1937, American blues singer Bessie Smith died aged 43 after being involved in a car accident while traveling along Route 61 outside Memphis, Tennessee. Her 1923 song ‘Downhearted Blues’ was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2006.
1961, The Greenbriar Boys started a two-week residency at Gerde’s Folk Club in New York. The opening act was Bob Dylan.
1964, Roy Orbison started a three week run at No.1 on the US singles chart with ‘Oh Pretty Woman’. The title was inspired by Orbison’s wife Claudette interrupting a conversation to announce she was going out; when Orbison asked if she was okay for cash, his co-writer Bill Dees interjected “A pretty woman never needs any money.”
1965, At the end of a European tour Roger Daltry knocked out Keith Moon resulting in the singer being sacked from The Who. The band were playing two shows in one night in Denmark, when an argument broke about between all four band members. Daltrey was reinstated the following day.
1967, Pink Floyd played the first of three nights at the Fillmore in San Francisco, the groups first ever live dates in the US.
1968, Rolling Stone Brian Jones was fined £50 with 100 guineas cost after being found guilty of possession of cannabis.
1969, The Beatles released Abbey Road in the UK. The final studio recordings from the group featured two George Harrison songs ‘Something’ (Harrison’s first A-side single), and ‘Here Comes The Sun’. In their interviews for The Beatles Anthology, the surviving band members stated that, although none of them ever made the distinction of calling it the “last album”, they all felt at the time this would very likely be the final Beatles product and therefore agreed to set aside their differences and “go out on a high note”.
1981, Bruce Dickinson joined UK rock band Iron Maiden, (Dickinson had been the vocalist with Samson).
1987, Michael Jackson started a six-week run at No.1 on the US album chart with ‘Bad’. Released nearly five years after Jackson’s previous studio album, Thriller, Bad, went on to become the world’s best-selling album having sold between 30 to 45 million copies worldwide. The album produced five US No.1’s, the first album to do so.
1987, Whitney Houston started a two week run at No.1 on the US singles chart with ‘Didn’t We Almost Have It All’.
1989, Paul McCartney started his world tour at The Drammenshallen, in Drammen, Norway. It was McCartney’s first major tour outing in ten years, since Wings UK Tour 1979, and his first appearances in North America in thirteen years.
1995, AC/DC released Ballbreaker their 12th international studio album. The album which was produced by Rick Rubin, featured the return of former drummer Phil Rudd, who had been fired from the band in 1983 as a result of drinking and drug problems and a fight with founding rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young.
1996, Police found drugs hidden in a Smarties tube when they raided the London home of Paula Yates and INXS singer Michael Hutchence. The couple were away in Australia at the time of the raid.
2003, English singer, songwriter Robert Palmer died of a heart attack aged 54 in Paris France. He was a member of Vinegar Joe and Power Station (with Duran Duran members Andy Taylor and John Taylor with drummer and former Chic member Tony Thompson). As a solo artist had the 1986 US No.1 & UK No.5 single ‘Addicted To Love’ and the 1988 hit ‘Simply Irresistible’.
2003, A report published on requests by artists to venues of their backstage requirements revealed; Limp Bizkit insisted that all the lamps in their rooms be dimmable while Mariah Carey would only have ‘bendy’ straws as she will not use straight ones. Van Halen insisted that back-stage celery is trimmed and not peeled. The Red Hot Chili Peppers asked for a meditation room and a selection of aromatherapy candles. Barry Manilow requested that the air temperature in the auditorium be kept at a regular 65 degrees.
2004, Green Day scored their first UK No.1 album with ‘American Idiot’ the bands seventh release.
2007, A charitable foundation set up by Shakira donated $40 million to help victims of natural disasters. The money would go towards repairing damage caused by an earthquake in Peru and a hurricane in Nicaragua. A further $5 million would be spent on health and education in four Latin American countries.
2008, Matthew Bellamy, Christopher Wolstenholme and Dominic Howard from Muse was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from the University of Plymouth, England.
2009, Jay-Z started a two-week run at No.1 on the US album charts with ‘The Blueprint 3’, the rappers eleventh studio album.
2016, Universal, Warner Brothers, Sony and several other record labels filed a law suit against the operators of YouTube-mp3.org, a service that allowed its users to remove audio from videos streamed on YouTube. The court action, launched against a German company, alleged that “tens, or even hundreds, of millions of tracks are illegally copied and distributed by stream ripping services each month.”
