This is the week that was in matters musical …
This past Tuesday saw the passing of drummer Buddy Miles, who of course was part of Jimi Hendrix’s Band Of Gypsies as well as playing with the likes of the Ink Spots, the Delfonics, Stevie Wonder, David Bowie, Muddy Waters, Ike Turner, Barry White, Prince and Stevie Ray Vaughan. As well as forming Electric Flag with Mike Bloomfield.
Also lead singer of The Dave Clark Five, Mike Smith died on Thursday.
1942, revolutionary jazz guitarist Charlie Christian dies at age 25 from a combination of tuberculosis and hard living … Christian was one of the early pioneers of the electric guitar … his big break occurred in August 1939 when record producer John Hammond took Christian to see Benny Goodman perform at a Los Angeles restaurant … during a break, unbeknownst to Goodman, Christian set up his amplifier and plugged in his Gibson ES-150 archtop electric … reportedly annoyed at the intrusion, Goodman called out the tune "Rose Room," figuring Christian wouldn’t be familiar with it … when it came his time to solo, Charlie spun out 20 choruses of dazzling horn-like single-note guitar artistry … among his other accomplishments in those few short years before his demise, Christian is cited as having played an important role in the development of bebop …
1949, RCA introduces the first 45rpm record … some record labels actually release extended classical works on sets of 45s with the playback interrupted every 4 or 5 minutes while listeners swap discs …
1952, Sun Records, future home of Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins, releases its first record: an instrumental recording by sax man Johnny London … it flops …
1955, Bo Diddley cuts his first records for Chess including "I’m a Man," a tune that will influence generations of rockers to follow … Muddy Waters later records his version, slowing it down a bit and re-titling it "Mannish Boy" …
1957, Chess Records releases singles of Muddy Waters’ "I Got My Mojo Working" and Chuck Berry’s "School Days" …
1963, golden-voiced country/pop great Patsy Cline never makes it back to Nashville when her plane goes down en route from St. Louis … she, Cowboy Copas, and Hawkshaw Hawkins are returning from a benefit concert for the widow of DJ Cactus Jack Call, who was recently killed in a car crash …
1967, San Francisco’s Jefferson Airplane release their second album Surrealistic Pillow … recorded in Los Angeles, the LP features two songs sung by new bandmember Grace Slick—"White Rabbit" and "Somebody To Love" … both are released as singles and become the band’s biggest radio hits … Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead contributes uncredited guitar work to a couple of tracks including electric guitar on "Coming Back To Me" … also featured is the solo acoustic guitar instrumental "Embryonic Journey," written and performed by lead guitarist Jorma Kaukonen using drop-D tuning … Kaukonen later reveals it was the first tune he’d ever written …
1968, before all the publicity about San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district—culminating with the Summer of Love in 1967—the Haight was an obscure bohemian scene populated by writers, artists, musicians, and shopkeepers … the subsequent flood of scene-makers, drug-dealers, and runaways prompts the Grateful Dead to relocate to Marin County … as a farewell gesture, the Dead perform a four-song set on a flatbed truck smack in the middle of Haight Street …
1969, lead singer of The Doors, Jim Morrison, is charged with indecent exposure after a concert in Miami where he allegedly unzipped his leather pants to reveal to the audience his inner artistic self … Morrison is later convicted but his appeal never comes to trial because of his death in Paris in 1971 …
1972, glam rockers Marc Bolan and T-Rex have a string of Top 10 hits in England resulting in "T-Rexmania" at their concerts … but they remain a cult item in the U.S. until they release Bolan’s "Bang A Gong (Get It On)" … based on the simplest of riffs and nonsensical lyrics, the recording bangs its way to #10 on the U.S. charts … however Marc and company fail to capitalize on the hit and are too busy to tour America effectively … follow-ups fail to hit the Top 40, confining T-Rex to one-hit-wonder status in the States … despite lost momentum, T-Rex continue to release albums to their loyal fan base and appear in the Ringo Starr-directed documentary film "Born to Boogie" … in 1977, Marc is killed in a car crash in England …
