| 80 | years ago | 1946 | The late Terry Kath, guitarist with Chicago, is born. |
| 75 | years ago | 1951 | Former Genesis drummer and lead singer Phil Collins, Phil Manzanera of Roxy Music and Harry “K.C.” Casey of K.C. and the Sunshine Band are born. |
| 70 | years ago | 1956 | John Lydon (Johnny Rotten) is born. |
| 66 | years ago | 1960 | Jimmy Jones' Handy Man enters the R&B chart, soon to be #3. The song is written and produced by Otis Blackwell. James Taylor will make it a #4 pop hit in 1977. |
| 58 | years ago | 1968 | John Fred and his Playboy Band's Judy in Disguise and the American Breed's Bend Me, Shape Me are certified gold. Neither group came even close to selling that many records with any other release. |
| 54 | years ago | 1972 | More than 40,000 mourners file past Mahalia Jackson's open coffin in Chicago's Great Salem Baptist Church. Funeral services are held the next day. Those in attendance are Coretta Scott King, Mayor Richard Daley and Sammy Davis, Jr. who reads a telegram from President Nixon. Aretha Franklin closed things by singing Precious Lord, Take My Hand. |
| 54 | years ago | 1972 | Joan Baez claims a gold record for her album Any Day Now, which was made up solely of songs by Bob Dylan. The LP went gold three years after its release. |
| 48 | years ago | 1978 | Blood Sweat & Tears saxophone player Greg Herbert dies of an accidental drug overdose in Amsterdam during the band's European tour. He was 30 years age. |
| 47 | years ago | 1979 | The Clash begin their first U.S. tour with Bo Diddley as their opening act. |
| 45 | years ago | 1981 | Female disco duo A Taste of Honey enter the soul chart with a disco remake of Kyu Sakamoto's 1963 hits #1 hit, Sukiyaki. The latter peaks at #1 on the soul chart. It makes it to the pop chart in March and climbs to #3. |
| 41 | years ago | 1985 | Barbara Cowsill, mother of the group The Cowsills, dies in Arizona. |
| 40 | years ago | 1986 | Down and Out in Beverly Hills, co-starring Little Richard, opens. |
| 28 | years ago | 1998 | The Come Together benefit concert is held at a small New Jersey shore theatre. The show was a benefit for the family of Sgt. Patrick King, a Long Branch, NJ, police officer killed in the line of duty in the fall of 1997. The show was a 3 1/2 hour jam which featured Bruce Springsteen, Jon Bon Jovi, Southside Johnny, Little Steven and a host of New Jersey musicians. It was a practical E Street Band reunion, with Max Weinberg, Danny Federici and Clarence Clemons joining in. The show featured tunes such as Tenth Avenue Freezeout, Backstreets, Livin' On A Prayer, Thunder Road, You Give Love A Bad Name and Born To Run. |
| 19 | years ago | 2007 | The widow of Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia files suit to gain access to unpublished tapes of her late husband’s musical performances. She wants to have them professionally restored, but is allegedly being blocked by a limited liability corporation of Garcia beneficiaries, including herself, that was supposed to cease to exist in 2005. |
| 9 | years ago | 2017 | John Wetton of Asia and King Crimson dies at the age of 67. He had been courageously battling colon cancer. |