Feature Year 1970 – Part III
Tag: Max 20th Century
MUSIC NEWS 1975
January 2 – New York City U.S. District Court Judge Richard Owen rules that former Beatle John Lennon and his lawyers can have access to Department of Immigration files pertaining to his deportation case.
January 5 – The Wiz, a new musical version of the classic Wizard of Oz story, opens at Broadway’s Majestic Theater in New York City.
January 6 – Approximately 1000 Led Zeppelin fans, waiting for tickets to go on sale for Led Zeppelin’s February 4 concert, cause an estimated $30,000 in damage to the lobby of the Boston Garden. The fans reportedly broke chairs and doors and caused other damage to the building. Boston Mayor Kevin White cancels the upcoming show.
January 8 – Three Led Zeppelin concerts at Madison Square Garden sell out in a record four hours.
January 12 – “The Warner Brothers Music Show” begins a nine city, 18 show tour of Europe. The tour included Warner Brothers acts Little Feat, Tower of Power, the Doobie Brothers, Bonaroo, Montrose, and Graham Central Station.
January 24 – Jazz pianist Keith Jarrett plays the solo improvisation ‘The Köln Concert’ at the Cologne Opera, which, recorded live, becomes the best-selling piano recording in history.
February 13 – The film Slade In Flame, starring the members of Slade, premieres at the Metropole Theatre in London.
February 21 – John Lennon releases his Rock ‘n’ Roll LP, featuring his favorite rock songs from the 1950s. To promote the album he conducts a telephone interview with 20 rock radio stations simultaneously.
March 1 – Jeff Beck releases the album Blow by Blow. It is the first album to be released using just his name.
March 2 – Los Angeles Police make a routine traffic stop that turns out to be Paul McCartney and his wife Linda. Linda is arrested for having 170 to 225 grams (six to eight ounces) of marijuana in her pocketbook.
March 21 – Alice Cooper, now a solo artist, begins the Welcome to My Nightmare tour in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The elaborate show is among the largest stage spectacles of the decade.
March 22 – In the Eurovision Song Contest in Stockholm, Sweden, the Dutch group Teach-In wins with the song “Ding-A-Dong”.
March 23 – Promoter Bill Graham stages the S.N.A.C.K. (Students Need Athletics, Culture and Kicks) charity concert at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco, California, to benefit the city’s educational system. Almost 60,000 people come to see The Grateful Dead, The Doobie Brothers, Santana, Jefferson Starship, Tower of Power, Eddie Palmieri, Joan Baez, Graham Central Station and Neil Young joined by members of The Band along with a surprise appearance by Bob Dylan. It’s the largest benefit concert in history to date.
March 26 – The film version of The Who’s Tommy premieres in London.
April 3 – Steve Miller is arrested and charged with setting fire to the clothes and personal effects of a friend, Benita DiOrio, and resisting arrest. DiOrio drops the charges the following day.
April 7 – Ritchie Blackmore plays a final show with Deep Purple in Paris before quitting to form his own group, Rainbow.
April 17 – Cambodian singer-songwriter Sinn Sisamouth and his pregnant wife are among millions forced out of Phnom Penh by the Khmer Rouge.
April 18 – Alice Cooper’s first television special, Welcome to My Nightmare: The Making of a Record Album airs.
April 24 – Pete Ham, founder of the group Badfinger, is found hanged in his London garage. His death is ruled a suicide.
April 28 – Tom Snyder interviews John Lennon on the Tomorrow Show.
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The Easybeats were an Australian rock band that formed in Sydney, Australia, in late 1964, and disbanded at the end of 1969. They were the first rock and roll act from Australia to score an international pop hit with the 1966 single “Friday on My Mind”.
All five founder members were from families that had migrated to Australia from Europe: lead singer Stevie Wright and drummer Gordon “Snowy” Fleet were from England; rhythm guitarist George Young was from Scotland; lead guitarist Harry Vanda and bassist Dick Diamonde were from the Netherlands.
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January 5 – Renato Carosone and his band start their American tour in Cuba.
January 6 – Elvis Presley makes his final appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.
January 16 – The Cavern Club opens in Liverpool, England, as a jazz club.
February 8 – Bo Diddley records his songs “Hey Bo Diddley” and “Mona” (aka “I Need You Baby”).
March – Chicago’s Cardinal Stritch bans all rock and roll and rhythm and blues music from Catholic-run schools, saying that “its rhythms encourage young people to behave in a hedonistic manner.”
March 1 – The Everly Brothers record in Nashville their first single “Bye Bye Love” for Cadence Records.
March 3 – The second annual Eurovision Song Contest is staged in Frankfurt am Main, West Germany. The contest is won by Dutch singer Corry Brokken with the song Net als toen.
March 19 – Elvis Presley purchases a mansion in Memphis, Tennessee, and calls it Graceland.
March 26 – Ricky Nelson records his first three songs.
March 27 – “Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)” from 1956’s Alfred Hitchcock suspense film The Man Who Knew Too Much wins the Academy Award for Best Song. Sung by Doris Day in the film, it proves to be one of her biggest hit records as well.
May 14 – In Paris, Heitor Villa-Lobos records his Bachiana Brasileira No. 4, with the Orchestre Nationale de la Radiodiffusion Française, for EMI. Through May 21 the recording sessions continue with Bachiana Brasileira No. 7 and Bachiana Brasileira No. 3 with Manoel Braune, piano.
May 26 – Paul Robeson, blacklisted at this time from travelling outside the United States, performs a concert from New York City via the new transatlantic telephone line to an audience in St Pancras Town Hall in London; on October 5 he uses the same means to address the Miners’ Eisteddfod at the Grand Pavilion, Porthcawl in Wales.
June 20 – Toru Takemitsu’s Requiem for Strings is first performed, by the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra.
July 6 – John Lennon and Paul McCartney of The Beatles first meet at a garden fete at St. Peter’s Church, Woolton, Liverpool, England, at which Lennon’s skiffle group, The Quarrymen, is playing (and in the graveyard of which an Eleanor Rigby is buried).
August 5 – American Bandstand begins its 30-year syndicated run on US network television.
September 19 – Dalida is the first artist to be awarded a gold record in France for 300,000 sales of “Bambino”. This year, she is also the first female recording artist to have her own fan club.
September 20 – Jean Sibelius dies aged 91 at Ainola, his home in Finland, having completed no significant compositions for thirty years; at the time of his death, a performance of his Symphony No. 5 is being given in Helsinki under the baton of Sir Malcolm Sargent.
September 26 – Broadway première of the musical West Side Story at the Winter Garden Theatre (following tryouts in Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia beginning in August) with music by Leonard Bernstein (who a week later is appointed music director of the New York Philharmonic orchestra) and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, his Broadway debut. This year also Bernstein conducts the inaugural concert of the Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv.
November 25–27 – The first two Hollywood motion pictures starring Pat Boone, Bernadine and April Love, are released.
Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel name themselves Tom and Jerry and begin their recording career, signing with Sid Prosen of Big Records. Their first single, “Hey, Schoolgirl”, backed with “Dancin’ Wild”, hits #49 on the Billboard pop charts. Garfunkel is Tom Graph (so called because he like to write the pop charts out on graph paper) and Simon is Jerry Landis, a pseudonym he used during his early 1960s solo recordings. They tour for eighteen months before retiring to become college students and then reforming in 1963 as Simon & Garfunkel.
The Casals Festival is founded in Puerto Rico.
When Nat King Cole’s television show is unable to get a sponsor, Frankie Laine becomes the first artist to cross TV’s color line, becoming the first white artist to appear as a guest, foregoing his usual salary of $10,000. Other top performers follow suit, including Mel Tormé and Tony Bennett, but, despite an increase in ratings, the show still fails to pick up a national sponsor.
Gorni Kramer makes his first appearance on Italian television, in Il Musichiere.
Maria Callas is introduced to Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis.
“Suíte do Pescador” is composed by Dorival Caymmi.
Actress Debbie Reynolds earns a gold record for her song Tammy, which is the best-selling single by a female vocalist in 1957 in the United States. This song from the motion picture Tammy and the Bachelor is also nominated for an Academy Award.
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January 9 – Apple Inc. introduces the iTunes media player.
January 12–21 – Rock in Rio 3 is held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Headlining acts consist of Sting, R.E.M., ‘N Sync, Iron Maiden, Neil Young, Red Hot Chili Peppers and a new line-up of Guns N’ Roses.
