Keefer

Keefer

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ON THIS DAY IN MUSIC HISTORY: 12.21

1970 - Music and politics collided when Elvis Presley met President Richard Nixon at the White House. A collector of police badges, The King really desired one from the federal Bureau of Narcotics.

"The narc badge represented some kind of ultimate power to him," Priscilla Presley would write in her memoir, Elvis and Me. "With the federal narcotics badge, he [believed he] could legally enter any country both wearing guns and carrying any drugs he wished."

Elvis figured the shortest distance between him and the badge was to get the President to OK it.

Nixon's famous taping system had not yet been installed, so the conversation wasn't recorded. But Nixon aide Egil "Bud" Krogh took notes: "Presley indicated that he thought the Beatles had been a real force for anti-American spirit. The President then indicated that those who use drugs are also those in the vanguard of anti-American protest."

"I'm on your side," Elvis told Nixon, adding that he'd been studying the drug culture and Communist brainwashing. Then he asked the president for a badge from the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.

Nixon made it happen.

At Elvis' request, the meeting was kept secret. A year later, columnist Jack Anderson broke the story—"Presley Gets Narcotics Bureau Badge"—but few people seemed to care.

In 1988, years after Nixon resigned and Elvis died of a drug overdose, a Chicago newspaper reported that the National Archives was selling photos of the meeting, and within a week, some 8,000 people requested copies, making the pictures the most requested photographs in Archives history. (Photo by National Archives)

Birthdays:

Frank Zappa was born today in 1940. He used his prodigious musical talent to challenge the status quo.

Frank Zappa was an outspoken critic of everything from the herd mentality of the middle-class to censorship of rock and roll. In his career, he worked with every genre from rock to jazz to classical music.

As Dave Marsh wrote in his Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame essay: His greatest importance to rock history was in bringing all these talents to bear at once. Not content to create a rock band with the chops and discipline to play 12-tone rows, he also created modernist works that incorporated "Louie Louie.”

Lou Reed, who inducted Frank into the Rock Hall said this: Whether writing symphonies, satirical broadsides or casting a caustic glow across the frontier of madness that makes up the American political landscape...Frank was a force for reason and honesty in the business deficient in those areas.

Carl Wilson of The Beach Boys was born today in 1946. He performed lead vocals on several of their hits, including 'God Only Knows' (1966) and 'Good Vibrations' (1966).

Betty Wright, R&B singer of “Clean Up Woman,” was born today in 1953. One of only a few singers who could be called both a powerhouse and a songbird -- Wright was also a songwriter of rare candor and additionally produced and arranged material for herself and artists she dutifully supported.

R.I.P.:

1992 - American blues singer and guitarist Albert King died. King made his first guitar out of a cigar box, a branch from a shrub, and a strand of broom wire; he later bought a real guitar for $1.25, which he learned to play himself, left-handed with the strings upside down. He developed a distinct, powerful string-bending style and would become known as one of the "Three Kings of the Blues Guitar" (along with B.B. King and Freddie King). Probably best known for his 1967 single, "Born Under a Bad Sign", covered by Cream.

On This Day In Music History was sourced from This Day in Music, Smithsonian Magazine, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Song Facts, Wikipedia and occasionally woven together with my own crude prose.

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