights to every Beatles single until then, finally released a double single, the first half of which had already reached number one in the United Kingdom:
One year later, guess which group had their sixth number one of the year.
Today in 1967, BBC TV broadcasted the Beatles’ “Magical Mystery Tour” movie:
The movie got terrible reviews, perhaps because it was shown in black and white instead of in color (or “colour” as the Brits spell it). As a result, plans to show it in the U.S. were shelved. It didn’t make U.S. theaters until 1974 and U.S. TV until the 1980s.
Also today in 1967, the Dave Brubeck Quartet decided to take five permanently:
Would you have spent $5 to see this concert in Denver today in 1968?
The number one single today in 1970:
The number one album today in 1979 was Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”:
The number one album today in 1981 was AC/DC’s “For Those About to Rock We Salute You”:
Who shares a birthday with my father, my brother-in-law and my late aunt? First, Steve Allen:
Starting shortly after my birth, my parents purchased Christmas albums for $1 from an unlikely place, tire stores.
(That’s as unusual as getting, for instance, glasses every time you filled up at your favorite gas station, but older readers might remember that too, back in the days when gas stations were usually part of a car repair place, not a convenience store.)
The albums featured contemporary artists from the ’60s, plus opera singers and other artists.
These albums were played on my parents’ wall-length Magnavox hi-fi player.
Playing these albums was as annual a ritual as watching “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas,” “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” or other holiday-season appointment TV.
Those albums began my, and then our, collection of Christmas music.
You may think some of these singers are unusual choices to sing Christmas music. (This list includes at least six Jewish singers.)
Of course, Christians know that Jesus Christ was Jewish.
And I defy any reader to find anyone who can sing “Silent Night” like Barbra Streisand did in the ’60s.
These albums are available for purchase online, but record players are now as outmoded as, well, getting glasses with your fill-up at the gas station.
But thanks to YouTube and other digital technology, other aficionados of this era of Christmas music now can have their music preserved for their current and future enjoyment.
The tire-store-Christmas-album list has been augmented by both earlier and later works.
In the same way I think no one can sing “Silent Night” like Barbra Streisand, I think no one can sing “Do You Hear What I Hear” like Whitney Houston:
This list contains another irony — an entry from “A Christmas Gift for You,” Phil Spector’s Christmas album. (Spector’s birthday is Christmas.)
The album should have been a bazillion-seller, and perhaps would have been had it not been for the date of its initial release: Nov. 22, 1963.
Finally, here’s a previous iteration of one of the currently coolest TV traditions — “The Late Show with David Letterman” and its annual appearance of Darlene Love (from the aforementioned Phil Spector album):
Today in 1954, R&B singer Johnny Ace had a concert at the City Auditorium in Houston. Between sets, Ace was playing with a revolver. When someone in the room said, “Be careful with that thing,” Ace replied, “It’s OK, the gun’s not loaded. See?” And pointed the gun at his head, and pulled the trigger. And found out he was wrong.
The number one album today in 1965 was the Beatles’ “Rubber Soul”:
If you think accidentally blowing your brains out is a strange way to celebrate Christmas, this isn’t much better: Today in 1973, Tom Johnson of the Doobie Brothers was arrested in Visalia, Calif., for (irony alert) possession of marijuana. Johnson’s court date was set for Jan. 10, the scheduled release for his group’s next album (irony alert II), “What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits”:
The number one album today in 1976 was the Eagles’ “Hotel California”:
The number one single today in 1988:
The short list of birthdays begin with Lee Dorsey, who was …
Jan Akkerman of Focus:
Ricky Martin:
Two other deaths of note today: Zeke Carey of the Flamingos in 1999 …
… and Nick Massi of the Four Seasons today in 2000:
Seasonally appropriate music (in contrast to what was here) next hour.
For those who didn’t notice (or are engaged in being contrarian), Christmas is Sunday.
I can’t believe you didn’t notice, because the media has inundated us with reminders of Christmas for months — literally, in the case of radio stations that started playing all-Christmas music around Halloween. During that time, those radio stations lose my listenership, because all-Christmas music is appropriately starting around today and lasting through Christmas.
