This is the week that was in matters musical…
1952, Cleveland DJ Alan Freed mounts his first rock ‘n’ roll show dubbed The Moondog Coronation Ball … the venue holds 10,000 but 30,000 rock-hungry teens turn up causing the cops to call the show off … the resulting riot is a precursor to the coming age of rock …
1956, Carl Perkins receives severe injuries in a Delaware auto accident … he was on his way to the Big Apple to perform on Perry Como’s TV variety show … the El Capris enjoy a minor hit with the tune “(Shimmy Shimmy) Ko Ko Wop” … the song will resurface as a hit for Little Anthony and the Imperials in 1960 … in an early instance of political correctness, it’s retitled “Shimmy Shimmy Ko Ko Bop” …
1964, after a long day of shooting their first feature film, the Beatles’ Ringo Starr is heard to say, “Boy, this has been a hard day’s night!” thus inadvertently giving a name to the movie … also this week, wax images of The Beatles go on display in London at the Madame Tussaud Wax Museum … they will later appear on the Sergeant Pepper cover …
1965, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Bill Wyman are busted for peeing on a petrol station wall after they’re refused admittance to the loo …
1967, a late night jam in L.A.’s Laurel Canyon with Eric Clapton and Buffalo Springfield is broken up by the police who, upon arriving, smell marijuana … Stills escapes through a window; Clapton is somehow set free; the rest, including Neil Young, spend the night in jail and later plead guilty to disturbing the peace in exchange for having the drug charges dropped …
1969, John and Yoko are married in Gibraltar … two days later they begin their famous “bed-in for peace” …
1982, soul-singing smoothie Teddy Pendergrass is paralyzed from the waist down in Philly when he flips his Rolls attempting to avoid another auto … Randy Rhoads, lead guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne’s band, is killed when a plane he is flying in crashes into a home and explodes … the band has stopped at the Leesburg, Florida, home of its bus driver, Andrew Aycock, a licensed pilot … Aycock “borrows” a plane from a nearby airfield and invites Rhoads and costume designer Rachel Youngblood to take a quick flight … as Ozzy and the rest of the band sleep on the bus, Aycock circles and buzzes it three times without incident … on the fourth pass, the aircraft bumps the bus, clips a wing, and crashes into a nearby house, erupting in flames … all three onboard are killed … a postmortem exam finds cocaine in Aycock’s system …
1990, Gloria Estefan is seriously hurt when a tractor-trailer smacks into her band’s tour bus near Scranton, Pennsylvania … she returns to touring 11 months later …
1991, Eric Clapton’s 4-year-old son, Conor, falls 56 floors out the window of a New York apartment building in a freak accident … the little boy is in the custody of his mother, Italian actress Lori Del Santo … they are visiting New York and staying in a friend’s apartment … the housekeeper has just cleaned a room and opened the window to air it out when young Conor comes dashing by and falls out the window … Clapton is in his hotel nearby … he had just taken Conor to the circus the previous evening … “Tears in Heaven,” “The Circus Left Town,” and “Lonely Stranger” are all inspired by the deep impact the accident has on Conor’s grieving father …
1994, Bruce Springsteen wins the Oscar for Best Original Song for “Streets of Philadelphia” … the song is from the film Philadelphia, and is the first ever written by Springsteen specifically for a film …
1996, The Beatles last charting single, “Real Love,” enters the Top 100 and will eventually rise to #11 … the song is based on a demo cut by John Lennon in 1979 to which the other Beatles added new vocals 16 years after Lennon’s death …
