| 84 | years ago | 1941 | Harry Nilsson is born. He dies in 1994. |
| 67 | years ago | 1958 | The Platters sing Twilight Time on Ed Sullivan. |
| 62 | years ago | 1963 | Jan & Dean's Surf City is released. |
| 62 | years ago | 1963 | Kyu Sakamoto’s Sukiyaki hits #1 on the U.S. pop charts. It's the first Japanese song to do so. |
| 61 | years ago | 1964 | Peter & Gordon arrive in the U.S. for their first Stateside tour. Four days later they will perform at New York's World Fair. |
| 59 | years ago | 1966 | The Beatles album, Yesterday & Today is released by Capitol in the controversial “butcher” sleeve, with The Beatles smiling amongst a group of decapitated baby dolls. The original photo quickly becomes a problem for Capitol, so it is pulled and replaced by a more conventional cover. |
| 57 | years ago | 1968 | The Beatles announce the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi as a public mistake at a press conference in New York. |
| 55 | years ago | 1970 | Jimi Hendrix records his first session at his Electric Ladyland Studio in New York City. It was the guitarist's state of the art “dream” studio. |
| 54 | years ago | 1971 | The Guess Who's Best of the Guess Who LP goes gold. |
| 51 | years ago | 1974 | After several drummer-less months, Paul McCartney & Wings announce the addition of Geoff Britton, who replaces Denny Seiwell. |
| 47 | years ago | 1978 | Bob Dylan begins his first British tour in several years at London's Wembley Empire Pool. |
| 36 | years ago | 1989 | The hard core rap group Public Enemy breaks up after group member Professor Griff makes anti-Semitic remarks. They reassemble two months later. |
| 33 | years ago | 1992 | Bruce Springsteen starts his first tour in four years with a show in Stockholm, Sweden. The tour is in support of his Human Touch and Lucky Town LP's, and is the first time he has ever toured without the E Street Band. |
| 20 | years ago | 2005 | It’s a long and expensive day for 69-year-old Jerry Lee Lewis as he finalizes a divorce settlement in court with wife #6, Kerrie Lynn McCarver Lewis. She gets $250,000 immediately, and $30,000 a year for the next five years. |
| 19 | years ago | 2006 | The Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival, named for Dr. John’s 1974 album Desitively Bonnaroo, kicks off its four-day run in Manchester, Tennessee. Artists include Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Radiohead, Oysterhead, Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint, World Party, Ben Folds, the Neville Brothers, Buddy Guy, Beck, Bonnie Raitt, Steve Earle, Phil Lesh, Sonic Youth, and Dr. John, who resurrects his Night Tripper personna for the first time in decades. With all 80,000 tickets sold out in advance, it’s America’s highest grossing music festval according to Billboard. |
| 11 | years ago | 2014 | Casey Kasem dies at age 82. He was a disc jockey, music historian, radio personality, voice actor and actor, best known for being the host of several music radio countdown programs, most notably American Top 40, from 1970 until his retirement in 2009, and for providing the voice of "Shaggy" Rogers in the Scooby-Doo franchise from 1969 to 1997, and again from 2002 until 2009. |