20 October

Pick a Day

20 OCTOBER

In Music History

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2023 She's got yule, babe: Cher releases her first holiday album, Christmas, with a cover of "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" featuring Darlene Love. Cher sang backup on Love's original version 60 years earlier in 1963.

2016 Little Big Town release the single "Better Man," which they later reveal was written by Taylor Swift, marking the first time she pitched a song to another artist.

2013 Kelly Clarkson marries Brandon Blackstock, Reba McEntire's stepson. They have two children before splitting up in 2020.

2011 John Mayer has throat surgery to treat a problem with his vocal cords, pushing back the release of his album Born and Raised.

2010 Lil Wayne, in prison on weapons charges, hits #1 in America with his album I Am Not a Human Being, recorded before he started serving his eight-month sentence.

2005 Jazz singer/pianist Shirley Horn dies of complications from diabetes at age 71.

2003 Amy Winehouse, 20, issues her first album, Frank, in the UK. It doesn't appear in America until 2007.

2002 A man identifying himself as Kid Rock's personal assistant is charged with felony and misdemeanor drug possession after a traffic stop on Rock's tour bus on the Florida Turnpike. Officers find a small amount of cocaine, two marijuana cigarettes, a glass pipe, and rolling papers on Kevin J. McMahon's person and in his luggage. He is released from jail on $16,000 bond.

2001 Raising money for victims of the September 11th attacks, Paul McCartney leads "The Concert For New York" in Madison Square Garden. Elton John, Billy Joel, David Bowie, The Who, and Eric Clapton all participate.

1999 A year after nearly dying from pneumonia, Johnny Cash finds himself battling the condition again. Cash is listed in serious condition at Baptist Hospital in Nashville.

1998 98 Degrees release their breakout album, 98 Degrees and Rising, featuring the hit singles "Because Of You" and "The Hardest Thing," as well as "True To Your Heart," a duet with Stevie Wonder from the Disney movie Mulan.

1997 Canned Heat guitarist Henry "The Sunflower" Vestine, age 52, dies of respiratory and heart failure in a Paris hotel room just after finishing a European tour with the band.

1996 Carly Simon is unable to perform due to stage fright, aboard the Queen Elizabeth II in New York.

1991 Country music singer Clint Black marries TV actress Lisa Hartman. The couple met when Hartman and her mother attended a New Year's concert Black gave in Houston.

1984 A-ha make their television debut, performing four songs – including an early version of their future #1 hit "Take On Me" - on Lordagssirkus, a program from their native Norway.

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Lynyrd Skynyrd Singer And Guitarist Killed In Plane Crash

1977

Lynyrd Skynyrd members Ronnie Van Zant and Steve Gaines die in a plane crash in Mississippi. Gaines' sister Cassie, a backup singer with the group, is also killed along with two pilots and the band's manager. Other members of the group are badly injured.

At about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, a 1948 Convair CV-240 bearing Lynyrd Skynyrd and crew lifts into the sky over Greenville, South Carolina, bound for Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The atmosphere is a bit tense, as that very same plane's right engine had spewed 20 feet of fire while in flight the night before. This flight, band and crew have all agreed, will be the last one they take in the craft. They will leave the plane at their next stop in Baton Rouge and find new transportation. Two-and-a-half hours into the air and the plane's right engine starts to sputter. Keyboardist Billy Powell goes to the cockpit to ask what's wrong. The pilots, both relatively young, tell him that everything is fine and they're simply transferring oil from one wing to another. Powell returns to the seat. The right engine dies. The pilot radios Houston Air Traffic Control, tells them that their Convair is low on fuel and asks for the vectors for a McComb, Mississippi airstrip to make an emergency landing. Before the final directions to the airstrip get back to the pilots, the plane's left engine goes as well. Powell and drummer Artimus Pyle run to the cockpit to find the pilots looking terrified but keeping themselves composed enough to tell everyone to get back to their seats and get their seat belts on. Everyone buckles up except for Ronnie Van Zant, who is sleeping on the floor behind the cockpit. Artimus wakes him up, but before Van Zant can make it to his seat, the plane crashes into a wooded Mississippi swamp at approximately 90 miles per hour. Van Zant is launched from the craft and into a tree, killing him instantly. Guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Steve Gaines, his sister (and Skynyrd backup singer) Cassie, and road manager Dean Kilpatrick also die on impact. Pilot Walter McCreary and co-pilot William Gray are also killed. Pyle emerges from the wreckage with his ribs protruding from his body to see that the pilot has been decapitated. He makes it nearly a full mile to a farmhouse. Powell lies in the swamp thinking that the crash has been a sort of culmination of the violence and recklessness that the band has been living for years. He silently thanks God that the violence is over. Guitarist Gary Rossington wakes up to the sound of helicopters and the sight of search lights. He starts screaming. The helicopters can't land because of the swamp's terrain. Local farmers come to the scene and begin helping get the injured out of the wreakage while emergency crews work on bulldozing a road through the trees. Less benevolent folks arrive, as well, to scavenge memorabilia from the wreckage and even from the dead. The incident puts an abrupt stop to Lynyrd Skynyrd's climb to stardom. Just three days earlier, they released their fifth album, Street Survivors, and were filling arenas on their tour. After the crash, band members are too traumatized to go on. Added to that is the bitterness and anger they feel that their mission to become as big as The Rolling Stones has been so brutally crushed. They dive into self-medication with alcohol and drugs for many years. An eight-month National Transport Safety Bureau investigation of the crash determines that the probable cause of the accident was, "Fuel exhaustion and a total loss of power on both engines due to crew inattention of fuel supply. Contributing to the fuel exhaustion were inadequate flight planning and an engine malfunction of undetermined nature in the right engine which resulted in a higher than normal fuel consumption." Despite some eye-witness reports, no evidence of drugs or alcohol are found during autopsies performed on the pilots. At Van Zant's funeral, Merle Haggard's "I Take a Lot of Pride in What I Am" is played. Van Zant is buried with his favorite fishing pole and Texas Hatters hat. A recording of David Allen Coe's "Another Pretty Country Song" is played and Charlie Daniels sings "Amazing Grace." It is ten years before the surviving band members reunite, and it isn't until 1991 that they complete that trip to Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

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Comments: 2

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Kenneth Hatfield from Birmingham, Alabama They were true blue in their songs and the life they lived.
Scott L from Sw MichOne of the saddest days in rock history. Steve Gaines added so much to Skynyrd's sound & losing these members was devastating.

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