It happened this week

This is the week that was in matters musical …

1957, RCA Records signs Harry Belafonte for the unprecedented sum of $1 million … dubbed the “King of Calypso,” the singer is from The Bronx …

1960, Jeannie Black charts with her single “He’ll Have to Stay” … it’s an answer song in the form of a retort to Jim Reeves’ hit “He’ll Have to Go” … in a strange recording-history footnote, Cathy Jean & the Roomates cut the single “Please Love Me Forever” which will rise to number 12 on the pop chart … but the lead singer and her backup group will remain strangers … the Roomates arrive to do their vocal backing tracking track after Cathy’s left the studio …

1961, Tony Orlando makes his TV debut on American Bandstand singing his hit “Halfway to Paradise” … he fails to notice that his fly is down …

1964, Keith Moon takes the bandstand for the first time with The Detours who will later rename themselves The Who … 15 years later to the day, Kenney Jones of Small Faces takes over The Who’s drum throne following Moon’s death … The Beatles’ “Can’t Buy Me Love” enjoys its fifth and final week at the top of the pop chart … Louis Armstrong’s “Hello Dolly” will knock it out of that spot a week later …

1966, The Beatles record “Eleanor Rigby,” which Paul McCartney originally titles “Miss Daisy Hawkins” … not happy with the title, and wanting something more realistic, McCartney comes up with Eleanor after he sees a clothing store named Rigby in Bristol, England …

1967, Elvis Presley marries Priscilla Beaulieu …

1968, the musical Hair opens on Broadway at the Biltmore Theater in New York, where it stays for 1,873 performances … original cast members include Melba Moore and Diane Keaton …

1974, The Carpenters perform at President Nixon’s request at a White House dinner for West German Chancellor Willy Brandt …

1976, customs officers at the Polish-Russian border confiscate a collection of Nazi memorabilia from David Bowie … Bowie claims that the material is being used for research on a movie project about Nazi propaganda leader, Joseph Paul Goebbels … Bruce Springsteen is thrown out of Graceland after sneaking in to see Elvis …

1981, Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles effort has its “Wings” clipped after it is announced that Denny Laine has left Wings, which is then disbanded … ex-Beatle Ringo Starr marries actress Barbara Bach, best known as the James Bond girl from The Spy Who Loved Me …

1982, Rod Stewart is robbed on Hollywood Boulevard standing next to his $50,000 Porsche … the car is untouched …

1984, Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac files for bankruptcy …

1992, Bonnie Raitt receives an honorary Doctor of Music degree from the Berklee College of Music …

1993, Prince announces that he will no longer make records … six weeks later he will change his name to an unpronounceable glyph that turns out to be a modified version of the ancient symbol for soapstone used in alchemy …

1994, former Jefferson Airplane/Starship singer Grace Slick enters a guilty plea to the charge of menacing police officers with a shotgun … the singer explains that she was under stress due to the recent loss of her Mill Valley, California, home in a fire, along with memorabilia that she alleges was stolen by Corte Madera firefighters …

1997, beginning their PopMart tour in Nevada to promote the brand new Pop album and its single, “Staring at the Sun,” U2 gets a bit of a slap in the face … the companion TV special, U2: A Year in Pop, aired in the U.S. just days into the tour, becomes the lowest-rated show in prime-time television history that is not related to politics … it appears that Pop wasn’t so popular …

1999, Irish singer and hellraiser Sinead O’Connor becomes the first female priest in the Latin Tridentine Church, a breakaway segment of the Roman Catholic church … her priestly name will be Mother Bernadette Mary …

2000, Lars Ulrich of Metallica goes to Napster headquarters in San Mateo, California, and presents a list of 300,000 downloaders he claims are using the software to illegally share the group’s music … by mid-2001, Napster will close down as a file-sharing site … Eric Clapton reunites with keyboard player Bobby Whitlock of Derek and the Dominos for a BBC appearance … it’s the first time the two have worked together in 29 years …

2004, “Billy Joel in the house” takes on new meaning when he plows into a Long Island house while on a pizza run … this is the third wreck in three years for the embarrassed piano man who sends the homeowner a note of apology and flowers …

2005, 37 years after Cream played its farewell concert, the revived ’60s supergroup performs the first of four sold-out concerts … the two-hour set encompasses all of Cream’s biggest hits including: “Sunshine of Your Love,” “Spoonful,” and “White Room” … Matchbox Twenty frontman Rob Thomas’ first solo album becomes the first album available exclusively as a dual-sided audio-video disc to debut at No. 1 … Coldplay becomes the first British band since the Beatles to score a single debut in the U.S. Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart …

2006, CNN.com publishes the results of a reader’s poll naming the worst songs of all time … counting down from five to one, the worst songs of all time are: 5. “Seasons in the Sun,” (Terry Jacks), 4. “I’ve Never Been to Me,” (Charlene), 3. “You Light Up My Life,” (Debby Boone), 2. “Muskrat Love,” (The Captain and Tennille), and the No. 1 worst song of all time as voted on by CNN.com users is “(You’re) Having My Baby” by Paul Anka … The Dave Matthews Band pledges a $1.5 million challenge grant to help build the New Orleans Habitat Musicians’ Village, a part of the Gulf Coast’s recovery efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina … record labels pressure Apple’s iTunes to adopt a variable-pricing scheme for single downloads … the labels are frustrated by their original deal with Apple calling for a flat 99-cents charge per song … they want to charge more for current hits and less for back-catalog tunes … Apple resists the pressure … Jersey Boys, a Broadway musical that’s based on Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons is doing great business … other recent rock and pop-based shows about John Lennon, The Beach Boys, and Elvis have not been as nearly well received, closing shop after short runs in the face of a lot of empty seats … in a feverish two-week creative process, Neil Young creates the album Living with War then initially posts it as a free stream online … the album includes the bluntly-titled anti-Bush song, “Let’s Impeach the President” …

And that was the week that was.

