31 OCTOBER
In Music History
1952 When his original guitarist has a stroke just before a New Year's Eve gig, popular St. Louis boogie-woogie pianist Johnnie Johnson hires a 26-year-old hairdresser named Chuck Berry for his group The Sir John's Trio.
1952 Bernard Edwards (bassist, songwriter for Chic) is born in Greenville, North Carolina.
1945 Russ Ballard (Unit 4+2 guitarist and Argent frontman) is born in Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire, England.
1945 Rik Kenton (Roxy Music bassist) is born in Nottingham, England.
1940 Eric Griffiths (original guitarist for The Quarrymen, a pre-Beatles rock 'n roll group founded by John Lennon) is born in Denbigh, North Wales.
1937 Folk singer-songwriter Tom Paxton is born in Chicago, Illinois.
1937 Doo-wopper Norman Wright (of The Del-Vikings) is born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
1934 Rockabilly musician Ray Smith, known for the 1960 hit "Rockin' Little Angel," is born in Melber, Kentucky.
1930 Count Basie records "Somebody Stole My Gal."
1927 Hoagy Carmichael records his most famous composition, "Star Dust."
1912 Western singer-songwriter Dale Evans is born Lucille Wood Smith (changed to Frances Octavia Smith soon after) in Uvalde, Texas. She meets screen partner Roy Rogers in 1944 and the pair marry in 1947.
"Monster Mash" Rules Halloween
1962The "Monster Mash" rules the airwaves, becoming the most popular Halloween song of all time.
Read more31 OCTOBER
Featured Events
2011 The album Lulu, a baffling collaboration between Metallica and Lou Reed, is released. The first single, "The View," reaches peak lunacy when James Hetfield screams, "I am the table!"
2010 Demi Lovato deletes her Twitter account and enters rehab after suffering a nervous breakdown on the Jonas Brothers tour. Stress from the tour and other commitments, including promoting her movie Camp Rock 2, led to an eating disorder and a dependency on drugs and alcohol - she had also broken up with her tourmate Joe Jonas, who had taken up a new girlfriend, Ashley Greene. Lovato leaves the facility in January 2011.
2008 In Notttingham, England, 1,227 people in zombie garb perform the dance from Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video, setting a new Guinness World Record for largest gathering of zombies. The stunt pushes the song back into the UK chart, where it lands at #35.
1993 Tupac Shakur shoots two white off-duty police officers in Atlanta, who are treated and released from the hospital. Accounts of the incident are sketchy, but it appears that at least one of the cops instigated the incident and was possibly inebriated. Charges against Tupac are later dropped.
1992 "End Of The Road" by Boyz II Men is the #1 song on the Hot 100 for the 12th consecutive week, breaking the record held by Elvis Presley's two-sided "Don't be Cruel/Hound Dog," which was #1 for 11 weeks in 1956. The group is displaced three months later by Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You"; in 1995, Boyz II Men ties Houston's 14-week record with "I'll Make Love To You."
1991 After meeting up at their ex-manager's funeral, Spinal Tap announce a reunion. "It was destiny and also because none of us were really making a great amount of money," bass player Derek Smalls says.
1964 Unseating The Beatles' 14-week run at the top of the US albums chart with A Hard Day's Night, Barbra Streisand hits #1 with People, which stays at the top for five weeks.
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