ROCK & ROLL HISTORY

Junior Parker (blues singer/songwriter – ‘Mystery Train’) was born in 1932.

The late Robert Jance Garfat (bass guitar with Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show – ‘Cover Of The Rolling Stone’) was born in 1944.
Rock Factoid: Garfat played with Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show from 1971 to 1985. He died on November 6, 2006, in a motorcycle accident.

Jennifer Warnes (‘Right Time Of The Night’ as a solo artist and ‘Up Where We Belong’ with Joe Cocker) is 68.

Mike Pender (born Michael John Prendergast – guitarist with The Searchers –‘Needles And Pins’) is 73.
Rock Factoid: Pender – who co-founded The Searchers in 1959 and left in 1985 – sang the main lead vocal on ‘Needles And Pins’m ‘When You Walk in the Room’ and ‘Don’t Throw Your Love Away’, all of them featuring drummer Chris Curtis on high harmony vocal.
Rock Factoid #2: According to Pender, the name of the band was his idea. “The band was founded by myself and John McNally. I was an ardent western movies fan and I dragged John along with me to see The Searchers starring John Wayne. I take the credit for choosing the name ‘The Searchers.'”
McNally agrees that he and Pender started the band but he credits ‘Big Ron’ Woodbridge, the bands first lead singer, with naming the group. The genesis – 56 years later – remains unresolved.

1956 – Elvis Presley hit the Billboard charts for the first time when ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ entered the Billboard pop chart at #68, and the Country and Western chart at #9.

1957 – Chicago’s Cardinal Samuel Stritch banned all rock & roll and rhythm & blues music from Catholic-run schools, saying that “its rhythms encourage young people to behave in a hedonistic manner.”
Rock Factoid: It wasn’t the first time Cardinal Stritch had banned music. In October 1955, he expressly forbade the playing of the Wagner and Mendelsson wedding marches, eight versions of ‘Ave Maria’, and secular titles such as ‘I Love You Truly’, ‘Because’, and ‘O Promise Me’ in all Catholic churches of the Chicago archdiocese.
He deemed the music “unsuitable because they fail to meet the primary requisite of sanctity. No deviation can or will be permitted.”

1960 – Along with 79 other soldiers, Elvis Presley arrived at McGuire Air Force Base at Fort Dix, New Jersey. Following a press conference, a party was held, attended by manager “Colonel” Tom Parker, and Nancy Sinatra, whom Elvis had met while at a USO show.

1961 – The Supremes’ first single (‘I Want A Guy’) was released and flopped.
Rock Factoid: At the time, the group had four members; Diana Ross (who was using the name Diane), Mary Wilson, Florence Ballard and Barbara Martin. The latter left the group in early 1962.

1964 – Elvis Presley recorded ‘Big Love, Big Heartache’, ‘Wheels On My Heels’, ‘Carny Town’, ‘There’s A Brand New Day On The Horizon’ and ‘Roustabout’.
Rock Factoid: All the songs were part of the ‘Roustabout’ soundtrack for the film of the same name. When the soundtrack album was released in October 1964, it reached #1 on the Billboard Pop Album Chart. It would prove to be Presley’s final soundtrack to reach #1 and his last #1 album until 1973’s ‘Aloha From Hawaii: Via Satellite’.

1966 – Stephen Stills, Neil Young, Richie Furay, Dewey Martin and Bruce Palmer formed Buffalo Springfield.

1967 – The Jeff Beck Group, featuring Rod Stewart on vocals, Ron Wood on bass and Aynsley Dunbar on drums, kicked off their first tour at the Astoria in London on a package tour with Roy Orbison and The Small Faces. After receiving several poor notices, Beck’s group was asked to leave the tour.

1967 – The Dave Clark Five released ‘You Got What It Takes’ / ‘Sitting Here Baby’ in England.
Rock Factoid: Their cover version of Marv Johnson’s 1959 single outperformed Johnson (who reached #10 in the U.S.) by hitting #28 in England and #7 in the U.S. (when it was released in April 1967).

1967 – Eric Burdon & The Animals refused to perform a scheduled concert in Ottawa after a promoter refused to pay them in advance. The audience of 3,000 rioted and caused damages of $5,000.

1967 – The Beatles were in the recording studio (Studio Two, EMI Studios, London) working on the song ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’
Rock Factoid: Four French horn players (James Buck, Neil Sanders, Tony Randall, and John Burden) were brought in to record overdubs. Unbeknownst to them, John Lennon, as he had done with session musicians brought in to play on ‘Penny Lane’, secretly recorded the musicians’ conversations for his personal tape archive (which he was compiling for use in his experimental works).