1999, Radiohead debuts its behind-the-scenes film, Meeting People is Easy, at the South By Southwest Music and Film Festival in Austin, TX … rapper Ol’ Dirty Bastard is arrested yet again, this time in New York City after police claim to have found crack cocaine in his vehicle after pulling him over for missing license plates … ODB will be charged with misdemeanor drug possession and driving with a suspended license … he will be arrested again five days later after police pull him over because once again, the vehicle he is driving has no license plates …
2002, The Ramones are inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the 17th annual induction dinner … Pearl Jam frontman and self-admitted Ramones fanatic Eddie Vedder is their presenter … with a freshly cut mohawk atop his shaved head, Vedder delivers a 16-minute-long tribute to the band before bringing them onstage …
2005, Justin Jeffre, former member of the boy band 98 Degrees, announces his candidacy for mayor of Cincinnati … he will finish fifth out of seven candidates with 708 votes …
2006, Utah Jazz forward Carlos Boozer withdraws a civil suit he filed against Prince resulting from the Purple One’s redecoration of the mansion he rents from the basketballer … among Prince’s improvements: lavender stripes painted on various surfaces, installation of purple-and-black carpets, and modifications to the plumbing system to accommodate several beauty-salon chairs … Courtney Love sells her 25% share in Nirvana’s catalog to Larry Mestel, a former Virgin Records executive, for an estimated $50 million … Bon Jovi’s hit single “Who Says You Can’t Go Home” takes the #1 slot on the Hot Country Chart … it’s the first rock crossover hit ever to do that … Aerosmith is obliged to cancel the rest of its tour dates when Steven Tyler is operated on for unspecified throat problems …
2007, members of the ’70s Scots pop band Bay City Rollers sue Arista, their former label, charging that they are owed millions in unpaid royalties … Elsrock, an outdoor heavy-metal rock festival, is given conditional approval to put on its show outside the town of Rijssen, located in the Netherlands’ Bible Belt … the proviso prohibits cursing and blasphemy … the 2006 version of the festival had outraged residents … in explaining why the permit was granted, Mayor Bort Koelewijn cites “the stated readiness of the organizers to make sure that no blasphemous words are used, and that the honor of God’s name is not besmirched” …
2008, R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe publicly reveals he’s gay in an interview with Spin magazine … adding to the record industry’s woes, Walmart tells the major labels that if they don’t lower wholesale prices so the giant retailer can sell CDs profitably in the $10-12 range, they’ll quit selling them entirely … as America’s biggest record retailer, such a move would be another nail in the industry’s coffin lid … popster Avril Lavigne partners with the Kohl’s department store chain to launch a line of teen togs dubbed Abbey Dawn … in the wake of Radiohead’s successful web-only release of In Rainbows, Nine Inch Nails brings in $1.6 million with its 36-track instrumental album Ghosts I – IV available in five different versions ranging from a nine-song free download to a $300 deluxe vinyl package …
…and that was the week that was.
Arrivals:
March 18: Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844), Lester “Big Daddy” Kinsey (1927), Robert Lee Smith of The Tams (1936), Charley Pride (1938), Wilson Pickett (1941), dub-style reggae pioneer Keith Hudson (1946), B.J. Wilson of Procol Harum (1947), John Hartman of The Doobie Brothers (1950), Bill Frisell (1951), Irene Cara (1959), Vanessa Williams (1963), Jerry Cantrell of Alice in Chains (1966), Queen Latifah born Dana Owens (1970), Jamiroquai’s Stuart Zender (1974)