January 17 – Bass player Jason Newsted leaves Metallica after 14 years with the band.
January 26 – A crowd crush occurs during a set by Limp Bizkit at the Sydney Big Day Out music festival. Jessica Michalik is killed and the band subsequently leaves the country after threats to their safety.
February 1
CFXJ (Flow 93.5), Canada’s first urban music station, goes to air for the first time as a testing signal (its official debut is on March 1.) This is considered a breakthrough for Canadian hip hop and R&B musicians.
Jennifer Lopez becomes first female artist to have both a number one album (J.Lo) and a number one movie (The Wedding Planner) in the same week.
February 6 – Don Felder is fired from the Eagles. Felder sues the band for wrongful termination, and is countersued by Don Henley and Glenn Frey for breach of contract. The suits are settled out of court.
February 13 – Peter Frampton receives the Orville H. Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award.
February 17 – Manic Street Preachers become the first western rock band to play in Cuba. (Fidel Castro is in attendance.) They did not tour however, meaning that the unsigned British rock band Sandstone Veterans are the only band from the western world to tour Cuba.
February 18 – James Taylor weds for the third time, marrying Caroline “Kim” Smedvig, director of public relations and marketing for the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
February 28 – Courtney Love sues to get out of her contract with Vivendi Universal, on the grounds that music industry contracts are unfairly long compared to those in other industries.
March 1 – Collin Raye is awarded the Artist Humanitarian Award from Country Radio Broadcasters. The award was given in recognition of Raye’s work on behalf of a number of different charitable organizations including Childhelp USA, USA Weekend’s Make A Difference Day and the Native American organization Hecel Oyakapi.
March 8 – Melanie Chisholm announces she does not intend to do any more work with the Spice Girls. Although the group denies it is splitting, it would not be active again until 2007.
March 9
Janet Jackson’s single “All for You” breaks several airplay records, becoming the first song to be added to every station in three mainstream radio formats within its first week of release. It was also the highest debut for a single not commercially available in both the United States and France, and the highest debut and largest opening airplay figure on the Radio Songs chart.
Eric Singer replaces Peter Criss as the drummer for Kiss as the band continues its farewell tour in Yokohama, Japan. Singer dons the “Catman” make-up, ending the band’s tradition of creating new make-up and personas for replacement members.
March 14 – The Court of Appeals in Rome finds Michael Jackson “not guilty” of plagiarism, reversing a decision made in 1999 by a lower court. Italian songwriter Albano Carrisi had claimed that Jackson’s “Will You Be There” was a copy of his song “I Cigni Di Balaka.”
March 16 – Sean “Puffy” Combs is acquitted on all charges stemming from a December 1999 nightclub shooting in Manhattan. However, an artist on his Bad Boy Records label, Shyne, is convicted of two counts of assault as well as reckless endangerment and gun possession.
March 24 – John Connolly of Sevendust marries Lori Kirkley.
March 26 – Gorillaz release their first studio album Gorillaz. The album reached number three in the UK, and was an unexpected hit in the US, hitting number 14 and selling over seven million copies worldwide by 2007. It earned the group an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records as the Most Successful Virtual Band.
March 28
Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 replaces Max Bruch’s violin concerto at #1 in the Classic FM Hall of Fame.
Two big selling albums : Hikaru Utada’s Distance and Ayumi Hamasaki’s A Best are released on exactly the same date. Their debut week sales are 3,002,720 and 2,874,870, respectively, setting the world’s #1 and #2 one-week album sales records.[6]
March 31 – Couple Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown were thrown out and banned for life from Hollywood’s Bel Air Hotel and arrested and jailed after destroying their room. Property that was allegedly damaged included a TV and two doors. According to hotel workers, the walls and carpets were also stained by alcohol. The hotel closed down the room for five days for repairs.
April–May
April 3 – Mariah Carey signs a blockbuster contract with Virgin Records, worth $80 million for four albums.
April 4 – Original Zombies lead singer Colin Blunstone and keyboardist Rod Argent reunite for a two-part performance at London’s Jazz Cafe, the first time the two had performed together in over 30 years.
April 14 – Janet Jackson’s “All for You” reaches number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and remains atop the chart for seven non-consecutive weeks. It becomes the longest reigning hit of the year.
April 15 – The Dutch DJ Tiësto releases his first solo album, In My Memory, on Black Hole Recordings.
April 21 – The first Top Chinese Music Awards ceremony is held.
April 24 – Janet Jackson releases her seventh studio album, All for You. It becomes her fifth consecutive album to open at number one, with sales exceeding 600,000 copies. It receives three Grammy Award nominations, winning for Best Dance Recording.
May 1
Huey Lewis and the News makes a comeback with their album Plan B, their first album of new material in a decade.
The 4th EJCF is held in Basel. The next time was in 2004.
May 12 – Joey Fatone of ‘N Sync injures his leg in a trap door during rehearsals for the new tour.
May 15 – Charley Pride’s A Tribute to Jim Reeves is the first compact disc to have copy protection, ’80s band The Go Go’s release their first album in 17 years: God Bless The Go Go’s
May 22 – Mötley Crüe publishes their collective autobiography The Dirt.
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January 5 – Renato Carosone and his band start their American tour in Cuba.
January 6 – Elvis Presley makes his final appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.
January 16 – The Cavern Club opens in Liverpool, England, as a jazz club.
February 8 – Bo Diddley records his songs “Hey Bo Diddley” and “Mona” (aka “I Need You Baby”).
March – Chicago’s Cardinal Stritch bans all rock and roll and rhythm and blues music from Catholic-run schools, saying that “its rhythms encourage young people to behave in a hedonistic manner.”
March 1 – The Everly Brothers record in Nashville their first single “Bye Bye Love” for Cadence Records.
March 3 – The second annual Eurovision Song Contest is staged in Frankfurt am Main, West Germany. The contest is won by Dutch singer Corry Brokken with the song Net als toen.
March 19 – Elvis Presley purchases a mansion in Memphis, Tennessee, and calls it Graceland.
March 26 – Ricky Nelson records his first three songs.
March 27 – “Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)” from 1956’s Alfred Hitchcock suspense film The Man Who Knew Too Much wins the Academy Award for Best Song. Sung by Doris Day in the film, it proves to be one of her biggest hit records as well.
May 14 – In Paris, Heitor Villa-Lobos records his Bachiana Brasileira No. 4, with the Orchestre Nationale de la Radiodiffusion Française, for EMI. Through May 21 the recording sessions continue with Bachiana Brasileira No. 7 and Bachiana Brasileira No. 3 with Manoel Braune, piano.
May 26 – Paul Robeson, blacklisted at this time from travelling outside the United States, performs a concert from New York City via the new transatlantic telephone line to an audience in St Pancras Town Hall in London; on October 5 he uses the same means to address the Miners’ Eisteddfod at the Grand Pavilion, Porthcawl in Wales.
June 20 – Toru Takemitsu’s Requiem for Strings is first performed, by the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra.
July 6 – John Lennon and Paul McCartney of The Beatles first meet at a garden fete at St. Peter’s Church, Woolton, Liverpool, England, at which Lennon’s skiffle group, The Quarrymen, is playing (and in the graveyard of which an Eleanor Rigby is buried).
August 5 – American Bandstand begins its 30-year syndicated run on US network television.
September 19 – Dalida is the first artist to be awarded a gold record in France for 300,000 sales of “Bambino”. This year, she is also the first female recording artist to have her own fan club.
September 20 – Jean Sibelius dies aged 91 at Ainola, his home in Finland, having completed no significant compositions for thirty years; at the time of his death, a performance of his Symphony No. 5 is being given in Helsinki under the baton of Sir Malcolm Sargent.
September 26 – Broadway première of the musical West Side Story at the Winter Garden Theatre (following tryouts in Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia beginning in August) with music by Leonard Bernstein (who a week later is appointed music director of the New York Philharmonic orchestra) and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, his Broadway debut. This year also Bernstein conducts the inaugural concert of the Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv.
November 25–27 – The first two Hollywood motion pictures starring Pat Boone, Bernadine and April Love, are released.
Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel name themselves Tom and Jerry and begin their recording career, signing with Sid Prosen of Big Records. Their first single, “Hey, Schoolgirl”, backed with “Dancin’ Wild”, hits #49 on the Billboard pop charts. Garfunkel is Tom Graph (so called because he like to write the pop charts out on graph paper) and Simon is Jerry Landis, a pseudonym he used during his early 1960s solo recordings. They tour for eighteen months before retiring to become college students and then reforming in 1963 as Simon & Garfunkel.
The Casals Festival is founded in Puerto Rico.
When Nat King Cole’s television show is unable to get a sponsor, Frankie Laine becomes the first artist to cross TV’s color line, becoming the first white artist to appear as a guest, foregoing his usual salary of $10,000. Other top performers follow suit, including Mel Tormé and Tony Bennett, but, despite an increase in ratings, the show still fails to pick up a national sponsor.
Gorni Kramer makes his first appearance on Italian television, in Il Musichiere.
Maria Callas is introduced to Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis.
“Suíte do Pescador” is composed by Dorival Caymmi.
Actress Debbie Reynolds earns a gold record for her song Tammy, which is the best-selling single by a female vocalist in 1957 in the United States. This song from the motion picture Tammy and the Bachelor is also nominated for an Academy Award.
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January 3 – Bach: The Goldberg Variations, Glenn Gould’s debut solo piano recording, is released by Columbia Records in the United States; it sells 40,000 copies by 1960.
January 26
The North American premiere of Carlos Chávez’s Third Symphony is given by the New York Philharmonic conducted by the composer.
Buddy Holly’s first recording sessions for Decca Records take place in Nashville, Tennessee.
Roy Orbison signs with Sun Records.
January 27 – Elvis Presley’s single “Heartbreak Hotel” / “I Was the One” is released. It goes on to be Elvis’s first #1 hit.
January 28 – Elvis Presley makes his national television debut on The Dorsey Brothers Stage Show.
February 3 – The Symphony of the Air, conducted by Leonard Bernstein, gives the world première of Robert Moevs’s Fourteen Variations for Orchestra (composed in 1952) in New York.
February 11 – Henry Barraud’s Concertino for Piano and Winds receives its world-première performance by Eugene List and members of the New York Chamber Ensemble in New York City.
March – The Coasters’ recording career begins, with “Turtle Dovin'”.
March 10 – Carl Perkins’ single “Blue Suede Shoes” enters the R&B charts, the first time a country music artist has made it on the R&B charts.
March 21 – World première of Heitor Villa-Lobos’s Eleventh Symphony, by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Charles Münch, at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
March 22 – Carl Perkins is injured in a car accident near Wilmington, Delaware, on his way to New York City to make an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. He spends several months in hospital.
March 24 – The first regularly scheduled nationally broadcast rock & roll show, Rock ‘n Roll Dance Party, with Alan Freed as host, premières on the CBS Radio Network.
March 26 – Colonel Tom Parker formally becomes Elvis Presley’s manager.
March 31 – Elvis Presley films a screen test for Paramount Pictures.
April 3 – Elvis Presley makes his first appearance on The Milton Berle Show.
April 6 – Paramount Pictures signs Elvis Presley to a three-picture deal.
April 10 – A group of racial segregationists (followers of Asa Earl Carter) rush the stage at a Nat King Cole concert in Birmingham, Alabama, but are quickly captured.
April 22 – The 2i’s Coffee Bar opens in Old Compton Street, Soho, London; its basement rapidly becomes a pioneering venue for rock & roll music in Britain, Tommy Steele being resident from July.
May – Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch, a CBS Radio Sunday evening program on the air since 1940 (except for a hiatus from 1942–45), ends its run.
May 2 – For the first time in Billboard magazine history, five singles appear in both the pop and R&B Top Ten charts. They are Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel” (#1 pop, #6 R&B), Carl Perkins’ “Blue Suede Shoes” (#4 pop, #3 R&B), Little Richard’s “Long Tall Sally” (#9 pop, #1 R&B), the Platters’ “(You’ve Got) The Magic Touch” (#10 pop, #7 R&B) and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers’ “Why Do Fools Fall in Love” (#7 pop, #4 R&B). Presley’s and Perkins’ singles also appeared on the country and western Top Ten chart at #1 and #2 respectively.
May 6
Elvis Presley appears on the Milton Berle show.
In Paris, Heitor Villa-Lobos records his Bachiana Brasileira No. 9 with the strings of the Orchestre National de la Radiodiffusion Française, for EMI.
May 6–28 – In Paris, Heitor Villa-Lobos supervises the recording of his Bachianas Brasileiras No. 6 by Fernand Dufrene (flute) and René Plessier (bassoon) and his Bachianas Brasileiras No. 2 with the Orchestre National de la Radiodiffusion Française, the four suites of his Descobrimento do Brasil, his Chôros No. 10 and his Invocação em defesa da patria, with Maria Kareska (soprano), the Chorale des Jeunesses musicales de France, and the Orchestre National de la Radiodiffusion Française for EMI.
May 8
Ernst Toch’s Third Symphony is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music.
Benjamin Britten’s opera Gloriana is given its US premiere in Cincinnati, in concert form conducted by Josef Krips.
May 24 – First-ever Eurovision Song Contest from the Kursaal Theatre, Lugano, Switzerland. Seven countries participate, each with two songs. Switzerland is declared the winner, with Lys Assia singing “Refrain”.
June – The winners of the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition, held in Brussels and devoted this year to the piano, are:
First Prize: Vladimir Ashkenazy
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January 3 – Bach: The Goldberg Variations, Glenn Gould’s debut solo piano recording, is released by Columbia Records in the United States; it sells 40,000 copies by 1960.
January 26
The North American premiere of Carlos Chávez’s Third Symphony is given by the New York Philharmonic conducted by the composer.
Buddy Holly’s first recording sessions for Decca Records take place in Nashville, Tennessee.
Roy Orbison signs with Sun Records.
January 27 – Elvis Presley’s single “Heartbreak Hotel” / “I Was the One” is released. It goes on to be Elvis’s first #1 hit.
January 28 – Elvis Presley makes his national television debut on The Dorsey Brothers Stage Show.
February 3 – The Symphony of the Air, conducted by Leonard Bernstein, gives the world première of Robert Moevs’s Fourteen Variations for Orchestra (composed in 1952) in New York.
February 11 – Henry Barraud’s Concertino for Piano and Winds receives its world-première performance by Eugene List and members of the New York Chamber Ensemble in New York City.
March – The Coasters’ recording career begins, with “Turtle Dovin'”.
March 10 – Carl Perkins’ single “Blue Suede Shoes” enters the R&B charts, the first time a country music artist has made it on the R&B charts.
March 21 – World première of Heitor Villa-Lobos’s Eleventh Symphony, by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Charles Münch, at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
March 22 – Carl Perkins is injured in a car accident near Wilmington, Delaware, on his way to New York City to make an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. He spends several months in hospital.
March 24 – The first regularly scheduled nationally broadcast rock & roll show, Rock ‘n Roll Dance Party, with Alan Freed as host, premières on the CBS Radio Network.
March 26 – Colonel Tom Parker formally becomes Elvis Presley’s manager.
March 31 – Elvis Presley films a screen test for Paramount Pictures.
April 3 – Elvis Presley makes his first appearance on The Milton Berle Show.
April 6 – Paramount Pictures signs Elvis Presley to a three-picture deal.
April 10 – A group of racial segregationists (followers of Asa Earl Carter) rush the stage at a Nat King Cole concert in Birmingham, Alabama, but are quickly captured.
April 22 – The 2i’s Coffee Bar opens in Old Compton Street, Soho, London; its basement rapidly becomes a pioneering venue for rock & roll music in Britain, Tommy Steele being resident from July.
May – Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch, a CBS Radio Sunday evening program on the air since 1940 (except for a hiatus from 1942–45), ends its run.
May 2 – For the first time in Billboard magazine history, five singles appear in both the pop and R&B Top Ten charts. They are Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel” (#1 pop, #6 R&B), Carl Perkins’ “Blue Suede Shoes” (#4 pop, #3 R&B), Little Richard’s “Long Tall Sally” (#9 pop, #1 R&B), the Platters’ “(You’ve Got) The Magic Touch” (#10 pop, #7 R&B) and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers’ “Why Do Fools Fall in Love” (#7 pop, #4 R&B). Presley’s and Perkins’ singles also appeared on the country and western Top Ten chart at #1 and #2 respectively.
May 6
Elvis Presley appears on the Milton Berle show.
