This is the week that was in matters musical…
1949, RCA introduces the 45-rpm record …
1952, Sun Records, future home of Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins releases its first record, an instrumental by saxman Johnny London … it flops …
1957, Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers receive the princely sum of $7,500 to play a carnival in Panama … the fee is considered huge for a one-nighter … meanwhile Chicago’s Chess Records releases Muddy Waters’ “I Got My Mojo Working,” and Chuck Berry’s “School Days” … the singles reflect the company’s dual focus on urban blacks and white teens …
1967, Paul McCartney reads a newspaper account of a missing teenage girl inspiring his “She’s Leaving Home” …
1968, Johnny Cash and June Carter marry in Franklin, Kentucky … a motorcade of Cadillacs transports Johnny, June, and their families to a small, private ceremony … Cash’s best man is Merle Kilgore who shares co-writing credits with June on “Ring of Fire,” a tune often considered as the musical record of Johnny and June’s illicit love affair …
1977, Mississippi bluesman Bukka White dies of cancer … born Booker T. Washington White, he was inspired to play music by blues legend Charley Patton … in the 1930s he played semi-pro baseball and boxed, and in 1937 was imprisoned on an assault charge … after escaping from prison, White cut some sides for the Vocalion label and was eventually recaptured … his name as it appears on records resulted from a Vocalion producer misunderstanding his name; White preferred to be called Booker … rediscovered by a blues researcher in 1963, he made appearances at festivals during the blues revival that marked the latter stages of his eventful life … remembered as a powerful performer on National steel guitars, White gave his cousin B.B. King a Stella—the future electric blues star’s first guitar …
… meanwhile in Santa Monica, California, Bob Dylan’s wife, Sara, files for divorce … the couple has been married for 11 years and has five children … in the property settlement she is given the family home and custody of the kids … Sara is said to be the inspiration behind Dylan songs such as “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands,” “Lay Lady Lay,” and “Sara” …
1978, Van Halen plays the first date of its first national tour at Chicago’s Aragon Ballroom … there’s a rider in the contract providing that M&Ms with the brown candies removed be available backstage …
1983, Michael Jackson’s Thriller soars to #1 on the pop chart and will stay there 37 weeks, selling over 40 million copies … it’s the number-one seller in every Western nation where such records are kept …
1985, Jacko drops in on Madame Tussaud’s London waxworks where his likeness is being unveiled …
1990, former Coasters lead tenor Cornell Gunter dies in Las Vegas when an unknown assailant shoots him while he’s sitting in his car …
1994, Kurt Cobain 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 thought to be a suicide attempt by those close to Cobain … a second attempt nearly two months later with a shotgun will prove fatal …
1995, Lyle Lovett breaks his collarbone while motorcycling in Mexico causing him to miss the Grammys where he wins Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals for his duet on “Funny How Time Slips Away” with Al Green and Best Country Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group for his version of “Blues For Dixie” with Asleep At The Wheel … meanwhile in Lausanne, Switzerland, Bill Berry of R.E.M. suffers a massive migraine about 90 minutes into the band’s set … 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 … Berry undergoes surgery and makes a full recovery …
1999, British singer Dusty Springfield falls victim to breast cancer … born Mary Elizabeth Catherine Bernadette O’Brien, the highly regarded singer enjoyed a series of pop hits including the blockbuster “Silver Threads and Golden Needles” … her death falls on the day she was scheduled to receive her OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) from Queen Elizabeth …she was 59 …
… Joss Stone may have a Brand New Combine Harvester but she ain’t got no soul … after a 31-year hiatus, Patti LaBelle & The Bluebelles appear at the Rhythm & Blues Foundation’s Pioneer Awards in L.A. where they perform a stunning rendition of “You’ll Never Walk Alone” …
2000, it’s announced that pop princess Britney Spears is marketing her own brand of bubble gum creatively dubbed “Britney Spears CD Bubble Gum” … meanwhile in Newport Beach, California, Dennis Danell of Social Distortion dies of an apparent brain aneurysm suffered in his driveway … he was 38 …
2003, R&B singer Hank Ballard dies of throat cancer at home in L.A. … notable for having written “The Twist” and enjoying a hit with it before Chubby Checker’s cover, he and his swinging band, The Midnighters, charted with 22 R&B hits in the 1950s and ’60s, many of which crossed over onto the pop chart … these include the suggestive “Work With Me Annie” followed by “Annie Had a Baby” … their racy lyrics resulted in the songs being banned on many radio stations …
2004, shock jock Howard Stern is suspended indefinitely from Clear Channel radio following listeners’ complaints sent to the network and the FCC … complaints center around Stern’s potty mouth and the smutty subjects he addresses … Clear Channel president John Hogan publicly demands Stern drop the naughty content from his show … Stern demurs and is suspended only to be picked up as a broadcaster by XM satellite radio …
2005, the legendary Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, closes … artists such as The Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Bob Seger recorded some of their biggest hits at the facility … the studio, owned since 1985 by indie blues label Malaco Records, is a victim of the computer recording boom …
… Ozzy Osbourne, who’s promoting the Australian MTV Awards in Sydney, inexplicably cups daughter Kelly’s left breast during a press conference …
2006, new-age musician Yanni is arrested in Florida on charges of domestic battery against his girlfriend … after being found asleep at the steering wheel of his car in London, George Michael is taken in by the bobbies on charges of possessing pot and painkillers …
