1955 - In an attempt to hide the wrinkles in his suit, Chuck Berry does the duck walk for the first time. Berry and his band were on Alan Freed's "Rock and Roll Spectacular," Their suits get wrinkled on the way to New York, so Berry keeps a crouch on stage to conceal them, improvising his duck walk along the way. The crowd goes nuts, so Berry does it at the rest of the shows, where it wows the crowd every time. It became his signature move on stage.(Photo by LUC NOVOVITCH/AFP via Getty Images)
1982 - Peter Gabriel released Security. The gloom that permeates the third album has been alleviated and while this is still decidedly somber and serious music, Security flows easily and enticingly, with certain songs -- the eerie "San Jacinto," "I Have the Touch," "Shock the Monkey" -- arising from the wash of sound. Security remains a powerful listen, one of the better records in Gabriel's catalog, proving that he is becoming a master of tone, style, and substance, and how each part of the record enhances the other.
1992 - Tom Waits' album Bone Machine drops a sonic avalanche of apocalyptic percussion sounds, snarls, and deathly wails. Perhaps Tom Waits' most cohesive album, Bone Machine is a morbid, sinister nightmare, one that applied the quirks of his experimental '80s classics to stunningly evocative -- and often harrowing -- effect. Rich in strange and extraordinarily vivid imagery, many of Waits' tales and musings are spun against an imposing backdrop of apocalyptic natural fury, underlining the insignificance of his subjects and their universally impending doom. All of it adds up to Waits' most affecting and powerful recording, even if it isn't his most accessible.
1993 - Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain (Nirvana) appear on stage together for the first time, performing at Club Lingerie in Los Angeles. They play "Pennyroyal Tea" and "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?"
2017 - Forty-one years after it was recorded, over the course of one lazy, stoned day in Malibu in 1976, Neil Young's Hitchhiker is finally released. It holds together as a mood piece, an album where Young slowly reckons with a new dawn after surviving a hectic mid-'70s. Features the first recorded versions of "Pocahontas" and "Powderfinger.
Birthdays:
Pasty Cline was born on this day in 1932. One of the greatest singers in the history of country music, Patsy Cline also helped blaze a trail for female singers to assert themselves as an integral part of the Nashville-dominated country music industry.
Ron Pigpen McKernan of The Grateful Dead was born on this day in 1945. Starting a rock band was actually Ron McKernan's idea, and he was its first front man, delivering stinging harmonica, keyboards, and beautiful blues vocals in the early years of the Warlocks/Grateful Dead. Nicknamed "Pigpen" for his funky approach to life and sanitation. His father was an R & B disc jockey and that sound put Pig's life on the rails of the blues from the time he was 12. Liquor, Lightnin' Hopkins, the harmonica and some barbecue - it was an unusual life for a white kid from San Carlos, but it was Pig's life. And the hard-drinkin' blues life began to catch up with Pig by the very early '70s. He played his last show with the band in 1972,
Benjamin Orr, bassist for The Cars, was born today in 1947. Ric Ocasek and Benjamin Orr met in Cleveland, Ohio and formed a Crosby, Stills and Nash-style folk rock band called Milkwood. After Milkwood, Ocasek and Orr formed the group Richard and the Rabbits, before putting together the line up for the Cars.
Aimee Mann is 63. A singer/songwriter of perceptive intelligence who possesses a refined sense of craft, Aimee Mann sustained a long, successful career that ran from the twilight of new wave ( with Til Tuesday) until the height of adult alternative pop.
Neko Case is 53. Singer/songwriter Neko Case won a large and loyal audience for her smoky, sophisticated vocals and the downcast beauty of her music. A fiercely independent creative mind, she's also a member of New Pornographers.
On This Day In Music History was sourced from This Day in Music, Song Facts, Grateful Dead, Allmusic, and Wikipedia.
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