1973 - Dark Side Of The Moon by Pink Floyd went to No. 1 on the U.S. album charts. The album stayed a record-breaking 741 discontinuous weeks on the Billboard chart, and it has now sold over 45 million copies worldwide.
1976 - Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band play the Grand Ole Opry. It's the first time a rock band has played the Opry since The Byrds in 1968.
1998 - Before These Crowded Streets by the Dave Matthews Band debuts at #1 on the US albums chart, ending the Titanic soundtrack's 16-week berth at the top.
The Dave Matthews Band made their reputation through touring, spending endless nights on the road improvising and Before These Crowded Streets is the first album to fully capture that adventurous spirit. Here, everything hangs out. Old trademarks, like jittery acoustic grooves and jazzy chords, are here, augmented by complex polyrhythms, Mideastern dirges, and on two tracks, the slashing strings of the Kronos Quartet. (Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images for Citi)
2003 -Apple launches the iTunes store, the first widely successful legal music download app, thanks to the emergence of the iPod, which lets people take their music with them. At first, the service is available only to Mac users, with the music files encoded in Apple's proprietary format (AAC) restricting where they can be played.
Birthdays:
Muscle Shoals keyboardist Chuck Leavell is 70. He recorded and toured with the Rolling Stones (Says guitarist Keith Richards: “Without the continuity that Chuck brings to us, the Stones would not be the Stones.”) the Allman Brothers, Eric Clapton and many others. Formed the rock/jazz/blues fusion group Sea Level with Allman’s drummer Jaimoe.
In 1999, Leavell released his first seasonal album, What’s In That Bag? Since that time it has become a holiday favorite and it continues to rate highly every year in Christmas CD sales. When not tickling the 88s, he runs a tree farm near Macon Georgia.
Kim Gordon, ex bassist in Sonic Youth is 70. A musician, visual artist, and writer who questions consumerism and women's place in society with a keen eye and poetic detail, Kim Gordon first came to prominence as the bassist/vocalist for Sonic Youth. During her time with that band, her smoky, half-spoken, half-sung vocals and feminist viewpoint added depth to their experimental rock and made her a major figure on the American indie rock scene from the '80s onward.
On This Day In Music History was sourced from This Day in Music, Allmusic Chuck Leavell, Song Facts and Wikipedia.