This is the week that mattered in the music world…
1944, jazz comes to the Met for the first time when Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Artie Shaw, Roy Eldridge, and Jack Teagarden take the stage and show 'em how it's done …
1957, this week marks the opening of the Cavern Club in an old wine cellar on Matthew Street in Liverpool … the club becomes world famous thanks to the happy choice of The Beatles as its house band in 1961 and '62 … it remains in business to this day … on this side of the pond, Johnny Cash hits network TV for the first time as a guest on the Jackie Gleason Show …
1958, The Five Royales' "Dedicated to the One I Love" is released … three years later the Shirelles will take it to #3 … in 1967 The Mamas & The Papas revive the tune one more time scoring a #2 hit …
1962, "The Twist" by Chubby Checker tops the charts … the song was written and first recorded by Hank Ballard and the Midnighters …
1963, drummer Charlie Watts debuts with The Rolling Stones at The Flamingo in Soho, London …
1964, The Beatles play the venerable Olympia Theater in Paris … the old venue's electrical system is not up the demands of rock 'n' roll and the show is marred by three power failures …
1965, recording sessions begin at Columbia studios in New York City for Bob Dylan's fifth album, Bringing It All Back Home … the album will feature one side of acoustic songs and one side with (yikes!) a band … the album includes Dylan's first charting single, "Subterranean Homesick Blues" …
1966, British popster David Jones becomes David Bowie in an effort to avoid confusion with The Monkees' Davy Jones … Brian Wilson begins recording Pet Sounds at Western Studios in Los Angeles while the rest of the Beach Boys are on tour in the Far East …
1967, the first Be–In takes place in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park … the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, Timothy Leary, and poet Allen Ginsberg entertain and inform … the gatherings of the incense–and–sandals set go on to become a Bay–Area fixture …
1970, in a bizarre latter–day bubble of Victorian flatulence, Scotland Yard confiscates eight prints from John Lennon's exhibit of erotic lithographs … an accountant who has strayed into the Bag One gallery complains to the police, "They were exaggerated distorted caricatures depicting intimate sexual relationships of a repulsive and disgusting nature" … the raiding policeman, Detective Inspector Frederick Luff, says, "Many toilet walls depict works of similar merit. It is perhaps charitable to suggest that they are the work of a sick mind … The only danger to a successful prosecution is the argument that they are so pathetic as to be incapable of influencing anyone" … the gallery is closed and its owners prosecuted for violating obscenity laws … a London magistrate finally dismisses the charges and returns the lithos to the gallery, where they had been on sale for $58 each …
1972, Memphis' Highway 51 South is renamed Elvis Presley Boulevard … within a few years the street goes unmarked because the street signs are stolen as quickly as they can be replaced …
1973, Pink Floyd hits the studio to begin work on what will become one of the most successful albums ever, Dark Side of the Moon …
1974, in a move that jumps the gun on rapper antics by two decades, singer Dino Martin (son of Dean) of the pop trio Dino, Desi, and Billy is arrested on suspicion of possession and sale of two machine guns … Bob Dylan and The Band are the cause of a nine-mile-long traffic jam in the sunny state of Florida … the queue takes so long to clear up that many fans do not get into the Hollywood Sportatorium, located just between Miami and Fort Lauderdale, until the show is halfway over …
1978, The Sex Pistols play their swan–song show at San Francisco's Winterland …
1980, Paul McCartney goes down in Japan for a big bag of reefer … he spends 10 days in the slam then gets the ignominious boot … Macca later reports that he spent his time singing Beatles songs with fellow inmates … ruefully he recalls, "I knew I wouldn't be able to get anything to smoke over there. This stuff was too good to flush down the toilet, so I thought I'd take it with me." …
