1962 - Bob Dylan records his first album, "Bob Dylan", for Columbia Records. The LP featured the 20-year-old singer accompanied only by his guitar and harmonica. The recording is done in one day and productions costs were held to $400. (Photo credit should read BERTRAND GUAY/AFP via Getty Images)
1972 - Many years after making pioneering rock 'n' roll records, Chuck Berry had his first and only U.S. No. 1 hit, an unlikely novelty tune called "My Ding-a-Ling." While many rock scholars dismiss this song as a senseless novelty ditty, Berry is quite proud of the song. He told Rolling Stone in 2010 that he wanted to be a comedian at one point, and enjoys getting a laugh. The song is about a young boy who discovers his... Berry was good at making sexual references that did not seem offensive.
1977- Meat Loaf releases the landmark album Bat Out Of Hell. This is Grand Guignol pop -- epic, gothic, operatic, and silly, and it's appealing because of all of this. Jim Steinman was a composer without peer, simply because nobody else wanted to make mini-epics like this and Meat Loaf finds the emotional core in each song. Produced by Todd Rundgren.
1978 - Neil Young releases Comes a Time. Six and a half years later, Comes a Time finally was the Neil Young album for the millions of fans who had loved Harvest, an acoustic-based record with country overtones and romantic, autobiographical lyrics, and many of those fans returned to the fold, enough to make Comes a Time Young's first Top Ten album since Harvest.
1995 - Blind Melon lead singer Shannon Hoon dies of a drug overdose at age 28.
1997 - Elton John's "Candle In The Wind '97" was declared by the Guinness Book Of Records as the biggest-selling single record of all time, with 31.8 million sales in less than 40 days. The song, performed at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, on Sept. 6, 1997, raised more than $32 million for charity.
2003 - Acclaimed singer-songwriter Elliott Smith died from apparent self-inflicted knife wounds. His career had been growing in success with two major-label releases, and an Oscar nomination for "Miss Misery" from the Good Will Hunting soundtrack, but he suffered from depression, alcoholism and drug dependence, and these topics appeared throughout his lyrics.
2016 - Leonard Cohen releases his last album, You Want It Darker. Cohen was in poor health while the album was being made, and never went to the recording studio, relying on his son Adam to handle the sessions and integrate his tracks. Cohen dies a few weeks later age age 82.
Birthdays:
Manfred Mann is 82.
Steve Cropper, guitarist best known for his work with the Stax Records house band, Booker T. & the M.G.'s, and the Blues Brothers, is 81.
Guitarist Elvin Bishop in 80.
Lux Interior of The Cramps was born on this day in 1946.
Brent Mydland, was born on this day in 1965. Best known for being in Grateful Dead from 1979 to 1990. His eleven-year tenure was longer than that of any other keyboardist in the band.
Steve Lukather, guitarist from Toto is 65.
Julian Cope, The Teardrop explodes and solo artist (World shut your mouth), is 65.
Charlotte Caffey of the Go-Go's is 69.
On This Day In Music History was sourced from Classic Bands, Allmusic, This Day in Music, Song Facts and Wikipedia.