Author: Jim Feliciano

From the MCRFB music calendar:

Events on this date: MARCH 26

 

 

 

 

 

 

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1962: Elvis Presley begins filming his 11th motion picture, titled Girls! Girls! Girls!

1963: Funny Girl, opens on Broadway today, starring Barbra Streisand. It features the hits, “Don’t Rain On My Parade” and the song that would become her signature-song in popularity, “People.”

1964: Tonight on the CBS-TV’s I’ve Got A Secret panel show as guest, is former Beatles drummer Pete Best, whose “secret” is almost guessed immediately. When show-host Gary Moore asks Best why he left the group (Best was fired), he replied, “I thought I’d like to start a group of my own.”

1965: The Walker Brothers make their first UK television appearance, performing on ITV’s Ready Steady Go!

1969: Pat Boone guest-stars as himself on tonight’s Beverly Hillbillies episode, titled, Collard Greens An’ Fatback on the CBS Televison Network.

1970: Just days after winning a Grammy for Best Recording For Children with their album Peter, Paul, And Mommy, Peter, Paul and Mary are scandalously rocked when group leader Peter Yarrow is arrested in Washington D.C., for allegedly “taking immoral liberties” with a minor, a fourteen-year-old girl. He would serve three months and would later be given clemency by President Jimmy Carter.

1975: In London, the rock musical Tommy, based on the Who album bearing the same title name, makes it premier film debut today. Directed by Ken Russell, Who lead-singer Roger Daltry is cast in the title role, and co-starring are American actors Jack Nicholson and Ann Margaret. Guest stars includes Tina Turner and Elton John.

1976: Keith Richards and model-girlfriend Anita Pallenberg becomes the proud parents of a son, Tara. Sadly, he would die ten weeks later of pneumonia.

1976: Riding near the scene of a multi-car pileup in Memphis, Elvis Presley jumps out of his limo, displays his honorary Captain’s police badge given to him by the city, and attempts to help the victims until police and paramedics arrive.

1980: Pink Floyd’s landmark 1973 LP Dark Side Of The Moon surpasses Carole King’s Tapestry as the album with the longest consecutive stay on the Billboard 200 album chart. It would remain on the chart until 1988.

1985: After Stevie Wonder’s Oscar acceptance speech the previous night, at which he dedicated his Best Song Award to Nelson Mandela, South Africa bans all Stevie Wonder records from playing on it’s nation’s airwaves in response (oops).

Deaths: Little Willie John (of “Fever” fame) 1968; Duster Bennett (British blues singer; member John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers) 1976; Jon-Jon Paulos (The Buckinghams) 1980; Jan Berry (of Jan and Dean); 2004.

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And that’s a few of the events which took place in pop music history, on this day….

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From the MCRFB music calendar:

Events on this date: MARCH 25

 

 

 

 

 

 

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1958: reporting to Ft. Chafee, Arkansas by bus, Elvis Presley has his famous hair shorn off by an Army barber. For the occasion, the media was there with cameras in hand.

1961: Elvis Presley holds an afternoon press conference and, in the evening, performs the USS Arizona concert at Pearl Harbor’s Bloch Arena. The Presley performance raised $62,000 for the memorial dedicated to the 1,177 servicemen killed when the ship went down on December 7, 1941. It was to be his last concert appearance for eight years.

1965: After Eric Clapton quit the band, London session guitarist Jeff Beck joins the Yardbirds after being recommended by the group’s first choice, another session man named Jimmy Page.

1967: The Who plays their first American show at New York’s RKO Radio Theater.

1967: Cream arrive in the U.S. to begin their first North American tour.

1968: Roy Orbison marries his second wife, Barbara Wellhonen, in Nashville, Tennessee. They would remain married until Orbison’s death twenty-years later.

1969: A just-married John Lennon and Yoko Ono decide to use the press to promote an end to the Vietnam war, and all wars in general, during their honeymoon. The duo stay, fully clothed,  in their bed at the Amsterdam Hilton for the next four days, talking about peace to a cadre of largely skeptical reporters from around the world.

1971: New York radio station WNBC becomes the first to ban Brewer’s and Shipley’s hit “One Toke Over The Line” due to alleged marijuana references.

1976: Jackson Browne’s wife, Phyllis Major, commits suicide with sleeping pills just months after their marriage.

1983: Motown tapes an all-star concert at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium in Pasadena, California in order to celebrate Motown’s 25th year anniversary. Michael Jackson steals the show with his solo performance of his new single, Billie Jean, complete with moonwalk. That performance event alone catapults Jackson from superstar to megastar status worldwide overnight.

1985: Stevie Wonder wins his first Oscar for his theme to the film The Women In Red, entitled, “I Just Called To Say I Love You.”  Sixteen-years later to the day, Bob Dylan will win his first Oscar ever for his “Wonder Boys” song, “Things Have Changed.”

