Category: Today in Music History

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Today in Music History

July, 8

  • 2000 Halfway into the first song of the band’s encore for their Mannheim, Germany show, Iron Maiden guitarist Janick Gers falls loses his footing and plunges 10-feet off the front of the stage and into the photographers’ pit. Gers is rushed to the hospital where he receives six stitches to a gash in his forehead.
  • 1998 Two armed men break into the home of rapper Foxy Brown. Though she and her mother both are in the apartment, neither suffers any injuries.
  • 1998 The estate of Roy Orbison files a $12 million royalty suit against Sony Music Entertainment Inc. The suit alleges that Sony, in selling licenses from the artist’s Monument Records master recordings, consistently underpaid Orbison in domestic and international royalties.
  • 1998 Nancy Sinatra makes the announcement at a press conference in the capital that the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., have worked out an agreement to be the repository of the late Frank Sinatra’s music and movie archives.
  • 1997 Marty Stuart and Grand Ole Opry star Connie Smith are married in Pine Ridge, S.D., a tour stop for Stuart. The marriage is the second for Stuart, 38, and the fourth for Smith, 55.
  • 1988 Velvet Underground chanteuse Nico dies.
  • 1986 No. 1 Billboard Pop Hit: “Holding Back the Years,” Simply Red.
  • 1976 No. 1 Billboard Pop Hit: “Afternoon Delight,” Starland Vocal Band. The song’s title is taken from a menu at a Washington, D.C., restaurant.
  • 1970 “The Everly Brothers Show” is launched on ABC-TV as a summer series.
  • 1961 No. 1 Billboard Pop Hit: “Tossin’ and Turnin’,” Bobby Lewis.
  • 1956 No. 1 Billboard Pop Hit: “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around the Clock,” Bill Haley & His Comets. The song is the opening theme for the film “The Blackboard Jungle,” starring Glenn Ford and inducted in the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1982.
  • 1908 Vocalist/saxophonist Louis Jordan is born in Brinkley, Ark. He dies of a heart attack on Feb. 4, 1975. His song “I’m Gonna Leave You at the Outskirts of Town” was No. 3 during the debut week of Billboard’s first R&B chart, the Harlem Hit Parade, on Oct. 24, 1942. He followed with 18 No. 1 R&B hits, including four that topped the chart for more than 10 weeks.