5 JANUARY
In Music History
1940 The FCC hears the first demonstration of FM radio.
1932 Blues singer Johnny Adams, known for the '60s hits "Release Me" and "Reconsider Me," is born Laten John Adams in New Orleans, Louisiana.
1929 R&B singer Wilbert Harrison - who wrote the 1962 hit "Let's Stick Together," later known as "Let's Work Together" by Canned Heat - is born in Charlotte, North Carolina.
1923 Record producer Sam Phillips, founder of Sun Records (which launched careers for Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash), is born in Florence, Alabama.
1875 Paris' Palais Garnier, one of the most famous opera houses in the world, is inaugurated. Fourteen years previously, Parisian workers attempting to lay the concrete foundations of the opera house uncovered a vast swampy lake. That lake swirling beneath the building and its surrounding cellars inspire Gaston Leroux to write The Phantom of the Opera in 1910.
1649 The opera Giasone by Francesco Cavalli premieres in Venice.
Springsteen Releases First Album
1973With a boulder on his shoulder, feelin' kinda older, 23-year-old Bruce Springsteen releases his first album, Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.
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Featured Events
1998 Sonny Bono (of Sonny & Cher) dies in a skiing accident in Nevada, near South Lake Tahoe, California, at age 62. An advanced skier, he goes off course to do some "tree skiing" when he crashes and dies. His wife and two children are with him on the slopes, but don't witness the accident.
1998 In the Ally McBeal episode "Cro-Magnon," a thirty-something Ally is reminded of her ticking biological clock when she hallucinates a baby dancing to the tune of Blue Swede's "Hooked On A Feeling." By the end of the episode, Ally relents and grooves along with the tot.More
1997 Johnny Cash plays Coyote, Homer Simpson's imaginary guru, on The Simpsons. Coyote tells Homer to buy more material possessions.
1979 The double-album soundtrack to the film Saturday Night Fever reaches sales of 25 million worldwide, making it the best-selling LP in history.More
1976 Former Beatles road manager Mal Evans is shot and killed by police in Los Angeles after he brandishes an unloaded rifle (some claim it was an air gun) after becoming despondent.
1975 The Wiz premieres at the Majestic Theatre on Broadway. An adaptation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz with an all-black cast, it stars future disco diva Stephanie Mills ("Never Knew Love") as Dorothy. In 1978, the production is turned into a movie starring Michael Jackson and Diana Ross.
1969 Marilyn Manson is born Brian Hugh Warner in Canton, Ohio. Contrary to the urban myth, Warner does not start his entertainment career playing Paul on The Wonder Years (that would be Josh Saviano). After a stint as a music journalist, he teams up with guitarist Scott "Daisy Berkowitz" Putesky and reinvents himself as Marilyn Manson in 1989.
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