Part of the reason for my assertion is that there really isn’t that much good Christmas music. In fact, the subset of good Christmas music, whether religious or secular, is a very small part of the total amount of Christmas music. (Examples of that very small subset can be seen in this space tomorrow.)
Back in 2002, the Music Choice channel analyzed every British number one Christmas song from the previous three decades to identify reasons for their success. The common criteria included sleigh bells, singing children, church bells and references to love. The “perfect” Christmas hit, they concluded, was …
That would be Britain’s idea of a “perfect” Christmas hit, because it did not make Mediaguide’s list of this country’s top 100 Christmas songs of all time. That’s OK, though, because only 20 of those songs on Mediaguide’s list would make my list of top Christmas songs or performances.
My definition of bad Christmas music is unfortunately like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famous definition of pornography: he knows it when he sees it, and I know it when I hear it. (Unlike my definition of bad music, which is at least partly objective.) This abomination will make a Scrooge or a Grinch out of anyone:
Part of my disdain for most Christmas music is a disconnect between song and performer. Gloria Estefan is a great talent, but she’s Cuban and from Miami, so having her sing “Let It Snow” is a non sequitur. And if you don’t like the act when it performs anything else (say, Celine Dion), why listen to its Christmas work (say, Dion’s “The Christmas Song”) I am not a fan of “The Little Drummer Boy,” so when Bob Seger gravels his way through it, it’s time to select something else.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Duane Dudek believes the aforementioned advent (get it?) of all-Christmas radio programming has actually hurt the cause of Christmas music:
In 1994 Bill Clinton was president, the Dow Jones average reached a record 3,900 points and Mariah Carey was 24 and released the album “Merry Christmas,” which has since sold more than 15 million copies and is believed to be the bestselling Christmas album in the world.
Today the single from that album, “All I Want for Christmas,” is radio’s 12th-most played holiday song, according to data collected between Oct. 1 and Dec. 12 by Mediaguide, which measures song and advertising radio airplay.
It is the last new song to enter the list, behind 11th-ranked “Blue Christmas” by Elvis Presley. …
Carey’s song originally was released “just as the all-holiday format started to take hold” on radio, and is “the newest of the now (holiday) standards,” Sean Ross, executive editor for Radio-Info.com, wrote in an email.
It signaled an “end of the era” when radio was used to introduce new holiday songs, he said.
Ross said holiday songs “used to be between-the-albums knockoffs for major artists.”
Today they are intended to keep “a ‘no longer on the radio’ or ‘never on the radio’ artist on the radar. The goal is to sell albums, not singles, and to maximize your chances with radio, which won’t play many new holiday songs but might play a new version of a standard.”
The media goes far beyond Christmas music, of course. I was one year old when my favorite Christmas-themed TV show premiered (which has to be preceded by something long-time TV viewers will recognize):
“The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” is simply brilliant from beginning to end. Dr. Seuss wrote it, of course. It was directed by Chuck Jones of the Looney Tunes works of art. Boris Karloff narrates. And Thurl Ravenscroft, the voice of Tony the Tiger, sings the most recognizable song:
It is no accident that “Grinch,” “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” the “Frosty the Snowman” cartoon and the stop-motion-animation “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” show up on the TV schedule every year. All of those were 1960s creations, and yet they were better done than anything comparable today. (If you want to get a politician mad at you, call him the Burgermeister Meisterburger to his face.)
Other Christmas media I avoid like the plague is the Christmas-themed episode of your favorite TV series. The most famous was for a show that I was not allowed to watch in its late ’60s iteration:
The worst … well, it may be the worst two hours in the history of communication:
The advent of VCRs and DVD players allowed people to stockpile their favorite Christmas movies. The two favorites around here are …
“A Christmas Story,” based on Jean Shepherd’s In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash, is the funniest thing Darren McGavin ever did, and a movie former children and parents can relate to, for such scenes as saying something you shouldn’t say in front of your parents:
You can tell McGavin was having the time of his life playing the father, veering between studied ironic underreaction (“You look like a deranged Easter bunny”), unusual enthusiasms (his “frah-GEE-lay” leg lamp), and his never-ending expletives-deleted battles with his house’s furnace and the neighborhood stray dogs. When the aforementioned dogs swipe the Christmas turkey, the father does what all fathers must do in times of crisis — use his brain to devise a solution, such as finding the only restaurant that would possibly be open on Christmas Day.
