2 NOVEMBER
In Music History
1966 Country blues musician Mississippi John Hurt dies of a heart attack at age 74.
1966 Dressed in full revolutionary regalia, Paul Revere & the Raiders appear on an episode of Batman.
1963 Folk music is in the air as Peter, Paul and Mary's album In The Wind hits #1 in America.
1963 Bobby Dall (bassist for Poison) is born Robert Harry Kuykendall in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania.
1963 The female UK duo The Caravelles reach the Hot 100 at #84 with "You Don't Have To Be A Baby To Cry," starting a run of 38 years when at least one British act is on the American chart.
1963 Reviewing The Beatles' concert the night before in Cheltenham, England, the British paper Daily Mirror uses the headline "Beatlemania!", effectively inserting the phrase into the popular consciousness for the first time.
1963 Dion performs "Donna The Prima Donna" on the British TV show Ready Steady Go!, but gets irritated when audience members dance around him. He walks out on the show even though he is slated for another song.
1962 Ron McGovney (original Metallica bassist) is born in Los Angeles, California. McGovney can be heard on the first Metallica demos, Power Metal and No Life 'Til Leather.
1957 Carter Beauford, drummer for The Dave Matthews Band, is born in Charlottesville, Virginia. When Julia Roberts inducts the band into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 2024, she makes it clear that he's her favorite member.
1956 A riot breaks out at Fats Domino's show in Fayetteville, North Carolina, with police resorting to tear gas to break up the unruly crowd. Fats jumps out of a window to avoid the melee; he and two other band members are slightly injured.
1952 Maxine Nightingale is born in Wembley, London, England.
1947 Dave Pegg (bassist for Jethro Tull, Fairport Convention) is born in Acock's Green, Birmingham, England.
1945 J.D. Souther is born in Detroit, Michigan.
1945 Len "Chip" Hawkes (bassist for The Tremeloes) is born in England.
1944 Keith Emerson of Emerson, Lake & Palmer is born in Todmorden, Yorkshire, England, where his family has been evacuated during World War II. He grows up in Worthing, Sussex, learning classical piano but later expanding into rock and jazz.
Rami Malek Stars In Bohemian Rhapsody
2018The Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, starring Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury, opens in theaters. It wins four Oscars, including Best Actor for Malek.
Read more2 NOVEMBER
Featured Events
1995 Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders guest stars on the Friends episode "The One with the Baby on the Bus." She sings "Angel of the Morning" and learns "Smelly Cat" from Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow).
1985 "Part-Time Lover" hits #1 on the Hot 100, 22 years after Stevie Wonder first topped the chart in 1963.More
1985 The Miami Vice soundtrack album, featuring the #1-hit theme song, tops the albums chart in America, ushering in a new age of TV soundtracks.More
1978 Alice Cooper appears on The Muppet Show, where he performs "Welcome to My Nightmare" and "School's Out." He also offers to give the Muppets fame and riches if they'll sign their souls over to him. Kermit is horrified. Gonzo spends the entire episode looking for a pen.
1978 The Police release their debut album, Outlandos d'Amour. The working title, "Police Brutality," is changed to make is sound more romantic. The title loosely translates as "Outlaws of Love" but the term "Outlandos" is actually a mix of the words for "Outlaws" and "Commandos."
1974 George Harrison begins his Dark Horse tour with Ravi Shankar in Vancouver, BC. It's the first solo tour for any Beatle, and a drag on Harrison, who doesn't travel well. It's the last time he tours until 1991, when he joins Eric Clapton on some dates in Japan.
1968 Jose Feliciano's unique rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner," which he performed on acoustic guitar before Game 5 of the World Series on October 7, enters the Hot 100 at #89, making it the first version of the US National Anthem to chart (it peaks at #50). Many singers start adding their own flavor to the song; the next version to chart is Whitney Houston's Super Bowl performance in 1991, which hits #20.
1961 k.d. lang is born Kathryn Dawn Lang in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
1920 KDKA in Pittsburgh becomes the first commercially licensed radio station in the United States. They are not the first station on the air, but the first to get the broadcast license. With consumers unsure of the benefits of radio, the station announces results of the Harding-Cox presidential election, getting the news to those with a radio much faster than everyone who had to wait for the morning paper.
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