1926 - Louis Armstrong introduces scat singing when he records "Heebie Jeebies." As Armstrong tells it, he improvised his vocals when his lyric sheet fell off the stand.
1965 - Jimmy Page released a solo single called "She Just Satisfies." Page played all the instruments on it except for the drums, and produced the track, as well as singing lead vocals. It's actually a nice slab of garage rock. Take a listen below.
1970 - The Beatles release Hey Jude. Essentially a clearinghouse for singles that never appeared on album, the record relies heavily on songs released between 1968 and 1969, but it also stretches back to get both sides of the 1966 single "Paperback Writer"/"Rain" and "Can't Buy Me Love" and "I Should Have Known Better". Great songs all, they all sound good together here.
1987 - The Beatles finally enter the CD age with the release of the group’s first four albums – Please Please Me, With the Beatles, A Hard Day’s Night and Beatles for Sale – in their original British formats on compact disc.
Lawsuits over royalties plus concerns over being able to meet demand long were cited as some of the reasons why the Beatles' catalogue took so long to come out on CD.
( Actually, Abbey Road, was issued in Japan in 1983. This pressing was on sale for a very short period of time and then taken off the market)
2001 - Daft Punk's second album, Discovery, marks a change in their musical direction from house to electronic disco. Abusing their pitch-bend and vocoder effects as though they were going out of style, the duo loops nearly everything they can get their sequencers on -- divas, vocoders, synth-guitars, electric piano -- and conjures a sound worthy of bygone electro-pop technicians like Giorgio Moroder. Daft Punk even manage a sense of humor about their own work, closing with a ten-minute track aptly titled "Too Long."
2002 - Norah Jones releases her debut album Come Away With Me.
It's is a mellow, acoustic pop affair with soul and country overtones, immaculately produced by the great Arif Mardin. Both have a gift for melody, simple yet elegant progressions, and evocative lyrics. Jones, for her part, wrote the title track and and also included convincing readings of Hank Williams' "Cold Cold Heart," J.D. Loudermilk's "Turn Me On," and Hoagy Carmichael's "The Nearness of You."
Birthdays:
Fats Domino was born today in 1928. The most popular exponent of the classic New Orleans R&B sound, Fats Domino sold more records than any other Black rock & roll star of the 1950s. 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.
Johnny Cash was born today in 1932. Johnny Cash was one of the most imposing and influential figures in post-World War II country music. With his deep, resonant baritone and spare percussive guitar, he had a basic, distinctive sound. Cash didn't sound like Nashville, nor did he sound like honky tonk or rock & roll. He created his own subgenre, falling halfway between the blunt emotional honesty of folk, the rebelliousness of rock & roll, and the world-weariness of country. Cash's career coincided with the birth of rock & roll, and his rebellious attitude and simple, direct musical attack shared a lot of similarities with rock. However, there was a deep sense of history -- as he would later illustrate with his series of historical albums -- that kept him forever tied with country. (Photo credit should read DANIEL JANIN/AFP via Getty Images)
Bob “The Bear” Hite of Canned Heat was born today in 1943. A blues historian and collector, formed Canned heat with Alan Wilson. He was nicknamed "The Bear" and stalked the stage in the time-honored tradition of Howlin' Wolf. Canned Heat were best known for the songs, "On The Road Again", "Goin' Up the Country" and an explosive version of Wilbert Harrison's "Let's Work Together".
Erica Abi Wright, known best as Erykah Badu, is 53. She grew up listening to '70s soul and '80s hip-hop, but Erykah Badu drew more comparisons to Billie Holiday upon her breakout in 1997, after the release of her first album, Baduizm. The grooves and production on the album are bass-heavy R&B, but Badu's languorous, occasionally tortured vocals and delicate phrasing immediately removed her from the legion of cookie-cutter female R&B singers. She's also an actress who has played several supporting roles in movies including Blues Brothers 2000, The Cider House Rules and House of D.
On This Day In Music History was sourced from, copied, pasted, edited, and occasionally woven together by my own crude prose from, from This Day in History, Music This Day, Allmusic, Ultimate Classic Rock, Song Facts and Wikipedia.