Another reality of parenting is demonstrated in “Christmas Vacation.” Clark Griswold seeks the perfect Christmas for his family — a blot-out-the-sun Christmas tree (what happened to the Wagon Queen Family Truckster, by the way?), having both sides of the family over for Christmas dinner, and the announcement of the swimming pool paid for by his Christmas bonus. And, of course, everything goes horribly wrong.
Both movies demonstrate a parental reality as well — certain occasions are best handled when either drinking or hung over. That includes when the following presents are opened:
Today in 1964, a group of would-be DJs launched the pirate radio station Radio London from a former U.S. minesweeper anchored 3½ miles off Frinton-on-the-Sea, England.
It’s probably unrelated, but on the same day Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys had a nervous breakdown on a flight from Los Angeles to Houston. Wilson left the band to focus on writing and producing, with Glen Campbell replacing him for concerts.
The pernicious influence of unions reared its ugly head today in 1966, when Britain’s ITV broadcast its final “Ready, Steady, Go!” because of a British musicians’ union’s ban on miming. The final show featured Mick Jagger, The Who, Eric Burdon, the Spencer Davis Group, Donovan and Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich.
Today in 1985, after drinking beer, smoking marijuana and listening for hours to the Judas Priest album “Stained Class,” Raymond Belknap and James Vance shot themselves at a school playground. Belknap died, while Vance lived for three more years after shooting away his jaw, mouth and nose.
The band was sued for putting subliminal messages on the album, which band member Glenn Tipton denied doing, saying, “If we were going to do that then we might put messages saying, ‘Buy 10 more of these albums,’ but why would we tell our record buyers to kill themselves?”
The number one single today in 1989:
Birthdays begin with Esther Phillips:
Eugene Record of the Chi-Lites:
Jorma Kaukonen of the Jefferson Airplane:
Ron Bushy of one-incredibly-long-hit-wonder Iron Butterfly:
Ariel Bender of Mott the Hoople:
Dave Murray of Iron Maiden:
Who is Edward Louis Stevenson III? Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam …
… who was born the same day as Saul “Slash” Hudson of Guns N Roses:
One death of note today in 2008: Songwriter Clint Ballard Jr.:
Proving that there is no accounting for taste, I present the number one song today in 1958:
The number one single today in 1962 was by a group whose name was sort of a non sequitur given that the group came from a country that lacks the meteorological phenomenon of the group’s title:
The number one single today in 1963:
The number one British album today in 1973 was Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”:
Birthdays begin with Barry Jenkins, drummer of the Animals:
Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick:
Robin and Maurice Gibb, two-thirds of the Bee Gees:
Two deaths of note today: Joe Strummer of The Clash in 2002 …
… and songwriter Dennis Linde, writer of one of Elvis Presley’s last hits, in 2006:
Today in 1969, the Supremes made their last TV appearance together on CBS-TV’s Ed Sullivan Shew, with a somewhat ironic selection:
Today in 1970, Army veteran Elvis Presley volunteered himself as a soldier in the war on drugs, delivering a letter to the White House. Earlier that day, the head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration had declined Presley’s request to volunteer, saying that only the president could overrule him.
If I say the number one album today in 1985 is “Heart,” I have given you artist and title:
The number one single today in 1985:
Also today in 1985, Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” passed Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” to become the album with the second longest stay in the Billboard Top 10, behind only “The Sound of Music” soundtrack:
The number one British single today in 1991 was originally released 16 years earlier:
The number one British single today in 1996 was a memorial for the children and teacher killed in the Dunblane, Scotland, massacre:
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 