1964 - The Beatles' debut U.S. album, Meet The Beatles, was released. As an introduction, there could hardly have been one better. Largely comprised of material released on their second U.K. LP, With the Beatles -- -- Meet the Beatles! contains nine of that album's 14 songs, cutting out almost all the covers. an appropriate soundtrack for the wild heyday of Beatlemania that includes their break though U.S. single, "I Want To Hold Your Hand".
1965 - Alan Freed, who brought black music to a white audience as a DJ and concert promoter in Cleveland and New York, dies at age 41. He popularized the phrase "rock and roll" on mainstream radio and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame in 1986.
1977 - Jimmy Buffett releases Changes In Latitudes, Changes In Attitudes, which features his signature song "Margaritaville." They worked in the studio by day and on Buffett's sailboat by night, trying to get the rhythms and the vibe to match the rhythm of the ocean waves against the boat. "People ask if I ever get tired of playing it," he says. "The answer is no. It has paid the rent for a long time.
1975 - Bob Dylan releases Blood on the Tracks. This is an album alternately bitter, sorrowful, regretful, and peaceful, easily the closest he ever came to wearing his emotions on his sleeve. While Dylan denied the album was autobiographical, many will tell you it was "inspired" by the breakdown of his marriage. That's not to say that it's an explicitly confessional record, since many songs are riddles or allegories, yet the warmth of the music makes it feel that way. Dylan made albums more influential than this, but he never made one better.
1982 - Ozzy Osbourne bit the head off a bat during a concert at the Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines, IA. Osbourne thought it was a rubber bat, so he bit its head off and was taken to a hospital after the concert to undergo a rabies injection.
1988 - The Beatles were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. George Harrison, Ringo Starr and Yoko, Sean, and Julian Lennon all attend. Paul McCartney did not attend, sending instead a letter stating that continuing business differences with the other ex-Beatles was the reason for his absence.
1997 - Ben and Jerry's introduced 'Phish food', a new flavor of ice cream named after Phish. The ingredients were chocolate ice cream, marshmallows, caramel and fish-shaped fudge.
“Ben was our neighbor through the woods & we're fond of ice cream. So we teamed up to create Phish Food®. A portion of our royalties from this flavor goes toward environmental efforts in Vermont's Lake Champlain Watershed. Enjoy!” - PHISH
Photo by Scott Gries/Getty Images)
2012 - Etta James died at the age of 73. She is best remembered for her signature song "At Last". Beyoncé portrayed her in the movie Cadillac Records. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.
2022 - Meat Loaf dies at 74. His 1977 album Bat Out Of Hell is one of the best-selling albums of all time.
Birthdays:
Leadbelly (Huddie William Ledbetter), who wrote "Goodnight Irene", "The Rock Island Line", and '"The Midnight Special" was born today in 1889. He was also an early example of a folksinger whose background had brought him into direct contact with the oral tradition by which folk music was handed down, a tradition that, by the early years of the century, already included elements of commercial popular music. He influenced the folk revival and the development of rock music from the 1960s onward, which makes his induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 wholly appropriate.
Ahmir Khalib Thompson, known professionally as Questlove, is 52. Drummer and co-frontman for the original all-live, all-the-time hip-hop band the Roots. They also serve as the house band on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. In 2021, Questlove made his directorial debut with Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), a film about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival. It won both the US Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award for documentary at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.
Kevin Parker of Tame Impala is 37. As the main man of Tame Impala, Kevin and the group have put out music featuring loud guitars dipped in swirling psychedelic colors to poppy sounds with hip hop and disco influences. Parker recently paired up with Motown legend, Diana Ross on the song "Turn Up the Sunshine".
On this Day in Music History was sourced from This Day in Music, Allmusic, Song Facts and Wikipedia.