5 SEPTEMBER
In Music History
1945 Folk rocker Al Stewart is born in Glasgow, Scotland. He is raised in Wimborne Minster, Dorset, England.
1941 John Stewart (of The Kingston Trio) is born in San Diego, California. Wrote The Monkees' #1 hit "Daydream Believer."
1936 Blues guitarist Willie Woods (of Junior Walker & The All Stars) is born.
1912 Experimental composer John Cage is born in Los Angeles, California. Known for his composition "4'33," in which musicians were present but did not play their instruments. Instead, environmental sounds provided the music for the piece.
1791 Opera composer Giacomo Meyerbeer is born Jacob Liebmann Beer near Berlin, Germany.
The Animals Take Folk Song "The House Of The Rising Sun" To #1
1964British group The Animals hit #1 in America with "The House Of The Rising Sun," a folk song set in New Orleans about either a brothel or a prison.
Read more5 SEPTEMBER
Featured Events
2008 The first Fender Stratocaster set alight on stage by Jimi Hendrix is auctioned. The guitar sells for $575,000 to collector Daniel Boucher - less than the $1 million predicted. It is one of only two guitars definitively burned by Hendrix - the other was at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967.
1991 Guitarist C.C. DeVille is kicked out of Poison after he sabotages their performance at the MTV Video Music Awards by playing "Talk Dirty To Me" instead of "Unskinny Bop" as planned. DeVille rejoins the band five years later.More
1989 Soundgarden release Louder Than Love, the first grunge album on a major label (A&M).
1981 Soft Cell hit #1 in the UK with an electronic cover of "Tainted Love," a song originally released by the American soul singer Gloria Jones in 1964. The song also charts in America, reaching #8 in July 1982. It's the only hit for the duo in the States, but they have many more in their native UK.
1976 Garry Rossington of Lynyrd Skynyrd falls asleep at the wheel of his new Ford Torino and hits a tree and a house. The incident inspires their song "That Smell."
1946 Queen frontman Freddie Mercury is born as Farrokh Bulsara in Zanzibar (a set of islands off the coast of Africa).More
1945 Boudleaux Bryant and Felice Scaduto get married. The couple become one of the most successful songwriting teams in pop music, with over 700 songs published, including "Wake Up Little Susie" and "Bye Bye Love."
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