1956 - Elvis Presley releases "Hound Dog" and "Don't Be Cruel" as a double-A-side single. It sells four million copies to become the top-selling single of 1956, and makes Elvis a superstar. He's soon booked on every major variety show and launches a movie career.
1964 - The Beatles released "A Hard Day's Night" in the U.S. Not only was the record the de facto soundtrack for their movie, not only was it filled with nothing but Lennon-McCartney originals, but it found the Beatles truly coming into their own as a band by performing a uniformly excellent set of songs. All of the disparate influences on their first two albums had coalesced into a bright, joyous, original sound filled with ringing guitars and irresistible melodies. In just a few years, they made more adventurous and accomplished albums, but this is the sound of Beatlemania in all of its giddy glory. A Hard Day's Night stands as a testament to their collaborative powers -- never again did they write together so well or so easily.
1968 - Steppenwolf's "Born To Be Wild" is released in the US, where it will reach #2. A line from the song which includes the words "heavy metal thunder" (referring to motorcycles) is often credited with popularizing a new term for loud, guitar dominated music.
1973 - Bob Dylan releases Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid, the soundtrack album for the Sam Peckinpah-directed movie of the same name. The album was a beautifully simple, sometimes rough-at-the-edges and sometimes gently refined piece of country- and folk-influenced rock, devised to underscore a very serious historical film by one of the movies' great directorial stylists.
1974 - Eric Clapton's version of Bob Marley's "I Shot The Sheriff" is released in America where it will become his only US #1. Clapton would later say "I tried to ask him (Marley) what the song was all about, but couldn't understand much of his reply. I was just relieved that he liked what we had done."
1985 - The Live Aid concerts take place in Philadelphia and London to raise money for the hungry in Africa. The Beach Boys, The Four Tops, Paul McCartney, Tina Turner, Elton John, David Bowie, The Who, Queen, Eric Clapton and Bob Dylan all take part.
Highlights include Queen's Freddie Mercury engaging the 72,000 strong crowd in a mass-singalong and David Bowie and Mick Jagger performing "Dancing in the Street" as a duet.
The hardest-working artist of the day is undoubtedly Phil Collins, who performs his set, then teams up with Sting to perform "Long Long Way To Go" and "Every Breath You Take," before jumping on a jet for an 8-hour flight to Philadelphia, where he then plays "Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now)" and "In The Air Tonight" before jumping behind the drums for Led Zeppelin, who have reformed for the event.
TV pictures beamed to over 1.5bn people in 160 countries made it the biggest live broadcast ever known.
1999 - The New Radicals called it a day after just one album and a worldwide hit single, "You Get What You Give." Frontman, songwriter and driving force Gregg Alexander said he wanted to concentrate on producing and writing.
Birthdays:
Richard Anthony "Cheech" Marin is 77. Best known as one half of the hilariously irreverent, satirical, counter-culture, no-holds-barred duo Cheech and Chong. At their peak in the 1970s, Cheech & Chong represented the mainstream embodiment of the attitudes and lifestyles of the underground drug culture. Much as W.C. Fields shot to fame by making alcohol the focus of his act, the duo of Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong emerged from a cloud of pot smoke, simultaneously championing and lampooning the stoner community. (At one time in my youth I had pretty much memorized their entire self titled album that came out in 1972).
He has released two best-selling albums of children's music, My Name is Cheech, the School Bus Driver (1992) and My Name is Cheech, The School Bus Driver "Coast to Coast" (1997). Both albums were released bilingually. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for MTV/Paramount Global)
Roger McGuinn of the Byrds is 81. As the frontman of the Byrds, Roger McGuinn and his trademark 12-string Rickenbacker guitar pioneered folk-rock and, by extension, country-rock, influencing everyone from contemporaries like the Beatles to acolytes like Tom Petty and R.E.M. in the process.
Leon Bridges is 34. While working at Del Frisco's Grille in Fort Worth, he played countless open-mics until he was signed by Columbia Records in December 2014. As a youngster, he was drawn to then-current pop-R&B acts like Usher and Ginuwine, but would later absorb inspiration from the likes of Sam Cooke and pre-"Grapevine" Marvin Gaye
R.I.P:
2004 - Arthur "Killer" Kane, bass player with The New York Dolls, died at age 55 after going to a Los Angeles emergency room, complaining of fatigue. He was quickly diagnosed with leukemia and died within two hours.
The New York Dolls created punk rock before there was a term for it. Building on the Rolling Stones' dirty rock & roll, a bastardization of Brill Building pop, the Stooges' anarchic noise, and the glam rock of David Bowie and T. Rex, the New York Dolls created a new form of rock that presaged both punk rock and heavy metal.
On This Day In Music History was sourced from This Day in Music, Song Facts, Allmusic, Classic Bands, and Wikipedia.