Pick a Day

27 OCTOBER

In Music History

1991 Country music singer Lorrie Morgan marries Brad Thompson, a tour bus driver for singer Clint Black. The two met when the singer toured with Black and Merle Haggard in 1990. Black, who married just one week earlier, serves as best man. Morgan and Thompson divorce in 1993.

1991 Country music singer Jimmy Dean, 62, marries his second wife, fellow country singer Donna Meade, 38. The two would stay married until Dean's death in 2010.

1990 Bandleader Xavier Cugat dies of heart failure in Barcelona, Spain, at age 90.

1986 David Byrne, who has recently directed the movie True Stories (with a soundtrack by his band, Talking Heads), makes the cover of Time magazine under the headline "Rock's Renaissance Man."More

1984 Ozzy Osbourne and wife Sharon welcome baby girl Kelly Osbourne, born in Westminster, London.

1980 Mark David Chapman buys a .38 revolver at a gun store in Honolulu for $169. On December 8, he uses it to kill John Lennon.

1980 Steve Took, original percussionist of T. Rex, dies in New Kensington, London, at age 31. Although he had taken drugs, his official cause of death was asphyxiation after inhaling a cocktail cherry.

1979 Iron Maiden, rejected by every label they approached, make the cover of the UK magazine Sounds as an unsigned band, championed as the leaders of a new British heavy metal movement. They live up to the hype: After signing to EMI they release their first album in April 1980 and become a top UK metal band.

1973 Gladys Knight and the Pips' "Midnight Train To Georgia" hits #1 in America for the first of two weeks.

1972 Eight months after releasing Music Of My Mind, the very prolific Stevie Wonder puts out Talking Book, an innovative album where he creates most of the sounds himself using a Clavinet and a custom-made synthesizer. Tracks include "Superstition" and "You Are The Sunshine Of My Life."

1970 Black Sabbath begin their first US tour.

1964 The Supremes release "Come See About Me."

1964 Sonny (31-year-old Salvatore Bono) and Cher (18-year-old Cherilyn Sarkisian), exchange vows and wedding rings in their first home. Their publicity materials cite this as the day of their wedding, but the duo does not officially marry until 1969.

1962 The Rolling Stones record their first demos in London at Curly Clayton Studios, recording covers of songs by Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed and Bo Diddley. The demos get little interest when they shop them to record companies.

1960 Ben E. King records "Spanish Harlem" and "Stand by Me."