On This Day In Music 19th March
1937 Clarence ‘Frogman’ Henry born in Algiers, Louisiana. an American singer and pianist.
1942 Robin Luke born in Los Angeles, California. US Pop Singer. His only hit was ‘Susie Darlin’ in 1958. The title was named after his sister Susie. (Revived in Australia by Barry Crocker in 1973).
1946 Paul Atkinson born in Cuffley, Hertfordshire, England. UK Lead Guitarist with The Zombies, (1964 US No.2 & UK No.12 single ‘She’s Not There’) Atkinson died at the age of 58 in a Santa Monica hospital due to liver and kidney disease on 1 April 2004. He had been suffering from cancer for some time, and had two liver transplants.
1946 Ruth Pointer born in East Oakland, California. US Singer with The Pointer Sisters, (1981 US No.2 single, ‘Slow Hand’, 1984 UK No.2 single ‘Automatic’).
1947 Vince Lovegrove born in Perth, WA. Australian Journalist. He was the lead singer for the 60’s band the Valentines who charted in 1969 with the Vanda-Young song ‘My Old Man’s A Groovy Old Man. On 24 March 2012, Vince Lovegrove died, aged 65, in a car accident at Federal, near Bangalow, New South Wales, about 20 km west (inland) of Byron Bay.
1952 Derek Longmuir born in Edinburgh, Scotland. UK Drummer with the Bay City Rollers, (1975 UK No.1 single ‘Bye Bye Baby’ plus 11 other UK Top 20 singles’, 1976 US No.1 single ‘Saturday Night’).
1953 Ricky Wilson born in Athens, Georgia. US Guitarist with The B-52’s, (1990 UK No.2 & US No.3 single ‘Love Shack’). Wilson died on October 12th 1985 of AIDs.
1953 Billy Sheehan born in Buffalo, New York. Bass Guitarist with f US Band Mr Big. They had a No.1 hit in 1992 with ‘To Be With You’.
1955 Actor and singer Bruce Willis, (1987 UK No.2 single ‘Under The Boardwalk’).
1958 During his only UK tour, Buddy Holly played two shows at the Regal Cinema in Hull, Yorkshire. Also on the bill, Gary Miller, The Tanner Sisters, Des O’Connor, The Montanas, Ronnie Keene & His Orchestra.
1959 Terry Hall born in Coventry, England. UK Singer/Songwriter with The Specials, (1981 UK No.1 single ‘Ghost Town’). Then formed Fun Boy Three, (1982 UK No.4 single ‘It Ain’t What You Do It’s The Way That You Do It’ with Bananarama). And Colour Field, (1985 UK No.12 single ‘Thinking
1962 Bob Dylan’s debut album Bob Dylan was released in the Untied States. Initially poor sales led the record to be known around Columbia Records as ‘Hammond’s Folly’ (John Hammond was producer of Dylan’s early recordings and the man responsible for signing Dylan). The album was praised by the New York City weekly newspaper Village Voice as an ‘explosive country blues debut’, but featured only two Dylan original compositions, Talkin’ New York and Song To Woody, the rest being old folk standards.
1964 Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas were at No.1 on the UK singles chart with ‘Little Children,’ the group’s second No.1.
1964 UK Prime Minister Harold Wilson presented The Beatles with their awards for show business personalities of the year for 1963 at London’s Dorchester Hotel.
1965 The Tailor And Cutter Magazine ran an article asking The Rolling Stones to start wearing ties. The current fashion did not include wearing ties with shirts and many tie-makers were facing financial disaster. Mick Jagger said of the appeal, “The trouble with a tie is that it could dangle in the soup. It is also something extra to which a fan can hang when you are trying to get in and out of a theatre.”
1971 T Rex were at No.1 on the UK singles chart with ‘Hot Love.’ The group’s first of four UK No.1’s spent six weeks at the top of the charts.
1971 Jack Bessant, bass, Reef, (1996 UK No. 6 single ‘Place Your Hands’, 1997 UK No.1 album ‘Glow).
1974 Jefferson Airplane re-named the group and became Jefferson Starship. The new line-up included Paul Kantner, Grace Slick, drummer Johnny Barbata, David Freiberg, Peter Kaukonen, Cragi Chaquico and Papa John Creach.
1975 Led Zeppelin played the first of two sold-out nights at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver, Canada. Tickets cost $7.50. The set list included: ‘Rock And Roll’, ‘Stairway To Heaven’, ‘Whole Lotta Love’, ‘Black Dog’ and ‘Heartbreaker’.
