1973 - Shortly after having a hit with Shel Silverstein's "The Cover of the Rolling Stone," Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show were on the cover of Rolling Stone in caricature. According to members of the group, they really did buy five copies for their mothers, just like the song said.
1975 - Jeff Beck releases Blow by Blow. It's balanced by open-ended jamming and crisp ensemble interaction as it sidesteps the bombast that sank much of the jazz-rock fusion of the period. It featured "Cause We Ended As Lovers", given to him by Stevie Wonder as payback for for playing on Talking Book (and in exchange for taking "Superstition" back after originally giving it to Beck), and the classic "Freeway Jam". Blow by Blow signaled a new creative peak for Beck and ranks as one of the premiere recordings in the canon of instrumental rock music. (Photo by Paul Kane/Getty Images)
1978 - After a tumultuous ordeal that lasted nearly two years, Tina Turner is officially divorced from husband Ike. She gets nothing in the settlement except her name; born Anna Mae Bullock, it was Ike who named her "Tina Turner" when they started performing together.
1979 - After attending a Dire Straits show during their residency at the Roxy in Los Angeles, Bob Dylan asked Mark Knopfler and drummer Pick Withers to play on the sessions for his next album. Slow Train Coming was the album, recorded in Muscle Shoals. Dylan had first heard Dire Straits' Mark Knopfler when his assistant him the single 'Sultans of Swing'.
1980 - Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon spent its 303rd consecutive week on the Billboard 200 album chart, breaking the record set by Carole King's Tapestry for longest stay on the Billboard 200.
2019 - Billie Eilish released her debut album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?. Eilish largely wrote the album with her brother Finneas O'Connell, who produced it at his small bedroom studio. With a youthful, hybrid blend that incorporates elements of indie electronic, pop, and hip-hop, it captures the late-2010s zeitgeist by throwing conventional boundaries to the wind and fully committing to its genre-blurring self.
Birthdays:
Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou, better-known as Vangelis, was born today in 1943. One of the most influential figures in the history of electronic music and as a composer of film scores. However, his oeuvre encompassed many genres, from progressive rock and jazz improvisation to choral and symphonic music. best known for for the theme to Chariots Of Fire.
Patty Donahue of The Waitresses was born on this day in 1956. Donahue was able to express a woman's inner strength without having to yell, a quality shared by '90s female singers such as Liz Phair, Juliana Hatfield, and Ani DiFranco. Best know for singing the yuletide classic, "Christmas Wrapping".
Jane's Addiction frontman Perry Farrell is 64. Also founded the Lollapalooza festival in 1991, paving the way for decades of boundary-pushing music that followed. Born Peretz Bernstein, his stage name is a play on the word "peripheral," in the sense that he's "on the edge."
John Popper of Blues Traveler is 56. Blues Traveler, earning a fervent grassroots following during the early '90s on the basis of their relentless touring schedule and a sprawling blues-rock sound that aligned them alongside other neo-hippie outfits including Phish, Widespread Panic, and the Spin Doctors. All of the aforementioned joined Blues Traveler in 1992 on the inaugural H.O.R.D.E. (Horizons of Rock Developing Everywhere) tour, which was originally conceived by Popper and band manager Dave Frey and went on to become one of the most successful annual tour packages of the decade.
On This Day In Music History was sourced from This Day in Music, Allmusic, Song Facts and Wikipedia.