11 DECEMBER
Featured Events
2010 The Billboard Social 50 chart debuts, ranking artists by popularity on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Vevo, Myspace, and iLike. Rihanna comes in at #1, followed by Justin Bieber and Eminem.
1995 Atlantic Records posts "Caught A Lite Sneeze," the first single from Tori Amos' album Boys For Pele, on their website in RealAudio format, marking the first time a full track by a major artist has been made available for download before its official release.
1968 The Rolling Stones record their Rolling Stones' Rock and Roll Circus TV special - and then bury it for nearly 30 years.More
1964 Sam Cooke is killed at age 33 when the manager of the Hacienda Motel in Los Angeles (where rooms cost $3 a night) shoots him three times. The manager claims that Cooke assaulted her and that he tried to rape his companion. The incident was ruled a justifiable homicide.
1961 Motown Records scores their first #1 on the Hot 100 when The Marvelettes' "Please Mr. Postman" tops the chart.
1960 Aretha Franklin plays her first concert, performing at the Village Vanguard in New York City.
1957 In what remains one of the most shocking celebrity scandals, Jerry Lee Lewis marries 13-year-old Myra Gale Brown, who was the daughter of his cousin (and bass player), J.W. Brown. The marriage lasts 14 years but seriously damages Lewis' career.More
11 DECEMBER
In Music History
2023 Taylor Swift's Eras tour becomes the first to gross over $1 billion, hitting the mark in the first 60 shows, according to Pollstar's report. The previous record holder was Elton John's Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour, which took in $939 million in 328 shows from 2018-2023.
2015 Peter Garrett, frontman for the incendiary Aussie rock band Midnight Oil, publishes his memoir, Big Blue Sky.
2014 Country singer Dawn Sears (of The Time Jumpers) dies of lung cancer at age 53. She was a member of Vince Gill's road band and sang harmony on his 1992 album, I Still Believe In You.
2013 Tommy Ruger (drummer for The Nightcrawlers) dies of multiple health issues, including diabetes, in Port Orange, Florida, at age 67.
2012 Sitar maestro Ravi Shankar dies during surgery for a heart valve replacement in San Diego, California, at age 92. He was survived by two daughters, Norah Jones and Anoushka Shankar. His son, musician Shubhendra Shankar, died in 1992.
2010 Good Charlotte's Joel Madden marries Nicole Richie at the home of Richie's dad, Lionel Richie, in Los Angeles.
2006 "All I Want For Christmas Is You" by Mariah Carey becomes the first ringtone certified Gold for sales of over 500,000.
1998 Lynn Strait (lead singer for Snot) dies in a car accident in Santa Barbara, California, at age 30.
1990 Led Zeppelin IV is certified Diamond, with sales of 10 million in America.
1989 Supporting Alice Cooper, Great White play Wembley Arena; the concert is broadcast later by The Friday Rock Show and is released the following year in Japan as Live In London.
1988 Los Angeles' Wiltern Theatre plays host to a Roy Orbison tribute concert, featuring Don Henley, Tom Petty, Graham Nash and Bonnie Raitt.
1983 Run-D.M.C. release their second single, "Hard Times," a song about financial struggles. It's the first rap song to get covered by another rap group, having first appeared on Kurtis Blow's debut album in 1980.
1983 Whodini release their debut album, one of the first rap LPs on a major label (Jive). The song "Magic's Wand" inspires their name, which is a play on the name of magician Harry Houdini.
1981 George Thorogood completes his 50/50 tour in Pasadena, California, covering all 50 states in 50 days. Many of the venues were chosen because they were on the route, so he ended up playing places like Moorhead, Minnesota and Flagstaff, Arizona.
1981 Bad Brains play the last-ever show at Max's Kansas City, a storied New York City nightclub where The Velvet Underground, David Bowie, and The New York Dolls all played early in their careers. Their opening act is a group of teenagers from Brooklyn called The Beastie Boys.
Brenda Lee Is Born
1944Brenda Lee is born Brenda Mae Tarpley in Atlanta, Georgia. Her small stature and big voice inspire the nickname "Little Miss Dynamite," which she lives up to by blowing up the charts with rockabilly bops ("Sweet Nothin's"), pop ballads ("I'm Sorry"), and Christmas tunes ("Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree") throughout the '60s.
By the time she's 10 years old, Lee becomes the main breadwinner for her family after the untimely death of her father in a construction accident. Her skills as a singer and performer earn her gigs on local TV and radio programs until she catches the attention of Red Foley, a big country star and host of Ozark Jubilee, a national TV show that boasts the latest country acts. Lee astounds him with an amped up version of Hank Williams' "Jambalaya (On The Bayou)," and he offers her a regular spot on the show. But Decca Records is also impressed by the child performer and signs her to a recording contract in 1956, with her first single being her rendition of "Jambalaya." Despite her country roots, Lee is marketed as a pop singer in the early part of her career. But with producer Owen Bradley, one of the founding fathers of the Nashville Sound, and a team of prominent Nashville session players backing her, she manages to become a teen pop star with a distinct country edge, not to mention a flair for rock and roll. She scores big with the rockabilly tune "Sweet Nothin's" in 1959, followed by a pair of #1 hits, the countrypolitan heartbreakers "I'm Sorry" and "I Want To Be Wanted," in 1960. Her newfound fame renews interest in her overlooked holiday single from 1958, "Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree," which propels to the Top 20. Little Miss Dynamite continues to light up the charts throughout the '60s with pop hits like "Fool #1," "Losing You" and "Everybody Loves Me But You," before remarketing herself as a country artist in the '70s and '80s. Although she rarely performs these days, Lee wins more fans every year as "Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree" ushers in the holiday season, especially when they learn she was just 13 years old when she first recorded the tune. In December 2023, 65 years after its release, the song finally hits #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, making 78-year-old Lee the oldest performer to ever top the chart. "I still don't believe it," says Lee of the feat. "Even though I know the song is great and written by a great man [Johnny Marks], after all these years it's just surreal."
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