FLASHBACK POP MUSIC HISTORY: MARCH 26

From the MCRFB music calendar:

Events on this date: MARCH 26

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

1962: Elvis Presley begins filming his 11th motion picture, titled Girls! Girls! Girls!

Barbra Streisand’s Columbia Records 1964 hit, “People.”

1963: Funny Girl, opens on Broadway today, starring Barbra Streisand. It features the hits, “Don’t Rain On My Parade” and the song that would become her signature-song in popularity, “People.”

1964: Tonight on the CBS-TV’s I’ve Got A Secret panel show as guest, is former Beatles drummer Pete Best, whose “secret” is almost guessed immediately. When show-host Gary Moore asks Best why he left the group (Best was fired), he replied, “I thought I’d like to start a group of my own.”

1965: The Walker Brothers make their first UK television appearance, performing on ITV’s Ready Steady Go!

1969: Pat Boone guest-stars as himself on tonight’s Beverly Hillbillies episode, titled, Collard Greens An’ Fatback on the CBS Televison Network.

Peter, Paul and Mary. Formed in 1961, they disbanded in 1970. Mary Travers died of cancer at 72, in 2009.

1970: Just days after winning a Grammy for Best Recording For Children with their album Peter, Paul, And Mommy, Peter, Paul and Mary are scandalously rocked when group leader Peter Yarrow is arrested in Washington D.C., for allegedly “taking immoral liberties” with a minor, a fourteen-year-old girl. He would serve three months and would later be given clemency by President Jimmy Carter.

1975: In London, the rock musical Tommy, based on the Who album bearing the same title name, makes it premier film debut today. Directed by Ken Russell, Who lead-singer Roger Daltry is cast in the title role, and co-starring are American actors Jack Nicholson and Ann Margaret. Guest stars includes Tina Turner and Elton John.

1976: Keith Richards and model-girlfriend Anita Pallenberg becomes the proud parents of a son, Tara. Sadly, he would die ten weeks later of pneumonia.

1976: Riding near the scene of a multi-car pileup in Memphis, Elvis Presley jumps out of his limo, displays his honorary Captain’s police badge given to him by the city, and attempts to help the victims until police and paramedics arrive.

1980: Pink Floyd’s landmark 1973 LP Dark Side Of The Moon surpasses Carole King’s Tapestry as the album with the longest consecutive stay on the Billboard 200 album chart. It would remain on the chart until 1988.

1985: After Stevie Wonder’s Oscar acceptance speech the previous night, at which he dedicated his Best Song Award to Nelson Mandela, South Africa bans all Stevie Wonder records from playing on it’s nation’s airwaves in response (oops).

Deaths: Little Willie John (of “Fever” fame) 1968; Duster Bennett (British blues singer; member John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers) 1976; Jon-Jon Paulos (The Buckinghams) 1980; Jan Berry (of Jan and Dean); 2004.


And that’s a few of the events which took place in pop music history, on this day….



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FOUR TOPS’ ’67 CLUB SCENE . . . SEPTEMBER 23, 1967

From the MCRFB news archive: 1967

Room At The Top, Motown’s Own Four Tops Customizing Song Selections For Nightclub Acts

 

 

 


 

Hollywood — The Four Tops, who closed their first booking at the Cocoanut Grove with a live LP recording, have learned to custom-tailor their repertoire to suit the level of the room audience. Four years ago the Detroit quartet was still hustling around the “chitlin’ circuit.”

The Four Tops.

Today, the male vocalists are a top Motown act and a new find for such rooms as the Grove and New York’s Copa, Washington D.C.’s Shoreham, Cherry Hill, New Jersey’s Latin Casino, and Hollywood, Miami’s own Diplomat — all forthcoming bookings.

On recordings, the quartet sings the pop love songs of Eddie Holland-Brian Holland and Lamont Dozier. On stage, they dip into the Broadway and film repertoire for adult-oriented tunes which fit the Tops’ pleasant harmonies.

“We try to keep the composer’s beauty in the material,” explains Renaldo Benson, who along with Levi Stubbs, Jr., Lawrence Payton, and Abdul (Duke) Fakir formed the group thirteen-years ago.

During their Grove engagement the quartet included an Academy Award medley as its customizing salute to the film-oriented audience. Wade Marcus, the group’s musical director, along with Payton produced the live LP, for which Motown’s chief engineer was flown here for the special event.

The Four Tops circa 1966.

Benson, the “philosopher” in the group, feels that as a result of the Grove appearance, the group sought a wider musical scope in selections of other songs they were to perform. “For the last four years we’ve been playing rock concerts where sounds are really not that important. Here, we have to truly work to stimulate the audience.” Benson says they never “jive the audience” because they’ve been through the scuffling bit and appreciate the opportunity to work in the big time.

The Tops’ troupe numbers nine (including rhythm section) which involves a healthy weekly pay, but they are earning substantially more than their “chitlin’ circuits” salaries of from $1,000 to $1,500.