1981, Plasmatics singer and former erotic dancer/porn actress Wendy O. Williams is arrested in Milwaukee for becoming too intimate with a sledgehammer on stage … Ms. Williams, who typically performs adorned only in a G string and two tiny strips of electrician's tape, resists arrest valiantly and receives a 12–stitch head wound for her efforts …
1986, Harvard grads Henry Juszkiewicz, David Berryman, and Gary Zebrowski purchase Gibson Musical Instruments from Norlin for about $5 million …
1991, the crowd rushes the stage at an AC/DC concert in Salt Lake City, crushing three people to death …
1993, the U.S. Supreme Court decides Tom Waits can keep the $2.6 million judgment awarded him in a lawsuit against Frito Lay … the snack food company had asked to use Waits' song "Step Right Up" in an advertisement, but he declined the offer … in a moment of overwhelming stupidity, Frito Lay hired a Tom Waits-soundalike to record a song strikingly similar to "Step Right Up" and used it in the commercial … ironically, Waits wrote and recorded the song as "an indictment of advertising" and it contains the lyric "What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away" …
1996, a milestone of sorts is achieved when Wayne Newton performs his 25,000th Las Vegas show …
1999, claiming that Victoria's Secret's Metallica lip pencils constitute trademark infringement, the band Metallica files suit against the lingerie company …
2001, bassist Jason Newsted splits with Metallica after 14 years with the band … the split looms large in the 2003 documentary Some Kind of Monster that covers the recording of the album St. Anger …
2003, as part of a sting on users of an Internet child porn site, Pete Townshend is arrested at his home and his computer is seized … the irony is that Townshend is an activist against child pornography and foolishly used his credit card to access the site as part of his research for a book on child abuse … no child porn is found on Townshend's computer or in his house … he is given a reprimand and released … cops stage raids in England and the Netherlands to recover nearly 500 original Beatles studio tapes recorded during the Let It Be sessions … the tapes had been the source of countless bootlegs over the years …
2005, indie band Camper Van Beethoven is robbed again … just three months after having their equipment stolen in Montreal, their gear disappears again, this time from a hotel parking lot in Dallas … the trailer was backed up against a parking deck wall so the doors would not open … the thieves cut through the side of the trailer and helped themselves … the band had even hired a security guard … a $1,000 reward is offered for information leading to the recovery of the gear … in the good news category this week, a horde of comedy and musical heavyweights show up to help Tenacious D raise cash for victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami … a benefit show is held at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles and features Will Ferrell, Eddie Vedder, Beck, Chris Rock, Dave Grohl, and Josh Homme all performing with Jack Black and Kyle Gass of Tenacious D …
2006, Eminem remarries his ex-wife Kim, who was previously the subject of the rapper's wrath in the 2000 song "Kim" … soulman Isaac Hayes is hospitalized in Memphis for exhaustion …
2007, System of a Down figures large in the debut of the documentary Screamers with concert footage, interviews, and archival film intermixed to tell the story of the Armenian genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century … Ted Nugent helps his buddy, Texas Governor Rick Perry, celebrate at his inaugural ball by appearing onstage with a cutoff tee, sporting the Confederate flag, and rambling on about people who don't speak English …
2008, Eddie Vedder nails a Golden Globe award for "Guaranteed," a song he wrote for Sean Penn's film Into the Wild … Twiggy Ramirez rejoins Marilyn Manson after quitting the band six years earlier … it's announced that Suze Rotolo, who was Bob Dylan's main squeeze circa 1961–1964, will publish a memoir titled A Freewheelin' Time in which she recounts her life with Bobby Z in Greenwich Village and the illegal abortion she underwent when she became pregnant by the singer–songwriter … after failing to show up for a court-ordered drug counseling session, Phish frontman Trey Anastasio is jailed … he is released two days later …
…and that was the week that was.