March 19: saxophonist Ornette Coleman (1930), Chicago blues singer Sam Myers (1936), New Orleans R&B singer Clarence “Frogman” Henry (1937), R&B artist Walter Jackson (1938), Grateful Dead keyboard player Tom Constanten (1944), The Monkees’ Mickey Dolenz (1945), The Zombies’ Paul Atkinson (1946), Ruth Pointer of The Pointer Sisters (1946), bassist Billy Sheehan (1953), The B-52s’ Ricky Wilson (1953), Bay City Rollers’ Derek Longmuir (1955), Terry Hall of The Specials (1959), Brann Dailor, drummer for Mastodon (1975)
March 20: gospel singer-guitarist Sister Rosetta Tharpe (1921), guitarist Jerry Reed (1937), blues saxist Eddie Shaw (1937), Carl Palmer of ELP (1951), guitarist Jimmy Vaughan (1951), Slim Jim Phantom of Stray Cats (1961), singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman (1964), Chester Bennington of Linkin Park (1976)
March 21: Johann Sebastian Bach (1685), Delta bluesman Bo Carter (1893), Delta blues legend Eddie “Son” House (1902), Chicago bluesman Otis “Big Smokey” Smothers (1929), blues pianist Otis Spann (1930), Vivian Stanshall of The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band (1943), Rosemary Stone of Sly and the Family Stone born Rosemary Stewart (1945), Ray Dorset of Mungo Jerry (1946), Eddie Money, born Edward Mahoney (1949), Roger Hodgson of Supertramp (1950), Conrad Lozano of Los Lobos (1951), Russell Thompkins of The Stylistics (1951), Prodigy’s MC Maxim (1967), Ace of Base’s Jonas Berggren (1967), Andrew Copeland of Sister Hazel (1968), rapper Notorious B.I.G. born Christopher Wallace (1972)
March 22: composer Stephen Sondheim (1930), jazz guitarist George Benson (1943), Keith Relf of The Yardbirds (1943), Tony McPhee of The Groundhogs (1944), Jeremy Clyde of Chad and Jeremy (1944), Harry Vanda of The Easybeats (1947), Patrick Olive of Hot Chocolate (1947), Andrew Lloyd Webber (1948), McCoys/Johnny Winter bass player Randy Jo Hobbs (1948), R&B/soul singer Stephanie Mills (1957), Richard Ploog of The Church (1962)
March 23: Joey d’Ambrosio of Bill Haley & His Comets (1934), swamp bluesman Louisiana Red (1936), Ric Ocasek of The Cars (1949), disco singer Karen Young (1952), Chaka Khan, born Yvette Marie Stevens (1953), Epic Soundtracks, born Kevin Godfrey, founding drummer of the punk band Swell Maps (1959), Damon Albarn of Blur (1968)
March 24: Ollie McLaughlin, producer for Del Shannon (1925), George Lee, singer with Ruby & The Romantics (1936), soul singer Billy “Fat Boy” Stewart (1937), songwriter Peggy Sue, sister of Loretta Lynn and Crystal Gayle (1947)
Departures:
March 18: New Orleans pianist Eddie Bo (2009), rapper Darnell “King Tut” Brittingham (2009), session bassist Wayne Pedzwater (2005), The Mamas & the Papas co-founder John Phillips (2001)
March 19: drummer Jeff Ward of Nine Inch Nails and Ministry (1993), Mother Love Bone’s Andrew Wood (1990), Randy Rhoads (1982), Chicago’s first big blues star, bottleneck slide man Tampa Red (1981), Paul Kossoff of Free (1976)
March 20: jazz and R&B guitarist Billy Butler (1991), Cadence Records founder Archie Bleyer (1989)
March 21: songwriter Fred Spielman (1997), Leo Fender (1991)
March 22: George Howard, sax player with Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes (1998), singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Dan Hartman (1994), Dave Guard of The Kingston Trio (1991), one-hit-wonder Mark Dinning of “Teen Angel” fame (1986)
March 23: Walter Turnbull, founder of the Boys Choir of Harlem (2007), Cindy Walker, country songwriter who also wrote hits for Ray Charles and Roy Orbison (2006), songwriter-producer J.D. Miller (1996), Don Murray, drummer for The Turtles (1996), Ripley Ingram, tenor vocalist with The Five Keys (1995), Jeanine Deckers aka the Singing Nun (1985), Frank Kirkland, Bo Diddley’s drummer (1973)
March 24: Funk Brothers drummer Uriel Jones (2009), country singer Hensen Cargill (2007), Foghat’s founding guitarist Rod Price (2005), Harold Melvin, leader of Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes (1997)