1974, here is a multifaceted diamond of a one hit wonder: "Seasons in the Sun" by Terry Jacks … it was written by Belgian poet-composer Jacques Brel and American poet Rod McKuen … the tune is rejected by the Beach Boys after it was suggested by producer Terry Jacks, a former member of Top 40 hit group The Poppy Family … Jacks records his version with the help of legendary guitarist Link Wray … the song’s death theme is lightened up by a final verse written by Jacks and an unforgettable sing-along chorus that many have learned to loathe over the years … and now, just to drive you crazy, we’ll get you started: "We had joy, we had fun … " …
1977, out of CBGBs club scene in New York, the band Television release their first album Marquee Moon … it features the winding, twisting guitar work of leader Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd, using arcane modes such as Mixolydian and Aeolian instead of the blues and pentatonic scales commonly found in rock guitar at this point … the virtuosic soloing culminates in the nearly 11-minute title track recorded in one take with drummer Billy Fica thinking it was a rehearsal … the LP is hugely influential and, over the years, has appeared on a number of greatest album-of-all-time rankings …
1978, recorded after recovering from her neck injury of the previous year, Patti Smith releases her third album Easter … a track from the LP, "Because the Night," co-written with Bruce Springsteen, becomes a Top 20 single … Elvis Costello features songs from his upcoming album This Year’s Model at a performance at El Mocambo in Toronto..the concert is broadcast on radio and becomes a much-bootlegged souvenir of the former Declan MacManus’ second American tour …
1982, Blues Brother John Belushi dies at age 33 of too much speedball … according to fellow Blues Brother Dan Akroyd, Belushi had taken to hanging out with a group of sleazy sycophants who had anything but Belushi’s best interests in mind …
1984, Gold Star Recording Studios where Phil Spector cut most of his monster hits is demolished to make way for a mini-mall that features a Del Taco stand …
1994, Kurt Cobain of Nirvana washes down a handful of Valiums with champagne and winds up in a coma in a Rome hospital … he revives after about 20 hours … though officially labeled accidental, the overdose is privately thought to be a suicide attempt by those close to Cobain … conspiracy theorists have suggested that Courtney Love may have slipped him the dose without his knowledge …
1995, Bill Berry of R.E.M. begins suffering from a massive migraine about 90 minutes into the band’s set in Lausanne, Switzerland … he collapses and is rushed offstage, but does not see a doctor until the next day when it is discovered he has an aneurysm on the right side of his brain … the aneurysm is clipped and Berry makes a full recovery …
2007, in its ongoing campaign against piracy, the Recording Industry Association of America sends 400 letters to universities across the U.S. warning them that their students may be sued for copyright infringement if they don’t settle up … the RIAA directs students to a website where they can settle their cases online by coughing up some bucks … Big Champagne, a web tracking service, estimates that one billion songs are swapped online every month on sites such as Limewire … elsewhere, Bono is given the NAACP’s Chairmen’s Award in acknowledgment of his involvement in the AIDS prevention effort … in the ongoing saga of rapper Sean Combs’ ever-changing nom-de-rap, a British court rules that he violated a deal made with London record producer Richard "Diddy" Dearlove to not use the alias "Diddy" in the U.K. … in response to the judgment, Combs agrees to remove the lyric " … mainline this Diddy heroin … " from his song, "The Future," when it is performed in Britain henceforth … ’50s teen idol Fabian has an accident-prone weekend … first, the vehicle he’s riding in near Palm Desert, California, is sideswiped by another vehicle and rolls several times … he and his daughter Julia emerge unscathed while his manager receives minor injuries … the next night, while performing at a casino, he takes a tumble from the stage, scraping his chin …
And that was the week that was.
