1962, Bill Wyman made his live debut with The Rolling Stones at the Ricky Tick Club, Star and Garter Hotel in Windsor, England. The group were known as The Rollin’ Stones during this period.
1963, American singer and pianist Dinah Washington died at the age of 39. An autopsy later showed a lethal combination of secobarbital and amobarbital had contributed to her death. Washington gave herself the title of “Queen of the Blues”. She had her first top ten pop hit in 1959 with a version of ‘What a Diff’rence a Day Made’, and then two successful duets in 1960 with Brook Benton, ‘Baby (You’ve Got What It Takes)’ and ‘A Rockin’ Good Way (To Mess Around and Fall in Love).
1963, The Beatles played a show for their Southern Area Fan Club at Wimbledon Palais, London. To prevent damage to the stage from fans the management of the Palais constructed a platform for The Beatles to perform on, surrounded by a steel cage.
1967, Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones was rushed to St Georges hospital in London after collapsing. A doctor reported Jones was tired and suffering from over strain and was also recovering from having some teeth out.
1968, Marvin Gaye scored his first US No.1 single when ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’ started a five-week run at the top of the charts. It was Marvin’s 15th solo hit and also his first UK No.1 single in March 69. Written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong in 1966, the single was first recorded by Smokey Robinson & the Miracles as well as Gladys Knight & the Pips.
1969, The Jackson Five made their first network television appearance in the US when they appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show.
1971, Led Zeppelin IV was riding high in the Top 10 of the US album charts. In 2006, the album was rated No.1 on Classic Rock magazine’s ‘100 Greatest British Albums’ poll, and No.1 in a poll conducted by Guitar World. The album has now sold over 23 million copies in the US. The typeface for the lyrics to Stairway to Heaven, printed on the inside sleeve of the album, was Jimmy Page’s contribution. He found it in an old arts and crafts magazine from the late 19th century. He thought the lettering was interesting and arranged for a designer to create a whole alphabet
1972, Born To Boogie the Ringo Starr directed movie premiered in London. The film was based around a concert at Wembley Empire Pool, London, England starring Ringo Starr, Marc Bolan and T. Rex and was released on The Beatles Apple Films label.
1973, Bruce Springsteen appeared at the Pinecrest Country Club, Shelton, Connecticut. Only 200 tickets were sold for the show.
1979, The Clash released their third studio album London Calling. The double album received widespread acclaim and was ranked at number eight on Rolling Stone’s list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2003 and was ranked as the sixth-greatest album of the 1970s by NME.
1980, Yoko Ono called on fans to observe ten minutes of silence in memory of John Lennon. 30,000 gathered outside St George’s Hall in Liverpool, while nearly 100,000 attend a memorial in New York’s Central Park.
1985, Whitney Houston scored her first UK No.1 single with ‘Saving All My Love For You’. The song which was written by Michael Masser and Gerry Goffin, had been a minor hit for Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr. in 1978 and was also a US No.1 for Houston.
1991, Michael Jackson started a four-week run at No.1 on the US album chart with his eighth studio album ‘Dangerous’. The album has sold over 32 million copies worldwide making it one of the best selling albums of all time. Nine singles were released from the album spanning two years (1991–1993).
1997, Canadian guitarist and songwriter Kurt Winter died of kidney failure at the age of 51. He was a member of Brother and The Guess Who (replacing guitarist Randy Bachman), who scored the 1970 US No.1 & UK No.19 single ‘American Woman’. Winter penned the hit singles ‘Bus Rider’ and ‘Hand Me Down World’, both of which were hits for The Guess Who.
1998, Billy Preston pleaded guilty to insurance fraud in a Los Angeles court and agreed to testify against six other defendants who allegedly participated in starting fires, staging thefts and rigging car crashes for which a total of 18 fraudulent insurance claims were filed. Preston received five years of probation and one year in jail to run concurrently with a sentence he was already serving for violating probation on a prior conviction for cocaine possession.
1999, Sir Paul McCartney appeared at The Cavern Club Liverpool, England in front of 300 people with David Gilmour, Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice, Pete Wingfield on keyboards and the legendary Mick Green (of Johnny Kidd & The Pirates) on guitar. It marked McCartney’s last gig of the year and the 20th Century. His last gig at the venue was in 1963. The show went out as a live webcast and was estimated to have been watched by some three million people worldwide (a record at the time for an online audience), BBC Radio 2 broadcast the show live and BBC1 TV also aired the historic performance.
2003, Ozzy & Kelly Osbourne went to No.1 on the UK singles chart with ‘Changes’ a remake of a track first sung by Ozzy on the Black Sabbath album Volume IV in 1972. It was the first father and daughter chart topper since Frank & Nancy Sinatra in 1967.
2004, The funeral took place in Arlington, Texas for Damageplan and Pantera guitarist Dimebag Darrell, Eddie Van Halen, placed Darrell’s original black and yellow stripes guitar into the KISS Kasket he was buried in. Several thousand fans and friends gathered at the Arlington Convention Center in Arlington, to mourn the guitarist’s death. Darrell was shot five times in the back of the head during a gig at the Alrosa Villa Club in Columbus on 8th Dec 04 by a mentally ill former US Marine. Damageplan’s drum technician, John Brooks, and tour manager, Chris Paluska, were both injured in the incident.
2006, The co-founder of Atlantic Records Ahmet Ertegun died, aged 83. Ertegun who founded Atlantic Records with Herb Abramson in 1947 helped make Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin stars and signed The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin in the early 70s. He suffered a head injury when he fell at a Rolling Stones concert at New York’s Beacon Theatre in October, and died after slipping into a coma.
2011, The Troggs singer Reg Presley was hospitalized in Winchester, England, with what was suspected to be a stroke. Presley had become ill during a gig in Germany a few days earlier.
2011, American country music singer Billie Jo Spears died of cancer age 74. She reached the top 10 of the US country music chart five times between 1969 and 1977, her biggest being ‘Blanket on the Ground’, a 1975 No.1 hit. One of Spears’s first singles was ‘Harper Valley PTA’, but her single release was beaten off the presses by Jeannie C. Riley’s version which became a monster crossover hit, while Spears’s failed to chart.
2015, Adele was at No.1 on both the UK and US chart with her third album 25. The album was a massive commercial success, debuting at No.1 in more than 25 markets and broke first-week sales records in many countries, including the UK and US. 25 eventually became the world’s best-selling album of 2015 with 17.4 million copies sold within the year, and has sold 20 million copies as of June 2016, making it one of the best selling albums worldwide.
