| 97 | years ago | 1929 | Christine McGuire of The McGuire Sisters is born. |
| 93 | years ago | 1933 | Edd Byrnes is born in New York City. He grows up to land a role as “Kookie” the parking lot attendant on TV’s 77 Sunset Strip in 1958, and record a 1959 Top 5 record with Conniue Stevens called Kookie, Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb. |
| 90 | years ago | 1936 | Blues musician Buddy Guy is born. |
| 85 | years ago | 1941 | Singer-composer Paul Anka is born. His steadiest paycheck would be royalties from Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show instrumental theme, which he originally wrote as a vocal number titled It’s Really Love for Mouseketeer Annette Funicello’s album, Annette Sings Anka. |
| 84 | years ago | 1942 | Frank Sinatra ends his association with the Tommy Dorsey orchestra, recording the last two of over 90 songs before moving on to great acclaim as a solo star at Columbia. |
| 81 | years ago | 1945 | Saxophonist David Sanborn is born. |
| 80 | years ago | 1946 | Bassist Jeffrey Hammond of Jethro Tull is born. |
| 78 | years ago | 1948 | Blues singer-musician Otis Taylor is born. |
| 77 | years ago | 1949 | Guitarist Andy Scott of Sweet is born. So are Joyce Jones of First Choice and Hugh Nicholson of Marmalade. |
| 72 | years ago | 1954 | Elvis Presley makes his professional debut in Memphis. It's his first concert to be advertised. |
| 70 | years ago | 1956 | Brenda Lee records Jambalaya and Bigelow 6-200. The record label says she's 9 years old, but she's actually 10. |
| 68 | years ago | 1958 | Kate Bush is born. |
| 61 | years ago | 1965 | The Rolling Stones release the album Out of Our Heads. |
| 60 | years ago | 1966 | The Troggs' Wild Thing hits #1. It'll spend two weeks there. On the album chart, The Beatles' Yesterday ...And Today LP grabs the top spot. |
| 58 | years ago | 1968 | The Beatles' Apple Boutique, a psychedelic clothing store located at 94 Baker Street in London, closes for business after seven months of bad business practices and rampant theft. With the group and its intimates having had the pick of the remaining inventory the night before, Apple Boutique employees are instructed to simply let people in off the street to take whatever merchandise they like. The store closes that evening for good. |
| 57 | years ago | 1969 | The Beatles, producer George Martin, and the Abbey Road engineers assemble the first rough cut of the proposed Abbey Road medley. Paul McCartney, feeling that the song Her Majesty distracts from the flow of the medley, has it removed and orders it erased. Second engineer John Kurlander, not wanting to destroy a Beatles song, instead appends it to the end of the medley tape, adding 15 seconds of leader to make sure it's kept separate. When he finds out, Paul likes the effect so much that he leaves the ending of the album just that way. It ends up being the last song WIXO in New Orleans plays before going off the air for good in September, 1974. |
| 56 | years ago | 1970 | Remember the Power Ridge Rock Festival in Connecticut that was cancelled by local authorities? Over 30,000 people show up even though police have barricaded all roads leading up to the festival for two hours. Utilities to the site are cut off and the crowd parties on. Doctors report over 800 cases of bad drug reactions. |
| 56 | years ago | 1970 | The Rolling Stones fire Allen Klein as their manager. |
| 54 | years ago | 1972 | Brad Hargraves of Third Eye Blind is born. |
| 51 | years ago | 1975 | The Charlie Daniels Band, one of the U.S.' popular exponents of Southern style boogie rock, earns it first gold record for Fire on the Mountain. |
| 49 | years ago | 1977 | Andy Gibb's I Just Want To Be Your Everything enters the charts. It will spend 31 weeks there, including four at #1. |
| 48 | years ago | 1978 | Glen Goine of Parliament-Funkadelic dies. |
| 40 | years ago | 1986 | RCA releases John Denver from his contract, possibly over his new single, What Are We Making Weapons For?, which he recorded with the Russian singer Alexander Gradsky. RCA had recently been acquired by General Electric, which is a top military contractor. |
| 39 | years ago | 1987 | David Bowie plays the first show of his Glass Spider tour in Philadelphia. |
| 34 | years ago | 1992 | Many Motown stars gather for a memorial service for Mary Wells, who died of cancer at the age of 49. Smokey Robinson sings a medley of Wells' hits. |
| 33 | years ago | 1993 | Don Myrick of Earth, Wind & Fire passes on. |
| 24 | years ago | 2002 | Bruce Springsteen releases The Rising. |
| 23 | years ago | 2003 | SARS spreads to Toronto, scaring a lot of people away. To get people back, the city puts on a huge open-air concert featuring The Rolling Stones, The Guess Who, Rush, The Isley Brothers, The Flaming Lips, and Justin Timberlake (who was jeered and had muffins thrown at him). About 450,000 people attend. |
| 23 | years ago | 2003 | Sun Records owner Sam Phillips dies. |
| 22 | years ago | 2004 | While walking around London, The Isley Brothers' Ronald Isley suffers a minor stroke and is admitted to a local hospital. He recovers in a matter of just a few weeks. |
| 19 | years ago | 2007 | Britney Spears’ marriage to Kevin Federline officially ends with the signing of papers at a Superior Court hearing in Los Angeles. |