1989: The recording studio at Chuck Berry’s ranch at Wentzville, Missouri is destroyed by a fire, taking with it 13 of Berry’s unreleased songs.

Deaths: On this date, Bill Kerney (The Inkspots fame) 1978; Joe Schermie (Three Dog Night fame) 2001; Buck Owens (Country singer) 2008; Dan Seals (England Dan and John Ford Coley fame) 2009.

 

 

 

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And that’s just a few of the events which took place in pop music history, on this day….

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From the MCRFB music calendar:

Events on this date: MARCH 24

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1956: Elvis Presley visits friend and fellow Sun label mate Carl Perkins in a Dover, Delaware hospital, where he is recovering from his near-fatal crash.

1958: At 6:35 AM, Elvis Presley reports to the offices of Memphis’ local Draft Board 86, accompanied by his parents and longtime friend Lamar Fike, then is bused with twelve other new recruits to Kennedy Veterans Memorial Hospital.

There, Elvis is inducted into the U.S. Army, a Private with serial number 53 310  761. Dozens of photographers and reporters attend the event. He will serve two years, and his monthly payment for military service will be $78.00 per month.

1962: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards first perform together in Ealing, England on stage for the first time, with their first band, as Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys.

1965: While playing in Odense, Denmark, Rolling Stone bassist Bill Wyman is instantly knocked unconscious by a poorly grounded microphone stand while on stage.

1966: The first major U.S. bootleg law is passed in New York State, a bill that makes the processing of unlicensed recordings a misdemeanor. Twelve-years later to the day, Great Britain grants all their record companies the right to confiscate unauthorized recording duplicates, officially by law as illegal property of copyrighted materials.

1973: An overly-zealous male fan climbs onstage during a Lou Reed concert in Buffalo, New York, and plants a bite on one of Reed’s buttocks. The attendee-culprit who performed this unusual behavior was, not surprisingly, tossed out of the event immediately by the band’s security unit. Reed later remarked that, “America seems to breed real animals.”

2001: Macon, Georgia’s Hwy 19 is renamed Duane Allman Boulevard. The renaming of the stretch of highway running through Macon is in remembrance of the famed band member guitarist who was killed in a motorcycle accident there some thirty-years earlier.

2002: After a record fifteen nominations, Randy Newman wins his first Oscar for The Monster, Inc. composition “If I Didn’t Have You.” The number was awarded for Best Song.

Deaths: Harold Melvin (of the Blue Notes) 1997; Rod Price (Foghat) 2005; Henson Cargill (Country singer, 1968 “Skip A Rope” fame) 2007; Uriel Jones (Drummer, Funk Brothers) 2009.

 

 

 

 

And that’s just a few of the events which took place in pop music history, on this day . . . .  M  A  R  C  H   2  4

From the MCRFB music calendar:

Events on this date: MARCH 23

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1955: The juvenile-delinquent flick The Blackboard Jungle premiers in U.S. theaters. While it is a solid and even daring drama, its remembered mainly for prominently featuring Bill Haley and his Comets’ “Rock Around The Clock.” The single, which had been released to little fanfare a year earlier, rockets back into the charts and straight to No. 1, officially kicking off the birth of the rock and roll era.

1955: Elvis Presley, along with band mates Scotty Moore and Bill Black, audition for Arthur Godfrey’s Talents Scouts in New York with a surprisingly tepid version of “Milkcow Blues Boogie.” They are subsequently rejected.

1956: At a Frankie Lyman and the Teenagers concert in Hartford, Connecticut, eleven young hooligans are arrested for allegedly inciting a riot.

1960: Songwriter Carole King and husband and writing partner Gerry Goffin are proud parents to their first child, a daughter Carole named Louis.

1963: Dion, formerly of the Belmonts, take wed to his own “Runaround Sue,” and her name is, in actuality, Sue Butterfield.

1969: In response to the Doors infamous recent concert there ( at which Jim Morrison allegedly exposed himself before the audience), a “Rally For Decency” is held in Miami featuring Jackie Gleason, The Letterman, Kate Smith, and Anita Bryant and they were assured by its promoters that the crowd of 30,000 will contain “no longhairs and weird dressers.”

1970: Although the Beatles had abandoned the tracks originally cut for the Let It Be album, their business manager, Allen Klein, invites Phil Spector to remix the recordings. Spector’s tampering with the original recordings further alienates Paul McCartney from the band, who instead is working on his first solo album in the studio next room over.

1977: Elvis Presley begins what will be his last tour with a concert at Arizona State University.

1985: John Fogerty engineers an amazing comeback when his LP Centerfield goes No. 1, fifteen-years after after the breakup of his band, Creedence Clearwater Revival.

