1956 - Carl Perkins was almost fatally injured in an automobile accident near Wilmington, Delaware, while on his way to New York City to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show. Perkins had to spend several months in the hospital. By the time he was well enough to resume his career, Elvis Presley had covered his hit "Blue Suede Shoes," and Perkins never really rebounded.
1965 - Bob Dylan released album Bringing It All Back Home. This is the point where Dylan eclipses any conventional sense of folk and rewrites the rules of rock, making it safe for personal expression and poetry, not only making words mean as much as the music, but making the music an extension of the words. A truly remarkable album. The album's iconic cover, features Sally Grossman, wife of Dylan's manager Albert Grossman, lounging in the background. The artefacts scattered around the room include vinyl LPs by The Impressions and Robert Johnson.
1969 - Two days after their wedding in Gibraltar, John Lennon and Yoko Ono began their "Bed-in," inviting members of the media into their Amsterdam hotel room where they were promoting peace with songs, signs and dialogue. The events captured in song on "The Ballad of John and Yoko."
1971 - John Lennon releases "Power to the People" in the US. He said of the song: "I wrote 'Power to the People' the same way I wrote 'Give Peace A Chance,' as something for the people to sing. I make singles like broadsheets. It was another quickie."
1974 - The Eagles released On the Border the first Eagles album to feature guitarist Don Felder. Like most successful groups, the Eagles combined many different elements (hard rock, modern bluegrass, and a Tom Waits cover) which looked back to their earlier work and anticipated their later work. A hidden message carved into the run out groove of some vinyl LPs reads: "He who hesitates is lunch".
1976 - While campaigning for U.S. President, Jimmy Carter tells NARM (The National Association of Record Merchandisers) that he listened to Dylan, Grateful Dead, and Led Zeppelin while Governor of Georgia.
1978 - The Beatles' parody 'The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash' aired on NBC with Eric Idle, Neil Innes, etc. Coming out a full 4 years before This Is Spinal Tap, it was considered the first Rock Mockumentary. The originally fictional band, was originally created by Eric Idle and Neil Innes for a sketch in Idle's mid-1970s BBC television comedy series Rutland Weekend Television. Additional actors in the special included Dan Aykroyd as the man who turned down the Rutles; John Belushi as Ron Decline (a parody of Allen Klein); Bill Murray as "Bill Murray the K"; Gilda Radner as a reluctant street interviewee; George Harrison as a TV reporter; Mick Jagger and Paul Simon as themselves;[5] Michael Palin as Eric Manchester (a parody of Beatles press agent Derek Taylor); Ron Wood as a biker; Lorne Michaels as a man who wants to merchandise the Rutles; Al Franken and Tom Davis as Ron Decline employees. (Photo by Steve Spatafore/Getty Images)
1980 - Pink Floyd tops the charts with "Another Brick In The Wall (part II)," which stays a total of four weeks. It's a rare hit single for the band, whose only other Top 40 appearance is "Money," which hit #13 in 1973. Producer Bob Ezrin has transformed the band's original minute-and-a-half demo recording into a multi-tracked masterpiece, using cutting-edge studio technology to physically copy and paste the tape to increase the length of the song. His inspired decision to add a choir of London school children to pad out the second verse (following his use of a similar format on Alice Cooper's hit "School's Out") leads to the band's biggest ever commercial single success.
Birthdays:
Stephen Sondheim is 91. He has won an Academy Award, eight Tony Awards (more than any other composer), eight Grammys, A Pulitzer and the 2015 Presidential Medal Of Freedom.
Keith Relf, lead singer of The Yardbirds, was born today in 1943.
George Benson, jazz guitarist, is 78.
Andrew Lloyd Webber is 73.
On This Day In Music History are is sourced from This Day in Music, Paul Shaffer's Day in Rock, Song Facts, Allmusic and Wikipedia.