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April 7, 1959 As the snow melts in Mason City, Iowa, Buddy Holly's glasses are found from the plane crash that killed him two months earlier. They are turned in to police, where they stay until 1980, when a sheriff finds them and returns them to Holly's widow.
April 3, 1959 Because of its references to bad behavior in school (writing on the wall, throwing spitballs), The British Broadcasting Corporation bans The Coasters song "Charlie Brown." The ban is lifted two weeks later.
March 29, 1959 Jane's Addiction frontman Perry Farrell is born Peretz Bernstein in Queens, New York City. His stage name is a play on the word "peripheral," in the sense that he's "on the edge." Farrell fronts the bands Jane's Addiction and Porno For Pyros, but is most famous for launching the Lollapalooza music festival.
March 27, 1959 Keyboard player Andrew Farriss, who forms INXS along with his brothers, Tim and Jon, is born in Perth, Western Australia. He and lead singer Michael Hutchence team up to write most of the group's songs.
March 23, 1959 Kevin Godfrey is born in Surrey, England. Taking the name "Epic Soundtracks," he forms the group Swell Maps and plays drums in Crime & the City Solution and These Immortal Souls.
March 23, 1959 Bobby Darin's first full-length album, That's All, is released. Among the tracks is "Mack The Knife," a song about a cold-blooded murderer popularized in the play The Threepenny Opera. Considered just an album cut at first, in August the song is released as a single, and it transforms Darin's career, going to #1 for nine weeks and making him one of the most popular entertainers in America.
March 20, 1959 Bobby Rydell makes his first TV appearance when he shows up on American Bandstand. He soon becomes a teen idol.
March 16, 1959 Flavor Flav is born William Jonathan Drayton, Jr. He becomes a rapper with Public Enemy and also a reality TV star.
February 27, 1959 Johnny Van Zant is born in Jacksonville, Flordia. He performs and records with the Johnny Van Zant Band and as a solo artist, but is best known for succeeding his deceased brother Ronnie Van Zant as frontman for Lynyrd Skynyrd in 1987.
February 27, 1959 Jerry Lee Lewis and his third wife (and first cousin once removed) Myra have a son, Steve Allen Lewis, who is named after the TV host. The boy dies in a swimming pool accident three years later.
February 25, 1959 Mike Peters (lead singer for The Alarm) is born in Prestatyn, Wales.
February 18, 1959 While on leave from the US Army in Paris, Elvis Presley visits the famous Lido Club, performing an impromptu show there.
February 18, 1959 Ray Charles records "What'd I Say," a song he came up with by improvising at concerts, at Atlantic Records studios in New York City.
February 9, 1959 Lloyd Price's "Stagger Lee" hits #1 for the first of four weeks.
February 4, 1959 A day after the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper, the Winter Dance Party tour continues in Sioux City, Iowa, with Fabian, Frankie Avalon and Jimmy Clanton as the new headliners and Waylon Jennings singing Holly's songs.
February 3, 1959 Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson are killed in a plane crash. Don McLean would call it "The Day the Music Died" in his 1971 hit "American Pie."More
February 3, 1959 Laurence "Lol" Tolhurst of The Cure is born in Horley, Surrey, England. A founding member, he starts out on drums, then moves to keyboards before he is sacked by Robert Smith in 1989.
February 2, 1959 At the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper play their last show as part of the "Winter Dance Party" tour. Admission: $1.25. The last song of the night: The Big Bopper's "Chantilly Lace."
January 28, 1959 Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin perform together in Vegas for the first time, joining forces at the Sands hotel. They become regular performers at the venue, often joined by fellow "rat pack" members Sammy Davis, Jr., Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford.
January 23, 1959 The "Winter Dance Party" tour gets underway with a show at the Million Dollar Ballroom in Milwaukee. Before the tour is over, headliners Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper are killed in a plane crash.More
January 22, 1959 Buddy Holly makes his last recordings alone with an acoustic guitar in his Greenwich Village apartment. Songs include "Peggy Sue Got Married," "Crying, Waiting, Hoping," "That's What They Say," "What to Do," "Learning the Game" and "That Makes it Tough." The rough versions are overdubbed and released after his death.
January 19, 1959 Arbitron ratings reveal that ABC's American Bandstand is now the nation's most popular daytime show.
January 17, 1959 Susanna Hoffs is born in Los Angeles, California. She forms the Bangles after answering an ad placed by the sisters Debbi and Vicki Peterson.
January 16, 1959 Sade is born Helen Folasade Adu in Ibadan, Nigeria. She moves to England with her mother when she's 4, and after studying fashion design in London, she forms the band Sade in 1982. Their first album, Diamond Life, is released in 1984 and includes the hit "Smooth Operator."
January 14, 1959 Geoff Tate (lead singer for Queensryche) is born in Stuttgart, West Germany.
January 12, 1959 Berry Gordy, who had a hit as a songwriter with "Lonely Teardrops," launches the Tamla Record Company with $800 he borrowed from his family. A year later, he changes the label's name to Motown Records.
January 6, 1959 Kathy Sledge (of Sister Sledge) rounds out the R&B group when she's born the youngest of the five sisters in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
January 6, 1959 Neil Simpson (bass player for Climax Blues Band) is born in Stoke-on-Trent, England. At age four, he receives a toy guitar featuring a picture of The Beatles.
January 1, 1959 Johnny Cash plays one of his first jailhouse shows when he performs at San Quentin prison in San Rafael, California. Among those in the captive audience is Merle Haggard, who is serving time for burglary.More
December 27, 1958 While attending a class at the Liverpool College of Art, John Lennon meets student Cynthia Powell, later to become his first wife.
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