This is the week that was in matters musical…
1957, Johnny Cash hits network TV for the first time as a guest on The Jackie Gleason Show…
1959, armed with naught but an acoustic guitar and a tape recorder, Buddy Holly holes up in his New York apartment to lay down the last tracks he will ever record … tunes include “Crying, Waiting, Hoping” and “Peggy Sue Got Married” … Coral Records mixes in backing instrumentation and releases the songs posthumously…
1960, Sam Cooke signs his record deal with RCA Records…
1966, Nancy Sinatra, the most famous fruit of Frank’s loins, enters the Hot 100 for the second time with the timeless cheek and brassy cool of “These Boots Are Made for Walkin'”…
1970, Dr. Robert Moog introduces the Mini Moog…
1971, China, the daughter of Jefferson Airplane bandmates Grace Slick and Paul Kantner, is born at French Hospital in San Francisco … a joke Slick makes at a nurse’s expense spawns a decades-long urban myth that the baby was dubbed God … the little girl appears on the cover of the 1972 Slick/Kantner album Sunfighter, which includes a song about her creatively titled “China”…
1973, Jerry Lee Lewis is invited to play the Grand Ole Opry with the proviso that he neither perform rock ‘n’ roll tunes nor utter profanities … The Killer proceeds to belt out “Great Balls of Fire,” “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” and “Good Golly Miss Molly” and then announces that he’s a “rock and rolling, country and western, rhythm and blues singin’ motherfucker”…
1973, Neil Young stops during a New York performance to read a mysterious message handed to him onstage … “Peace has come,” he announces, referencing the signing of the Paris Peace Accords, which signals the formal end of the Vietnam War … the crowd spontaneously celebrates with wild bouts of hugging and kissing as Young fires up a particularly rockin’ version of “Southern Man”…
1974, Bob Dylan and The Band are the cause of a nine-mile-long traffic jam in the sunny state of Florida … the queue takes so long to clear up that many fans do not get into the Hollywood Sportatorium, located between Miami and Fort Lauderdale, until the show is halfway over…
1979, The Cars are voted the Best New Band of the Year in the Rolling Stone annual readers’ poll…
1980, Saturday Night Live comedian John Belushi busts out his rawest Blues Brothers chops in a post-birthday jam with The Dead Boys at The Whisky A Go Go in Los Angeles…
1982, a highly-soused Ozzy Osbourne gnaws the head off a bat that has been tossed onstage by a fan … Ozzy later says he thought it was a fake rubber model … legend has it that he is obliged to go through a course of rabies shots just to be safe…
1982, as record collectors everywhere drool, the University of Mississippi receives the entire record collection of bluesman and ex-disc jockey B.B. King … the veritable audio treasure trove is B.B.’s effort to enrich the university’s Center for the Study of Southern Culture and includes about 20,000 rare blues records…
1986, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame holds its first induction ceremony in New York City … started just three years prior, it will be nine more years before the Hall has a proper building…
1988, Nirvana records a ten-song demo tape with producer Jack Endino and with The Melvin’s Dale Crover holding down the drumming responsibilities as a favor to the band … the six-hour session’s tracks are never released as a collective album but will be spread across the Nirvana albums Bleach, Incesticide, From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah, With the Lights Out, and numerous bootleg CDs…
1991, he rocks his peers and the cash register at record stores: the L.L. Cool J album Mama Said Knock You Out is certified Platinum by the RIAA…
1993, the U.S. Supreme Court decides that Tom Waits can keep the $2.6 million judgment awarded him in a lawsuit against Frito Lay … the snack food company had asked to use Waits’ song “Step Right Up” in an advertisement, but he declined the offer … in a moment of overwhelming stupidity, Frito Lay hired a Tom Waits sound alike to record a song strikingly similar to “Step Right Up” and used it in the commercial instead … ironically, Waits wrote and recorded the song as “an indictment of advertising” and it contains the lyric “What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away”…
1998, James Brown gets out of the hospital … he has been undergoing treatment for addiction to painkillers…
2001, Bob Dylan takes the best original song award at the Golden Globes … this same week Nelly Furtado makes a splash with her debut album Whoa Nelly which is nominated for five Juno Awards…
2002, it is announced by Virgin Records that they are going to fork out 28 million smackers to be free of Mariah Carey and her $80 million contract for several albums … Carey has undergone a woeful personal and professional collapse with rambling suicidal missives on her website, a laughably bad movie, and a poor-selling soundtrack”her first record with Virgin … things look more promising for Freddy Fender who receives a kidney transplant … he will be released from the hospital on January 30th…
…and that was the week that was.
