1969 - Billy Preston arrives at Apple Studios, where he helps The Beatles complete the Let It Be album. They knew Preston from 1962 when he was a member of Little Richard's backing group. Preston gives them a musical jolt but more importantly provides a buffer for their infighting - George Harrison had quit the group 12 days earlier.
1981 - The John Lennon tribute issue of Rolling Stone is published with the famous Annie Leibovitz photo of a naked Lennon embracing a fully-clothed Yoko Ono.
Leibovitz showed them a sketch of the pose she had in mind. John and Yoko gave it a go, he wearing nothing and she fully clothed. When Leibovitz showed them a Polaroid, Lennon said it captured their relationship exactly. That night, Lennon was shot and killed outside the building.
1983 - The Clash peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart with "Rock the Casbah" which was their first and only top ten single in the U.S. Drummer Topper Headon wrote the music and the original lyrics.
Joe Strummer decided to take Headon's lyrics in a different direction. According to former Clash co-manager Kosmo Vinyl, Headon's original words were a filthy ode to his girlfriend.
Strummer told Rolling Stone: "I started to think about what someone had told me earlier, that you get lashed for owning a disco album in Iran." This served as inspiration for the rest of the lyrics, about the people defying the Arab ruler (Shareef)'s ban on disco music and "Rocking the Casbah."
1991 - Sting releases his third album, The Soul Cages. Reeling from the loss of his parents, Sting constructed The Soul Cages as a hushed mediation on mortality, loss, grief, and father/son relationships. Within this setting, Sting hits a few remarkable peaks, such as the elegant waltz "Mad About You" and "All This Time," a deceptively skipping pop tune that hides a moving tribute to his father.
Birthdays:
Gospel/soul singer Sam Cooke was born on this day in 1931. Sam Cooke was one of the most important soul singer in history, its primary inventor, and its most popular and beloved performer in both the Black and white communities.
Born in Mississippi, his family moved to the southside of Chicago where he began singing. His early career included stints in the Singing Children and Soul Stirrers. He soon moved into popular music (but never really abandoning his gospel roots) with such future classics, "You Send Me" and "For Sentimental Reasons."
Moving to a larger label, the hits continued: "Cupid", Twisting The Night Away", and "Bring It on Home to Me". Cooke was keenly aware of the music around him, and was particularly entranced by Bob Dylan's song "Blowin' in the Wind."
The result was "A Change Is Gonna Come," perhaps the greatest song to come out of the civil rights struggle, and one that seemed to close and seal the gap between the two directions of Cooke's career, from gospel to pop.
Malcolm McLaren — manager for the Sex Pistols, New York Dolls, Adam and the Ants, and others — was born today in 1946.
McLaren began making his own records as well, beginning with the single "Buffalo Gals," which combined traditional folk music with hip-hop. In late 1982, the album Duck Rock, reached the Top 20 and produced a Top 40 hit in "Soweto" and a Top Five hit in "Double Dutch."
Jim Jarmusch — musician and director of Down by Law (starring Tom Waits) and Coffee and Cigarettes (starring Waits, Iggy Pop, the White Stripes, RZA, and more) — is 71.
Michael Hutchence — musician, singer-songwriter and actor — was born on this day in 1960 in Sydney, Australia; raised primarily in Hong Kong, he made his professional debut singing in a commercial for an area toy company at the age of eight. The family returned to Sydney in 1972. While in high school, Hutchence joined Andrew Farriss and Garry Gary Beers in a group which would ultimately become INXS with the subsequent additions of Kirk Pengilly and two more Farriss brothers.
They became superstars in Australia with the album Shabooh Shoobah and finding international favor with Listen like Thieves and Kick. (Photo credit should read TORSTEN BLACKWOOD/AFP via Getty Images)
On This Day In Music History was sourced, copied, pasted, edited, and occasionally woven together with my own crude prose, from This Day in Music, Allmusic, Song Facts and Wikipedia.
KBCO