| This Week in Our History |
News & Entertainment | |
| 1955 - Disneyland opened the gates to “The Happiest Place on Earth” in Anaheim, California. In the famous theme park’s first year of operation, some four million people visited Main Street USA, Fantasyland, Frontierland and Tomorrowland. On its opening day, Disneyland held a gala TV broadcast featuring Walt Disney, Bob Cummings, Art Linkletter and Ronald Reagan. | |
| 1960 - Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy the Democratic presidential nomination at his party’s convention in Los Angeles, California. | 1960 - The New York World-Telegram reported that the average white-collar worker would earn a lifetime income of $200,000 (forty years at $5,000 per year). |
| 1965 - The Mariner IV spacecraft sent back the first close-up pictures of the planet Mars. | |
| 1969 - A car driven by U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) plunged off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island. His passenger, 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, died in the accident. | 1969 - The Crew of Apollo 11 (Neil A. Armstrong, Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr. and Michael Collins) blasted off from Cape Kennedy on the first manned mission to the surface of the moon. |
Rock & Roll Birthdays | |
| Jul 13 | Roger McGuinn of The Byrds (1942) |
| Jul 15 | Linda Ronstadt of The Stone Poneys (1946) |
| Jul 16 | Desmond Dekker (Dacris) (1942, d. 5/25/06) |
| Jul 17 | Spencer Davis (1942) |
| Jul 18 | Dion DiMucci (1939) |
| Lonnie Mack (McIntosh) (1941) | |
| Martha Reeves (1941) | |
| Jul 19 | Vikki Carr (Florencia Bisenta deCasilla Martinez Cardona) (1941) |
| Chart Toppers This Week | |||
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| This Week In Rock & Roll History | |
| 1953 | 18 year-old Elvis Presley visited the Memphis Recording Service to record My Happiness as a gift for his mother. The so-called vanity disc, which cost Presley $3.98, was his first recording. It would surface 37 years later as part of an RCA compilation called "Elvis - the Great Performances". |
| 1954 | Sun Records releases the first Elvis Presley single, That's All Right (Mama). |
| 1958 | John Lennon's mother, Julia is struck by a car and killed. |
| Manager George Treadwell fires the Drifters, replacing them with the Five Crowns. | |
| 1959 | Dedicated to the One I Love, by The Shirelles, was released. The tune went to number 83 on the Top 100 chart of "Billboard" magazine. The song was re-released in 1961 and made it to number three on the charts. That’s just one case for being in the right place at the right time... |
| The Coasters record Poison Ivy. | |
| 1960 | Roy Orbison saw his first record, Only The Lonely climb into the Top 5 in the United States after The Everly Brothers and Elvis both turned the song down. Over the next six years, The Big O would have 22 top 40 hits. |
| 15 year old Brenda Lee had the number one song in the US with I'm Sorry, a tune that was recorded in the last ten minutes of a session and originally meant to be the "B" side of That's All You Gotta Do. The record reached #12 in the UK. | |
| 1961 | Motown Records releases The Supremes' second single, Buttered Popcorn with Who's Loving You on the flip side. The record, featuring Florence Ballard on lead vocal, would be a total flop. |
| 1962 | Bobby Vinton’s Roses are Red became the top song in the U.S. The song stayed at the top for four weeks and was the first of four #1 hits for Vinton. |
| 1963 | The Beach Boys record In My Room. |
| 1964 | The 4 Seasons reached the top spot on the record charts with Rag Doll, the group’s fourth hit to climb to the #1 position. The song stayed on top for two weeks. |
| The Animals' first single House of the Rising Sun entered the UK chart at #16. The next week, it was at #3 and seven days later it rose to number one. To promote the group in the US, disc jockeys were sent boxes of animal crackers wrapped with special promotional material. | |
| The Supremes' Where Did Our Love Go? is released and enters Billboard's Hot 100. It would stay on the chart for 14 weeks and becomes the group's first number one hit. | |
| The Supremes record Come See About Me. | |
| The Rolling Stones chart in the US for the first time when a cover of Buddy Holly's Not Fade Away peaks at #48. | |
| 1965 | Papa's Got a Brand New Bag by James Brown was released. It would go on to sell over 2 million copies and receive the Grammy Award for best R&B recording. |
| The Miracles' Tracks of My Tears is released. It will reach #16 in the US. | |
| 1966 | Singer Percy Sledge earned a gold record for When a Man Loves A Woman. It was his only song to make it to number one (5/28/66) and the only one of five to break into the top ten. |
| Tommy James and The Shondells started a two week run at #1 on the US singles chart with Hanky Panky, a song first recorded by The Raindrops. A Pittsburgh DJ had begun playing the two year old recording and regional record sales had reached over 80,000. James called the members of his now defunct band, but they were no longer interested. He recruited a group called The Raconteurs to be the new Shondells and took the master tape of Hanky Panky to Roulette Records, who released it. Despite being a huge hit in the US, it could only reach #38 in the UK. | |
| Singer Bobby Fuller, leader of the Bobby Fuller Four, was found dead in his car in Los Angeles. He was only 22. Police ruled his death a suicide - death by asphyxiation - but it was later revealed that he had been beaten and had ingested gasoline. Only six months earlier, the Bobby Fuller Four had been in the top ten with I Fought the Law. The song was written by Sonny Curtis, a former member of Buddy Holly’s Crickets. | |
| Eric Clapton formed a new band he called "Cream", along with two former members of the Graham Bond Organization, bassist Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker. The trio lasted just 2 years, but left us with some classic Rock tunes like Sunshine of Your Love and "White Room". To this day, Clapton says he does not look back on those days with great fondness, but many fans feel that he was at his best at this point. | |
| The Monkees record the theme song to their TV show, which will begin airing next Fall. Although the tune appeared as an album track on their self-titled debut LP and got some AM radio play, it was not released as a single. | |
| The Lovin' Spoonful release Summer In The City. Although they would place seven straight songs in Billboard's Top Ten, this would be their only number one. | |
| Johnny Rivers begins recording Poor Side Of Town. | |
| 1967 | The Who began their first American tour -- as the opening act for Herman’s Hermits on their U.S. tour. |
| The Beatles released All You Need Is Love / Baby You're A Rich Man (originally titled "One Of The Beautiful People") in the US, where it would go on to become their 14th #1 single. | |
| 1968 | The Beatles’ feature-length cartoon, Yellow Submarine, premiered at the London Pavilion. The song, Yellow Submarine, had been a #2 hit for the supergroup (9/17/66) and was the inspiration for the movie. |
| Steppenwolf's Born To Be Wild is released in the US, where it will reach #2. A line from the song which includes the words "heavy metal thunder" is often credited with popularizing a new term for loud, guitar dominated music. | |
| Hugh Masekela struck gold with the breezy, Latin-soul instrumental Grazing in the Grass. | |
| Black Sabbath played their first gig at a small backstreet blues club in Birmingham, England. The group would develop into one of the biggest heavy metal bands of the 1970's with such albums as "Paranoid", "Masters of Reality" and "Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath". | |
| 1969 | The Beatles worked on two new George Harrison songs, Here Comes The Sun and Something during recording sessions at Abbey Road studios in London. |
| The Supremes guest-host NBC-TV's "Tonight Show". | |
Information provided by ClassicBands.com & Oldies Music Calendar | |
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