1970 – Bob Dylan recorded ‘In Search Of Little Sadie’, ‘Belle Isle’, ‘It Hurts Me Too’, ‘The Boxer’ and ‘Woogie Boogie’.

1971 – The South African Broadcasting Corporation lifted its ban on Beatles music.
Rock Factoid: The ban had been in effect since August 8, 1966, in response to John Lennon’s “Beatles bigger than Jesus” controversy.
Rock Factoid #2: The lifting of the ban did not extend to John Lennon’s compositions, vocals, or solo work, which remained off limits.
Rock Factoid #3: When the Lennon interview with Maureen Cleave was published in the London Evening Standard newspaper on March 4, 1966, Lennon was quoted as saying, “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first – rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.”
Although the remarks were barely noticed in the UK, they were featured in a July 29, 1966 issue of a U.S. teen magazine called Datebook, which republished the Jesus quote out of its original context.
The magazine, until then a minor player in the teen market, unexpectedly sold around a million copies. American Christian fundamentalists were outraged and angry hordes, concentrated in the southern states, organized bonfires of Beatles records and memorabilia.
Rock Factoid #4: In that same Datebook issue, an interview with Paul McCartney (also by Cleave) was also featured, and surprisingly, his incendiary comments went virtually unnoticed.
“There they were in America, all getting house-trained for adulthood with their indisputable principle of life: short hair equals men, long hair equals women. Well, we got rid of that small convention for them. And it’s a lousy country where anyone who is black is made to seem a dirty n*gger. There is a statue of a good Negro doffing his hat and being polite in the gutter. We look at things a lot better (in England).”

1973 – At the 15th Grammy Awards, George Harrison and Friends won Album of The Year for ‘The Concert For Bangladesh’.
Rock Factoid: Grammys for Album of The Year were awarded to Harrison, who organized the project, and to the concert’s featured artists, including Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Billy Preston, Leon Russell, Ravi Shankar, Ringo Starr, and Klaus Voormann, among others.
Rock Factoid #2: In an early display of feminism, Helen Reddy accepted the award for Best Pop Performance, Female (‘I Am Woman’) by thanking God “because She makes everything possible.”
Rock Factoid #3: Record of The Year: ‘First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ by Roberta Flack.
Rock Factoid #4: Song of The Year: Ewan MacColl for ‘First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’.
Rock Factoid #5: Best New Artist: America
All awards were for recordings released the previous year.

1974 – Johnny Cash guest starred as less than righteous gospel singer “Tommy Brown” in an episode (Swan Song) of NBC’s Columbo.

1977 – After some prodding by his father, Vernon, Elvis Presley signed his will, leaving control of everything to his father.

1981 – The acclaimed documentary This Is Elvis premiered in Memphis, featuring former Elvis impersonator Ral Donner doing a voiceover narration as The King. The film opened in theaters nationwide one month later.

1982 – The (kind of) reunited Mamas and Papas, featuring John Phillips, Denny Doherty, MacKenzie Phillips (John’s daughter, taking the place of John’s ex-wife Michelle Phillips) and Spanky and Our Gang leader Elaine “Spanky” MacFarlane replacing the deceased “Mama” Cass Elliott, made their concert debut.

1983 – A Hells Angels member testified to the U.S. Senate that the California chapter “has had a murder contract out for Mick Jagger since 1969 and had attempted to kill him twice.”
Rock Factoid: The Rolling Stones singer was seen as having blamed the gang for the death of concertgoer Meredith Hunter at Altamont.
“There’s always been a contract on the band,” the witness stated, noting “two attempts to kill them that I know about. They will some day. They swear they will do it.”

1986 – Metallica released the ‘Master Of Puppets’ album.

1990 – Ten years after his infamous Japanese drug bust had resulted in the former Beatle being deported, Paul McCartney performed in Japan at the Tokyo Dome.

1993 – Carlos Montoya (world renowned flamenco guitarist – ‘Zambra’) died at 89 of natural causes.

1995 – R.E.M. drummer Bill Berry underwent successful brain surgery. Berry had collapsed due to a brain aneurysm during a concert in Switzerland.

2002 – Harlan Howard (songwriter) died at 74 of natural causes.
Rock Factoid: Howard wrote ‘Heartaches By The Number’ (Guy Mitchell), ‘I Fall To Pieces’ (Patsy Cline), ‘I’ve Got A Tiger By The Tail’ (Buck Owens), ‘Busted’ (Ray Charles), ‘Everglades’ (Kingston Trio) and hundreds more.