In Paris, Heitor Villa-Lobos records his Bachiana Brasileira No. 9 with the strings of the Orchestre National de la Radiodiffusion Française, for EMI.
May 6–28 – In Paris, Heitor Villa-Lobos supervises the recording of his Bachianas Brasileiras No. 6 by Fernand Dufrene (flute) and René Plessier (bassoon) and his Bachianas Brasileiras No. 2 with the Orchestre National de la Radiodiffusion Française, the four suites of his Descobrimento do Brasil, his Chôros No. 10 and his Invocação em defesa da patria, with Maria Kareska (soprano), the Chorale des Jeunesses musicales de France, and the Orchestre National de la Radiodiffusion Française for EMI.
May 8
Ernst Toch’s Third Symphony is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music.
Benjamin Britten’s opera Gloriana is given its US premiere in Cincinnati, in concert form conducted by Josef Krips.
May 24 – First-ever Eurovision Song Contest from the Kursaal Theatre, Lugano, Switzerland. Seven countries participate, each with two songs. Switzerland is declared the winner, with Lys Assia singing “Refrain”.
June – The winners of the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition, held in Brussels and devoted this year to the piano, are:
First Prize: Vladimir Ashkenazy
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January 3 – Bach: The Goldberg Variations, Glenn Gould’s debut solo piano recording, is released by Columbia Records in the United States; it sells 40,000 copies by 1960.
January 26
The North American premiere of Carlos Chávez’s Third Symphony is given by the New York Philharmonic conducted by the composer.
Buddy Holly’s first recording sessions for Decca Records take place in Nashville, Tennessee.
Roy Orbison signs with Sun Records.
January 27 – Elvis Presley’s single “Heartbreak Hotel” / “I Was the One” is released. It goes on to be Elvis’s first #1 hit.
January 28 – Elvis Presley makes his national television debut on The Dorsey Brothers Stage Show.
February 3 – The Symphony of the Air, conducted by Leonard Bernstein, gives the world première of Robert Moevs’s Fourteen Variations for Orchestra (composed in 1952) in New York.
February 11 – Henry Barraud’s Concertino for Piano and Winds receives its world-première performance by Eugene List and members of the New York Chamber Ensemble in New York City.
March – The Coasters’ recording career begins, with “Turtle Dovin'”.
March 10 – Carl Perkins’ single “Blue Suede Shoes” enters the R&B charts, the first time a country music artist has made it on the R&B charts.
March 21 – World première of Heitor Villa-Lobos’s Eleventh Symphony, by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Charles Münch, at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
March 22 – Carl Perkins is injured in a car accident near Wilmington, Delaware, on his way to New York City to make an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. He spends several months in hospital.
March 24 – The first regularly scheduled nationally broadcast rock & roll show, Rock ‘n Roll Dance Party, with Alan Freed as host, premières on the CBS Radio Network.
March 26 – Colonel Tom Parker formally becomes Elvis Presley’s manager.
March 31 – Elvis Presley films a screen test for Paramount Pictures.
April 3 – Elvis Presley makes his first appearance on The Milton Berle Show.
April 6 – Paramount Pictures signs Elvis Presley to a three-picture deal.
April 10 – A group of racial segregationists (followers of Asa Earl Carter) rush the stage at a Nat King Cole concert in Birmingham, Alabama, but are quickly captured.
April 22 – The 2i’s Coffee Bar opens in Old Compton Street, Soho, London; its basement rapidly becomes a pioneering venue for rock & roll music in Britain, Tommy Steele being resident from July.
May – Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch, a CBS Radio Sunday evening program on the air since 1940 (except for a hiatus from 1942–45), ends its run.
May 2 – For the first time in Billboard magazine history, five singles appear in both the pop and R&B Top Ten charts. They are Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel” (#1 pop, #6 R&B), Carl Perkins’ “Blue Suede Shoes” (#4 pop, #3 R&B), Little Richard’s “Long Tall Sally” (#9 pop, #1 R&B), the Platters’ “(You’ve Got) The Magic Touch” (#10 pop, #7 R&B) and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers’ “Why Do Fools Fall in Love” (#7 pop, #4 R&B). Presley’s and Perkins’ singles also appeared on the country and western Top Ten chart at #1 and #2 respectively.
May 6
Elvis Presley appears on the Milton Berle show.
In Paris, Heitor Villa-Lobos records his Bachiana Brasileira No. 9 with the strings of the Orchestre National de la Radiodiffusion Française, for EMI.
May 6–28 – In Paris, Heitor Villa-Lobos supervises the recording of his Bachianas Brasileiras No. 6 by Fernand Dufrene (flute) and René Plessier (bassoon) and his Bachianas Brasileiras No. 2 with the Orchestre National de la Radiodiffusion Française, the four suites of his Descobrimento do Brasil, his Chôros No. 10 and his Invocação em defesa da patria, with Maria Kareska (soprano), the Chorale des Jeunesses musicales de France, and the Orchestre National de la Radiodiffusion Française for EMI.
May 8
Ernst Toch’s Third Symphony is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music.
Benjamin Britten’s opera Gloriana is given its US premiere in Cincinnati, in concert form conducted by Josef Krips.
May 24 – First-ever Eurovision Song Contest from the Kursaal Theatre, Lugano, Switzerland. Seven countries participate, each with two songs. Switzerland is declared the winner, with Lys Assia singing “Refrain”.
June – The winners of the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition, held in Brussels and devoted this year to the piano, are:
First Prize: Vladimir Ashkenazy
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News Events for 1955
January 2 – José Antonio Remón Cantera, president of Panama, is assassinated at a race track in Panama City.
January 3 – José Ramón Guizado becomes president of Panama.
January 7 – Marian Anderson is the first African-American singer to perform at the Metropolitan Opera, in New York City.
January 17 – USS Nautilus, the first nuclear-powered submarine, puts to sea for the first time, from Groton, Connecticut.
January 18–January 20 – Battle of Yijiangshan Islands: The Chinese Communist People’s Liberation Army seizes the islands, from the Republic of China (Taiwan).
January 22 – In the United States, The Pentagon announces a plan to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), armed with nuclear weapons.
January 23 – The Sutton Coldfield rail crash kills 17, near Birmingham, England.
January 25 – The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union announces the end of the war between the USSR and Germany, which began during World War II in 1941.
January 28 – The United States Congress authorizes President Dwight D. Eisenhower to use force, to protect Formosa from the People’s Republic of China.
February 9 – Apartheid in South Africa: 60,000 non-white residents of the Sophiatown suburb of Johannesburg are forcibly evicted.
February 10 – The United States Seventh Fleet helps the Republic of China evacuate the Chinese Nationalist army and residents, from the Tachen Islands to Taiwan.
February 12 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower sends the first U.S. advisors to South Vietnam.
February 14 – WFLA-TV signs on the air in Tampa/St. Petersburg, Florida.
February 16 – Nearly 100 die in a fire, at a home for the elderly in Yokohama, Japan.
February 19 – The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) is established, at a meeting in Bangkok.
February 22 – In Chicago’s Democratic primary, Mayor Martin H. Kennelly loses to the head of the Cook County Democratic Party, Richard J. Daley, 364,839 to 264,077.
February 24 – The Baghdad Pact (CENTO), originally known as Middle East Treaty Organization (METO), is signed between Iraq and Turkey.
March – A young Jim Henson builds the first version of Kermit the Frog.
March 2
Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old African-American girl, refuses to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, to a white woman after the driver demands it. She is carried off the bus backwards, while being kicked, handcuffed and harassed on the way to the police station. She becomes a plaintiff in Browder v. Gayle (1956), which rules bus segregation to be unconstitutional.
Serious floods occur in Australia.
March 5
WBBJ-TV signs on the air in Jackson, Tennessee, with WDXI as its initial call-letters, to expand American commercial television in mostly rural areas.
Elvis Presley makes his television debut on “Louisiana Hayride”, carried by KSLA-TV Shreveport.
March 7 – The Broadway musical version of Peter Pan, which had opened in 1954 starring Mary Martin, is presented on television for the first time by NBC-TV, with its original cast, as an installment of Producers’ Showcase. It is also the first time that a stage musical is presented in its entirety on TV, almost exactly as it was performed on stage. This program gains the largest viewership of a TV special up to this time, and it becomes one of the first great TV family musical classics.
