Today in Oldies Music History: July 8

Births

1908: Louis Jordan
1914: Billy Eckstine
1932: Jerry Vale
1935: Steve Lawrence
1944: Jai Johanny Johanson (Allman Brothers)

Deaths

1988: Nico (Velvet Underground)

Events

1946: After just one year of marriage, actress Ava Gardner divorces bandleader Artie Shaw.
1954: Dewey Phillips of Memphis' WHBQ radio plays a new song, "That's All Right (Mama)," and its flip, "Blue Moon of Kentucky," on his "Red Hot & Blue" R&B show. An instant hit, the song is immediately played 14 more times. Callers to the station insist that the singer, a local boy named Elvis Presley, must be a black man. Elvis himself, who knew of the airplay in advance, hides out at a local movie show, but response is so immediate and positive that Dewey tracks him down for a live radio interview later that evening.
1958: The RIAA awards its first ever gold record for an LP -- for the soundtrack to the film Oklahoma!. ("Gold" albums at that time represented one million dollars in sales.)
1965: The Dave Clark Five's first movie, Having A Wild Weekend, opens in London. (For American audiences, it's entitled Catch Us If You Can, after their hit of the same name.)
1967: In Jacksonville, FL, Jimi Hendrix is invited to open for the Monkees on their latest tour. The band loves him, but the audience , oblivious, keeps screaming for Davy Jones. A frustrated Hendrix leaves the tour a week or so later.
1969: Singer/actress Marianne Faithfull, girlfriend of Mick Jagger, attempts suicide with barbiturates while on the set of the film Ned Kelly (also starring Mick). She eventually recovers, and when awaking from her coma, tells friends that "wild horses couldn't drag me away." The Rolling Stones song "Wild Horses" is built around that phrase.
1970: The Everly Brothers debut their ill-fated summer variety series, The Everly Brothers Show, on ABC-TV.
1978: After a staggering six months at #1, the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack is finally bumped off the top spot by Gerry Rafferty's City To City.
1985: Three Dog Night's Chuck Negron is hospitalized in Los Angeles for drug addiction.
1988: Stevie Wonder announces he will run for mayor of Detroit in 1992, but eventually thinks better of it.
1998: Roy Orbison's estate files a suit seeking $12 million in unpaid royalties from Sony, owners of the star's famous Monument label recordings.
1998: The Smithsonian and Library of Congress agree to house the music and film archives of Frank Sinatra.
2002: Michael Jackson unleashes a sudden tirade on the music industry, accusing several music execs of racism and calling Sony head Tommy Mottola in particular "very, very, very devilish."
2003: A tooth from the mouth of Elvis Presley, once the property of former girlfriend Linda Thompson, goes up for auction on eBay. Along with a lock of his hair and a gold record, it fetches over $100,000.

Releases

1978: Exile, "Kiss You All Over"

Recording

1963: Freddie and the Dreamers, "I'm Telling You Now"
1968: The Beatles, "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da"
1969: The Beatles, "Here Comes The Sun"

Charts

1950: Nat "King" Cole's "Mona Lisa" hits #1
1957: Elvis Presley's "(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear" hits #1
1973: Bill Withers' "Lean On Me" hits #1