Good music doesn’t have an expiration date. Music and imagination are made of the same substance. They contain soulful substances that are more real than reality.

A look at the birthdays and events that helped to create the soundtrack of our lives.

BIRTHDAYS

1940 – Angelo D’Aleo (Belmonts – ‘Come On Little Angel’) was born. He’s 76 today.

1943 – Dennis Edwards (The Temptations – ‘Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone’) was born and is celebrating his 73rd birthday.

1945 – The late Johnny Cymbal (born John Hendry Blair – ‘Mr. Bass Man’) and a/k/a Derek (‘Cinnamon’) was born.

1947 – Melanie (born Melanie Safka – ‘Brand New Key’) was born. She’s 69 today.

1947 – Dave Davies (lead guitarist with The Kinks – ‘You Really Got Me’) was born. He’s 69 today.

EVENTS

1959 – ‘The Day The Music Died’ — Buddy Holly (22), Ritchie Valens (17) and J.P. Richardson, better known as The Big Bopper (28), died in an Iowa plane crash.
Rock Factoid: Performing in concert was very profitable and Buddy Holly needed the money it provided. “The Winter Dance Party Tour” was planned to cover 24 cities in a short 3 week time frame (January 23 – February 15) and Holly was the biggest headliner. Waylon Jennings, a friend from Lubbock, Texas and Tommy Allsup went along as backup musicians. Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper rounded out the list of headline performers.
The tour bus developed heating problems. It was so cold onboard that drummer Carl Bunch developed frostbite riding in it and had to be hospitalized. When they arrived at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, the singers were cold, tired and disgusted.
Holly had been through enough of the unheated bus and decided to charter a plane for himself and his guys (Jennings and Allsup). Dwyer Flying Service got the charter: $36 per person for a single-engine Beechcraft B35 Bonanza.
Waylon Jennings gave his seat up to Richardson, who was running a fever and had trouble fitting his stocky frame comfortably into the bus seats.
When Holly learned that Jennings wasn’t going to fly, he said, “Well, I hope your old bus freezes up.” Jennings responded, “Well, I hope your plane crashes.” This friendly banter of friends would haunt Jennings for the rest of his life.
Allsup told Valens, “I’ll flip you for the remaining seat.” On the toss of a coin, Valens won the seat and Allsup won the rest of his life.
The pilot, Roger Peterson, was not instrument rated – meaning he was not certified to fly in weather that required relying solely on instrumentation – but in fairness to him, he was never notified about pending snowfall.
The plane taxied, sat on the runway for a few minutes, and took off at about 12:55 a.m., heading north. Plane owner Jerry Dwyer later told investigators that from his point of view, in the airport tower, he thought he’d detected the plane “going down at a very slow rate of descent as it went farther away from us. I would guess that it was approximately four miles north of us. I thought at the time that probably it was an optical illusion.”
It wasn’t.
Later that morning, Dwyer, having heard no word from Peterson since his departure, took off in another airplane to retrace his planned route . Within minutes, at around 9:35 a.m., he spotted the wreckage less than 6 miles northwest of the airport. The sheriff’s office, alerted by Dwyer, dispatched Deputy Bill McGill, who drove to the crash site, a cornfield belonging to Albert Juhl.
The Bonanza had impacted terrain at high speed, estimated to have been around 170 mph, banked steeply to the right and in a nose-down attitude. The right wing tip had struck the ground first, sending the aircraft cartwheeling across the frozen field for 540 feet, before coming to rest against a wire fence at the edge of Juhl’s property
The bodies of Holly and Valens had been ejected from the torn fuselage and were both approximately 17 feet from the wreckage. Richardson’s body had been thrown 40 feet over the fence and into the cornfield of Juhl’s neighbor Oscar Moffett, while pilot Peterson’s body was entangled in the plane’s wreckage.

1960 – Frank Sinatra formed Reprise Records.
Rock Factoid: Sinatra recruited a host of his cronies for the fledgling label, such as fellow Rat Pack members Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr., along with Bing Crosby, Jo Stafford, Rosemary Clooney and stand-up comedian Redd Foxx.
Rock Factoid #2: Most the older artists were dropped when Sinatra sold the label to Warner Bros. Records in early 1963 due to insufficient sales. Warner-Reprise executives began targeting younger acts beginning by securing the American distribution rights of The Kinks in 1964, and eventually signed artists such as the Beach Boys, Neil Young, Arlo Guthrie, Gordon Lightfoot, Jethro Tull and Fleetwood Mac.

1961 – Bob Dylan made his first recordings (at the home of friends Sid and Bob Gleason in East Orange, NJ). Dylan recorded ‘San Francisco Bay Blues’ and ‘Jesus Met The Woman At The Well’.

1964 – The Beach Boys released ‘Fun, Fun, Fun’.

1964 – ‘Meet The Beatles’ was awarded a gold album certification by the Recording Industry Association of America.
Rock Factoid: The RIAA also announced ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ had been awarded a gold record. Both awards were the result of $1-million dollars in sales, a standard which has since been modified.

1967 – Joe Meek (producer for The Tornados – ‘Telstar’) and The Honeycombs – ‘Have I The Right’) died by suicide. He was 37.
Rock Factoid: Meek was a Buddy Holly fanatic who shot and killed himself (after murdering his landlady) on the eighth anniversary of Buddy’s death.
Rock Factoid #2: To be more precise, Meek was a fanatic about a lot of things. He claimed to have turned down the chance to work with the Beatles because he considered them to be “just a bunch of noise.”
He passed on working with Rod Stewart. During a rehearsal, upon hearing Stewart sing, Meek rushed into the studio, put his fingers in his ears and screamed until Stewart left.
He also turned down the opportunity to record a young David Bowie. He suggested Bowie had “almost no talent.”
Rock Factoid #3: He didn’t, however, turn down the chance to record a cat howling in a London cemetery because he believed it was possessed by the spirit of a dead person. So yeah, Joe was a little on the strange side.

1967 – In the “oh, how times have changed” department: Otis Redding, The Marvelettes, Aaron Neville, James and Bobby Purify and The Drifters all appeared at The Civic Coliseum in Knoxville, TN. Tickets cost just $2.50–3.50.

1969 – The demise of The Beatles began when the group hired Allen Klein as their new manager. One year later, Paul McCartney sued the other three Beatles to dissolve their partnership, a move clearly aimed at Klein, who had been hired over McCartney’s objections.

1971 – The Dave Clark Five released ‘Southern Man’ / ‘If You Wanna See Me Cry’ in the U.S.

1972 – Chuck Berry recorded ‘My Ding-A-Ling’ (his only #1 hit) during the Lanchester Arts Festival at the Locarno Ballroom in Coventry, England.

1986 – Mike & The Mechanics released ‘All I Need Is A Miracle’.

1994 – John ‘Buddy’ Bailey (The Clovers – ‘Love Potion #9’) died of cancer.

2003 – Record producer Phil Spector was arrested for the fatal shooting of actress Lana Clarkson in his Alhambra, California home. Spector was later convicted.

2009 – Tom Brumley (steel guitarist with Buck Owens – ‘Act Naturally’ and ‘I’ve Got A Tiger By The Tail’ and later with Rick Nelson – ‘Garden Party’) died of a heart attack.

Compiled by Ray Lemire ©2016 RayLemire.com. All Rights Reserved.