March 17 – Richard Riot in Montreal: 6,000 people protest the suspension of French Canadian ice hockey star Maurice Richard of the Montreal Canadiens by the National Hockey League, following a violent incident during a match.
March 19 – KXTV signs on the air in Sacramento, California.
March 20 – The movie adaptation of Evan Hunter’s novel Blackboard Jungle premieres in the United States, featuring the famous single “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley & His Comets. Teenagers jump from their seats to dance to the song.
April 1 – EOKA A starts a terrorist campaign against British rule, in the Crown colony of Cyprus.
April 5
Winston Churchill resigns as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, due to ill-health, at the age of 80.
Richard J. Daley defeats Robert Merrian to become Mayor of Chicago, by a vote of 708,222 to 581,555.
April 6 – Anthony Eden becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
April 10 – In the NBA, the Syracuse Nationals defeat the Fort Wayne Pistons 92-91 in Game 7, to win the title.
April 11
The Taiwanese Kuomintang put a time-bomb on the airplane Kashmir Princess, killing 16 but failing to assassinate the People’s Republic of China leader, Zhou Enlai.
Taekwondo, a famous form of Korean martial arts, is officially recognized[clarification needed] in South Korea.[citation needed]
April 12 – The Salk polio vaccine, having passed large-scale trials earlier in the United States, receives full approval by the Food and Drug Administration.
April 14 – The Detroit Red Wings win the Stanley Cup for the 7th time in franchise history, but will not win again until 1997.
April 15 – Ray Kroc opens his first McDonald’s, in Des Plaines, Illinois.
April 16 – The Burma-Japan Peace Treaty, signed in Rangoon on November 5, 1954, comes into effect, formally ending a state of war between the two countries that has not existed for a long time.
April 17 – Imre Nagy, the communist Premier of Hungary, is ousted for being too moderate.
April 18–April 24 – The Asian-African Conference is held in Bandung, Indonesia.
May 5 – West Germany becomes a sovereign country, recognized by important Western countries, such as France, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States.
May 6 – The Western European Union Charter becomes effective.
May 7 – Newcastle United F.C. in England win the Football League First Division title for the fourth time. They have yet to win it since.
May 9
West Germany joins the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Jim Henson introduces the earliest version of Kermit the Frog, in the premiere of his puppet show Sam and Friends, on WRC-TV in Washington, D.C.
May 11 – Japanese National Railways’ ferry Shiun Maru sinks after collision with sister ship Uko Maru, in thick fog off Takamatsu, Shikoku, in the Seto Inland Sea of Japan; 166 passengers (many children) and 2 crew members are killed. This event is influential in plans to construct the Akashi Kaikyō Bridge (built 1986-98).
May 12 – New York’s Third Avenue Elevated runs its last train between Chathem Square in Manhattan and East 149th Street in the Bronx, thus ending elevated train service in Manhattan.
May 14 – Warrington win the British Rugby League Championship title for the third time. As of 2018 they are yet to win it since.
May 14 – Eight Communist Bloc countries, including the Soviet Union, sign a mutual defence treaty in Warsaw, Poland, that is called the Warsaw Pact (it will be dissolved in 1991).
May 15 – The Austrian State Treaty, which restores Austria’s national sovereignty, is concluded between the 4 occupying powers following World War II (the United Kingdom, the United States, the Soviet Union, and France) and Austria, setting it up as a neutral country.
May 25 – Joe Brown and George Band are the first to attain the summit of Kangchenjunga in the Himalayas, as part of a British team led by Charles Evans.
June 7 – The television quiz program The $64,000 Question premieres on CBS-TV in the United States, with Hal March as the host.
June 11 – Le Mans disaster: Eighty-three people are killed and at least 100 are injured, after two race cars collide in the 1955 24 Hours of Le Mans.
June 13 – Mir Mine, the first diamond mine in the Soviet Union, is discovered.
June 16 – Lady and the Tramp, the Walt Disney company’s 15th animated film, premieres in Chicago.
June 26 – The Freedom Charter of the anti-apartheid South African Congress Alliance is adopted, at a Congress of the People in Kliptown.
July 7 – The New Zealand Special Air Service is formed.
July 13 – Ruth Ellis is hanged for murder in London, becoming the last woman ever to be executed in the United Kingdom.
July 17
The American Broadcasting Company broadcasts a sneak preview of Disneyland in Anaheim, California.
Disneyland opens to the public in Anaheim, California.
July 18
The first nuclear-generated electrical power is sold commercially, partially powering the town of Arco, Idaho.
Illinois Governor William Stratton signs the Loyalty Oath Act, passed by the state legislature, which mandates all public employees take a loyalty oath to Illinois and the United States, or lose their jobs.
The first Geneva Summit meeting between the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and France begins. It ends on July 23.
July 22 – In Long Beach, California, U.S.A., Hillevi Rombin of Sweden is crowned Miss Universe.
July 27 – El Al Flight 402 from Vienna, Austria to Tel Aviv via Istanbul, is shot down over Bulgaria. All 58 passengers and crewmen aboard the Lockheed Constellation are killed.
July 28 – The first Interlingua Congress is held in Tours, France, leading to the foundation of the Union Mundial pro Interlingua.
August 1 – The Lockheed U-2 makes its first flight.
August 18
The First Sudanese Civil War begins.
The first meeting of the Organization of Central American States (Organización de Estados Centroamericanos, ODECA) is held, in Antigua Guatemala.
August 19 – Hurricane Diane hits the northeastern United States, killing over 200 people, and causing over $1 billion in damage.
August 20 – Hundreds of people are killed in anti-French rioting, in Morocco and Algeria.
August 22 – Eleven schoolchildren are killed, when their school bus is hit by a freight train in Spring City, Tennessee.
August 25 – The last Soviet Army forces leave Austria.
August 26 – Satyajit Ray’s film Pather Panchali is released in India.
August 27 – The first edition of the Guinness Book of Records is published, in London.
August 28 – Emmett Till is beaten, tortured, and shot in the head by Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, for allegedly grabbing and threatening a white woman.
September 2 – Under the guidance of Dr. Humphry Osmond, Christopher Mayhew ingests 400 mg of mescaline hydrochloride and allows himself to be filmed as part of a Panorama special for BBC TV in the U.K. that is never broadcast.
September 6 – Istanbul pogrom: Istanbul’s Greek minority is the target of a government-sponsored pogrom.
September 10 – The long-running program Gunsmoke debuts, on the CBS-TV network.
September 14 – Pope Pius XII elevates many of the Apostolic vicariates in Africa to Metropolitan Archdioceses.
September 15 – Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial novel Lolita is published in Paris, by Olympia Press.
September 16
The military coup to unseat President Juan Perón of Argentina is launched at midnight.
A Soviet Navy Zulu-class submarine becomes the first to launch a ballistic missile.
September 18 – The United Kingdom formally annexes the uninhabited island of Rockall.
September 19–21 – President of Argentina Juan Perón is ousted in a military coup.
September 19 – Hurricane Hilda kills about 200 people in Mexico.
September 22 – Independent Commercial Television (ITV) begins broadcasting in the United Kingdom.
September 24 – Dwight D. Eisenhower, President of the United States, suffers a coronary thrombosis while on vacation in Denver, Colorado. Vice President Nixon serves as Acting President while Eisenhower recovers.
September 30 – Actor James Dean is killed, when his automobile collides with another car at a highway junction, near Cholame, California.
October 2 – Alfred Hitchcock Presents debuts on the CBS TV network in the United States.
October 3 – The Mickey Mouse Club debuts on the ABC-TV network in the United States.
October 4 – The Reverend Sun Myung Moon is released from prison in Seoul, South Korea.
October 5 – Disneyland Hotel opens to the public, in Anaheim, California.
October 11 – 70-mm film for projection is introduced, with the theatrical release of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical film, Oklahoma!.
October 14 – The Organization of Central American States secretariat is inaugurated.
October 20 – Disc jockey Bill Randle of WERE (Cleveland) is the key presenter of a concert at Brooklyn High School (Ohio), featuring Pat Boone and Bill Haley & His Comets, and opening with Elvis Presley (Elvis’s first filmed performance), for a documentary on Randle titled The Pied Piper of Cleveland.
October 26
After the last Allied troops have left Austria, and following the provisions of the Austrian Independence Treaty, the country declares its permanent neutrality.
