8 JULY
In Music History
1961 Depeche Mode founder Andy Fletcher is born in Nottingham, England.
1961 Toby Keith is born Toby Keith Covel in Clinton, Oklahoma. He works in the oil fields and for a rodeo company before launching his music career in his 30s. His pre-music life informs many of his songs, including "Beer For My Horses," inspired by his rodeo days.
1958 The RIAA gives its first ever Gold album to the Oklahoma! soundtrack for $1 million in sales. The Gold standard for albums is changed in 1975 to reflect sales of over 500,000.
1957 Elvis Presley's "(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear" hits #1 in America the day before it appears in his second film, Loving You. It holds the top spot for seven weeks.
1946 Ava Gardner divorces bandleader Artie Shaw after one year of marriage. Her next husband is Frank Sinatra.
1944 Jai Johanny Johanson (drummer for The Allman Brothers Band) is born Johnny Lee Johnson in Ocean Springs, Mississippi.
1935 Steve Lawrence is born Sidney Liebowitz in Brooklyn, New York City.
1930 Italian American singer Jerry Vale is born Genaro Louis Vitaliano in the Bronx, New York City.
1914 Swing era bandleader Billy Eckstine is born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Known for his 1948 rendition of "I Apologize."
1908 Bandleader Louis Jordan, whose jazz and blues music leads to rock and roll, is born in Brinkley, Arkansas.
1900 Avant-garde composer George Antheil is born Georg Johann Carl Antheil in Trenton, New Jersey.
Roswell Incident Leads To Spate Of UFO Songs
1947New Mexico's Roswell Daily Record reports an alien aircraft has crashed near a local ranch with the headline "RAAF Captures Flying Saucer In Roswell Region." In the coming decades, extraterrestrials and flying saucers invade several songs, including David Bowie's "Starman," Megadeth's "Hangar 18," and Radiohead's "Subterranean Homesick Alien."
Read more8 JULY
Featured Events
2023 Elton John wraps up his farewell tour with a show in Stockholm. The trek started in 2018 and played to over 6 million fans in 22 countries. It sets the mark for highest-grossing tour with over $900 million, a record broken months later by Taylor Swift's Eras tour.
1996 Spice Girls release their debut single, "Wannabe," in the UK. It shoots to #1, setting Spice-mania in motion. The single is released in the US in January 1997, and climbs to the top spot there as well.
1981 The Go-Go's release their debut album, Beauty and the Beat. It reaches #1 in the US, becoming the first by an all-girl band to do so.
1978 After a disco-rific six months at #1, the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack is finally bumped off the top spot by Gerry Rafferty's City To City.More
1972 Bill Withers' "Lean On Me" hits #1 in America. The song endures as a message of compassion and goodwill; in 1989 it is used as the theme to the movie Lean On Me, about a troubled school and its no-nonsense principal.
1967 In Jacksonville, Jimi Hendrix opens for The Monkees in a musical train wreck. Hendrix plays seven more shows with the pop stars before leaving the tour.
1954 Dewey Phillips at WHBQ in Memphis becomes the first DJ to play an Elvis Presley song when he spins "That's Alright Mama" on his Red Hot & Blue show. The switchboard lights up, so Phillips keeps playing the song, giving Elvis some prime publicity early in his career.
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