1956 - Elvis Presley releases "Hound Dog" and "Don't Be Cruel" as a double-A-side single. It sells four million copies to become the top-selling single of 1956, and makes Elvis a superstar. He's soon booked on every major variety show and launches a movie career.
1969 - Over 100 US radio stations banned The Beatles new single 'The Ballad Of John and Yoko' due to the line 'Christ, you know it ain't easy', calling it offensive.
1964 - The Beatles release "A Hard Day's Night" in the US. The title comes from a phrase Ringo Starr came up with.
Ringo explained: "We went to do a job, and we'd worked all day and we happened to work all night. I came up still thinking it was day I suppose, and I said, 'It's been a hard day...' and I looked around and saw it was dark so I said, 'Night!' So we came to 'A Hard Day's Night.'"
Not only was the record the de facto soundtrack for their movie, not only was it filled with nothing but Lennon-McCartney originals, but it found the Beatles truly coming into their own as a band by performing a uniformly excellent set of songs.
1973 - Bob Dylan releases Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid, the soundtrack album for the Sam Peckinpah-directed movie of the same name. "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" was the obvious hit off the album and the instrumentals surrounding them were also worth hearing as manifestations of Dylan's music-making.
1985 - At 12.01 Status Quo started the Live Aid extravaganza, held between Wembley Stadium, London and The JFK Stadium, Philadelphia. The brainchild of Bob Geldof and Midge Ure after the success of "Do they Know It's Christmas? which they wrote." Billed as a "global jukebox", it was organized to bring attention and relief to famine victims in Ethiopia. The cream of the world's biggest rock stars took part in the worldwide event. TV pictures beamed to over 1.5bn people in 160 countries made it the biggest live broadcast ever known. Artists who appeared included Paul McCartney, Phil Collins, The Who, U2, David Bowie and Mick Jagger, Queen, Tina Turner, The Cars, Neil Young, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, Bryan Adams, Hall and Oates, Lionel Richie and Led Zeppelin.
Also, David Bowie and Mick Jagger debuted their video for "Dancing in the Street" at Live Aid. They wanted to perform the song as a transatlantic duet, but the satellite delay made that impossible. (Photo credit should read JOHN D MCHUGH/AFP via Getty Images)
Birthdays:
Roger McGuinn is 80. As the frontman of the Byrds, Roger McGuinn and his trademark 12-string Rickenbacker guitar pioneered folk-rock and, by extension, country-rock, influencing everyone from contemporaries like the Beatles to acolytes like Tom Petty and R.E.M. in the process.
Richard Anthony "Cheech" Marin is 76. Best known as one half of the hilariously irreverent, satirical, counter-culture, duo Cheech and Chong. He also starred as Don Johnson's partner, Insp. Joe Dominguez, on Nash Bridges. He has also voiced characters in several Disney films, including Oliver & Company, The Lion King, the Cars series, Coco and Beverly Hills Chihuahua.
Todd Michael "Leon" Bridges is 33
On This Day In Music History was sourced from This Day in Music, Song Facts, Allmusic, and Wikipedia.