Pick a Day

15 MAY

In Music History

1992 '60s singer Barbara Lee (of The Chiffons) dies of a heart attack the day before her 45th birthday.

1990 Mariah Carey releases her first single, the ballad "Vision Of Love." In August, it climbs to #1 in America, setting Carey on track to become the best-selling female artist of the '90s.

1984 In Tulsa, Lionel Richie launches his Can't Slow Down tour. His opening act is Tina Turner, whose comeback album, Private Dancer, is released two weeks later. During his set, Richie brings Turner on stage to duet on "Three Times A Lady" and a cover of Rod Stewart's "Hot Legs."

1984 Nils Lofgren joins Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band.

1976 The Rolling Stones album Black and Blue goes to #1 in America.

1971 Pink Floyd, Mountain and the Faces perform the "Garden Party" concert at Crystal Palace Park in London. A small pond in front of the stage becomes an aquatic graveyard when hundreds of fish die during Pink Floyd's performance. What killed the fish? Reports vary, but it is either vibrations from the band's estimated 95-decibal sound system or smoke flares set off in the water. The band receives a bill for the dead fish.

1971 Two short John Lennon films are shown at the Cannes Film Festival in France.

1967 Paul McCartney first meets Linda Eastman at a Georgie Fame concert in London. They get married two years later, a union that lasts until her death in 1998.

1965 Burt Bacharach marries his second wife, Angie Dickinson. The composer and the actress stay together for 15 years and share a daughter, Nikki.

1963 At the fifth Annual Grammy Awards, The First Family, an album of comedy bits that pokes fun at President John F. Kennedy and his family, wins Album Of The Year, the only time a comedy or spoken-word album has ever won that award. Tony Bennett's "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" takes Record of the Year, Ray Charles' "I Can't Stop Loving You" gets Best R&B Recording, and Bent Fabric's instrumental "Alley Cat" takes Best Rock and Roll Record.

1961 Brenda Lee guests on Make Room For Daddy on CBS-TV.

1957 Elvis Presley inhales the cap from one of his teeth and is taken to a Los Angeles hospital to have it removed from his lung.

1953 Rock composer Mike Oldfield is born in Reading, Berkshire, England.

1951 Rock singer Dennis "Fergie" Frederiksen (of Toto) is born in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

1948 Nat King Cole's "Nature Boy" goes to #1 in America. The song was composed by a free-spirited songwriter named Eden Ahbez, who lived in a Los Angeles park.