[Compiled by the Musician’s Friend copywriting staff]
Arrivals:
January 13: singer-actress Sophie Tucker (1884), Modern Records founder Lester Sill (1918), British music publisher David Platz (1929), singer Bobby Lester of The Moonglows (1932), The Dells' original lead singer Johnny Funches (1935), Trevor Rabin of Yes (1954), Earth, Wind, and Fire drummer Fred White (1955), guitarist Tim Kelly of Slaughter (1963), Zach de la Rocha of Rage Against The Machine (1970)
January 14: big band vocalist Russ Columbo (1908), doo–wop/R&B record label owner Al Silver (1914), soul man Clarence Carter (1936), songwriter–producer Allen Toussaint (1938), Contours singer Hubert Johnson (1941), soul singer Linda Jones (1944), Allman Brothers bassist Lamar Williams (1949), Jim Croce guitarist Maury Muehleisen (1949), jazz guitarist-trumpeter Mark Egan (1951), Geoff Tate of Queensryche (1959), Chas Smash, born Cathal Joseph Patrick Smyth, of Madness (1959), Patricia Morrison of Sisters of Mercy (1962), LL Cool J, born James Todd Smith (1968), Dave Grohl (1969)
January 15: Gene Krupa (1909), folk music activist Alan Lomax (1915), Earl Hooker (1930), Jack Jones (1938), Don Van Vliet AKA Captain Beefheart (1941), Edward Bivins of The Manhattans (1942), Ronnie Van Zant of Lynyrd Skynyrd (1949), Martha Davis of the Motels (1951), ELO bassist Melvyn Gale (1952), Lisa Velez of Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam (1967)
January 16: Broadway diva Ethel Merman (1908), operatic diva Marilyn Horne (1934), Bob Bogle of The Ventures (1937), William Francis of Dr. Hook (1942), Raymond Philips of The Nashville Teens (1942), Ronnie Milsap (1943), Sade – born Helen Folasade Abu (1959), Paul Webb of Talk Talk (1962), Maxine Jones of En Vogue (1966), Aalliyah (1979)
January 17: Eartha Kitt (1927), blues singer Bobby Bland (1930), "British Elvis" Billy Fury (1941), Chris Montez (1943), Mick Taylor (1948), Steve Earle (1955), Paul Young (1956), Susanna Hoffs of The Bangles (1957), dancehall artist Shabba Ranks (1966), Robert James Ritchie AKA Kid Rock (1971)
January 18: producer Bobby Herne (1938), Bobby Goldsboro (1941), David Ruffin of The Temptations (1941), "Legs" Larry Smith of The Bonzo Dog Band (1944), Tom Bailey of The Thompson Twins (1956), influential grunge rocker Andrew Wood (1966), DJ Quik (1970), Jonathan Davis of Korn (1971), Irish popette Samantha Mumba (1983)
January 19: Don Lang of The Frantic Five (1925), Australia's first rock star, Johnny O'Keefe (1935), Phil Everly of the Everly Brothers (1939), Janis Joplin (1943), Rod Evans of Deep Purple (1945), Dolly Parton (1946), eclectic Brit vocalist Robert Palmer (1949), Dewey Bunnell of America (1952), Caron Wheeler of Soul II Soul (1963)
Departures:
January 13: Teddy Pendergrass (2010), saxophonist Michael Brecker (2007), Brian Keenan, drummer with the Chambers Brothers Band (1985), soul singer–songwriter Donny Hathaway (1979), Stephen Foster, "Father of American Music" (1864)
January 14: New York Dolls drummer Jerry Nolan (1992), bluesman Rube Lacey (1969)
January 15: Junior Wells (1998), Grand Ole Opry performer Vic Willis (1995), Harry Nillsson (1994), Sammy Cahn (1993), Elton John drummer Dee Murray, born David Oates (1992)
January 16: country singer Carl Smith (2010), Pookie Hudson (2007), former Peter Frampton drummer John Siomos (2004), Will Jones of the Coasters (2000), Sollie McElroy, lead singer of the Flamingos (1995), Paul Beaver of Beaver and Krause (1975), Ross Bagdasarian AKA David Seville, creator of The Chipmunks (1972), Arturo Toscanini (1957)
January 17: multi–instrumentalist Norris Turney (2001), Texas blues guitarist T.D. Bell AKA Little T–Bone (1999), bluesman David "Junior" Kimbrough (1998), blues drummer Robert Covington (1996), Tony Duhig, leader of prog–rock band Jade Warrior (1991), commie rocker Dean Reed (1986), R&B singer Billy "Fat Boy" Stewart (1970), Norman P. Rich, William Cathey, and Rico Hightower of Stewart's band, The Soul Kings (1970)
January 18: Canadian folk singer Kate McGarrigle (2010), Brent Liles of Social Distortion (2007), producer–songwriter Keith Diamond (1997), singer Adriana Caselotti (1997), Mel(anie) Appleby of Mel & Kim (1990), Chicago soul–blues vocalist McKinley Mitchell (1986)
January 19: Belizean Punta musician Andy Palacio (2008), singer-songwriter John Stewart (2008), Denny Doherty of The Mamas and The Papas (2007), Wilson Pickett (2006), Josh Clayton–Felt of School of Fish (2000), rockabilly pioneer Carl Perkins (1998), Joe Stubbs of The Falcons (1998), singer–guitarist Buster Benton (1996), leader and sax player for the Mar–Keys Packy Axton (1974).
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