Ngô Đình Diệm proclaims Vietnam to be a republic, with himself as its President (following the State of Vietnam referendum on October 23), and forms the Army of the Republic of Vietnam.
October 27 – The film Rebel Without a Cause, starring James Dean, is released in the United States.
October 29 – Soviet battleship Novorossiysk explodes at moorings in Sevastopol Bay, killing 608 (the Soviet Union’s worst naval disaster to date).
November 1
The Vietnam War begins between the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and Republic of Vietnam; the north is allied with the Viet Cong.
A time bomb explodes in the cargo hold of United Airlines Flight 629, a Douglas DC-6B, over Longmont, Colorado, killing all 39 passengers and 5 crew members on board.
November 3 – The Rimutaka Tunnel opens on the New Zealand Railways, at 5.46 mi (8.79 km), the longest in the Southern Hemisphere at this time.
November 5 – Racial segregation is outlawed on trains and buses in interstate commerce in the United States.
November 19 – C. Northcote Parkinson first propounds ‘Parkinson’s law’, in The Economist.
November 20 – Bo Diddley makes his television debut on Ed Sullivan’s Toast Of The Town show for the CBS-TV Network.
November 23 – The Cocos Islands in the Indian Ocean are transferred from British to Australian control.
November 26 – The British Governor of Cyprus declares a state of emergency on the island.
November 27 – The Westboro Baptist Church holds its first church service.
December 1 – In Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks refuses to obey bus driver James F. Blake’s order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger, and is arrested, leading to the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
December 4 – The International Federation of Blood Donor Organizations is founded in Luxembourg.
December 5
The American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations merge, to become the AFL–CIO.
The Montgomery Improvement Association is formed in Montgomery, Alabama, by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and other Black ministers to coordinate a Black people’s boycott of all city buses.
December 9 – Adnan Menderes of DP forms the new government of Turkey (22nd government).
December 10 – 1955 Australian federal election: Robert Menzies’ Liberal/Country Coalition Government is re-elected with a substantially increased majority, defeating the Labor Party led by H.V. Evatt. This election comes in the immediate aftermath of the devastating split in the Labor Party, which leads to the formation of the Democratic Labor Party. The DLP will preference against Labor, and keep the Coalition in office until 1972.
December 14
The Tappan Zee Bridge over the Hudson River, in New York State, opens to traffic.
Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Jordan, Laos, Libya, Nepal, Portugal, Romania, Spain, and Sri Lanka join the United Nations simultaneously, after several years of moratorium on admitting new members that began during the Korean War.
December 20 – Cardiff is declared by the British Government as the capital of Wales.
December 22 – American cytogeneticist Joe Hin Tjio discovers the correct number of human chromosomes (46), forty-six.
December 31
General Motors becomes the first American corporation to make a profit of over 1 billion dollars, in 1 year.
Austria becomes independent, after Post-WW2 allied occupation.
The Strömsund Bridge in Sweden is completed, being the first significant cable-stayed bridge of the modern era.[2]
World population
World population: 2,755,823,000
Africa: 246,746,000
Asia: 1,541,947,000
Europe: 575,184,000
South America: 190,797,000
North America: 186,884,000
Oceania: 14,265,000
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January 1 – RCA Victor announces a marketing plan called “Operation TNT.” The label drops the list price on LPs from $5.95 to $3.98, EPs from $4.95 to $2.98, 45 EPs from $1.58 to $1.49 and 45’s from $1.16 to $.89. Other record labels follow RCA’s lead and begin to drop prices as well.
January 7
Marian Anderson is the first African American singer to perform at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
“Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley & His Comets first appears on the British charts.
January 14 – In New York City, Alan Freed produces the first rock and roll concert.
January 27 – Michael Tippett’s opera The Midsummer Marriage is premiered at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in London, conducted by John Pritchard, with designs by Barbara Hepworth and choreography by John Cranko; it arouses controversy.
February 19 – Dot Records introduces a new singer, Pat Boone, with an advertisement in Billboard magazine calling him “a great new voice”.
February 24 – Carlisle Floyd’s opera Susannah is premiered in the Ruby Diamond Auditorium of Florida State University, Tallahassee with Phyllis Curtin in the title role.
February 26 – For the first time since their introduction in 1949, 45 rpm discs begin to outsell standard 78s.
February – Kay Starr leaves Capitol to sign with RCA.
March 3 – Italian soprano Mirella Freni makes her operatic debut as Micaëla in Carmen at the Teatro Municipale in her native Modena.
March 7 – The Broadway production of Peter Pan, starring Mary Martin, is presented on American television for the first time by NBC-TV with its original cast, as an installment of Producers’ Showcase. It is also the first time that a stage musical is presented in its entirety on TV almost exactly as it was performed on stage. This program gains the largest viewership of a TV special up to this time and becomes one of the first great TV family musical classics.
March 15 – Colonel Tom Parker becomes Elvis Presley’s de facto manager.
March 19 – The film Blackboard Jungle is premièred in New York City, featuring Bill Haley & His Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock” over the opening credits, the first use of a rock and roll song in a major film.
March 22 – Decca Records signs DJ Alan Freed as an A&R man.
March 26 – Bill Hayes tops the US charts for five weeks with “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” and starts a (fake) coonskin cap craze.
April 14 – Imperial Records in the United States release “Ain’t That a Shame” by Fats Domino (co-written with Dave Bartholomew). It reaches #1 in the R&B chart and becomes over time a million seller, bringing Domino to prominence and giving his work covers by white artists: Pat Boone makes this song a Billboard number-one single of 1955 for jukebox play.
May 13 – First riot at an Elvis Presley concert takes place in Jacksonville, Florida.
May 21 – Chuck Berry records his first single, “Maybellene”, for Chess Records in Chicago.
May 22 – Bridgeport, Connecticut, authorities cancel a rock concert to be headlined by Fats Domino for fear of a riot breaking out.
June
The 29th International Society for Contemporary Music Festival takes place in Baden-Baden.
The newly formed Netherlands Chamber Orchestra gives its first performance at the Holland Festival.
June 2 – Italian singers Natalino Otto and Flo Sandon’s marry.
June 16 – Glenn Gould completes his recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations.
June 18
Pearl Carr & Teddy Johnson marry in the U.K.
Pierre Boulez’s influential composition Le marteau sans maître (“The hammer without a master”), for contralto and six instrumentalists, is premiered (in its first revised version) at the International Society for Contemporary Music Festival in Baden-Baden at the insistence of Heinrich Strobel.
July 9 – “Rock Around the Clock” becomes the first Rock and roll single to reach Number One on the American charts.
July 13 – The Beaux Arts Trio make their debut at the Berkshire Music Festival.
August 8 – Luigi Nono marries Arnold Schoenberg’s daughter Nuria in Venice.
August 19 – WINS radio station in New York City adopts a policy of not playing white cover versions of black R&B songs.
August 31 – A Londoner is fined for “creating an abominable noise” for playing “Shake, Rattle, and Roll” at top volume.
September 3 – Little Richard records “Tutti Frutti” with significantly cleaned up lyrics (originally “Tutti Frutti, good booty” among other things).
September 26 – “America’s Sweethearts”, singers Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, marry.
October 15 – Elvis Presley plays a concert in Lubbock, Texas. Opening act is local duo Buddy and Bob, Buddy being future rock star Buddy Holly.
October 20 – Disc jockey Bill Randle of WERE (Cleveland) is the key presenter of a concert at Brooklyn High School (Ohio), featuring Pat Boone and Bill Haley & His Comets and opening with Elvis Presley, not only Elvis’s first performance north of the Mason–Dixon line, but also his first filmed performance, for a documentary on Randle titled The Pied Piper of Cleveland.
October 29 – Dmitri Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1, originally completed in 1948, is premiered by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra with its dedicatee, David Oistrakh, as soloist.
November 4 – William Schuman’s orchestral piece Credendum: Article of Faith, commissioned by UNESCO, is premiered in Cincinnati.
November 12 – Billboard magazine DJ poll names Elvis Presley as the most promising new country and western singer.
November 20 – Bo Diddley makes his debut TV appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on CBS television.
November 22 – Colonel Tom Parker signs Elvis Presley to RCA Records.
November 29 – Juan José Castro conducts the UK première of Carlos Chávez’s Symphony No. 3 at the Maida Vale Studios with the London Symphony Orchestra.
December 15 – Sun Records releases “Folsom Prison Blues” recorded by Johnny Cash on July 30.
