Pick a Day

29 OCTOBER

In Music History

2022 Kim Petras becomes the first transgender singer to top the Hot 100 when her Sam Smith collaboration "Unholy" goes to #1.

2016 John "Buck" Ormsby, bass player for the Wailers (sometimes the "Fabulous" Wailers) and founder of Etiquette Records, passes away from a fall in Mexico.

2014 NPR posts T-Pain's Tiny Desk concert, where he sings three songs without Auto-Tune. Listeners are shocked to hear he can sing really well, and the video goes viral, becoming the most popular Tiny Desk concert in the history of the series.

2012 While campaigning for the 2012 election, president Barack Obama takes time out to interview with radio station WIZF Cincinnati, to talk about his favorite music artists. Asked "what's on the presidential iPod?," Obama names Stevie Wonder, James Brown, The Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan as his "old school" choices, Jay-Z, Eminem, and Fugees for newer artists, and John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Gil Scott-Heron amongst his favorite jazz artists.

2009 To celebrate the 25th anniversary of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a series of concerts take place at Madison Square Garden, featuring inductees Bruce Springsteen, Bono, Mick Jagger and Aretha Franklin.

2007 Bon Iver signs to Jagjaguwar Records.

2006 Billboard executive Tom Noonan, who helped launch the Billboard Hot 100 during his 30-year tenure, dies of bladder cancer at age 78.

2005 The wax figures of the younger Beatles used in the cover of the band's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album are auctioned off for 81,500 pounds in London after being discovered languishing in the backroom of Madame Tussauds' famous wax museum.

2004 At a campaign rally in Columbus, Ohio, George W. Bush unveils his new theme song in his presidential re-election campaign: "Still The One" by Orleans. The song's co-writer, John Hall, is watching on CNN and is mortified, as he actively opposes Bush's policies. Along with his band members and the song's co-writer (his ex-wife, Johanna), Hall demands that Bush stop using the song.More

2003 Italian opera singer Franco Corelli dies at age 82, months after suffering a stroke.

2003 A study by the Nielsen ratings people finds that a full third of the sales of Beatles 1 were to new fans between the ages of 19 and 24, skewing the fan base even younger than it had been previously.

2001 Henry Berthold "Spike" Robinson, jazz tenor saxophonist, dies at age 71.

2001 Musician/poet Gil Scott-Heron is sentenced to 1-3 years in state prison in a New York court, after failing to appear at an Oct. 1 hearing regarding the mandatory drug rehabilitation required by his plea bargain on an earlier drug possession charge.

2000 The Spice Girls score their ninth and final UK #1 hit as the double-sided "Holler"/"Let Love Lead The Way" reaches the top of the chart.

1998 Singer/guitarist Brian Setzer files suit against Ken Kinnally, a former member of Setzer's pre-Stray Cats group the Bloodless Pharaohs. Setzer alleges that, without his knowledge or consent, Kinnally licensed 1978 studio tracks and 1979 live recordings to Collectibles Records, which issued an album titled Brian Setzer & the Bloodless Pharaohs.