2007, more than two months after his death, James Brown remains unburied while family members squabble over burial details … meanwhile an undisclosed agreement is reached on how DNA samples should be collected from the corpse … they are needed to resolve several paternity claims including the parentage of a child that his companion Tomi Rae Hynie says Brown fathered … though Hynie says she married Brown, the Godfather’s lawyers dispute that, saying she was still married to another man when the alleged marriage took place … meanwhile in Britain, the husband of deceased classical pianist Joyce Hatto confesses to passing off other artists’ recordings as the work of his late wife on more than 100 CDs issued under her name since she quit public performances in 1976 … William Barrington-Coupe admits the deception in a letter sent to BIS, the label that issued the discs … the scandal is precipitated by an article in Britain’s Gramophone magazine in which it’s revealed that Hatto’s recording of Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes was actually lifted from a recording by Laszio Simon … meanwhile on this side of the Atlantic, in its ongoing campaign against piracy, the Recording Industry Association of America sends 400 letters to U.S. universities warning them that 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 downloaded online every month at sites such as LimeWire … on this same day in 2007, 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 … and finally, in other legal proceedings back in the colonies, after spending three nights in the Norfolk County Jail in Massachusetts for late child-support payments, singer Bobby Brown is sprung when a Washington, DC, radio station posts $19,510 bail … in return, the singer will take part in a week’s worth of broadcasts of Hot 99.5 FM’s The Kane Show … the show’s host, who goes by the single name Kane, tells the press, “In exchange for the money, he agreed to be an employee of our radio station for one week, where he will discuss what he did wrong and how he could turn his life around. We are going to have a very open and candid conversation” … Brown was arrested as he watched his daughter perform at a local cheerleading competition … coincidentally, a year earlier Brown was arrested for a 14-year string of motor-vehicle violations, also while watching his daughter in a cheerleading competition …
2008, Dee Snider of Twisted Sister and Troy Luccketa of Tesla put together a lineup of rock and country performers at the Providence, Rhode Island, Dunkin’ Donuts Center to raise money for the families of the 100 fans who died and 200 who were injured in the Station nightclub fire five years earlier … the benefit that includes Winger, Stryder, and Gretchen Wilson among others raises $175,000 …
2009, President Obama awards Stevie Wonder The Library of Congress Gershwin Prize …
…and that was the week that was.
Arrivals:
February 25: blueswoman Ida Cox (1896), record store tycoon Sam Goody, born Samuel Gutowitz (1904), country singer Faron Young (1932), Barry Kramer, founder of Creem magazine (1943), guitarist Frank “Poncho” Sampedro of Crazy Horse (1949), bassist and songwriter Stewart “Woody” Wood of The Bay City Rollers (1957), drummer Dennis Diken of The Smithereens (1957), singer Mike Peters of The Alarm (1959)
February 26: Fats Domino (1928), Norman P. Rich of Billy Stewart’s band (1930), Johnny Cash (1932), Paul Cotton of Poco (1943), Bob “The Bear” Hite of Canned Heat (1943), Mitch Ryder (1945), Elvis impersonator Orion born Jimmy Hodges (1945), Jonathan Cain of Journey (1950), Michael Bolton (1954), Bronski Beat’s John Jon (1961), Erykah Badu (1971)
February 27: New Orleans guitarist Roy Montrell (1928), Ralph Garone of The Bob Knight Four (1940), Eddie Gray of Tommy James & The Shondells (1948), Neil Schon of Journey (1954), Adrian Smith of Iron Maiden (1957), Chili of TLC (1971), Jeremy Dean of Nine Days (1972), rapper Ja Rule (1976), singer-songwriter Josh Groban (1981)
February 28: guitarist John Fahey (1939), singer-songwriter 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: producer David Briggs (1944)
March 1: bandleader 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), synth pop singer-songwriter 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), blues/rock guitarist Rory Gallagher (1948), sax player Michael Brecker (1949), Eddie Money (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: 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)
Departures:
February 25: Pylon guitarist Randy Bewley (2009), ’60s folk singer Mark Spoelstra (2007), Thomas Koppel, co-founder of Danish prog-rock band Savage Rose (2006), blues saxophonist A.C. Reed (2004), William “Hoss” Allen, white DJ who promoted R&B in Nashville (1997), Toy Caldwell, guitarist and songwriter for the Marshall Tucker Band (1993)
February 26: ELO bassist Kelly Groucutt (2009), drummer Buddy Miles (2008), Cajun music pioneer Edwin Duhon (2006), lyricist Ben Raleigh (1997), Frank O’Keefe of The Outlaws (1995), Cornell Gunter of The Coasters (1990), bluesman Bukka White (1977), Sherman Garnes of Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers (1977), blues pianist Big Maceo (1953)
February 27: drummer Bobby Rosengarden (2007), Mississippi fife player Othar Turner (2003), Marlena Easley of The Orlons (1993)
February 28: Mike Smith of The Dave Clark Five (2008), saxophonist Walter Kimble (1988), DJ Eddie Madison (1987), David Byron of Uriah Heep (1985), Duprees lead vocalist Joey Vann (1984), songwriter Bobby Bloom (1974), Frankie Lymon (1968), Fats Domino’s guitarist Walter “Papoose” Nelson (1962)
March 1: Jackson 5 drummer (and no relation) Johnny Jackson (2006), Dennis Danell of Social Distortion (2000), Air Supply’s Frank Esler-Smith (1991)
March 2: country singer-songwriter Ernie Ashworth (2009), blues guitarist Jeff Healey (2008), exotica bandleader 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 and Beatles influence Ivor Cutler (2006), Harlan “Mr. Songwriter” Howard (2002)