Today In Oldies Music History: August 13
--Births
1919: George Shearing1921: Jimmy McCracklin
1930: Don Ho
1938: Dave "Baby" Cortez
1940: John Stokes (The Bachelors)
1949: Cliff Fish (Paper Lace)
1951: Dan Fogelberg
1959: Danny Bonaduce (The Partridge Family)
Deaths
1968: Joe Hinton1971: King Curtis
2003: Ed Townsend
2005: Francine Hurd Barker (Peaches & Herb)
Events
1924: Vernon Dalhart's "The Prisoner's Song" becomes the first country record to sell a million copies -- a milestone for public acceptance of the genre.1938: Blues legend Robert Johnson, who was reported to have "made a deal with the Devil" in order to execute his amazing guitar technique, plays his last gig at a dance approximately 15 miles from Greenwood, MS, and is supposedly poisoned by either the club's owner or a jealous girlfriend, who places strychnine in an open bottle of whiskey. When offered the bottle, fellow bluesman Sonny Boy Williamson knocks it out of his hand, admonishing him against ever drinking from an open container at a public event, but Johnson drinks from the next open bottle anyway. He would die three days later.
1959: Bobby Darin signs his first movie contract, a million-dollar, six-year, six-picture deal with Paramount Studios. He would go on to secure a nomination for Best Supporting Actor in 1962.
1963: The Four Seasons sue their struggling first label, Vee Jay, for non payment of royalties and move to Mercury/Philips Records. This would be the first of a long line of incidents that would doom the label.
1964: The Kinks score their first hit as "You Really Got Me," written by Ray Davies on his mother's piano, enters the British charts.
1966: Longview, TX radio station KLUE-AM organizes the first of the "Beatles bonfires," where ex-Beatle fans can burn the groups' records in protest of John Lennon's recent "bigger than Jesus" comment. KLUE's radio tower is struck the next morning by lightning, throwing the station off the air. Meanwhile, Cleveland's Reverend Thurman H. Babbs, of the New Haven Baptist Church, calls for the excommunication of all Beatles fans.
1967: A planned Joan Baez concert at Washington DC's Constitution Hall is canceled after the Daughters of the American Revolution protest her recent anti-war remarks concerning Vietnam.
1971: John Lennon leaves England via Heathrow Airport, headed for New York City to find Yoko Ono's estranged and possibly kidnapped daughter Kyoto. It would be the last time he would see England.
1975: Marking his first real appearance on the national radar, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band perform the first of five sold-out shows at New York's Bottom Line.
1977: Bachman-Turner Overdrive announce that the group is splitting up (though they would reunite within six years).
1980: Songwriter, producer, and artist Todd Rundgren, his female companion, and three others are victims of a home invasion at his house in Woodstock, NY, bound and gagged by four masked intruders who steal art, stereo equipment, and recording equipment. One of the criminals hums Todd's 1972 hit "I Saw The Light" to himself as the robbery takes place.
1982: In response to plummeting record sales (which the industry blames on the sale of blank cassette tapes), major labels CBS, Atlantic, and Warner Brothers announce a series of major staff cuts.
1990: While warming up for an outdoor concert at Wingate Field in Flatbush, Brooklyn, Curtis Mayfield is paralyzed by a lighting tower which falls from the stage and onto his back. He will remain a quadriplegic for the next nine years until his death in 1999.
2007: Fats Domino is honored as an "American Music Legend" by the Recording Industry Association of America.
Releases
1965: The Beatles, Help!1966: The Supremes, "You Can't Hurry Love"
Recording
1930: Guy Lombardo, "Go Home And Tell Your Mother"1952: Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton, "Hound Dog"
1959: Brenda Lee, "Sweet Nothin's"
1964: The Supremes, "Baby Love"
1968: The Beatles: "Sexy Sadie," "Yer Blues"
1969: The Guess Who, "American Woman"
