7 DECEMBER
Featured Events
1998 The Indiana University a cappella group Straight No Chaser perform their zany rendition of "Twelve Days of Christmas" at the school. In 2006, a video of the performance is uploaded to YouTube and goes viral, earning the group a record deal and sending the song to #5 on the Adult Contemporary chart.
1991 Amplified by an innovative video with Macaulay Culkin and morphing, "Black Or White" by Michael Jackson hits #1 in America for the first of seven weeks.More
1979 "Christmas Rappin'" by Kurtis Blow becomes the first rap song released on a major label - Mercury Records. It sells about 400,000 copies and provides the template for his next single, "The Breaks," which becomes the first rap Gold record.
1973 Fleetwood Mac's manager, Clifford Davis, gets fed up with the premature cancellation of a tour and sends out his own version of the group with unknown musicians. It doesn't go well: The new band lasts just a few weeks and the real band wins the rights to their name after years of litigation.
1967 The Beatles' Apple Boutique officially opens its doors at 94 Baker Street in London. Seven months later, they close the boutique and give away the remaining merchandise.
1942 Harry Chapin is born in New York City. The folk rocker debuts in 1972 with the album Heads & Tales, featuring his first hit, "Taxi."
7 DECEMBER
In Music History
2016 One Direction's Louis Tomlinson loses his 43-year-old mother, Johannah Deakin, to leukemia.
2016 Greg Lake of Emerson, Lake and Palmer dies at 69 after a battle with cancer.
2015 Less than a month after their concert was invaded by terrorists and many of their fans murdered, Eagles of Death Metal make an emotional return to the Bataclan Theatre in Paris, where they lay flowers in memory of the 90 dead. They also join U2 on stage at the AccorsHotel Arena to perform Patti Smith's "People Have the Power." "Don't Let It Go Away" is performed by the Missing People Choir in a carol service at St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square in the evening.
2011 The Black Keys, who won three Grammy Awards in 2011, appear on The Colbert Report. They play "Lonely Boy" and "Gold on the Ceiling."
2011 30 Seconds to Mars breaks the record for most shows performed during a single album cycle when they play their 300th concert in support of their album This Is War at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City.
2010 Judas Priest announces that their Epitaph World Tour, which will run until 2012, will be their last major tour. In 2013 they change their minds and pick up right where they left off.
2008 Classics IV frontman Dennis Yost dies of respiratory failure at age 65, two years after suffering a traumatic brain injury from a fall.
2003 Mary J. Blige marries her manager, Martin "Kendu" Isaacs. She files for divorce in 2016.
1996 Toni Braxton's "Un-Break My Heart" hits #1 in America for the first of 11 weeks.
1990 Soul singer Dee Clark, known for the 1961 hit "Raindrops," dies of a heart attack at age 52.
1987 Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, and Judy Collins (among others) appear onstage at Carnegie Hall to pay tribute to Harry Chapin, who would have been celebrating his 45th birthday.
1987 The Replacements play a drunken, disastrous show at the Pine Street Theatre in Portland, Oregon, that ends with the band throwing their clothes into the audience. It becomes part of their lore and the topic of their song "Portland."
1987 Uriah Heep become the first hard rock act to play behind the Iron Curtain in Moscow, Russia. They do 10 shows at the Olympic Stadium.
1987 Harry Chapin receives a posthumous Congressional Gold Medal for his efforts in fighting hunger. Along with Bill Ayres, Chapin founded World Hunger Year, which is later re-named WhyHunger and becomes a very effective organization in distributing food to those in need.
1987 Aaron Carter is born in Tampa, Florida, to a family that includes brother Nick Carter of Backstreet Boys. Aaron will release his self-titled debut album by the time he's 10.
French Song By Belgian Nun Hits #1 In America
1963The Singing Nun's "Dominique" hits #1 for the first of four weeks.
When Jeanine Deckers entered a Dominican convent in Belgium, she was allowed to keep her guitar, which she used to entertain the sisters and perform at retreats. She composed her own songs, including one about St. Dominic, the founder of her order, called "Dominique." Philips Records in Brussels agreed to record an album of her songs and press a few hundred copies, but when they heard it, they decided to press thousands of copies and distribute them around Europe, earning money for the convent to support their good deeds. When she became a nun, Deckers took the name Sister Luc-Gabrielle; Philips gave her the stage name Sœur Sourire, meaning "Sister Smile." The album did surprisingly well, so Philips issued it in America, naming her "The Singing Nun" for this audience. The album went nowhere, but a music publisher for the label thought "Dominique" had hit potential and released it as a single. Even though it's sung in Luc-Gabrielle's native French, the song captivates American listeners and climbs all the way to the top, where it stays for four weeks. In 1964, she performs it on the Ed Sullivan Show. In 1965, she leaves the order and releases an ode to contraception called "Glory Be to God for the Golden Pill." This and her other efforts go nowhere, and she finds herself in financial distress, exasperated when the Belgian government comes after her for taxes on her earnings, which all went to the convent. In 1985, she and her partner, a one-time nun named Annie Pecher whom she met at the convent, kill themselves by ingesting deadly doses of barbiturates.
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