8 MAY
In Music History
1967 LaVerne Sophia Andrews (of The Andrews Sisters) dies of cancer at age 55.
1965 "Count Me In" makes Gary Lewis and the Playboys the only American act in the US Top 10. Their song is #2 behind "Mrs. Brown You've Got A Lovely Daughter" by Herman's Hermits.
1964 Blur drummer Dave Rowntree is born in Essex, Rowntree, England.
1963 Major Lance records "Monkey Time."
1963 Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) is born in Versailles, France. The imaginative director is also known for his surreal music videos for artists like Bjork, The White Stripes, The Chemical Brothers, and others.More
1953 Billy Burnette (guitarist for Fleetwood Mac) is born Dorsey William Burnette III in Memphis, Tennessee.
1953 Drummer Alex Van Halen, who along with his younger brother Eddie forms Van Halen, is born in Nijmegen, Netherlands.
1951 Talking Heads drummer Chris Frantz is born in the Army hospital at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.
1951 Earth, Wind & Fire singer Philip Bailey is born in Denver, Colorado. Outside of EW&F, he has a hit with Phil Collins in 1986 with "Easy Lover."
1944 Glam rocker Gary Glitter is born Paul Francis Gadd in Banbury, Oxfordshire, England.
1943 Paul Samwell-Smith (bassist for The Yardbirds) is born in Richmond, Surrey, England.
1943 Danny Whitten, guitarist in Neil Young's band Crazy Horse, is born in Columbus, Georgia. The song "The Needle And The Damage Done" is about Whitten, who dies of a drug overdose at 29.
1942 Country musician Jack Blanchard is born in Buffalo, New York, raised in Ohio.
1941 Soul singer John Fred (of John Fred & His Playboy Band) is born John Fred Gourrier in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
1940 Toni Tennille of Captain & Tennille is born Cathryn Antoinette Tennille in Montgomery, Alabama.
Dylan Makes Original Lyric Video
1965D.A. Pennebaker films Bob Dylan in one of the earliest music videos ever shot, the famous "flashcard" clip for "Subterranean Homesick Blues."
Read more8 MAY
Featured Events
2015 In Tulsa, Rush begin their R40 Live tour, playing their newer songs first and working backward to "Working Man," the song that launched them in America. It ends up being their last tour, as drummer Neil Peart develops brain cancer and dies in 2020.
1993 The comeback is complete as Aerosmith's Get a Grip album debuts at #1, marking their first trip to the top of the albums chart.
1981 Lionel Richie and Diana Ross meet at a Reno, Nevada recording studio at 3:30 a.m., where they record vocals for "Endless Love," needed quickly so it can be inserted into the film of the same name. Richie flew in from Los Angeles; Ross drove up after her concert in Lake Tahoe. The song becomes one of the biggest hits of the decade.
1976 John Sebastian's "Welcome Back," the theme song to the TV series Welcome Back, Kotter, hits #1 in America. The series was originally called Kotter, but after Sebastian wrote the song, the title was changed to accommodate (Sebastian tried writing a song called "Kotter," but could only rhyme that word with "otter").
1970 The Beatles release their final studio album, Let It Be, in the UK. Its American release date is May 18.
1965 On their first American tour, The Rolling Stones stop in Jacksonville, Florida. In the audience is 17-year-old Ronnie Van Zant, who decides then and there that he wants to be a singer in a rock band. He later forms Lynyrd Skynyrd.
1963 The Beatles land their first #1 hit when "From Me to You" tops the UK chart. The song goes nowhere in America, where word of The Beatles is still just a whisper.
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