The Week That Was
1951, the Ike
Turner-produced "Rocket 88" featuring his rocking band and Jackie
Brenston's vocal is cut and comes to be regarded by many as the first
real rock 'n' roll record...
1953, Bill Haley ditches his country
band's old name, The Saddlemen, adds a drummer, and a year later puts
out "Rock Around The Clock"...
1957, The Isley Brothers release their
first single, "The Angels Cried"...the 45 stiffs and it's not until
'62 that the brothers hit paydirt with "Twist and Shout"...
June 7 is
a big day in Chuck Berry's career...in 1957 two of his records are
released in England by competing labels...London issues "Roll Over
Beethoven" while "School Day" is put out by Columbia...1963, the
Rolling Stones release their first single, a cover of Berry's "Come
On"...1979 he plays a White House command performance and is also
charged with income tax evasion for which he gets five months in the
lockup...and finally, in 1993, Chuck's on hand for the groundbreaking
ceremony at Cleveland's Rock & Roll Hall of Fame...
April 6, 1968, following a flunked audition for Decca Records in 1963,
The Beatles do their thing for producer George Martin at EMI...when Senator Robert
Kennedy is gunned down in L.A... the Stones are in
the midst of cutting "Sympathy for the Devil" to which they then add
the lyric, "who killed the Kennedys?"...that same week, Johnny
Mathis' "Greatest Hits" album rises to #1 and stays on the charts for
the next 490 weeks, a record that remains intact until eclipsed by
Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" in the 1980s...
1969, Brian Jones leaves the Rolling Stones on June 8, a day later the band
announces Mick Taylor will replace the increasingly erratic Jones...
1976, Keith
Richard's 10-week old son, Tara, dies of pneumonia...
1977, Alice Cooper's boa constrictor dies following a bite
administered by a rat intended as a snack for the snake...Cooper
holds public auditions to find a replacement...a boa named Angel
becomes part of Cooper's road show...also in 1977, 64-year-old Muddy Waters marries Marva Jean Brooks on her
25th birthday...Eric Clapton witnesses the ceremony...
1989,
Pretender's frontwoman and vegetarian Chrissie Hynde tells a
Greenpeace conference she once firebombed a McDonald's...the next day
a Brit Mickey D's is firebombed and the food chain threatens legal
action unless Hynde signs an agreement promising not to repeat her
statement...Chrissie complies...
1998,
opening arguments are heard in a suit by members of the '60s bad-girl
group The Ronettes against their former producer Phil Spector for
failing to pay royalties since 1963...later they win a judgment for
$2.97 million plus interest...also in 1998, Amazon.com begins selling CDs
with an initial selection of 120,000 titles in 14 genres...the
company continues to hemorrhage money...
1990, a federal judge rules that 2
Live Crew's "Nasty as They Wanna Be" is obscene leading to the
prosecution of a record store owner for selling the album...
2000, Cooper comes under fire
when, in the wake of the Columbine High shootings, his song "Wicked
Young Man" is released with lyrics that include, "a pocket full of
bullets and a blueprint of the school"...he hastens to explain that
he wrote the song to "let people know that if they see or know
someone like this guy in the song, that they report him immediately"...
and that was the week that
was...
Birthdays
June 5: Badfinger's Tom Evans and Laurie Anderson (1947), Nicko
McBrain of Iron Maiden (1952), Peter Erskine (1954)
June 6: Levi Stubbs of The Four Tops (1936), Gary "U.S." Bonds
(1939), Slayer's Tom Araya (1961)
June 7: Tom Jones (1940), Prince born Prince Roger Nelson (1958),
Red Hot Chili Peppers' Dave Navarro (1967)
June 8: Three Dog Night's Chuck Negron (1942), Boz Scaggs (1944),
Uriah Heep's Mick Box (1947), Bonnie Tyler aka Gaynor Hoskins (1953),
Simply Red's Mick Hucknall (1960), Duran Duran's Nick Rhodes (1962)
June 9: Les Paul aka Lester Polfus (1915), Johnny Ace (1929), Jackie
Wilson and Wild Jimmy Spruill (1934), Deep Purple's Jon Lord (1941),
Dean Felber of Hootie & the Blowfish (1967)
June 10: Chester Burnett aka Howlin' Wolf (1910), The Shirelle's
Shirley Alston (1941), The Move's Rick Price (1944)
June 11: Chick Corea (1941), The Pretty Things' Skip Allen (1948),
Frank Beard of ZZ Top (1949), Donnie Van Zant of .38 Special (1952)
Departures
June 5: Mel "The Velvet Fog" Torme and saxophonist/arranger Ernie
Wilkins (1999), Conway Twitty (1993), Tejano accordianist Narciso
Martinez (1992), "Sleepy" John Estes (1977)
June 6: Stan Getz (1991)
June 8: Blues shouter Jimmy "Mr. Five-By-Five" Rushing (1972)
June 9: Walter Pardon (1996), jazz and blues singer Clarence "Big"
Miller (1992)
June 10: Steve Sanders of The Oak Ridge Boys (1998), The Shirelles'
Addie Harris (1982)
