9 MARCH
Featured Events
2012 76-year-old Jerry Lee Lewis gets married for the seventh time, taking his caregiver, 62-year-old Judith Brown, as his bride. Brown was previously married to Lewis' cousin Rusty.
1987 Sam Cooke, John Lennon & Paul McCartney, Carole King & Gerry Goffin, and Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil are all inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
1987 U2 release their fifth studio album, The Joshua Tree. The first two singles, "With Or Without You" and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," climb to #1 in America. The album becomes their first #1 in that country, and takes the Grammy Award for Album of the Year.More
1985 REO Speedwagon's "Can't Fight This Feeling" hits #1 in America, where it stays for three weeks.
1970 Shortly before a show in Columbus, Georgia, James Brown replaces most of his band (including Fred Wesley and Maceo Parker), which had complained about working conditions and pay, with a young group from Cincinnati led by the brothers Bootsy and Catfish Collins. It's rough going at first, but the band eventually conforms to Brown's vision and leads him into a new era. Brown calls these guys "the new breed."
1969 Wiggen sisters Dorothy, Helen, Betty, and Rachel record Philosophy of the World as The Shaggs. Numerous music critics and historians consider it the worst album ever recorded, but years later both Frank Zappa and Kurt Cobain call it one of their favorites ever made.More
9 MARCH
In Music History
2020 An appellate court upholds a 2016 ruling that Led Zeppelin's "Stairway To Heaven" did not infringe on the Spirit song "Taurus," bringing an end to the lawsuit that was filed in 2014. The court also overturns the "inverse ratio rule," which sets a lower standard for infringement based on how much access a defendant had to a song.
2018 After 66 years, the British music magazine NME publishes its last print edition. The London rapper Stefflon Don gets the cover.
2018 Iconic album-cover-artist Gary Burden passes away.
2015 Eugene Patton, known as Gene Gene the Dancing Machine from the classic '70s Gong Show, dies at age 82 in Pasadena, California.
2015 R&B singer Angie Stone is arrested in Georgia on assault charges after allegedly punching her 30-year-old daughter's teeth out.
2011 Eric Clapton auctions off 75 guitars and 55 amplifiers, with proceeds going to his Crossroads rehab center in Antigua. Items sold include a vintage 1948 Gibson L-5P guitar and a Fender Twin amp.
2011 Phil Collins clears up rumors about why he is retiring. Speculation has included health problems, bad reviews, depression and an interest in devoting time to his collection of Alamo memorabilia, but Collins states the real reason: "So I can be a full time father to my two young sons on a daily basis."
2009 In New Orleans, Britney Spears launches her Circus tour, her first since 2004. The tour, which features acrobats, clowns, magicians, Pussycat Dolls, and lots of hits, is a triumphant return for Spears, who seemed unhinged throughout 2007 as she battled addiction and dealt with the fallout from her divorce.
2007 Boston lead singer Brad Delp commits suicide at age 55.
2005 George Scott of The Blind Boys of Alabama dies at age 75.
2005 Country singer Chris LeDoux dies from liver disease at age 56.
2005 The tour bus driver for The Dave Matthews Band pleads guilty to dumping sewage into the Chicago River, which hit a group of tourists cruising on an architectural tour. Stefan Wohl denied the charges at first, but admitted it when confronted with surveillance video. The band was not on the bus at the time.
2000 Croatian singer Ivo Robic dies at age 77.
1993 Sting releases his fourth solo album, Ten Summoner's Tales, which contains the hit "Fields of Gold."
1990 At The Central in Seattle, Mother Love Bone play their last show, as their lead singer Andrew Wood dies of a heroin overdose 10 days later. Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard from the band form Pearl Jam later that year.
The Notorious B.I.G. Meets a Tragic End
1997Beloved New York rapper Biggie Smalls (The Notorious B.I.G.) is gunned down in Los Angeles streets just six months after his rival Tupac Shakur met the same fate.
The 24-year-old rapper, born Christopher Wallace, is in Los Angeles to promote the release of his second album, Life After Death, and film a music video for his hit single "Hypnotize." The heated rivalry between the East Coast and West Coast hip-hop scenes, mainly driven by the feud between Biggie and Tupac Shakur, has slowly come to a halt after 2Pac was fatally shot down in Las Vegas, Nevada. Just a month earlier, West and East Coast rap representatives Snoop Doggy Dogg and Sean "Puffy" Combs joined together to call for a truce in the hip-hop rivalry that has gotten so out of hand. Though there is clearly still bad blood among some. At the 1997 Soul Train Music Awards in Los Angeles, Biggie presents an award to Toni Braxton and is booed by members of the audience. The next night, Smalls attends an after party hosted by Vibe magazine and Qwest Records at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. Late that night, he leaves the party with his entourage in his SUV. Their ride stops at a red light just 50 yards from the museum when a man dressed in a blue suit and bow tie pulls up in a Chevrolet Impala. He rolls down his window and unloads a 9mm blue-steel pistol into the SUV. Biggie is hit with four bullets and is pronounced dead within the hour. Hundreds turn out for Biggie's funeral in Manhattan - Queen Latifah, Flavor Flav, Lil' Kim and RUN-D.M.C. amongst them. "Hypnotize" is played in tribute, causing attendees to burst into dance. Biggie's murder is never solved, and while there are many theories linking B.I.G. and 2Pac's drive-by shootings, we may never know what took the rapper so soon. There is life after death for The Notorious B.I.G., who is the subject of Combs' 1997 #1 hit "I'll Be Missing You." He inspires a new generation of rappers with the smooth flow and lyrical dexterity that cement him as a legend.
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