This is the week that was in matters musical…
1948, 33-1/3 rpm records are introduced by Columbia …
1955, Sun Records releases Johnny Cash’s first single, “Cry Cry Cry” … it is the first in a line of well over 100 hit singles by Cash to appear on the country, rock, and pop charts …
1956, Paul McCartney receives a trumpet for his birthday … when he realizes he can’t sing and play the horn at the same time, he promptly trades it in on a Zenith acoustic guitar …
1962, Hank Ballard and The Midnighters who wrote and first recorded “The Twist” are scheduled to perform the song for American Bandstand but have to cancel the date … Chubby Checker is hired as a replacement to perform his version of “The Twist,” which will climb higher on the pop chart than Ballard’s original, twice … it will hit number one, and then do it again a year later …
1963, 13-year-old Stevie Wonder’s “Fingertips Pt. 2” becomes his first of 61 singles to chart …
1965, The Byrds’ folk-rock version of Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” spends a week at the top of the charts …
1967, what’s now considered the launch of the Summer of Love occurs when hippies gather in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood to celebrate the summer solstice … as an ominous harbinger of more troubling times, dozens are carted off to psycho wards after ingesting STP, a newly-developed psychedelic that produces scary three-day trips …
1969, Jimi Hendrix earns what is in its day the largest paycheck ever paid to a performer for a single show: $125,000 for a single set at the Newport Jazz Festival … the three-day music fest gathers 150,000 people in Northridge, California, to hear and see Hendrix, Steppenwolf, Jethro Tull, Joe Cocker, CCR, Ike and Tina Turner, and more …
1970, the cops in Niagara Falls discover Chubby Checker packing pot and some other illegal substances … “Cinnamon Girl” by Neil Young goes gold …
1973, The Rocky Horror Picture Show opens for the first time in London … two years later Tim Curry will reprise his role for the movie version …
1980, Led Zeppelin begins a three-week tour with a concert in Dortmund, Germany … held at the Westfalenhalle, it is their first concert on the European continent since 1973 … due to John Bonham’s death the following September, it will be the group’s last European tour … they open the show with “Train Kept A Rollin’,” a song they haven’t played since 1969 and which Page also performed with the original Yardbirds …
… The Blues Brothers, starring Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi, premieres in New York City … the movie’s rife with musician cameo appearances that include James Brown, Cab Calloway, Ray Charles, Steve Cropper, Donald “Duck” Dunn, Murphy “Murph” Dunne, Aretha Franklin, Willie “Too Big” Hall, John Lee Hooker, Chaka Khan, Tom Malone, “Blue” Lou Marini, Matt “Guitar” Murphy, Pinetop Perkins, and Joe Walsh … the film also boasts the biggest car-crash sequence ever shot …
1987, Mötley Crüe is sued by a Florida real estate agent who claims she lost her hearing while sitting in the front row at a Crüe concert … the band’s insurance company eventually pays her $30,000 …
1990, Little Richard receives his star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame …
1996, the Furthur Festival kicks off in Atlanta … the surviving members of The Grateful Dead perform together for the first time since the death of Jerry Garcia the previous August …
1997, Brooks & Dunn perform a special show at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium for their fan club members … the country duo stick around after the show to sign autographs for all 2,000 fans … the signing session starts at 9 p.m. and doesn’t end until the last fan is obliged at 5 a.m. the following morning …
1999, Pantera ride a float in the Dallas Stars Stanley Cup victory parade in downtown Dallas … the honor is bestowed upon the band because Pantera, in addition to being huge Stars fans, wrote the team’s theme song which is played multiple times at every home game … Paul McCartney personally selects and arranges the flowers—45,000 of them—at Manhattan Riverside Church where friends and family gather to say farewell to his wife Linda …
2004, faced with anemic ticket sales, the promoters of the Lollapalooza Festival pull the plug on the tour … organizers say they will lose millions if the tour goes ahead as scheduled … according to promoters the festival’s problem lies with the death of the alternative music market …
2006, when singer Jonathan Davis comes down with a blood disorder, Korn is obliged to pull the plug on its European tour … Davis posts a note on the band’s website saying that headbanging with his condition could lead to instant death by brain hemorrhage … in an ironic twist, the New Cars’ “Road Rage” tour comes to an abrupt halt when the band’s tour bus suddenly swerves to avoid a head-on … guitarist Elliot Easton breaks a clavicle in the incident … while traveling in the Middle East with his Dark Side of the Moon world tour, Roger Waters visits a concrete wall built by the Israeli government in the East Bank to keep out Palestinian suicide bombers … Waters scribbles sentiments on the structure such as “Tear Down the Wall!” … the next day the Pink Floyd founder decides to play in a community called Neveh Shalom where Israelis and Arabs peacefully live together instead of in Tel Aviv as originally planned … it’s reported that those opposed to the barrier have adopted Waters’ song “Another Brick in the Wall” as a rallying cry …
2007, after months of speculation, New Order finally confirms that they have split …
2008, presidential contender Barack Obama continues to rack up support in the rock community with Michael Stipe, Pete Wentz, Billy Joe Armstrong, Bob Weir, Dave Matthews, Jeff Tweedy, and Conor Oberst all signing on to give his campaign support … commenting on the candidate, the Dead’s Weir says, “The contagion of hope is real” … bucking slumping CD sales, Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III moves over a million shiny discs in its first week of release … Celine Dion’s rendition of AC/DC’s “You Shook Me” is given the dubious distinction of being the “Worst Ever Cover Song” in a Total Guitar<> magazine survey … editor Steven Lawson decries Dion’s version as “sacrilege” … the Canadian singer’s never released the song as a single, but performed it as a duet with Anastacia during the Live Divas Las Vegas concert six years ago … runner-up in the worst-cover category is Sugababes and the Bees’ version of “Walk This Way” … among the best covers named are the Jimi Hendrix Experience version of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” and The Beatle’s rendition of “Twist and Shout” …
…and that was the week that was.