2006 – Gary Glitter (‘Rock & Roll, Pt. 2’) was sentenced to three years in a Vietnamese prison after being found guilty of molesting two 11-year-old girls.
Rock Factoid: Glitter was released from Thu Duc prison in August 2008 and put on a plane to London via Bangkok. At Bangkok he claimed that he had a heart condition, and refused to board the flight to London despite the efforts of British police sent to escort him, although they had no jurisdiction to take action. He was refused entry to Thailand and threatened with deportation to the UK. At least 19 countries, including Cuba, Cambodia, and the Philippines, announced that they would refuse to admit Glitter, and on August 21, the Thai authorities stated that he had agreed to return to the UK.
Wait, it gets worse.
Rock Factoid #2: In January 2015, Glitter appeared at Southwark Crown Court in London, accused of seven counts of indecent assault, one count of attempted rape, and two other sexual offenses, against three girls (between 12-14 years old), between 1975 and 1980.
Glitter was convicted on February 5 and sentenced to 16 years in prison on February 27.

2008 – Norman ‘Hurricane’ Smith (recording engineer for The Beatles, producer for Pink Floyd, and a solo performer – ‘Oh Babe, What Would You Say’) died at 85 of cancer.
Rock Factoid: Smith, who had lied to EMI about his age when he applied to become an apprentice engineer at the Abbey Road studios – 28 was their limit and he was 35 – was the engineer on all of the recordings by the Beatles up until 1965. The last Beatles album he engineered was ‘Rubber Soul’.
Rock Factoid #2: When Beatles’ producer George Martin left EMI to work as an independent producer, Smith became the head of Parlophone A&R and signed Pink Floyd to the label. He produced that group’s first four albums.
Rock Factoid #3: In 1968 Smith produced the Pretty Things’ early – and sadly underrated – “rock concept album” ‘S.F. Sorrow’
Rock Factoid #4: Using the recording artist pseudonym of “Hurricane Smith”, his first single ‘Don’t Let It Die’, reached #2 in the UK charts in 1971. It was followed by ‘Oh Babe, What Would You Say’, a top five hit on both sides of the Atlantic.

2012 – Ronnie Montrose (guitarist with Van Morrison – ‘Tupelo Honey’, Edgar Winter Group – ‘Frankenstein’ and Montrose – ‘Bad Motor Scooter’) died at the age of 64 by suicide.
Rock Factoid: During a 2009 tour, Montrose revealed that he had fought prostate cancer for the previous two years but was healthy once again. However, the guitarist, who was immensely proud of being a “survivor,” simply couldn’t vanquish the clinical depression that plagued him since he was a child. A report by the San Mateo County Coroner’s Office confirmed Montrose died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
“Ronnie had a very difficult childhood, which caused him to have extremely deep and damaging feelings of inadequacy,” said his wife Leighsa. “This is why he always drove himself so hard. He never thought he was good enough and the expectations he put upon himself were tremendous. Now I see that perhaps he didn’t want to carry these burdens for very much longer.”

2013 – Bobby Rogers (The Miracles – ‘Tears Of A Clown’ and co-writer of ‘The Way You Do the Things You Do’, ‘Going To A Go-Go’, ‘First I Look At The Purse’) died at 73 of complications from diabetes.
Rock Factoid: In 1987, Smokey Robinson was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist. However, in a decision that sparked debate and controversy, the other original members of the Miracles, including Bobby Rogers, were not included in the induction.
Rock Factoid #2: Finally on February 9, 2012, it was announced that Bobby Rogers would be inducted with the rest of the Miracles into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on April 14, 2012. After a 26-year wait, Bobby was automatically and retroactively inducted with the rest of the original Miracles, Marv Taplin, Pete Moor, Claudette Robinson, and Ronnie White.
Rock Factoid #3: The induction was handled by a Special Committee designated by The Rock Hall in 2012, that inducted the Miracles, and five other deserving pioneering groups – The Crickets (Buddy Holly), The Comets (Bill Haley), The Midnighters (Hank Ballard), The Famous Flames (James Brown), and The Blue Caps (Gene Vincent) – that were overlooked when their lead singers were inducted into the Rock Hall many years ago.

Compiled by Ray Lemire ©2015 RayLemire.com. All Rights Reserved.
You may not, under any circumstances, reproduce, record, publish, republish, post, transmit, publicly display, publicly exhibit or distribute any articles or photographs on RayLemire.com without obtaining the express written consent of the Operator.