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Arrivals
January 19: Don Lange of The Frantic Five (1925), Australia’s first rock star Johnny O’Keefe (1935), Phil Everly of the Everly Brothers (1939), Janis Joplin (1943), Rod Evans of Deep Purple (1945), Dolly Parton (1946), Robert Palmer (1949), Dewey Bunnell of America (1952), Caron Wheeler of Soul II Soul (1963)
January 20: Leadbelly born Huddie William Ledbetter (1889), R&B singer Paul Gayten (1920), Earl Grant (1933), R&B singer Luther Tucker (1936), George Grantham of Poco (1947), Paul Stanley of Kiss (1952), guitarist John Campbell (1952), Ian Hill of Judas Priest (1952)
January 21: Wolfman Jack (1939), Richie Havens (1941), Placido Domingo of The Three Tenors (1941), Billy Ocean born Leslie Sebastian Charles (1950), Jam Master Jay of Run-DMC (1965)
January 22: Sam Cooke (1931), The Shirelles’ Addie Harris (1941), punk impresario Malcolm McLaren (1946), Meatloaf aka Marvin Lee Aday (1946), Steve Perry of Journey (1949), Michael Hutchence of INXS (1960), Steven Adler of Guns ‘N’ Roses (1965), D J Jazzy Jeff (1965), Willa Ford (1981)
January 23: Django Reinhardt (1910), Jerry Lawson of The Persuasions (1944), Anita Pointer of The Pointer Sisters (1948), Patrick Simmons of the Doobie Brothers (1950), Danny Federici of the E Street Band (1950), Bill Cunningham of The Box Tops (1950), Robin Zander of Cheap Trick (1953), Anita Baker (1958), UB40’s Earl Falconer (1959)
January 24: Doug Kershaw (1936), Ray Stevens (1939), Aaron Neville (1941), Neil Diamond (1941), Warren Zevon (1947), Jools Holland (1958)
January 25: Chita Rivera (1933), Etta James (1938), Richard Finch of KC & the Sunshine Band (1954), Terry Chimes of The Clash (1955), Andy Cox of Fine Young Cannibals (1956), Roxy Music’s Gary Tibbs (1958), Alicia Keys (1981)
Departures
January 19: Josh Clayton-Felt of School of Fish (2000), Carl Perkins (1998), Joe Stubbs of The Falcons (1998), leader and sax player for the Mar-Keys Packy Axton (1974)
January 20: Hugh O’Neill Jr. of The Queers (1999), drummer Bill Albaugh (1999), Ron Holden of “Love You So” fame (1997), Stan Szelest of The Hawks which later became The Band (1991), DJ Alan Freed (1965)
January 21: glam-rock star Les Gray (2004), Peggy Lee (2002), blues pianist and singer Charles Brown (1999), Col. Tom Parker (1997), Champion Jack Dupree (1992), mid-’80s rapper Mitch McDowell (1992), Steve Wahrer of The Trashmen (1989), Jackie Wilson (1984)
January 22: bandleader Billy May (2004), songwriter Irwin Levine of “Tie a Yellow Ribbon” fame (1997), Riot’s Rhett Forrester (1994), Tommy Tucker of “High Heel Sneakers” fame (1982)
January 23: Johnny Funches of The Dells (1998), “Louie Louie” composer Richard Berry (1997), gospel songwriter Thomas A. Dorsey (1993), blues guitarist James “Thunderbird” Davis (1992), Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist Allen Collins (1990), Carl Feaster of The Chords (1981), Terry Kath of Chicago (1978), Vic Ames of the Ames Brothers (1978), jazz trombonist Edward “Kid” Ory (1973), Big Maybelle Smith (1972)
January 24: James “Shep” Sheppard of Shep & the Limelites (1997), The Association founder Brian Cole (1995), producer and half of C&C Music Factory David Cole (1994), film composer Ken Darby (1992), Bill Horton of The Silhouettes (1955)
January 25: singer Ray Peterson (2005), choral conductor Robert Shaw (1999), New Orleans guitarist and signer Alvin “Shine” Robinson (1989), Lamar Williams of The Allman Brothers (1983), R&B singer Chris Kenner (1976)