Christmas – The Temperance Seven is founded as a jazz band, initially comprising three members from the Chelsea School of Art in London.
Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel write their first song, “The Girl For Me” (copyrighted with the Library of Congress in 1956), and begin singing together as a duo while still in high school in New York City.
Nine-year-old Al Green forms a gospel quartet, the Green Brothers.
Clyde McPhatter launches a solo career.
Renato Carosone and Nicola Salerno meet and start their songwriting partnership.
Astor Piazzolla, returning to Argentina from his studies with Nadia Boulanger, forms his string orchestra (Orquesta de Cuerdas) and octet (Octeto Buenos Aires) and introduces the nuevo tango style.
Indian santoor player Shivkumar Sharma gives his first public performance in Bombay.
Etta James makes her debut with “The Wallflower (Dance With Me Henry)” which tops the R&B Chart but is considered too risqué for pop radio. The song is subsequently covered by Georgia Gibbs in a sanitized version where the line “Roll with me Henry” is changed to “Dance with me Henry”
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September 1 – The Irish Music Hall of Fame opens; Van Morrison is the first inducted into the museum.
September 17 – Rapper Eminem is sued by his mother for $10 million, claiming that public comments he made about her were slanderous and had caused emotional stress and financial harm. She eventually collects a mere $1,600 settlement in 2001.
September 21 – David Bowie releases his twenty-first studio album Hours, which becomes the first complete album by a major artist legally available to download over the Internet, preceding the physical release by two weeks.
September 30 – Billboard announces that Ministry of Sound Recordings Ltd is expanding into Australia after ending a partnership with MDS Dancenet and establishes Ministry of Sound Australia, known until 2005 as Ministry of Sound (UK) Pty Ltd. Ministry UK also secures a distribution deal with EMI Music Group Australasia Pty Ltd.
October 9
“Heartbreaker”, the lead single from Mariah Carey’s ninth studio album, Rainbow, reaches #1 on the Billboard 100, becoming her 14th #1 single and also her 59th week atop the chart. When it stayed at #1 for a further week Carey surpassed The Beatles for the act with the most weeks spent at number one. The song also topped charts in Canada and New Zealand.
The first Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival is held in California. The inaugural line-up consists of Beck, The Chemical Brothers, Tool, Morrissey and Rage Against the Machine.
The anti-poverty initiative NetAid is launched with simultaneous benefit concerts in London, New Jersey and Geneva.
October 17 – Jimi Jamison release his second studio album, Empires first under the name of Jimi Jamison’s Survivor but after a battle curt for using the name of his previous band it was re-issue under his name the next year.
October 20 – Melissa Auf der Maur leaves Hole.
November 5
Australian independent record label Liberation Music is formed.
Gary Cherone leaves Van Halen.
November 12 – 1970s rock star Gary Glitter is jailed for four months for downloading child pornography off the Internet.
November 15 – Korn performs their entire album Issues at the Apollo Theater in New York City, becoming the first rock band ever to perform at the Apollo.
November 16 – Korn’s fourth studio album, Issues, debuts at number 1 on the Billboard 200 with 575,000 copies sold in its first week.
– Will Smith releases his second solo studio album Willennium
November 23 – University of Oregon student Jeffrey Levy, having downloaded MP3s without permission, is the first person ever convicted for copyright infringement under the NET Act of 1997. He is sentenced to two years of probation and a limit on Internet access.
December 4 – The Spice Girls start their Christmas Tour around the UK, dubbed as the Christmas in Spiceworld Tour.
December 14
BMI announces the most played songs on American radio and television in the 20th century
Paul McCartney returns to The Cavern Club to play a special concert for 300 fans.
Boy George is injured by a 62-pound disco ball that falls from a concert venue’s ceiling during a rehearsal, nearly killing him as it almost landed on his head.
December 27 – Puff Daddy and fellow rapper Shyne are arrested for weapons violations and other charges after a shooting in a Manhattan nightclub that leaves three people injured.
December 30 – George Harrison survives a knife attack by an intruder in his Friar Park home.
December 31 – Many special New Year’s Eve concerts are held around the world to celebrate the arrival of the year 2000. Big shows include Barbra Streisand at The MGM Grand Las Vegas, The Eagles at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden, and Metallica with Kid Rock and Ted Nugent playing for 54,000 the Pontiac Silverdome. The biggest concert on Earth that night is by Phish, however, playing for 75,000 people at the Big Cypress Indian Reservation in Florida.
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April 1 – The Backstreet Boys release their smash hit I Want It That Way.
April 10 – A charity tribute, the Concert for Linda McCartney is held at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Here, There and Everywhere: A Concert For Linda, features performances by Paul McCartney, Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders, Elvis Costello, Sinéad O’Connor, and George Michael. Proceeds raised at the event went to animal rights causes.
April 12 – Irish boy band Westlife make their debut with the release of their first single, “Swear It Again”, which would peak at number one on the charts.
April 19 – Neil Young performs at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Due to a mistake by a Madison Square Garden staff member, the marquee read “Bob Dylan, Tonight at 8pm”. Young jokingly introduced one of his guitar players as Bob Dylan during the show.
April 20
Billy Joel performs at Meadowlands in New Jersey. Joel announces that this would be his last public pop music concert. Joel also announces plans on devoting his future efforts to classical music.
Columbine High School massacre takes place in Jefferson County, Colorado, sparking a widespread moral panic that ultimately tries to place the blame on violent media, including music perceived to be violent and/or connected to the goth culture. American rocker Marilyn Manson receives the brunt of the blame despite evidence that neither of the shooters were fans of his only to address the issue in the form of his fourth studio album. The finger is also pointed at German industrial metal acts 
Rammstein and KMFDM, of whom the shooters were fans. This sensationalism gradually wanes in the years following, and all three music acts ironically achieve more mainstream acceptance in the U.S. than they had prior to the massacre. Christian Contemporary Music artists respond to the concept that Atheism caused the shooting and in particular the Cassie Bernall urban legend (about a girl who was initially believed to have been shot in the head for answering “yes” when perpetrator Eric Harris asked her if she believed in God) with songs such as “A New Hope” by Five Iron Frenzy, about a band member’s sister who had been trapped in the choir room returning to school after the shooting, and “This Is Your Time” by Michael W. Smith, a direct response to the Cassie Bernall story.
April 26 – Musician and former bandleader of The Sound, Adrian Borland, commits suicide in London.
April 28 – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
April 30 – Columbine High School massacre: Aerosmith visits Columbine High School shooting victim Lance Kirklin in a Colorado hospital before a concert in Denver, Colorado. Kirklin was one of 24 wounded in the April 20 shooting, 13 others were killed.
May 1
“The Paintings of Paul McCartney” exhibit opens at the Lyz Art Forum in Siegen, Germany. The exhibit features around 70 paintings by the former Beatle.
Musical group Atari Teenage Riot starts a riot in Berlin with their anti-consumer and anti-government lyrics.
June 1 – Peer-to-peer file sharing network Napster is launched.
June 2 – Backstreet Boys smashes the old first-week sales record of Garth Brooks’ 1.08 million, with (Millennium) which sold over 1.13 million in its first week and was the first album to sell over 500,000 copies at least 2 weeks. The album holds at No. 1 first-weeks sales record of the 1990s.
June 13 – S Club 7 debut at #1 on the UK singles chart with their first single “Bring It All Back” and become the largest vocal group to enter at the top.
June 14 – Vengaboys release their hit Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom!!, reaching number one in the UK Singles Chart on June 21, 1999.
June 22 – Limp Bizkit’s second album, Significant Other, debuts at number one on the Billboard 200, with 643,874 copies sold in its first week. The album launches them into mainstream success.
June 28 – Britney Spears embarked her first concert tour, …Baby One More Time Tour. The tour only reached North America and garned a positive review, but generated some controversy due to her racy outfit and accusation of lip syncing.
June 29
Santana and Matchbox Twenty vocalist Rob Thomas release Smooth, which peaks at #1 for 12 weeks.
Razor and Tie releases the single-disc version of Monster Ballads. It would eventually be certified platinum at the end of the year.
July 1 – The new Scottish Parliament is formally opened with a rock concert in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle and is headlined by Garbage, of which, lead singer Shirley Manson, is at the time one of the biggest music stars from Scotland.