Two months ago the artists worked the Whisky A Go-Go on the Sunset Strip, where their repertoire was more tuned to their Motown singles hits. Their booking into the downtown prestige room here in Los Angeles was so soon after the Whiskey exposure, that it was a surprising bit of scheduling for the Tops.

 

When they play for colleges, the students ask for the single hits. This fall the quartet is planning a new act for the Ivy circuit, which also considerably pays better than the “chitlin'” clubs they frequented just five-years earlier.

The Tops now plan to begin producing records, which is a characteristic of the Motown operation where executives are artists, and where writers are the artists as well. END

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(Information and news source: Billboard; September 23, 1967)



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DARIN DOES ‘ROOSTERTAIL’ . . . SEPTEMBER 23, 1967

From the MCRFB NEWS archive: 1967

Darin Darling of Detroit in Nightclub Bow

 

 

 


 

DETROIT — Bobby Darin opened at the Roostertail on Thursday, September 21, with an act that had the club audience shouting for more with a standing ovation.

Bobby Darin.

Everything about Darin’s act is contemporary. Even when he does a standard like “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” it has a big beat band arrangement. He isn’t bogged down by nostalgia but knows exactly what’s happening today with the music scene.

Darin put his heart into “Drown In My Own Tears,” and also his version of “The Work Song,” which added tremendous emotional impact, while mesmerizing the Detroit audience by his presence on stage.

Darin’s act paced beautifully as he wrapped up the evening playing on the piano, electrifying the crowd with a swinging version of “What’d I Say.” END

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A MCRFB Note: Lorraine Alterman also was the teen-editor for the Detroit Free Press’ ‘Teen Beat’ column which appeared in print in the daily newspaper then, every Friday, in 1966.

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(Information and news source: Billboard; September 23, 1967)



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FLASHBACK POP MUSIC HISTORY: MARCH 25

From the MCRFB music calendar:

Events on this date: MARCH 25

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

1958: reporting to Ft. Chafee, Arkansas by bus, Elvis Presley has his famous hair shorn off by an Army barber. For the occasion, the media was there with cameras in hand.

Elvis performing on stage at the Bloch Arena, at Pearl Harbor, while serving in the Army in 1961.

1961: Elvis Presley holds an afternoon press conference and, in the evening, performs the USS Arizona concert at Pearl Harbor’s Bloch Arena. The Presley performance raised $62,000 for the memorial dedicated to the 1,177 servicemen killed when the ship went down on December 7, 1941. It was to be his last concert appearance for eight years.

1965: After Eric Clapton quit the band, London session guitarist Jeff Beck joins the Yardbirds after being recommended by the group’s first choice, another session man named Jimmy Page.

1967: The Who plays their first American show at New York’s RKO Radio Theater.

1967: Cream arrive in the U.S. to begin their first North American tour.

1968: Roy Orbison marries his second wife, Barbara Wellhonen, in Nashville, Tennessee. They would remain married until Orbison’s death twenty-years later.

Lennon and Ono’s famous four-day bed-in at the Amsterdam Hilton in 1969.

1969: A just-married John Lennon and Yoko Ono decide to use the press to promote an end to the Vietnam war, and all wars in general, during their honeymoon. The duo stay, fully clothed,  in their bed at the Amsterdam Hilton for the next four days, talking about peace to a cadre of largely skeptical reporters from around the world.

1971: New York radio station WNBC becomes the first to ban Brewer’s and Shipley’s hit “One Toke Over The Line” due to alleged marijuana references.

1976: Jackson Browne’s wife, Phyllis Major, commits suicide with sleeping pills just months after their marriage.

Michael Jackson at Motown 25 in 1983.

1983: Motown tapes an all-star concert at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium in Pasadena, California in order to celebrate Motown’s 25th year anniversary. Michael Jackson steals the show with his solo performance of his new single, Billie Jean, complete with moonwalk. That performance event alone catapults Jackson from superstar to megastar status worldwide overnight.

1985: Stevie Wonder wins his first Oscar for his theme to the film The Women In Red, entitled, “I Just Called To Say I Love You.”  Sixteen-years later to the day, Bob Dylan will win his first Oscar ever for his “Wonder Boys” song, “Things Have Changed.”

Chuck Berry performing during his worldwide 1989 tour; stops would include Detroit, Oct. 18 at the Fox.

1989: The recording studio at Chuck Berry’s ranch at Wentzville, Missouri is destroyed by a fire, taking with it 13 of Berry’s unreleased songs.

Deaths: On this date, Bill Kerney (The Inkspots fame) 1978; Joe Schermie (Three Dog Night fame) 2001; Buck Owens (Country singer) 2008; Dan Seals (England Dan and John Ford Coley fame) 2009.

 

 

 


And that’s just a few of the events which took place in pop music history, on this day….



 

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