Arrivals:
June 17: Igor Stravinsky (1882), guitarist Cliff Gallup of Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps (1930), Norman Kuhlke of The Swinging Blue Jeans (1942), Chris Spedding (1944), Barry Manilow born Barry Alan Pinkus (1946), Paul Young (1956), Kevin Thornton of Color Me Badd (1969)
June 18: Jeanette MacDonald (1907), lyricist Sammy Cahn (1913), Paul McCartney (1942), bassist Carl Radle (1942), pop singer Sandy Posey (1944), Jerome Smith of KC and The Sunshine Band (1953), Tom Bailey of The Thompson Twins (1957), West Arkeen (1960), Alison Moyet (1961), Guns N’ Roses keyboardist Dizzy Reed (1963), Nathan Morris of Boyz II Men (1971)
June 19: bandleader Guy Lombardo (1902), Tommy Devito of The Four Seasons (1936), rockabilly bad boy Robert Gordon (1945), singer-songwriter Nick Drake (1948), Ann Wilson of Heart (1950) Paula Abdul (1962), Brian Vander Ark of The Verve Pipe (1964), Brian Welch of Korn (1969)
June 20: producer Mickie Most (1938), Brian Wilson (1942), singer Anne Murray (1945), Lionel Richie (1949), Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony (1955), John Taylor of Duran Duran (1960), Murphy Karges of Sugar Ray (1968), Twiggy Ramirez of Marilyn Manson (1972)
June 21: Ray Davies of The Kinks (1944), Joey Molland of Badfinger (1948), Joey Kramer of Aerosmith (1950), Nils Lofgren (1951), Mark Brzezicki of Big Country (1957), country singer-songwriter Kathy Mattea (1959), Marcella Detroit of Shakespears Sister (1959), British singer and DJ Sonique, born Sonia Clarke (1968), Mike Einziger of Incubus (1976)
June 22: jazz guitarist Johnny Smith (1922), Kris Kristofferson (1936), Peter Asher of Peter & Gordon (1944), singer Howard Kaylan of The Turtles (1947), Todd Rundgren (1948), Alan Osmond of The Osmonds (1949), Cyndi Lauper (1953), Derek Forbes, bassist with Simple Minds (1956), bassist Garry Gary Beers of INXS (1957), Cowboy Junkies’ bassist Alan Anton (1959), singer Jimmy Somerville of Bronski Beat and The Communards (1961), Mike Edwards of Jesus Jones (1964), Tom Cunningham of Wet Wet Wet (1965), singer-guitarist-songwriter Steven Page of Barenaked Ladies (1970)
June 23: saxophone inventor Adolphe Sax (1846), June Carter, singer-songwriter, actor, comedienne, and wife of Johnny Cash (1929), Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter (1938), British singer and actor, Adam Faith (1940), Paul Goddard of Atlanta Rhythm Section (1945), Richard Coles of The Communards (1962), Steve Shelley, drummer with Sonic Youth (1962)
Departures:
June 17: Karl Mueller of Soul Asylum (2005), jazz singer Jackie Paris (2004), songwriter Mark Cherron (1994)
June 18: sarod master Ali Akbar Khan (2009), Luther Tucker (1993), “Rock Around The Clock” guitar soloist Danny Cedrone (1954)
June 19: mariachi singer-actor Antonio Aguilar (2007), Bobby Helms of “Jingle Bell Rock” fame (1997), composer Vivian Ellis (1996), R&B artist Walter Jackson (1983)
June 20: British bassist-vocalist Tony Dangerfield (2007), Kool & The Gang co-founder and guitarist, Claydes Charles Smith (2006), Canadian one-hit-wonder, Bobby Gimby (1998), Lawrence Payton of The Four Tops (1997), Jim Ellison, lead singer and guitarist with Material Issue (1996)
June 21: Mississippi bluesman John Lee Hooker (2001), jazz and R&B crooner Arthur Prysock (1997), gospel singer Thomas Whitfield (1992), bandleader Bert Kaempfert (1980)
June 22: Kripp Johnson, born Corinthian Johnson, lead singer for The Del Vikings (1990), Jesse “Ed” Davis, session guitarist with Taj Mahal (1988), singer-radio personality Dennis Day (1988), Fred Astaire (1987), Warren Corbin, bass vocalist with the Cleftones (1978), Pere Ubu guitarist Peter Laughner (1977), composer Darius Milhaud (1974)
June 23: John Novarese, owner of Hi Records (1996), Tony Romeo, producer of the Cowsills and Partridge Family (1995), country yodeler Elton Britt (1972)