28 SEPTEMBER
In Music History
1967 English musician Rory Storm (of Rory Storm and The Hurricanes) dies of a chest infection at age 34.
1967 Gladys Knight and the Pips release "I Heard It Through The Grapevine."
1964 Connie Stevens premieres her first television sitcom, Wendy And Me, on ABC, featuring George Burns as her landlord. It lasts one season.
1964 Songwriter Nacio Herb Brown dies in San Francisco, California, at age 68. He wrote the music for "Singin' in the Rain," with lyrics by Arthur Freed.
1963 Jim Morrison is arrested while attending Florida State University. After stealing a cop's hat and umbrella, he's charged with petty larceny, resisting arrest, public drunkenness, and disturbing the peace.
1961 Dr. Kildare debuts on NBC. The theme song, sung by the show's star Richard Chamberlain, goes to #10 the following year.
1960 Jennifer Rush is born Heidi Stern in Queens, New York.
1958 The Teddy Bears release "To Know Him Is To Love Him."
1955 Louis Armstrong records "Mack the Knife," a song from the play The Threepenny Opera. Armstrong is the first to chart with a vocal version of the song; in 1959, Bobby Darin takes it to #1.
1954 Dokken guitarist George Lynch is born in Spokane, Washington, but is raised in Auburn, California.
1953 Keni Burke (of The Five Stairsteps) is born in Chicago, Illinois.
1953 Johnny Horton marries Billie Jean Jones Eshliman, widow of Hank Williams Sr.
1947 Peter Hope-Evans (of Medicine Head) is born in Brecon, Powys, Wales. Known for the 1973 UK hit "One and One is One."
1946 Helen Shapiro is born in Bethnal Green, London.
1943 Nick St. Nicholas (of Steppenwolf) is born Klaus Karl Kassbaum is born in Plön, Germany. Nick's family will flee to Toronto, Canada, after his father's involvement in Operation Valkyrie, the failed mission to overthrow Adolf Hitler, makes his dad an assassination target.
Garth Brooks #1 As Country Goes Mainstream
1991Thanks to a proliferation of "New Country" radio stations and more accurate reporting, country music goes mainstream as Garth Brooks' Ropin' the Wind becomes the first country album to debut at #1 on the Billboard 200 chart.
Read more28 SEPTEMBER
Featured Events
2012 The musical comedy Pitch Perfect, about an underdog collegiate singing group, premieres in theaters on the cusp of an a cappella revival. The resurgence includes the debut of the genre's newest phenomenon, Pentatonix. More
2000 Barbra Streisand closes out her Timeless tour with a show at Madison Square Garden. It's billed as her last tour, but she returns to the road six years later.
1991 Jazz legend Miles Davis dies of pneumonia, respiratory failure and stroke at age 65.
1989 Jimmy Buffett publishes his first book, a collection of short stories called Tales From Margaritaville that blends truth with confabulation.
1972 The Temptations release "Papa Was A Rollin' Stone." The single is cut to 6:58 because there's not enough vinyl on a 45 to handle the 11:46 album version.
1968 The Beatles' "Hey Jude" (backed with "Revolution") hits #1 in America. It holds the top spot for nine weeks, the longest of any Beatles single.
©2026 Songfacts®, LLC