1964 - Them (with Van Morrison) release "Gloria." It would become one of the quintessential garage rock anthems. In Rolling Stone magazine's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time issue, Morrison says of this song: "I was just being me, a street cat from Belfast. Probably like thousands of kids from Belfast who were in bands." It would go on to be covered by Shadows Of Knight, Patti Smith, and the Doors.
1966 - Chas Chandler of The Animals saw Jimi Hendrix perform at the Cafe Wha? in New York. Chandler went on to become Jimi's manager and took him to London, where The Jimi Hendrix Experience formed.
1969 - The Rolling Stones gave a free concert in London's Hyde Park for an audience of 250,000, as a tribute to Brian Jones who had died two days earlier. Mick Jagger read an extract from Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Adonais" and released 3,500 butterflies.
1978 - The manufacturing of Some Girls the new album by The Rolling Stones was halted at EMI's pressing plant after complaints from celebrities including Lucille Ball who were featured in mock advertisements on the album sleeve.
1994 - Hootie & the Blowfish release their debut album Cracked Rear View. It takes off at the beginning of 1995, eventually selling a staggering 21 million copies.
1993 - Björk releases her first post-Sugarcubes solo album, titled Debut. She moves in an elegantly playful, dance-inspired direction, crafting highly individual, emotional electronic pop songs. Possibly her prettiest work, Björk's horizons expanded on her other releases, but the album still sounds fresh, which is even more impressive considering electronic music's whiplash-speed innovations. Debut not only announced Björk's remarkable talent; it suggested she had even more to offer.
1997 - Organized by Sarah McLachlan, the all-female Lilith Fair tour kicked off with a show in The Gorge Amphitheatre in Washington State. The lineup included Jewel, Suzanne Vega and Paula Cole, with Emmylou Harris, Sheryl Crow and Fiona Apple joining on subsequent stops. The tour took place during the summers of 1997 to 1999, and was revived in the summer of 2010. In its initial three years, Lilith Fair raised over $10 million for charity. (Photo by Jesse Grant/Getty Images for NAMM)
Lilith was a strong-willed woman in Hebrew folklore who refused to be subservient to Adam.
2014 - The four surviving members of The Grateful Dead gave what they said would be their final performance, playing to over 70,000 fans at Chicago's Soldier Field. The shows came 20 years after the death of lead guitarist Jerry Garcia, who played his last show in the nation's third-largest city in 1995.
Birthdays:
Robbie Robertson of The Band is 80. Robbie Robertson was the architect of the Band, the one-time Bob Dylan backing group who profoundly changed the course of popular music in the late 1960s with their first two albums. As their principal songwriter and chief conceptualist, Robertson helped develop the idea of Americana music by spinning North American history into myths and undergirding his songs with a fusion of rock & roll, blues, folk, and country.
Marc Cohn is 64. Ohio-bred songwriter with a soulful voice and folk-infused piano pop sound emerged seemingly out of nowhere with "Walking in Memphis," a heartfelt tribute to the land of the Delta blues. In 2005, was heading back to a hotel after performing at the Denver Botanic Gardens on Aug. 7 when he was shot during what police say was an attempted carjacking. Doctors were able to remove the bullet which was lodged in his temple.
R.I.P.
Cub Coda, passed away in 2000. Best known as the leader of Brownsville Station and composer of their hit, "Smokin' in the Boys Room." During the second half of the '90s, Koda increased his presence as a writer, in addition to staying musically active. In addition to editing The All Music Guide to Blues, he wrote and edited Blues for Dummies. My first concert was Mountain, Montrose, and Brownsville Station. Yes, they rocked...
On This Day In Music History was sourced from This Day in Music, Allmusic, Song Facts and Wikipedia.