| 113 | years ago | 1912 | Folk legend Woody Guthrie is born. |
| 99 | years ago | 1926 | Lowman Pauling of The 5 Royales is born. He writes Dedicated to the One I Love for the R & B group, but it's an even bigger hit for the Shirelles and then for the Mamas and the Papas. |
| 73 | years ago | 1952 | Chris Cross, bass guitarist for the new wave band Ultravox, is born. |
| 64 | years ago | 1961 | A report from Billboard says The Twist teenage dance craze is being picked up by the adult crowd in Philadelphia. |
| 63 | years ago | 1962 | Bobby Vinton’s Roses Are Red (My Love) hits #1. |
| 61 | years ago | 1964 | The Rolling Stones score their first #1 hit in the UK with their cover of Bobby Womack’s It's All Over Now. |
| 60 | years ago | 1965 | Igor Khoroshev is born In Russia. He ends up living in the USA, becoming best known for his keyboard work with Yes between 1997 and 2001. |
| 59 | years ago | 1966 | Ellen Reid of Crash Test Dummies is born, as is Tonya Donelly of Belly. |
| 58 | years ago | 1967 | The Who begin their first full-scale U.S. tour as the opening act for Herman's Hermits. |
| 56 | years ago | 1969 | Bob Dylan makes a surprise appearance with The Band at the Mississippi River Rock Festival. He performs three numbers. |
| 52 | years ago | 1973 | The Everly Brothers decide to call it quits. The Everlys end things with a concert at Knott's Berry Farm. The show is stopped by entertainment director Bill Hollingshead because he feels Don is having a poor performance. Phil gets angry, smashes his guitar, and walks off the stage. Don performs the third set solo and announces their break-up to the audience. |
| 52 | years ago | 1973 | Clarence White of The Byrds dies after being struck by a drunk driver in Palmdale, California. |
| 52 | years ago | 1973 | Glam-rocker Gary Glitter makes his live stage debut in Mecksham, England. |
| 50 | years ago | 1975 | Taboo of Black Eyed Peas is born. So is Tameka Cottle of Xscape. |
| 47 | years ago | 1978 | American Idol contestant Ruben Studdard is born. |
| 46 | years ago | 1979 | Donna Summer’s Bad Girls hits #1. |
| 45 | years ago | 1980 | Malcolm Owen of The Ruts dies of a heroin overdose at age 26. |
| 45 | years ago | 1980 | In France, Roxy Music's Bryan Ferry contracts a kidney infection and is flown to London after collapsing in his hotel room. |
| 45 | years ago | 1980 | Former Beatles and Rolling Stones manager Allen Klein begins a two-month jail term for income tax evasion. |
| 38 | years ago | 1987 | Rocker Steve Miller gets a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. |
| 37 | years ago | 1988 | Singer Michael Jackson begins his first British tour at Wembley Stadium in London. |
| 37 | years ago | 1988 | At the height of “Elvis is Alive” mania, Nashville radio station WYHY offers a million dollars to anyone who shows up at the studios with the King. |
| 36 | years ago | 1989 | “Judge Judy” Sheindlin, not yet a TV star and still a Family Court judge in New York, orders singer Tom Jones to pay $200 weekly in child support to model Katherine Berkery. |
| 36 | years ago | 1989 | Cyndi Lauper releases the first closed-captioned video -- My First Night Without You. |
| 33 | years ago | 1992 | Olivia Newton-John makes public her bout with breast cancer, which she will eventually beat. |
| 33 | years ago | 1992 | Aretha Franklin opens the 1992 Democratic National Convention in New York by singing the U.S. national anthem. |
| 30 | years ago | 1995 | At what was previously a forsaken patch of land to the north of Hartford, Connecticut, Michael Bolton plays the grand opening concert at the Meadows Music Theater. Bolton, who grew up in New Haven, is good friends with the venue's promoter Jim Koplik. 90 degree heat stifles the ceremony a bit, as soon-to-be disgraced governor John Rowland has to take off his tuxedo coat when greeting Bolton onstage. |
| 30 | years ago | 1995 | George Michael announces he's settled his long running dispute with Sony and has been released from his contract. He signed a contract with the Dreamworks SKG label which allegedly pays Sony $40 million. |
| 20 | years ago | 2005 | Jill Fritzo, publicist for Christina Aguilera, says the 24-year-old singer accidentally cut her arm at home and has been forced to wear a cast and sling. She sliced two tendons in her arm two weeks ago when she picked up a piece of glass from a vase her dog knocked over and broke in her Los Angeles-area house. |
| 19 | years ago | 2006 | A New Jersey man who took money from New Orleans jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and his manager as part of an investment plan, is sentenced to 35 months in prison. The plan was to buy and renovate homes in poor neighborhoods and sell them at a profit. But con man Jay Bailey used the money instead to buy luxury vacations and a new $160,000 Porsche. Marsalis’ company got taken for nearly half a million, and his manager lost $42,000 of his own money in the scam. |
| 17 | years ago | 2008 | The makers of Rock Band 2 reveal that the new Guns N' Roses song Shackler's Revenge is to appear in the game. |
| 16 | years ago | 2009 | The debut album by The Dead Weather, Horehound, is released and spawns the singles Hang You from the Heavens, Treat Me Like Your Mother, and I Cut Like A Buffalo. |