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Featured Events
2008The first Fender Stratocaster set alight on stage by Jimi Hendrix is auctioned. The guitar sells for $575,000 to collector Daniel Boucher - less than the $1 million predicted. It is one of only two guitars definitively burned by Hendrix - the other was at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967.
1981Soft Cell hits #1 in the UK with an electronic cover of "Tainted Love," a song originally released by the American soul singer Gloria Jones in 1964. The song also charts in America, reaching #8 in July 1982. It's the only hit for the duo in the States, but they have many more in their native UK.
1976Garry Rossington of Lynyrd Skynyrd falls asleep at the wheel of his new Ford Torino and hits a tree and a house. The incident inspires their song "That Smell."
1964A British group scores a #1 hit in America with a folk song about a New Orleans brothel when The Animals' "The House Of The Rising Sun" tops the chart.
1946Farrokh Bulsara is born in Zanzibar (a set of islands off the coast of Africa). He would later take the name Freddie Mercury (after the Roman messenger to the gods) and become the frontman for Queen.
5
In Music History
2014Miranda Lambert and Blake Shelton open a bed and breakfast called The Ladysmith in Tishomingo, Oklahoma. It can be seen in Blake's video for "Sangria."
2014Pop singer Simone Battle (of G.R.L.) dies of an apparent suicide in Los Angeles, California, at age 25.
2012Country/folk musician Joe South dies of heart failure in Buford, Georgia, at age 72.
2007Influential blogger Perez Hilton declares himself "obsessed" with the unsigned artist Eric Hutchinson, earning the singer 3,000 new MySpace friends and serious industry buzz, leading to a deal with Warner Bros. Records.
1998R&B singer Sonny Knight dies at age 64 in Maui, Hawaii, two years after suffering a stroke. Known for the 1956 hit "Confidential."
1991Guitarist C.C. DeVille is kicked out of Poison after he sabotages their performance at the MTV Video Music Awards by playing "Talk Dirty To Me" instead of "Unskinny Bop" as planned. DeVille rejoins the band five years later.More
1990B.B. King receives a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
1987American Bandstand airs on network TV for the last time. ABC picked up the show in 1957, and throughout its run on the network, Dick Clark was the host. The show continued another year in syndication and aired one season on the USA network in 1989.
1978Rock-and-roll singer Joe Negroni (of Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers) dies of a cerebral hemorrhage in New York City, at age 37.
1972Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway's duet "Where Is The Love?" is certified Gold.
1971While Wishbone Ash are on stage at an outdoor concert in Austin, Texas, hot dog vender Francisco Carrasco is shot dead. The tragedy inspires the song "Rock 'N' Roll Widow."
1969Rock guitarist Dweezil Zappa is born Ian Donald Calvin Euclid Zappa in Los Angeles, California, to singer/songwriter Frank Zappa and his wife, Gail.
1969Country blues singer Josh White dies during a surgery to replace heart valves in Manhasset, New York, at age 55. Known for the 1944 hit "One Meat Ball."
1968Brad Wilk (drummer for Rage Against The Machine) is born in Portland, Oregon.
1968Tiny Tim sues Bouget Records, his first label, for releasing some of his early recordings without permission.
The First Major Reggae Movie Comes To America
1973
The Jamaican cult classic film The Harder They Come is released in the US.
The Perry Henzell-directed film casts real-life reggae performer Jimmy Cliff as an aspiring reggae singer who turns to a life of crime after getting mixed up with a corrupt record producer. Black Jamaicans praise the movie (the first ever produced on the island) for bringing their authentic experience to the big screen, citing the use of reggae music and Jamaican patois against the backdrop of real locations with real Jamaican performers.
But those very attributes make the film difficult to market in the US.
"Nobody would take it," Henzell explains in a 1995 interview with Variety. "They'd never heard of reggae music, and nobody was interested in black people in Jamaica."
The actors' thick, Creole-influenced dialect is difficult for many English speakers to understand, making the use of subtitles necessary. It doesn't find an appreciative audience until it runs on the midnight circuit a few months later, where the subtitles take a backseat to the real star of the movie: the soundtrack.
Indeed, Henzell wanted The Harder They Cometo be the film that brought reggae off the island and into the rest of the world. The soundtrack features four songs from Cliff, including the title track, and tunes from reggae artists like Desmond Dekker, Toots and the Maytals, and The Slickers. It would also pave the way for Bob Marley, whose breakthrough album, Catch A Fire, would nearly coincide with the movie's US debut.
But those very attributes make the film difficult to market in the US.
"Nobody would take it," Henzell explains in a 1995 interview with Variety. "They'd never heard of reggae music, and nobody was interested in black people in Jamaica."
The actors' thick, Creole-influenced dialect is difficult for many English speakers to understand, making the use of subtitles necessary. It doesn't find an appreciative audience until it runs on the midnight circuit a few months later, where the subtitles take a backseat to the real star of the movie: the soundtrack.
Indeed, Henzell wanted The Harder They Cometo be the film that brought reggae off the island and into the rest of the world. The soundtrack features four songs from Cliff, including the title track, and tunes from reggae artists like Desmond Dekker, Toots and the Maytals, and The Slickers. It would also pave the way for Bob Marley, whose breakthrough album, Catch A Fire, would nearly coincide with the movie's US debut.
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