Arrivals:
February 28: guitarist John Fahey (1939), Joe South (1940), Marty Sanders of Jay and the Americans (1941), R&B singer Barbara Acklin (1943), Brian Jones (1952), Ronald Rosman of Tommy James & The Shondells (1945), Cindy Wilson of The B-52’s (1957), Ian Stanley of Tears For Fears (1957), Phillip Gould of Level 42 (1957), Pat Monahan of Train (1969)
February 29: Jimmy Dorsey (1904), Jerry Lee Lewis (1935), Gretchen Diane Christopher of The Fleetwoods (1940), record producer David Briggs (1944), Ja Rule (1976)
March 1: Glenn Miller (1904), barrelhouse pianist Walter Davis (1912), Harry Belafonte (1927), Jim Ed Brown of The Browns (1934), Roger Daltrey (1942), Jerry Fisher of Blood, Sweat & Tears (1943), Mike D’Abo of Manfred Mann (1944), Nik Kershaw (1958)
March 2: Desi Arnaz (1917), Doc Watson (1923), Lawrence Payton of The Four Tops (1938), Lou Reed born Louis Firbank (1942), George Benson (1943), sax player Michael Brecker (1949), Eddie Money (1949), Rory Gallagher (1949), Karen Carpenter (1950), Jay Osmond of The Osmonds (1955), Dale Bozzio of Missing Persons (1955), Mark Evans of AC/DC (1956), Jon Bon Jovi born John Bongiovi (1962), rapper and DJ Scott LaRock (1962), Coldplay’s Chris Martin (1977)
March 3: Junior Parker (1927), jazz bassist Pierre Michelot (1928), Willie Chambers of The Chambers Brothers (1938), Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane (1942), Mike Pender of The Searchers (1942), Jance Garfat of Dr. Hook (1944), Jennifer Warnes (1947), Robyn Hitchcock (1953), Tone-Loc (1966), John Bigham of Fishbone (1969), Ronan Keating of Boyzone (1977)
March 4: Miriam Makeba (1932), Bobby Womack (1944), Shakin’ Stevens (1948), Billy Gibbons (1948), Chris Squire of Yes (1948), Emilio Estefan of Miami Sound Machine (1950), Jason Newsted of Metallica (1963), Patrick Hannan of The Sundays (1966), Fergal Lawlor of The Cranberries (1971)
March 5: blues great J.B. Lenoir (1929), R&B star Tommy “High Heel Sneakers” Tucker (1939), Electric Prune James Lowe (1945), Eddy Grant (1948), Alan Clark of Dire Straits (1952), Teena Marie (1956), Bobby DeBarge (1956), Mark Smith of The Fall (1957), Andy Gibb (1958), Craig Reid and Charlie Reid of The Proclaimers (1962), John Frusciante of The Red Hot Chili Peppers (1971)
Departures:
February 28: saxophonist Walter Kimble (1988), DJ Eddie Madison (1987), David Byron of Uriah Heep (1985), Duprees lead vocalist Joey Vann (1984), Bobby Bloom (1974), Frankie Lymon (1968), Fats Domino’s guitarist Walter “Papoose” Nelson (1962)
February 29: Brill Building songwriter Wes Farrell (1996)
March 1: Jackson 5 drummer Johnny Jackson (2006), Dennis Danell of Social Distortion (2000), Air Supply’s Frank Esler-Smith (1991)
March 2: pop composer Martin Denny (2005), Hank Ballard (2003), Dusty Springfield (1999), singer-songwriter David Ackles (1999), French pop singer Serge Gainsbourg (1991), rockabilly pianist Roy Hall (1984), Charlie Christian (1942)
March 3: poet-songwriter Ivor Cutler (2006), Harlan “Mr. Songwriter” Howard (2002)
March 4: songwriter-pianist Marvin Jenkins (2005), guitarist John McGeoch (2004), country artist Eddie Dean of “I Dreamed Of a Hillbilly Heaven” fame (1999), Minnie Pearl (1996), songwriter Eden Ahbez (1995), jazz guitarist Mary Osborne (1992), founder of the doo-wop Herald and Ember labels Al Silver (1992), bebop guitarist Tiny Grimes (1989), Richard Manuel of The Band (1986), R&B bandleader Red Saunders (1981), Brit rocker Mike Patto (1979), Raymond Edwards of The Silhouettes (1977)
March 5: Vivian Stanshall of The Bonzo Dog Band (1995), blues brother John Belushi (1982), Patsy Cline (1963), Cowboy Copas (1963), Hawkshaw Hawkins (1963)