July 3 – Indie rock icon Mark Sandman collapses on stage at the Giardini del Principe in Palestrina, Latium, Italy (near Rome) while performing with Morphine. He is soon pronounced dead of a heart attack at the age of 46. Morphine immediately disbands.
July 8 – Adrian Erlandsson quits The Haunted as the drummer while the band hires Per Möller Jensen as Erlandsson’s replacement.
July 12 – Gregg Alexander issues a press release dissolving the New Radicals.
July 13–18 – The third Yoyo A Go Go punk and indie rock festival opens in Olympia, Washington.
July 23–25 – The highly anticipated Woodstock 99 festival takes place in Rome, New York.
August
August 14-15 – The Artist Formerly Known as Prince holds a weekend yard sale at his Paisley Park Studios, with part of the proceeds going to benefit underprivileged youth.
August 27–29 – The third Terrastock festival is held in London.
August 31 – Megadeth release eighth studio album Risk.
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January 7
After eight years of marriage, musician husband Rod Stewart and supermodel wife Rachel Hunter announce their separation.
Paul McCartney attends the launch of his daughter Heather’s first housewares collection in Georgia.
January 11 – During the American Music Awards, Billy Joel is awarded the Special Award of Merit for his “inspired songwriting skills” and “exciting showmanship.”
January 12
Fredrik Johansson is fired from Dark Tranquillity.
Britney Spears releases her debut album, “…Baby One More Time”, which peaks at number one on the Billboard 200 and sells 121,000 copies in its first week. Over 10 million copies of …Baby One More Time were sold in the United States during 1999 alone.
January 21 – A&M Records is shut down and merged into the Universal Music Group umbrella label Interscope Geffen A&M. It would be relaunched in 2007.
January 22 – German industrial band KMFDM announces that it has disbanded.
February
February 9 – NSYNC release their third single from their debut album, “(God Must Have Spent) A Little More Time on You”, which peaks in the top 10 on the Pop charts.
February 10 – Iron Maiden announces that singer Bruce Dickinson and guitarist Adrian Smith have rejoined the band.
February 14 – Elton John appears as himself in a special episode of the animated series The Simpsons
February 15 – “Rolling Stones Day” is declared in Minnesota by Governor (and former Rolling Stones bodyguard) Jesse Ventura
February 19 – Marilyn Manson files a defamation countersuit against former Spin Magazine editor Craig Marks, in response to a multimillion-dollar lawsuit that Marks filed in January against the singer, the record label Nothing/Interscope, and Manson’s bodyguard agency.
February 20 – Trace Adkins performs his first concert following surgery for tendon damage and a broken ankle. Contrary to doctor’s orders, Adkins does not remain seated during the performance.
February 24 – Lauryn Hill makes history at the 1999 Grammy Awards by being the first female artist to win five Grammys in one night.
February 25 – The Artist Formerly Known as Prince files a lawsuit against nine Web sites for copyright and trademark infringement, claiming that the websites sell bootlegged recordings and offer unauthorized song downloads.
March
March 1 – Sony Music Distribution raises wholesale prices on audio compact discs by 8 US cents.
March 2
Cher’s song “Believe” reaches number one on the Billboard Hot 100, making Cher the oldest female artist (at the age of 52) to perform this feat. Cher also set the record for the longest hit-making career span, with 33 years between the release of her first and last Billboard Hot 100 #1 singles (1965 and 1999).
The House of Blues in Paradise, Nevada at the Mandalay Bay Resort. Bob Dylan performs a concert at the club and is joined by U2’s lead singer Bono for an encore of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”.
March 5 – Trauma Records files a $40 million breach-of-contract lawsuit against the members of Bush for failing to deliver a new album.
March 6 – A 67-year-old George Jones is seriously injured in a car accident while on his way home. Jones’ Lexus crashed into a bridge at about 1:30 p.m. It is later revealed that alcohol was a factor in the accident.
March 15 – Marilyn Manson is injured when he slips and falls during a concert at the Great Western Forum in Inglewood, California. Manson’s performance is cut short.
March 16 – The Recording Industry Association of America introduces a new certification level, Diamond, for albums or singles selling ten million units and the first Radio Disney Jams volume gets released on CD and cassette for the very first time.
March 17 – Namie Amuro’s mother Emiko Taira is murdered.
March 21 – Irish girl band B*Witched score their fourth consecutive #1 with Blame It On The Weatherman on the UK singles chart. They become the first band to have all their first four singles enter at the top simultaneously and set a new record. It is broken a year later by Irish boy band Westlife.
March 23 – Green Day release Nice Guys Finish Last, the lead track as well as the fourth and final single off their 1997 album Nimrod, and was their last single to be released in the 20th century.
March 27 – The Bee Gees end their One Night Only tour in Sydney, Australia.
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Today we start our focus on 1998.
January 28
Interscope Records pays a radio station in Portland, Oregon, USA, $5000 to play the Limp Bizkit single “Counterfeit” fifty times. The business move is widely criticized in the media as “payola”, but the controversy serves to further increase publicity for the band.
“Weird Al” Yankovic gets LASIK surgery to cure his myopia. At the same time, he grows out his hair and shaves off his moustache, radically changing his signature look.
Namie Amuro’s first greatest hits album 181920 is released.
January 31 – The Presidents of the United States of America play a farewell show in their hometown of Seattle. They would reunite in 2000.
February 5
Carnatic vocalist M. S. Subbulakshmi becomes the first musician ever to be awarded the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian award.
Former Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford publicly reveals his homosexuality for the first time in an interview with MTV.
February 15 – Sir Edward Elgar’s unfinished Third Symphony, completed by Anthony Payne, is performed for the first time at the Royal Festival Hall, London, UK.
February 19 – The Stray Cats reunite for a benefit show for the Carl Perkins Foundation at House of Blues in Los Angeles, USA.
February 21 – Misia made her official CD debut with the single “Tsutsumikomu Yō ni…”.
February 22 – In Los Angeles, California, Stevie Wonder is honored as the 1999 MusiCares Person of the Year.
February 23 – “Frozen”, the first single from Madonna’s eighth studio album, Ray of Light, is released. The single is a worldwide hit, peaking at #2 on US Billboard Hot 100 and becoming her first single to enter the charts at #1 in the UK.
February 24 – Elton John is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom at Buckingham Palace, London, UK. He was mistakenly introduced as “Sir John Elton”, but was renamed “Sir Elton John”.
February 28 – Haitian group RAM survive an attempted murder while performing at a carnival, after a disagreement with the newly elected mayor of Port-au-Prince.
March 3 – Madonna releases her seventh studio album Ray of Light. The album eventually sells over 16 million copies worldwide. The album received near universal acclaim upon release. Her collaborations with producer William Orbit, as well as her conversion to Kabbalah resulted in a completely new and unique lyric and musical approach for Madonna, which gains her four Grammy Awards out of a total of six nominations, as well as many other prestigious awards.
March 10 – The South Korean-made MPMan, the first mass-produced digital audio player, is launched at the CeBIT trade fair in Hanover, Germany.
March 13 – The Smashing Pumpkins file a US$1 million lawsuit against UK-based Sound And Media Ltd, alleging that the company has released a book and CD about the band without permission.
March 17 – Van Halen III is released. It is the first and only Van Halen album to feature Gary Cherone on vocals.
March 24 – NSYNC releases their debut album NSYNC
March 26 – Chuck Negron files a lawsuit against his fellow Three Dog Night bandmates alleging that they broke a 1990 settlement agreement and interfered with his career.
April 3 – Dave Navarro is fired by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
April 6 – Organizers announce that Lollapalooza will not be staged in 1998 due to the inability to sign a major headlining act. The festival would return in 2003.
April 7 – George Michael is arrested in a public restroom in Beverly Hills, California, USA for lewd conduct. He is subsequently sentenced to community service, and later describes it as a “subconsciously deliberate act”.
April 8 – Ayumi Hamasaki makes her debut under Avex Trax with the single “Poker Face”.
April 14 – The first VH1 Divas Live concert is broadcast on VH1, starring Aretha Franklin, Gloria Estefan, Céline Dion, Shania Twain and Mariah Carey.
April 17–19 – The second Terrastock festival takes place in San Francisco, USA.
April 29 – Steven Tyler breaks his knee at a concert in Anchorage, Alaska, USA, delaying Aerosmith’s Nine Lives Tour and necessitating camera angle adjustments for the filming of the video for “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing”.
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