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Featured Events
2013Beyoncé invigorates the 2013 Super Bowl halftime show with a performance that reunites Destiny's Child.More
2003Phil Spector is charged with murder after police are called to his 33-room mansion in Alhambra, California, and discover the actress Lana Clarkson dead from a gunshot wound.More
1989"Wild Thing" by Tone Loc becomes the first rap single certified Platinum, with over a million sales.
1976David Bowie opens his US tour with a new persona: The Thin White Duke. He's dressed in a black-vested suit with slicked-back hair. Bowie later described the persona as "a nasty character indeed."
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In Music History
2015Former Death Row Records CEO Suge Knight is rushed to the hospital after pleading not guilty in his connection with a fatal hit-and-run just days before. His friend Terry Carter was killed in the incident and actor Cle Denyale Sloan was injured during an altercation over the N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton. Knight faces charges of murder and attempted murder, along with two counts of hit-and-run.
1990Sean Kingston is born in Miami.
1980Studio 54 throws one last bash with A-list regulars Diana Ross, Andy Warhol and Richard Gere before the owners, Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager go to jail for tax evasion.
1979The Blues Brothers' album Briefcase Full of Blues hits #1 in the US - not bad for two comedians (John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd) who formed the duo for Saturday Night Live.
197920 years after the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Del Shannon and The Drifters perform a tribute show in Clear Lake, Iowa, where Holly's last concert took place.
1978Harry Chapin, who has started an organization to fight hunger called World Hunger Year, meets with US President Jimmy Carter to discuss the project.
1978The TV-movie Dead Man's Curve, the first to deal with the tragic Jan & Dean story, premieres on ABC.
1977Elton John resumes live performing in Sweden a mere fifteen months after announcing his "retirement" from the stage.
1973Elton John's reptile rocker "Crocodile Rock" hits #1 for the first of three weeks.
1971Lynn Anderson's "(I Never Promised You A) Rose Garden" is certified Gold.
1969Beatles John Lennon, George Harrisonand Ringo Starr hire Allen Klein as the group's new manager, against the express wishes of Paul McCartney, who preferred his father-in-law Lee Eastman. The dissension would prove to be the deciding factor in the group's breakup a year later.
1968The Lemon Pipers' "Green Tambourine" hits #1.
1967The Beatles record "A Day In The Life."
1967Joe Meek, an experimental pop pioneer who wrote and produced the Tornados' "Telstar," fatally shoots his landlady before turning the gun on himself.
The Day The Music Died
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."
The musicians were heading to Fargo, North Dakota, on a small private plane leaving Clear Lake Iowa, where they had performed as part of the 24-city "Winter Dance Party" tour. They had been travelling by bus, but it got so cold that Holly chartered the plane, a single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza. Shortly after takeoff, the plane goes down; it is snowing and poor visibility likely leads to the crash.
Tommy Allsup and Waylon Jennings, also on the tour, are spared by sheer luck: Allsup lost a coin flip for a seat on the plane to Valens, and Jennings let Richardson have the other seat.
Losing these musical luminaries drastically alters the rock and roll landscape; the "rock era" had begun about four years earlier, and with Elvis Presley in the Army, there are few stars to propel it forward (the British Invasion would revive the genre). Holly, 22, the headliner on the tour, was a rising star with a #1 hit under his belt ("That'll Be The Day"). Valens, 17, was one of the hottest new artists at the time, with the song "Donna" on the charts.
Don McLean, who was a teenager at the time, would call it "The Day the Music Died" in his 1971 hit "American Pie."
Tommy Allsup and Waylon Jennings, also on the tour, are spared by sheer luck: Allsup lost a coin flip for a seat on the plane to Valens, and Jennings let Richardson have the other seat.
Losing these musical luminaries drastically alters the rock and roll landscape; the "rock era" had begun about four years earlier, and with Elvis Presley in the Army, there are few stars to propel it forward (the British Invasion would revive the genre). Holly, 22, the headliner on the tour, was a rising star with a #1 hit under his belt ("That'll Be The Day"). Valens, 17, was one of the hottest new artists at the time, with the song "Donna" on the charts.
Don McLean, who was a teenager at the time, would call it "The Day the Music Died" in his 1971 hit "American Pie."
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