18 JANUARY
In Music History
1973 At The Forum in Inglewood, California, The Rolling Stones perform a benefit concert for the victims of an earthquake in Nicaragua, where Mick Jagger's wife Bianca is from. The show raises $400,000.
1971 KoRn frontman Jonathan Davis is born in Bakersfield, California.
1970 DJ Quik is born David Marvin Blake in Compton, California.
1969 Former Beatles drummer Pete Best wins a defamation suit against his former group. Best sued over remarks Ringo made in an interview implying that he was kicked out of the band because of drug use.
1969 Neil Young records "Cowgirl in the Sand."
1968 Joan Baez is released from jail after serving 31 days for a protest where she and other antiwar demonstrators blocked the entrance to the Armed Forces Induction Center in Oakland, California. "Jail is really peanuts," she tells reporters. "It's nothing for people like us."
1966 Lyricist Fred Wise dies aged 50 in New York, the city of his birth.
1965 Paul Simon drops out of law school to pursue music full-time.
1960 Johnny Preston's "Running Bear" hits #1 for the first of three weeks.
1956 Tom Bailey (lead vocalist for Thompson Twins) is born in Halifax, Yorkshire, England.
1953 Brett Hudson is born in Portland, Oregon, the youngest in The Hudson Brothers lineup.
1948 The Ted Mack Original Amateur Hour debuts on the Dumont network, a spinoff of Major Bowes' popular radio series. Teresa Brewer and Pat Boone, among others, are discovered via the program.
1944 New York City's Metropolitan Opera House holds its first Jazz concert, featuring Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Artie Shaw, Roy Eldridge and Jack Teagarden.
1944 "Legs" Larry Smith (drummer for Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band) is born in Oxford, England.
1943 English composer/keyboardist Dave Greenslade is born in Woking, Surrey, England.
Iconic Coke Commercial Is Born
1971The McCann-Erickson advertising agency takes a meeting with British songwriters Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway to record a Coca-Cola commercial with the group the New Seekers, which becomes "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing."
Read more18 JANUARY
Featured Events
2016 Glenn Frey dies at age 67. Years in the fast lane took a toll on Frey, who suffered from a host of ailments. Frey founded the Eagles, and along with Don Henley, led the group throughout their career. He had a successful solo career while the group was on hiatus, reaching #2 with "The Heat Is On" in 1985.
2015 John Legend and Common perform "Glory" (from the movie Selma) at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, to celebrate Martin Luther King Day and honor the march King led from the bridge to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965.
2009 A wide range of top musicians including Mary J. Blige, U2, Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen, Garth Brooks, Sheryl Crow, will.i.am, James Taylor, John Legend, John Mellencamp, Pete Seeger, Shakira, Usher and Stevie Wonder, perform at a concert in Washington, DC, to celebrate the upcoming inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States of America.More
1996 Lisa Marie Presley files for divorce from Michael Jackson.
1989 The Fourth Annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies are held in New York City. Inductees include Dion, Otis Redding, The Rolling Stones, The Temptations, and Stevie Wonder.
1974 Free's Paul Rodgers and Simon Kirke, Mott The Hoople's Mick Ralphs, and King Crimson's Boz Burrell unite to form the band Bad Company.
1968 At a White House luncheon to discuss the rise in urban crime, Eartha Kitt gets into a notorious spat with First Lady Claudia Taylor "Lady Bird" Johnson, declaring, "Vietnam is the main reason we are having trouble with the youth of America. It is a war without explanation or reason." Although accounts of the entire argument differ, Kitt is subsequently blackballed in America.
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