Keefer

Keefer

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ON THIS DAY IN MUSIC HISTORY: 1.23

1956 - Rock 'n' Roll fans in Cleveland under 18 were banned from dancing in public (unless accompanied by an adult), after Ohio Police enforced a law dating back to 1931.

1965 - 'Downtown' made Petula Clark the first UK female singer to have a No.1 on the US singles chart since 1952. Recorded in three takes (with the second take ultimately chosen as the completed track), session players in the studio recording included Jimmy Page.

1976 - David Bowie released his tenth studio album Station to Station which was the vehicle for his latest character - the Thin White Duke.

Taking the detached plastic soul of Young Americans to an elegant, robotic extreme, Station to Station is a transitional album that creates its own distinctive style. Abandoning any pretense of being a soulman, yet keeping rhythmic elements of soul, Bowie positions himself as a cold, clinical crooner and explores a variety of styles. Enormously influential on post-punk.

1986 - The first inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame include Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, Chuck Berry and Fats Domino.

Ray Charles was a pioneer in the genre of soul music during the 1950s by fusing rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues styles into his early recordings. He also helped racially integrate country and pop music during the 1960s with his crossover success on Modern Sounds albums. (Photo by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)

Elvis Presley, he may not have invented rock & roll, but he was indisputably its first rock star, a singer whose charisma was tightly intertwined with his natural talent for a combination that seemed combustible, sexy, and dangerous when he seized the imagination of America in1956.

Chuck Berry, perhaps the defining musician of the early rock & roll era, the one figure responsible for the music's sound, style, and sensibility that created the blueprint for the generations that followed. A guitarist who wanted to play like T-Bone Walker and croon like Nat King Cole, Berry married these two styles to a swinging beat that spliced jump blues with juke joint R&B and hillbilly boogie.

Fats Domino, the most popular exponent of the classic New Orleans R&B sound, his relaxed, lolling boogie-woogie piano style and easygoing, warm vocals anchored a long series of national hits from the mid-'50s to the early '60s. Through it all, his basic approach rarely changed. He may not have been one of early rock's most charismatic, innovative, or threatening figures, but he was certainly one of its most consistent.

2001 - Jack Johnson releases his debut album, Brushfire Fairytales. Just a guy who likes to surf and play music, makes an honest impression on his debut album. He's not noisy or gregarious. He's content with his new creative finding. He might chase waves in his other life, but his songwriting ways do make for something quite charming.

Birthdays:

Django Reinhardt, famous for a 2-finger guitar style, was born today in 1910. A legendary Romani-French guitarist, Django Reinhardt was the first hugely influential jazz figure to emerge from Europe and the person most credited with developing the style known as gypsy jazz, jazz manouche, or hot club jazz.

A disastrous caravan fire in 1928 badly burned his left hand, depriving him of the use of the fourth and fifth fingers, but the resourceful Reinhardt figured out a novel fingering system to get around the problem that probably accounts for some of the originality of his style.

Robin Zander, lead singer of Cheap Trick, is 71. Zander discovered his fondness for music via his father's jazz band, as well as his older sister's record collection. But as with countless other subsequent musicians, it was the Beatles' infamous appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show that inspired Zander to pick up the guitar, and play in various high-school bands.

Combining a love for British guitar pop songcraft with crunching power chords and a flair for the absurd, Cheap Trick provided the necessary links between '60s pop, heavy metal, and punk.

R.I.P.:

1990 - Allen Collins, guitarist from Lynyrd Skynyrd, died. He was part of the original line up that came together in 1965. Collins and singer Ronnie Van Zant co-wrote many of the biggest Skynyrd hits, including "Free Bird", "Gimme Three Steps", and "That Smell". His solo work (along with Rossington) on "Free Bird" is cited often among the best guitar solos in music history.

In the early days, Allen Collins was apparently fond of sniffing glue. “You could put a model airplane together with his breath,” says early bassist Larry Junstrom.

1978 - Terry Kath, guitarist with Chicago, died from an accidentally self-inflicted gunshot wound. Although Chicago is often thought of as a ballad-based soft rock outfit, early on in their career, guitarist/singer Terry Kath brought a much more rock-based edge to the band.

It was after an early performance that Kath received perhaps the highest accolade any guitarist could obtain, when Jimi Hendrix told sax player Walter Parazaider, "Your guitar player is better than me."

On This Day In Music History was sourced, copied, pasted, edited, and occasionally woven together with my own crude prose, from This Day in Music, Inside The Rock Era, Allmusic, Song Facts, Rolling Stone. and Wikipedia.

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