1968 - Marvin Gaye scored his first U.S. No. 1 single when "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" started a five-week run at the top. The song has a long history - written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong for Motown Records in 1966, first meant for Gladys Knight & the Pips, then recorded by The Miracles, then recorded by Marvin Gaye and placed on his 1968 album In the Groove. The Gaye recording has since become an acclaimed soul classic.
1971 - Poet, writer, political activist, and manager of the MC5, John Sinclair, is released from prison thanks to high-profile supporters such as John Lennon. Sinclair was sentenced to ten years in prison in 1969 after offering two joints to an undercover female narcotics officer.
1977 - At the peak of the disco era, the film Saturday Night Fever opens in theaters.
Saturday Night Fever comes from director John Badham's fascination with the disco movement, described in British journalist Nik Cohn's 1976 article "Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night." The world-weariness of working-class teens cutting loose on the dance floor every weekend is encapsulated in Tony Manero, the film's protagonist played by Welcome Back Kotter star John Travolta.
Though Cohn later admits that he fabricated the article, basing it on friends from London's Mod scene of the '60s rather than the disco scene of the '70s that he knew nothing about, the film is a true-to-life experience for disco obsessives and a fascination for the disco-curious.
The soundtrack spawns a slew of #1s. You Should Be Dancing, How Deep Is Your Love, Night Fever, Stayin' Alive, by The Bee Gees and If I Can't Have You, by Yvonne Elliman. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)
1980 - Yoko Ono called on fans to observe ten minutes of silence in memory of John Lennon. 30,000 gathered outside St. George's Hall in Liverpool, while nearly 100,000 attend a memorial in New York's Central Park; this becomes a tradition on each anniversary of Lennon's death.
1987 - Dinosaur, Jr. release You're Living All Over Me. Overall sales are modest, but the album is an influential landmark in the alternative and indie music genres.
It's a blitzkrieg fusion of hardcore punk, Sonic Youth-style noise freak-outs, heavy metal, and melodic hard rock in the vein of Neil Young. A turning point in American underground rock & roll. With its thin, unbalanced mix, the album sounds positively menacing and edgy
Birthdays:
Jane Birkin, English actress, singer, and songwriter, was born on this day in 1940. Had the 1969 UK No.1 single with Serge Gainsbourg 'Je t'aime...Moi non plus', the only French language UK chart- topper. She is also known as being the namesake of the popular Hermès Birkin bag.
Mike Scott, The Waterboys, is 65. Essential Song "Whole Of The Moon". Essential album, 'Fisherman's Blues'.
R.I.P.:
The co-founder of Atlantic Records Ahmet Ertegun died, aged 83. Ertegun who founded Atlantic Records with Herb Abramson in 1947 helped make Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin stars and signed The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin in the early 70s. He suffered a head injury when he fell at a Rolling Stones concert at New York's Beacon Theatre in October, and died after slipping into a coma.
Dinah Washington passes on this day in 1963. She was one of the most beloved and versatile singers of the mid-20th century, at home in all kinds of music, be it R&B, blues, jazz, gospel, and pop. Hers was a gritty voice, marked by absolute clarity of diction and clipped, bluesy phrasing. Washington's personal life was turbulent and her interpretations showed it, for she displayed a tough, totally unsentimental, yet still gripping hold on the universal subject of lost love.
On This Day In Music History sourced from This Day in Music, Allmusic, Song Facts and Wikipedia.
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