Arrivals:

April 26: Ma Rainey, “The Mother of the Blues,” born Gertrude Melissa Nix Pridgett (1886), Johnny Shines, blues guitarist who worked with Robert Johnson (1915), Bobby Rydell, born Robert Ridarelli (1942)

April 27: countdown DJ Casey Kasem (1932), Dr. Demento favorite, Jimmy Cross (1939), Main Ingredient’s Cuba Gooding Sr. (1944), Rita Coolidge (1944), Badfinger’s Pete Ham (1947), soul songstress Ann Peebles (1947), Kate Pierson of The B-52’s (1947), Ace Frehley (1951), Sheena Easton (1959), Marco Pirroni of Siouxsie and the Banshees (1959)

April 28: John Walters of Dr. Hook (1945), Steve Gilpin, lead singer of techno band Mi-Sex (1950), Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth (1953), Roland Gift of Fine Young Cannibals (1961), Too Short (1966), Daisy Berkowitz of Marilyn Manson (1968)

April 29: Duke Ellington (1899), Carl Gardner of The Coasters (1928), percussionist and bandleader Ray Barretto (1929), Lonnie Donegan, the “king of skiffle” (1931), Klaus Voorman (1942), Duane Allen of the Oak Ridge Boys (1943), Tammi Terrell (1945), Soft Machine’s Hugh Hopper (1945), Tommy James (1947), John Cascella, keyboard and accordion player with John Mellencamp (1947), Francis Rossi of Status Quo (1949), Mark Kendall of Great White (1958), Carnie Wilson of Wilson Phillips (1968), Master P (1970), Mike Hogan of The Cranberries (1973)

April 30: jazz bassist Percy Heath (1923), country singer Johnny Horton (1929), Willie Nelson (1933), Jerry Lordan, solo act and songwriter who wrote the instrumental, “Apache” (1934), Bobby Vee (1943), Chris “Choc” Dalyrimple of Soul For Real (1971), J.R. Richards of Dishwalla (1972), Jeff Timmons of 98 Degrees (1973)

May 1: Delta blues singer Charlie Patton (1891), blues singer Big Maybelle, born Mabel Louise Smith (1924), Harry Belafonte (1927), Sonny James (1929), blues harp player Little Walter, born Marion Walter Jacobs (1930), Titus Turner (1933), jazz singer and pianist Shirley Horn (1934), Judy Collins (1939), Mimi Fariña (1945), Ray Parker Jr. (1954), Johnny Colt of the Black Crowes (1966), Tim McGraw (1967), D’Arcy Wretsky-Brown of Smashing Pumpkins (1968), Nick Traina, member of punk bands Link 80 and Knowledge (1978)

May 2: Link Wray, born Frederick Lincoln Wray, progenitor of surf music and the power chord (1929), jazz-blues organist Richard “Groove” Holmes (1931), Engelbert Humperdinck, born Arnold George Dorsey (1936), Hilton Valentine of The Animals (1943), Goldy McJohn, born John Goadsby, of Steppenwolf (1945), Lesley Gore (1946), Larry Gatlin (1948), Lou Gramm of Foreigner (1950), Prescott Niles of The Knack (1954), Joe Callis of Human League (1955)

Departures:

April 26: Daniel McKenna, former guitarist in Toby Beau (2006), Ernest “Snuffy” Stewart of KC and the Sunshine Band (1997)

April 27: Al Hirt (1999), Fabulous Thunderbirds bassist Keith Ferguson (1997), soul singer Z.Z. Hill, born Arzel Hill (1984), Phil King of Blue Öyster Cult (1972)

April 28: Percy Heath, jazz bassist (2005), John Steele, bass singer with The (Five) Willows (1997), B.W. Stevenson, born Louis Charles Stevenson, among the first country rockers (1988), T. Rex bass player Steve Currie (1981), Tommy Caldwell, bassist for the Marshall Tucker Band (1980), Charlie Patton, pioneering Delta blues singer (1934)

April 29: Mick Ronson, guitarist who worked with David Bowie, Elton John, and Lou Reed (1993), Floyd Butler, co-leader of the pop outfit Friends of Distinction (1990), blues great J.B. Lenoir (1967), blues pianist Leroy Carr (1935)

April 30: Nazareth drummer Darrell Sweet (1999), Body Count drummer Beatmaster V, born Victor Ray Wilson (1996), blues legend Muddy Waters, born McKinley Morganfield, influenced the Rolling Stones and said of Mick Jagger, “He took my music but he gave me my name” (1983), rock writer Lester Bangs (1982), leftist singer-songwriter Richard Fariña (1966)

May 1: Johnny Pocisk, sax player with Johnny and the Hurricanes (2006), Sergio Franchi (1990), Spike Jones (1965)

May 2: jazz drummer Billy Higgins (2001), former X-Japan lead guitarist Hide, born Hideto Matsumoto (1998)

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