1985: Billy Joel marries supermodel Christie Brinkley on a boat in New York Harbor, near the Statue of Liberty. The marriage will last 10 years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And that’s just a few of the events which took place in pop music history, on this day . . . .  M  A  R  C  H   2  3

From the MCRFB music calendar:

Events on this date: MARCH 22

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1955: New York’s Coral Records hires   deejay Alan Freed for A&R duties. The recording company also gives Freed his own contract to record under his name.

1956: Sammy Davis, Jr., becomes an instant celebrity when he stars in the Broadway play Mr. Wonderful.

1958: The eight-year old Hank Williams, Jr. makes his first stage appearance in Swainsboro, Georgia.

1962: 19-year-old Barbara Streisand becomes an instant celebrity when she stars in the Broadway play I Can Get It For You Wholesale.

1963: EMI releases the Beatles album Please Please Me in the United Kingdom.

1967: Elvis Presley begins filming his 25th movie, Clambake, in Los Angeles.

1967: The Who makes it first U.S. stage debut, performing at the Paramount in New York City.

1971: The Allman Brothers are arrested at a truck stop in Jackson, Alabama, and are charge with possession of marijuana and heroin.

1975: Barry Manilow makes his first U.S. television appearance today. Manilow performs “Mandy” and “It’s A Miracle” on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand on ABC-TV.

1976: While campaigning for the presidency, Jimmy Carter tells the National Association of Records Merchandisers that he listened to Bob Dylan, Grateful Dead, and Led Zeppelin while he was Governor of Georgia.

1977: ABC-TV airs the John Denver special Thank God I’m A Country Boy.

1978: The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash, a Beatles parody special that grew out of sketches on the ex-Monty Python member Eric Idol’s show Rutland Weekend Television, get it’s first U.S. airing on ABC-TV.

1979: Chaka Kahn gives birth to her second child, Damien Milton Patrick Holland.

1994: Ted Nugent makes a PSA warning kids of the dangers of abusing inhalants.

1997: Paul McCartney’s original birth certificate is sold to a private Beatles collector for $84, 146.00.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And that’s just a few of the events which took place in pop music history, on this day . . . .  M   A  R  C  H   2  2

From the MCRFB music calendar:

Events on this date: MARCH 21

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1952: At the Cleveland arena, influential (notably R&B) deejay Alan Freed holds what is considered today the first true “rock and roll concert,” as his Moondog Coronation Ball features Billy Ward and the Dominoes, Tiny Grimes, and Paul Williams and the Hucklebuckers. With ten-thousand attendees (and twice that many outside waiting to get in), the Cleveland police shut down the concert down prematurely for potential fire code violations, causing a near riot.

1956: After performing in Norfolk, Virginia, while en route to New York to appear on the Perry Como Show, Carl Perkins is badly injured in a Dover, Delaware car crash that also kills his manager and his brother Jay Perkins. The crash derails Perkin’s career, almost for good, as he is forced to spend nine months in a hospital nursing a fractured neck, broken collarbone, as he suffered a severe concussion as well. In the meantime, while Perkins was on his extended recovery mend, Elvis Presley takes on Perkin’s own hit, “Blue Suede Shoes” in 1956. The Presley version becomes more popular on the charts than the Carl Perkins Sun records release, who incidentally, wrote the song.

1961: The Beatles, still featuring Pete Best on the drums, play their first evening gig at Liverpool’s Cavern Club, opened for a band called the Bluegenes (later renamed the Swinging Blue Jeans of “Hippy Hippy Shake” fame).

1964: Judy Collins is catapulted into stardom after a momentous appearance at New York’s Carnegie Hall.

1967: John Lennon takes his first major LSD trip and ‘freaks out’ while recording backing vocals on the track “It’s Getting Better.” Producer George Martin, not realizing the effects of the drug, takes Lennon for air on the roof of Abbey Road Studios. Paul and George, upon learning where John was, rush up to get him down. The group resumes more work on a piano track for “Lovely Rita” instead.

1973: After a large throng of teenage girls cause a riot as teen-heartthrob David Cassidy performs on the BBC show Top Of The Pops, the program bans all teen idols from performing on future shows.

1976: David Bowie and Iggy Pop are arrested in New York and are charged with marijuana possession, of which charges are later dropped.

1984: John Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, dedicates a section of New York City’s Central Park as a place of meditation called Strawberry Fields. Every December 9, thousands of fans converge on the spot to remember John Lennon, who was murdered by a deranged fan on that day in 1980.

1990: Tony Orlando is awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame at 6385 Hollywood Boulevard.

1994: Bruce Springsteen wins an Oscar for penning the song “Streets Of Philadelphia” for the Tom Hanks movie as titled, Philadelphia.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And that’s just a few of the events which took place in pop music history, on this day….