1976 Gary Thain bass player with Uriah Heep (joined in 1972) he died of a drug overdose on this day aged 28.
1976 Paul Kossof guitarist with Free and Back Street Crawler died aged 25, of heart failure during a flight from Los Angeles to New York, Kossof had a long history of drug abuse. Free had the 1970 UK No.2 & US No.4 single ‘All Right Now’. His first band was Black Cat Bones alongside drummer Simon Kirke, (later of Free), formed Back Street Crawler after leaving Free.
1981 The J Geils Band were at No.1 on the US singles chart with ‘Centrefold’, Roxy Music had the UK No.1 single with ‘Jealous Guy.’
1982 Ozzy Osbourne’s rhythm guitarist and former Quiet Riot member Randy Rhoads was killed when the plane he was riding in crashed. After driving much of the night, the band had stopped near a small airstrip. The tour bus driver, Andrew Aycock, talked the band’s keyboardist, Don Airey, into taking a test flight in a ’55 Beechcraft Bonanza, the joyride ended, and the plane landed safely. Then Aycock took Rhoads and Rachel Youngblood on another flight and attempts were made to “buzz” the tour bus. The left wing clipped the bus, which sent the plane spiralling into a nearby house and bursting into flames. All three bodies were burned beyond recognition, and were identified by dental records.
1986 Billy Ocean went to No.1 in the Australian Singles Chart with ‘When the Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Going’. Staying at No.1 for 5wks in a row.
1994 Dutch instrumental duo Doop were at No.1 on the UK singles chart with ‘Doop’, their only hit, making them One-hit Wonders.
1995 Bruce Springsteen started a two week run at No.1 on the US album chart with his ‘Greatest Hits.’
1996 The second Beatles Anthology series was released. The album featured ‘Real Love’, a track the remaining members of the Beatles recorded using an old demo track of John Lennon’s. The song was first recorded by Lennon in 1977 with a handheld tape recorder on his piano at home, it originated as part of an unfinished stage play that Lennon was working on at the time entitled “The Ballad of John and Yoko.”
1999 Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band played the second night at the Asbury Park Convention Hall, New Jersey as warm up dates for their forthcoming Reunion Tracks tour.
2001 Former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell’s London home was broken into. The intruder left obscene notes on the walls, stole the singer’s computer and Hi Fi and had thrown milk and Ribena fruit drink on the walls. They also stole a necklace that used to belong to actress Liz Taylor.
2001 Keith Richards inducted Johnnie Johnson and James Burton at the 16th annual Rock & Roll Hall of Fame award ceremonies at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City. Richards also took part in the closing jam with Bono, Paul Simon, Kid Rock, Solomon Burke, Robbie Robertson and others.
2005 50 Cent became the first solo artist to have three singles in the US Top 5. ‘Candy Shop’ was at No.1 with ‘How We Do’ by The Game, (a member of his G-Unit group) at No.4 and ‘Disco Inferno’ at No.5.
2006 Orson were at No.1 on the UK singles chart with ‘No Tomorrow’, the California band’s only UK chart topper.
2006 Shakira was set to become the first pop star to release a single only in the form of a mobile download. The singer’s forthcoming release ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ would not be issued in the US as a CD or as a download via the internet but would be available to phone users connected to Verizon.
2007 US soul singer Luther Ingram died from a heart attack at the age of 69. Ingram scored the 1972 US No.2 hit ‘(If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don’t Want to Be Right’ and wrote the Staple Singers’ hit ‘Respect Yourself’.
2009 Eighties pop fan Justine Thompson was ordered to pay more than £1,040 for repeatedly playing The Cure’s ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ at full blast. Thompson aged 31, had also belted out ‘Geno’ by Dexy’s Midnight Runners and The Smiths ‘This Charming Man’ so loudly it shook flats around her home in Brighton, a court heard. City magistrates found her guilty of ignoring a noise abatement notice.
2015 Michael Brown died of heart failure aged 65. He was an American keyboardist-songwriter with the Left Banke. He wrote the song “Walk Away Renee”.
2015 Ed Sheeran sold the two millionth copy of his second album, X, (pronounced multiply), in the UK, nine months after it was released. He became only the fifth artist to achieve the feat this decade, following in the footsteps of Adele, Emeli Sande, Take That and Michael Buble.
2018 Drake was at No.1 on the US singles chart with ‘God’s Plan’. The lead single from his fifth studio album, Scorpion, topped the Hot 100 for 11 weeks and spent 26 weeks in the top ten. The song broke first-day streaming records on both Apple Music and Spotify and topped the charts in fourteen countries.