Pick a Day

19 OCTOBER

In Music History

1991 At a gig in Texas, Nirvana's Kurt Cobain gets in a fight with a bouncer. While crowd surfing, the bouncer shoves him back into the crowd by the face, to which Cobain responds by driving the butt of his guitar into the bouncer's own mug. Barely back on his feet, Cobain gets a sucker punch to the back of the head before his bandmates jump in to help him.

1988 Blues singer/guitarist Son House dies of cancer of the larynx at age 86.

1986 Record executive Moses Asch dies at age 80. Founder of Folkways Records, formerly Asch Records, his label was the home of many classic folk recordings, including Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" and Lead Belly's "Goodnight Irene."

1977 Judy Collins appears on The Muppet Show, where she sings Sondheim's "Send in the Clowns."

1974 Billy Preston's "Nothing From Nothing" hits #1.

1974 Bachman-Turner Overdrive hit #1 in America with the album Not Fragile, the title a play on the Yes album Fragile. Hits from the set include "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet" and "Roll On Down the Highway."

1972 Pras Michel (of Fugees) is born in Brooklyn, New York, but will be raised in Irvington, New Jersey.

1970 Bob Dylan releases New Morning.

1970 The Australian outlaw film Ned Kelly, featuring Mick Jagger in his first starring role, is released to scathing reviews.

1970 Working from a design sketched out by his wife and himself, Elvis Presley orders a dozen 14-karat gold pendants from a Beverly Hills jeweler featuring the letters "TCB" set around a lightning bolt. Designed as totems for the Memphis Mafia (and also for security issues), the symbol stands, in Elvis' words, for "Taking Care of Business in a Flash." They would eventually come to symbolize the '70s era for Presley.

1968 At Liverpool University, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham perform as "The New Yardbirds" for the last time as they assume the moniker Led Zeppelin.

1968 Comedian/country singer (and sometimes both) Rodney Carrington is born.

1967 Smokey Robinson and the Miracles release "I Second That Emotion."

1967 Jose Feliciano records "Light My Fire."

1964 The incredibly influential English concert called the "American Negro Blues Festival" kicks off, featuring Howlin' Wolf, Willie Dixon, Lightnin' Hopkins, and Sonny Boy Williamson, among others. It is the first glimpse of these bluesmen for many upcoming British R&B and rock legends.