1968 - Simon and Garfunkel release "Mrs. Robinson." Simon began writing this as "Mrs. Roosevelt," and had just the line, "Here's to you, Mrs. Roosevelt" when he changed it to "Mrs. Robinson" for The Graduate.
According to Art Garfunkel, this song may never have been recorded had it not been for The Graduate director Mike Nichols, who asked the duo for songs for his film. Garfunkel said that at the time, the tune was "A trifle song we were about to throw out," but when Nichols heard this early version, he heard something in it and asked Simon to adapt it for the film.
It eventually topped the charts.
1968 - Dance to the Music, the second studio album from Sly & the Family Stone, is released. They came into their own on this one. This is exuberant music, bursting with joy and invention. If there's a shortage of classic material, with only the title track being a genuine classic, that winds up being nearly incidental, since it's so easy to get sucked into the freewheeling spirit and cavalier virtuosity of the group.
1987 - U2 make the cover of Time magazine with the headline "Rock's Hottest Ticket."
2003 - Iggy Pop reunited with the Stooges for the first time in 30 years to close out the Coachella festival. Originally formed in 1967 in Ann Arbor, Mich., the Stooges sold few records in their original incarnation, and they often performed for indifferent or hostile audiences, but they’re nevertheless widely regarded as instrumental in the rise of punk rock, as well as influential to alternative rock, heavy metal and rock music at large.
2006 - 62-year-old Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones falls out of a palm tree while vacationing in Fiji and goes to the hospital with a concussion, creating a rare news event on the island. According to his autobiography he was in a tree drying off after a swim and lost his grip on a branch.
A few days later he was rushed to New Zealand to be operated on. It turns out he had intracranial hemorrhaging. (Photo by Ian Gavan/Getty Images)
2012 - Bob Dylan received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama, which is the highest honor awarded to a United States civilian citizen. Dylan was only the 29th musician to receive the award. Previous recipients had included Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin, and Irving Berlin.
Birthdays:
Casey Kasem was born on this day in 1932. As the co-creator and host of American Top 40, one of radio's most enduring institutions, he delivered the biggest hits in the U.S. for ages; at one time, he was heard on more than 1,000 radio stations worldwide. Kasem was also famous for his voice-acting career, most notably for his long stint as the goofy, gluttonous, and easily scared Shaggy of the Scooby-Doo cartoon franchise.
Kate Pierson of The B-52's is 75. Growing up in New Jersey, Pierson was a serious Bob Dylan fan in junior high, and was a member of a local folk group that specialized in protest material. However, Pierson's tastes expanded to include rock & roll after the Beatles made their way to America.
cheerfully countercultural Pierson left New Jersey for Athens, Georgia in the '70s, where she hoped to do "a back-to-the-land thing, raise goats and be out in the country." But fate had other plans; in 1976, Pierson made friends with a handful of Athens bohemians named Fred Schneider, Keith Strickland, Cindy Wilson, and Ricky Wilson, and one evening after a party at a Chinese restaurant turned into a jam session, they decided to form the B-52's.
On This Day In Music History was sourced from This Day in Music, Allmusic, Song Facts and Wikipedia.