December 25, 1972 Pop singer Dido is born Dido Florian Cloud de Bounevialle O'Malley Armstrong in Kensington, London, England.
October 12, 1972 Joseph Kahn is born Ahn Jun-hee in Busan, South Korea, but will be raised in the Jersey Village suburb of Houston, Texas. Kahn grows up to be the go-to director for pop videos of the late-'90s into the new millennium, helming clips for everyone from Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Taylor Swift to Chris Brown and Eminem.More
August 20, 1972 Stax Records commemorates the seventh anniversary of the 1965 Watts riots with a star-studded benefit concert at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. More than 100,000 fans show up to hear Isaac Hayes, The Bar-Kays, The Staple Singers, and Kim Weston, among others, perform at what becomes known as Wattstax.More
August 11, 1972 The mayor of San Antonio, Texas, declares today "Cheech and Chong Day" after the popular comedy duo, although neither was born anywhere near the city.
August 4, 1972 The movie Super Fly is released, along with a soundtrack by Curtis Mayfield that becomes a soul music landmark, taking on the drug culture portrayed in the film with vivid commentary.More
June 16, 1972 David Bowie unveils his landmark album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars. His breakthrough LP, it sells over 7 million copies and is hailed as one of the greatest albums of all time.More
February 14, 1972 Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty is born to American parents in West Germany.More
October 2, 1971 Pop singer Tiffany is born Tiffany Darwish in Norwalk, California. She has two #1 hits: "I Think We're Alone Now" and "Could've Been."
August 1, 1971 The Sonny And Cher Comedy Hour, starring the popular duo, premieres on CBS.
July 6, 1971 Louis Armstrong dies of a heart attack in his sleep in Corona, Queens, New York, a month shy of his 70th birthday. More
June 19, 1971 Carole King's album Tapestry hits #1 in the US, where it stays for 15 weeks.More
February 2, 1971 The Point!, an animated fable written by pop star Nilsson, makes its debut on ABC's Movie of the Week.
December 21, 1970 Music and politics collide when Elvis Presley meets President Richard Nixon at the White House. A famous photo of the two shaking hands horrifies many Elvis fans.More
May 17, 1970 Pop singer Jordan Knight (of New Kids on the Block) is born in Worcester, Massachusetts.
April 7, 1970 Popular songwriting team Hal David and Burt Bacharach win the Academy Award for Best Original Song for "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" from the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Performed by B.J. Thomas, it hit #1 on the US charts. Bacharach also takes the prize for Best Original Score for his work on the film.
October 9, 1969 BBC's Top Of The Pops refuses to play the #1 hit in the country for the first time. The song, Serge Gainsbourg's "Je T'Aime Moi Non Plus," is considered one of the first "orgasm records," that is, one of the first to feature heavy female breathing and moaning.
July 24, 1969 Jennifer Lopez is born to Puerto Rican parents in The Bronx in New York City.More
June 29, 1969 At the Denver Pop Festival, the Jimi Hendrix Experience play their last gig with their original lineup, as bass player Noel Redding leaves the band after the show over disagreements with Hendrix.
May 23, 1969 The Who release their album Tommy, a rock opera about a deaf, dumb and blind boy who plays a mean pinball.More
December 28, 1968 Joni Mitchell, Fleetwood Mac, Steppenwolf and the Grateful Dead, land in Hallandale, Florida's Gulfstream Park to entertain 100,000 fans at Miami Pop Festival II, the East Coast's first major rock festival.More
December 26, 1968 D.A. Pennebaker's documentary Monterey Pop, which chronicles the 1967 Monterey International Pop Music Festival (where The Who smashed their instruments and Jimi Hendrix set his guitar on fire) opens in theaters.
September 25, 1968 No more whistling "Dixie" for University of Miami students as the school becomes the first university to ban the controversial Confederate anthem from being played at public events.More
August 13, 1968 Soul singer Joe Hinton dies of skin cancer at age 38 in Boston, Massachusetts. Known for the popular cover "Funny How Time Flies Slips Away," written by Willie Nelson.
August 4, 1968 The Newport Pop Festival attracts 100,000 with Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, and The Animals.
April 6, 1968 The Graduate soundtrack hits #1 in America thanks to Simon & Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson," which tops the Hot 100 less than two months later.More
March 23, 1968 Blur frontman Damon Albarn is born in London. The group helps define Britpop in the '90s with songs like "Parklife" and "Song 2," but in the '00s he becomes better known as the main voice and musical architect of Gorillaz, the most popular virtual band ever assembled.
February 5, 1968 Spin Doctors frontman Chris Barron is born Christopher Barron Gross in Hawaii. He moves with his family to Australia at age 8, then to Princeton, New Jersey at 12, where he goes to high school with John Popper of Blues Traveler.
November 9, 1967 The first issue of Rolling Stone magazine is published, with a photo of John Lennon on the cover and items about David Crosby, The Who and Country Joe McDonald (of Country Joe & the Fish).More
October 31, 1967 Iggy Pop's group The Stooges make their live debut at a Detroit, Michigan, Halloween party.
September 25, 1967 Little-known country singer Dolly Parton makes her first appearance on The Porter Wagoner Show, singing two songs from her debut album: "Dumb Blonde" and "Something Fishy." She becomes the full-time replacement for the program's longtime singer, Norma Jean. Parton stays on the show for seven years and records string of popular duet albums with Wagoner.
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