1955 – Elvis Presley’s performance in Jacksonville, Florida is the first Presley show at which a riot ensues. After Elvis tells the audience, “Girls, I’ll see you backstage,” he has some of his clothes ripped off but escapes unharmed.
1958 – Jerry Lee Lewis is granted a divorce from wife number two, Jane Mitcham, six months after marrying his second cousin, Myra Gayle Brown.
1966 – The Rolling Stones release “Paint It Black”, one of the first Rock records to use a sitar. The single will hit number one in both the UK and the US.
1970 – Badfinger records “No Matter What”, which will reach #8 in the US and #5 in the UK near the end of the year.
1971 – On his twenty-first birthday Stevie Wonder received his childhood earnings. Despite having made $30 million so far, he was given only $1 million.
Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane crashed her Mercedes into a wall near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and was hospitalized.
1974 – More than fifty people are hurt when trouble makers start throwing bottles outside a Jackson 5 concert at RFK Stadium in Washington D.C. 43 are arrested.
1977 – Linda Ronstadt denies reports that she’d been offered $1 million to be photographed nude for a Hustler Magazine centerfold. Publisher Larry Flynt offered the amount to ten famous women, none of whom accepted.
EMI in Britain and Capitol Records in the US released “The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl”, an album made from ‘live’ recordings of the Beatles’ American tours of 1964 and 1965.
1978 – After singing background vocals for Eric Clapton’s “I Shot The Sheriff” in 1974, Yvonne Elliman had a US number one hit of her own with “If I Can’t Have You”. The song reached #4 in the UK.
1981 – Joan Webber, who topped the Billboard chart in early 1955 with “Let Me Go, Lover”, died of heart failure in a mental institution in Ancora, New Jersey at the age of 45.
1985 – Stevie Wonder was cited by the United Nations for his efforts against apartheid.
1986 – Ted Nugent appears on Dr. Ruth Westheimer’s TV show and tells the audience “Life is one big female safari and Dr. Ruth is my guide.”
2002 – A battery charge against Soul singer Lou Rawls was dismissed for insufficient evidence. The 67-year-old Rawls was arrested last January 15th for allegedly shoving his girlfriend, Nina Inman, during an argument about their relationship.
2012 – Donald “Duck” Dunn, the bass guitarist for Booker T and the MGs, passed away while touring in Japan at the age of 70. He also played on Otis Redding’s “Respect” and Sam And Dave’s “Hold On, I’m Comin'”,
2013 – 71-year-old Aretha Franklin was forced to cancel two concerts in Illinois and Connecticut to undergo treatment for an unknown condition. She had called off a series of shows in 2010 to undergo surgery to remove a tumor.
2014 – “Xscape”, the first posthumous album of new music from Michael Jackson, was released by Epic Records. The collection of eight previously unreleased songs sold 1,410,000 copies worldwide in its first four months.
2015 – American Idol crowned their 14th Season champion Nick Fradiani with guest appearances by The Jacksons, Chic, Steven Tyler, Michael McDonald, and New Kids On The Block.
2019 – Doris Day, who scored two Billboard Top Ten hits in 1956 with “Whatever Will Be Will Be” and “Everybody Loves A Lover”, passed away at the age of 97 after contracting pneumonia. Besides making nearly forty movies, she also recorded more than six hundred songs and nearly thirty albums.
2020 – Astrid Kirchherr, the German photographer whose early shots of The Beatles helped turn them into icons, died at the age of 81 after a short illness. While dating the band’s original bassist, Stuart Sutcliffe, she cut his hair into the famous mop-top style that the group became famous for.
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