1959 - Introduced by Johnny Cash, 13-year-old Dolly Parton makes her Grand Ole Opry debut singing George Jones' "You Gotta Be My Baby." She receives three encores.
1965 - At the Newport Folk Festival, Bob Dylan played an electric set (backed by the Butterfield Blues Band) for the first time, horrifying folk purists everywhere. Folk music ‘purists’ tried to boo him off the stage for 'abandoning' of the folk orthodoxy.
Dylan declares, "I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more," and launches into 16 minutes of hard-rocking electric blues.
John Hall, who later forms the group Orleans is there. His recollection: "Maybe the folks in front, the folkie establishment (oxymoron?) and the music press, were upset, but back in the cheap seats, we were standing up and cheering."
1968 - The Beatles recorded their first take of George Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." Harrison had been reading the Chinese philosophical text the I Ching, which stipulates that there are no coincidences in the universe (i.e. that everything is connected and thus meant to be), and decided to use the book as inspiration to write a song. So, he opened another book and told himself he would compose a song based on the very first words his eyes landed on. The words turned out to be "gently weeps". (Photo by Getty Images)
1984 - Willie Mae ‘Big Mama’ Thornton died at the age of 58. She had a No.1 R&B hit in 1953 with ‘Hound Dog’ (later covered by Elvis Presley). She also wrote and recorded ‘Ball 'n' Chain,’ which Janis Joplin recorded.
1999 - Woodstock '99 ended in chaos with riots, fires, looting, three rapes, and other crimes, including three accidental deaths. In addition, several fans were hospitalized from drinking polluted water. The original Woodstock billed its self as, "three days of peace and music", this one wasn't that.
2020 - Fleetwood Mac founder Peter Green dies at 73. Green gave the band a strident blues sound before leaving in 1970.
Birthdays:
William 'Benny' Benjamin, primary drummer for Motown house band, The Funk Brothers, was born on this day in 1925.
Musician and composer Tom Dawes (lead vocalist of The Cyrkle, they had a hit with a song Paul Simon wrote, "Red Rubber Ball") was born in Albany, New York in 1944. He is also remembered for writing the music for some of advertising's best-known commercial jingles, including "Plop, Plop, Fizz, Fizz" for Alka-Seltzer and "7Up, the Uncola".
Singer-songwriter Steve Goodman was born on this day in 1948.
Verdine White, bassist of Earth, Wind & Fire, is 71.
Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth is 64.
On this Day In Music History was sourced from This Day in Music, Song Facts and Wikipedia.