23 APRIL
In Music History
1983 "Come On Eileen" by Dexys Midnight Runners goes to #1 in the US. It's the only American hit for the English group, but they are far more successful in the UK, where among their hits is the #1 "Geno."
1977 Thelma Houston's disco plea "Don't Leave Me This Way," originally recorded by Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes in 1975, hits #1 in America.
1976 The Rolling Stones release their album Black And Blue, which contains "Fool To Cry" and "Hot Stuff."
1969 Los Angeles' famed folk and rock club The Ash Grove, launching pad for everyone from Linda Ronstadt to Canned Heat, catches fire and nearly burns to the ground.
1968 Stan Frazier (drummer for Sugar Ray) is born Charles Stanton Frazier in Orange County, California.
1965 Life magazine runs a 22-page cover story on Frank Sinatra, the longest feature on an entertainer in the publication's history.
1964 The Beatles shoot the "Can't Buy Me Love" scene for their movie A Hard Day's Night on a south London athletic field augmented with a helipad.
1963 Bob Dylan records "Girl Of The North Country," "Masters Of War," "Talking World War III Blues," and "Bob Dylan's Dream."
1960 Paul McCartney and John Lennon perform as "the Nerk Twins" at the Fox and Hounds pub in Reading, England. The pub is owned by McCartney's cousin and her husband. The duo play another set the next day.
1960 Def Leppard guitarist Steve Clark is born Stephen Maynard Clark in Sheffield, England.
1956 Elvis Presley plays Vegas for the first time with a two-week residency at the New Frontier hotel. He returns to the city in 1969 to launch his comeback.
1952 Narada Michael Walden, a producer who helped stage Aretha Franklin's comeback in the '80s, is born in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
1949 British rocker John Miles is born in Jarrow, County Durham, England.
1947 Rock bassist Glenn Cornick (of Jethro Tull) is born in Barrow-in-Furness, Lancashire, England.
1940 Doo-wop singer Dale Houston (of Dale & Grace) is born Robert Dale Houston in Seminary, Mississippi.
Ramones Debut Album Creates The Punk Sound
1976The Ramones release their self-titled debut album, a punk rock landmark filled with frantic 2-minute songs like "Blitzkrieg Bop" and "Beat On The Brat."
Read more23 APRIL
Featured Events
2016 Bruce Springsteen salutes the recently deceased Prince by opening his show in Brooklyn with a rendition of "Purple Rain" (Nils Lofgren takes the guitar solo). The E Street Band wears purple for the show, deviating from their usual black.
2015 System Of A Down play the Armenian capitol of Yerevan in their first concert in that country. The band, which is of Armenian descent, is raising awareness of the Armenian genocide, which began 100 years earlier.
2005 YouTube launches. It works so well that Google can't beat it (they try with something called Google Video), so in 2006 they buy it. It eventually becomes the most popular place to hear music for free.
2002 Nine months after the album was rejected by Reprise Records, Wilco release Yankee Hotel Foxtrot on Nonesuch Records. It earns nearly universal acclaim from critics and goes Gold, earning the group a legion of new fans.
2002 Kenny Chesney releases his sixth studio album, No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems. Featuring five Top 10 country singles, including the hit title track, it's his first album to top both the Country and Billboard 200 charts.More
1995 The Sunday Times of London breaks the story that a welder in Liverpool named Peter Hodgson found a reel of Beatles material in his attic. The recordings turn out to be legit, as Hodgson's father had loaned the recorder to Paul McCartney. After hearing the recordings, McCartney buys the reel and uses some of it on the Anthology collection. Songs include the Lennon/McCartney original "Hello Little Girl" and the Ray Charles cover "Hallelujah, I Love Her So."
1981 Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins, who are in Germany appearing at different festivals, join Johnny Cash on stage in Stuttgart for a performance that is recorded and released as the album The Survivors. The trio toured together back in 1957.
1971 The Rolling Stones release Sticky Fingers, which includes "Brown Sugar," "Wild Horses" and "Can't You Hear Me Knocking?" It's the first album released on their own label, Rolling Stones Records.
1936 Roy Orbison is born in Vernon, Texas.
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