Today In Oldies Music History: April 12
--Births
1909: Lionel Hampton1916: Russ Garcia
1917: Helen Forrest
1921: Shakey Jake Harris
1925: Ned Miller
1938: Judy Lynn
1940: Al Jarreau
1940: Herbie Hancock
1942: Larry Ramos (The Association)
1951: Alex Briley (The Village People)
Deaths
1975: Josephine Baker1999: Boxcar Willie
Events
1961: At tonight's Grammy ceremonies, Ray Charles takes home four awards, including a Best Male Vocal for "Georgia On My Mind."1963: Bob Dylan performs a spectacular concert at Town Hall in New York, which is recorded for a never-released live album on Columbia.
1964: Chubby Checker marries Miss World 1962, Catharina Johanna Lodders of the Netherlands.
1966: Tom Jones enters a hospital to have his tonsils removed, though some who claim to have seen his tonsils since claim his real visit was for a nose job.
1966: In an eerie recreation of the duo's single from the year before, Jan Berry of Jan and Dean crashes his Corvette into a parked truck on Beverly Hills' Whittier Drive, near a stretch of road in Los Angeles known as "Dead Man's Curve." Berry will require four years of rehabilitation to be able to talk and a full decade in order to perform live again.
1968: Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention perform at a New York dinner for the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences dinner in New York. Zappa calls the event "a load of pompous hokum" and yells from the stage: "All year long you people have manufactured this crap, now for one night you're gonna have to listen to it!"
1973: Stevie Wonder becomes one of the first rock stars to appear on PBS-TV's Sesame Street.
1973: The movie musical That'll Be The Day, starring Ringo Starr and David Essex, premieres in London.
1979: Mickey Thomas, vocalist on the Elvin Bishop Band's 1975 hit "Fooled Around And Fell In Love," becomes the new lead vocalist for Jefferson Starship.
1988: Sonny Bono succeeds in his bid to become mayor of his hometown, Palm Springs, CA.
1989: David Cassidy's comeback begins when Los Angeles KLOS, to which the former Partridge Family singer is listening, wonder what happened to him. Before long, he's at the studio, performing three songs that land him a new record deal.
1990: The Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center, located at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, AZ, announces that four newly discovered asteroids, 4147-4150, will be named Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr.
1992: The Eagles' Don Henley leads 6,000 fans through Walden Woods in Massachusetts as part of a benefit walk to save the literally significant woods popularized by Henry Thoreau's work.
2001: Gladys Knight marries her fourth husband, longtime friend William McDowell.
2008: With her latest single, "4 Minutes," Madonna beats Elvis as the artist with the most all-time Top Ten Hits on the Billboard charts (37).
2008: Lou Reed marries his second wife, conceptual artist Laurie Anderson.
Releases
1954: Big Joe Turner, "Shake, Rattle, And Roll"Recording
1939: Woody Herman, "Woodchopper’s Ball"1954: Bill Haley and His Comets: "(We're Gonna) Rock Around The Clock," "Thirteen Women (And Only One Man In Town)"
Charts
1969: 5th Dimension's "Aquarius / Let the Sunshine In" hits #11975: Elton John's "Philadelphia Freedom" hits #1
