1955 - The UN's commission on narcotics released a report stating that there is a "definite connection between increased marijuana smoking and that form of entertainment known as bebop and rebop."
1970 - In Nashville, James Brown records "Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine." It's the first recording with his new band, which he hired in March when his previous group complained about how they were treated. The bass player in this new band is Bootsy Collins.
1979 - Rock & Roll High School, a film featuring the Ramones, made its debut. The basic plot: Vince Lombardi High School keeps losing principals to nervous breakdowns because of the students' love of rock 'n' roll and their disregard for education. The leader of the students, Riff Randell, is the biggest Ramones fan at the school and also the worst behavioral problem, in that her disciplinary record fills an entire filing cabinet. She waits in line for three days to get tickets to see the band, hoping to meet Joey Ramone so she can give him a song she wrote for the band, "Rock 'n' Roll High School". Spoiler alert, the students and the Ramones, eventually burn down the school...
1987 - U2's fifth album, The Joshua Tree, hits #1 in America. It holds the top spot for an impressive nine weeks, finally dethroned by Whitney Houston's Whitney.
1994 - The Eagles played the first of two shows where they recorded their 'Hell Freezes Over' album. Don Henley, Glenn Frey, Joe Walsh, Don Felder and Timothy B. Schmit first got back together the previous December for the making of a Travis Tritt video of their song, 'Take It Easy' The name of the album was taken from an earlier quote by Glen Frey, who responded to the question "When will the Eagles get back together?"
(Photo by JOHN PALMEN/LEHTIKUVA/AFP via Getty Images)
1994 - Blur released their acclaimed third studio album, Parklife. In 1990, frontman Damon Albarn told a writer for British music magazine Mojo: "When our third album comes out, our place as the quintessential English band of the '90s will be assured. Relying more heavily on Kinks/Ray Davies' seriocomic social commentary, as well as new wave, Parklife runs through the entire history of post-British Invasion Britpop in the course of 16 songs, touching on psychedelia, synth pop, disco, punk, and music hall along the way. It features “Girls & Boys,” the title track, “To the End,” “End of a Century,” and “Tracy Jacks” as singles.
2014 - Spotify removed an album of silence by American funk band Vulfpeck from its streaming site. The band's fourth record, Sleepify, was made up of 10 tracks of silence which they encouraged fans to stream on repeat overnight. The idea was aimed at generating money so that the band could go on tour and not charge admission fees.
Birthdays:
On this day in 1917, Ella Fitzgerald, the Queen of Jazz, was born in Newport News, Va. Fitzgerald is one of the most renowned jazz singers in history, thanks to her warm, sweet voice and signature scatting technique, she could hold her own against any of her instrumental contemporaries.
Blues guitarist and singer Albert King was born today in 1923. 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. He learned to play it 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.
Jerry Leiber, of the Leiber and Stoller songwriting team, was born today in 1933. His songs, such as "Hound Dog," "Yakety Yak," and "Jailhouse Rock," are clever and humorous lyrical vignettes that have been played millions of times and virtually been absorbed into the cultural consciousness.
Bjorn Ulvaeus of ABBA is 79. He was half of the production duo that included fellow Swede Benny Andersson and produced the huge hits by '70s supergroup ABBA, best known for the number one pop single "Dancing Queen."
Stu Cook, bassist with Creedence Clearwater Revival, is 79.
Steve Ferrone, former drummer with the Average White Band and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, is 74.
R.I.P.:
2007 - "Monster Mash" singer Bobby "Boris" Pickett died at age 69. Pickett's Boris Karloff impression propelled the Halloween anthem "The Monster Mash" to the top of the Billboard Pop chart in 1962.
2023 - Harry Belafonte died at the age of 96 in New York City. An activist, humanitarian, and actor as well as the designated "King of Calypso," Harry Belafonte ranked among the most seminal performers of the postwar era. His silken voice and masterful assimilation of folk, jazz, traditional pop, and rhythms of the Caribbean (his parents hailed from Jamaica and Martinique) took the Harlem, New York native to the top of the U.S. album chart in 1956, with "The Banana Boat Song (Day-O)".
He continued to chart throughout the 1960s while helping to spearhead the Civil Rights Movement as a confidant of Martin Luther King, Jr. -- it was Belafonte who bailed out King from the Birmingham, Alabama jail in 1963 (in addition to raising funds to release other protesters). He also helped organize the international smash 1985 fundraising single "We Are the World" by USA for Africa.
On This Day In Music History was sourced, curated, copied, pasted, edited, and occasionally woven together with my own crude prose, from This Day in Music, Allmusic, Song Facts and Wikipedia.