1955 - Johnny Cash releases "Folsom Prison Blues." The most famous line in this song, "I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die," Cash said he wrote while "Trying to think of the worst reason for killing another person."
The lyrics to this song were based on a 1953 recording called Crescent City Blues by a bandleader named Gordon Jenkins with Beverly Maher on vocals.
1967 - The Who release their third album, The Who Sell Out. Pete Townshend originally planned The Who Sell Out as a concept album of sorts that would simultaneously mock and pay tribute to pirate radio stations, complete with fake jingles and commercials linking the tracks. The concept wasn't quite driven to completion, breaking down around the middle of side two (on the original vinyl configuration).
Nonetheless, on strictly musical merits, it's a terrific set of songs that ultimately stands as one of the group's greatest achievements. "I Can See for Miles" (a Top Ten hit) is the Who at their most thunderous; tinges of psychedelia add a rush to "Armenia City in the Sky". Psychedelic pop was never as jubilant.
1969 - John Lennon and Yoko Ono launch the "War Is Over" campaign with billboards declaring peace around the world.
With the Vietnam War raging with no end in sight, John and Yoko make a bold statement, launching billboards in 11 major cities that say:
War Is Over
If You Want It
Love, John & Yoko
Says Lennon: "What we're trying to promote is an awareness in people of how much power they have, and not to rely on the government, or leaders, or teachers so much that they're all passive or automatons. They have to have new hope."
1975 - Parliament release their album Mothership Connection, the definitive P-Funk album. First, the incredible band highlighted by Bernie Worrell, Bootsy Collins, the Brecker Brothers, and Maceo Parker.
Besides the dazzling array of musicians, Mothership Connection boasts a trio of hands-down classics -- "P-Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)," "Mothership Connection (Star Child)," "Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker)" -- that are among the best to ever arise from the funk era, each sampled and interpolated time and time again by rap producers. There's no better starting point in the enormous P-Funk catalog. (Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images for BMI)
1974 - Young Frankenstein opens in theaters. When members of Aerosmith take a break from recording the Toys in the Attic album and see the film, the scene where Igor (Marty Feldman) tells Dr. Frankenstein (Gene Wilder) to "walk this way," and the doctor imitates Igor's walk, inspires the title to the track they’ve been working on.
1977 - The Sex Pistols were refused entry into the USA two days before a scheduled Saturday Night Live appearance. Johnny Rotten because of a drugs conviction, Paul Cook & Sid Vicious because of 'moral turpitude' and Steve Jones because of his criminal record.
1986 - At the Oakland Coliseum Arena, the Grateful Dead play their first concert since Jerry Garcia slipped into a diabetic coma six months earlier. With Garcia's heath scare, it was unclear if the band would continue, but Garcia reassures fans with the opening number, "Touch Of Grey," as he sings, "I will get by. I will survive."
Birthdays:
Alan Freed, the DJ who coined the phrase "Rock and Roll", was born today in 1921. At the Cleveland radio station WJW, he becomes the first white disc jockey to play upbeat rhythm and blues records north of the Mason Dixon line. At the time, they are called "race" records, but Freed calls the music "rock and roll."
Dave Clark of Dave Clark Five is 84. For a very brief time in 1964, it seemed that the biggest challenger to the Beatles' phenomenon was the Dave Clark Five. From the Tottenham area of London, the quintet had the fortune to knock "I Want to Hold Your Hand" off the top of the British charts with "Glad All Over," and were championed (for about 15 minutes) by the British press as the Beatles' most serious threat.
The Clash bassist Paul Simonon is 68. Though his main claim to musical fame is anchoring punk legends the Clash with his dub-inspired bass playing, Paul Simonon went on to make a name for himself in the art world as a painter. His renown as a bassist led to him becoming part of the Damon Albarn projects the Good, the Bad & the Queen and Gorillaz in the early 2010s.
Tim Reynolds of Dave Matthews Band is 66. Tim first wowed singer/songwriter Dave Matthews when he was playing in his own Charlottesville-based combo TR3 in the early 1990s. Reynolds had been a fixture in Charlottesville for years but it took Dave Matthews to get the guitarist known outside of Virginia. Matthews struck up a friendship with Reynolds, which turned into a lasting collaboration.
R.I.P.:
1943 - Jazz musician, singer and composer, Fats Waller died of pneumonia on a train trip near Kansas City, Missouri. Not only was Fats Waller one of the greatest pianists jazz has ever known, he was also one of its most exuberantly funny entertainers -- and as so often happens, one facet tends to obscure the other. His extraordinarily light and flexible touch belied his ample physical girth; he could swing as hard as any pianist alive or dead.
He wrote many songs including "Ain't Misbehavin'", "Your Feet's Too Big" and "The Reefer Song".
1944 - American big-band musician, arranger, composer, and bandleader Glenn Miller, traveling by air, disappeared in bad weather over the English Channel while traveling to entertain US troops in France during World War II. The plane is never found; Miller, age 40, is presumed dead. Miller was the best-selling recording artist from 1939 to 1943, leading one of the best-known big bands. In just four years Glenn Miller scored 23 No.1 hits. Miller's recordings include 'In the Mood', 'Moonlight Serenade', 'Pennsylvania 6-5000', and 'Chattanooga Choo Choo'.
Glenn is in the Colorado Music Hall Of Fame.
2001 - Funk and soul singer Rufus Thomas died of heart failure aged 84. He began his career as a tap dancer, vaudeville performer, and master of ceremonies in the 1930s. He later worked as a disc jockey on radio station WDIA in Memphis. He recorded on Sun Records in the 1950s and on Stax Records in the 1960s and 1970s. Thomas scored the 1963 US No.10 single 'Walking The Dog'
On This Day In Music History was sourced, copied, pasted, and occasionally rewritten with my own crude, personal style, from This Day in Music, Allmusic, Song Facts and Wikipedia.
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