Rock 'n' Roll History for
January 20


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1958 - ClassicBands.com

January 20
The management of St. Louis radio station KWK had all Rock 'n' Roll music removed from its play list. The disc jockeys gave every Rock 'n' Roll record in the station library a "farewell spin" before smashing it to pieces. The station manager, Robert T. Convey felt that Rock 'n' Roll had dominated the airwaves long enough and called the action "a simple weeding out of undesirable music."

January 20
Junior Records releases "Get A Job" by The Silhouettes. The song will climb to #1 in the US, selling over a million copies in the process. It is now considered to be a Rock and Roll classic, although the Philadelphia quartet who sang it never had another Top 40 hit.

January 20
Rick Nelson started a two-week run at #1 on the Billboard album chart with "Ricky", which featured his #3 hit single "Be-Bop Baby".

January 20
Capitol Records issues the original cast recording of "The Music Man", which will occupy the #1 spot on the Billboard album chart for twelve weeks and remain in the Top 200 for a total of 245 weeks.

1964 - ClassicBands.com

January 20
Capitol Records releases "Meet The Beatles!" in America in both stereo and mono formats. The album would enter the Billboard chart at #92 for the week ending February 1st, 1964. Two weeks later, it peaked at #1, where it remained for eleven consecutive weeks. Featuring "I Want To Hold Your Hand", "I Saw Her Standing There" and "All My Loving", the LP would be certified Gold by the RIAA on February 3rd, 1964, and 5X Platinum on December 26th, 1991.

1965 - ClassicBands.com

January 20
Alan Freed, who many credit with first associating the term "Rock and Roll" to music, died at the age of 43. Freed was a Cleveland disc jockey who started promoting dances that featured the top artists of the day, including, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino and Jerry Lee Lewis. After moving to New York and appearing in some teen movies, he was caught up in the payola scandal of 1959 for accepting money for playing certain records on his radio show. Before his death, he was virtually broke and fighting charges of tax evasion. It was a sad ending for one of Rock and Roll's most important pioneers.

January 20
The Rolling Stones and The Kinks make their first appearance on ABC-TV's Shindig! Also appearing were The Dave Clark Five, Petula Clark, Bobby Vee, Bobby Sherman and Gerry And The Pacemakers.

January 20
Instrumental tracks for The Byrds' "Mr. Tambourine Man" were recorded at Columbia Studios in Hollywood. The song was produced by Doris Day's son Terry Melcher, who replaced the rest of the group with session musicians to back Jim McGuinn and his twelve-string Rickenbacker guitar. The members of The Wrecking Crew appearing on the record were Larry Knechtel on bass, Hal Blaine on drums, Bill Pitman and Jerry Cole on guitar and Leon Russell on electric piano. The vocals with McGuinn, David Crosby and Gene Clark were recorded at a separate session.

1967 - ClassicBands.com

January 20
Arthur Conley records "Sweet Soul Music", a song that he and Otis Redding wrote. The record will be awarded a Gold disc for sales of one million copies and reach #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and the R&B chart. It was also a hit in the UK where it peaked at #7.

1968 - ClassicBands.com

January 20
John Fred's "Judy In Disguise (With Glasses"), a song title inspired by the Beatles' "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds", knocked the Fab Four's "Hello Goodbye" out of Billboard's top spot. It reached #3 in the UK.

1969 - ClassicBands.com

January 20
Elvis Presley records "In The Ghetto" at American Sound Studio in Memphis, Tennessee. Written by Mac Davis, the song would become Presley's first Top 10 hit in the United States in four years, peaking at #3. It was his first UK Top 10 hit in three years when it rose to #2.

1970 - ClassicBands.com

January 20
Diana Ross surprises many when she marries public relations executive, Robert Silberstein. They would divorce in 1976.

1973 - ClassicBands.com

January 20
Jerry Lee Lewis was booked to play the Grand Ole Opry on the condition that he would stick to Country and Western tunes only. Jerry did just that for a while, but eventually broke into his old Rock hits from the '50s, while swearing up a storm. He proclaimed, "I am the rock and rollin', country and western, rhythm and blues singin' motherf***er."

1975 - ClassicBands.com

January 20
Bob Dylan releases his fifteenth studio album, "Blood On The Tracks". Although reviews were mixed, the LP would reach #1 on the Billboard 200 and #4 on the UK Albums Chart. The single "Tangled Up in Blue" peaked at #31 on the Billboard Hot 100.

1982 - ClassicBands.com

January 20
During a concert at Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines, Iowa, Ozzy Osbourne bit the head off of what he thought was a plastic bat that had been thrown onstage. The bat turned out to be real and Ozzy was rushed to the Broadlawns Medical Center after the show to receive rabies shots. The singer would later tell the host of the TV show Night Flight, "The taste of bats is very salty. It tastes of salt." After being asked if it tasted like anything else, Ozzy replied, "Well, yes, but I can't really say that on the air, can I?"

1988 - ClassicBands.com

January 20
The Beach Boys, Berry Gordy, Jr., The Beatles, The Drifters, Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Les Paul, Leadbelly and The Supremes are inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame during ceremonies at New York's Waldorf Astoria. During the Beach Boys acceptance speech, vocalist Mike Love insulted just about everybody in the music business, including Paul McCartney, Diana Ross, Bruce Springsteen and Mick Jagger. In later years, Love would sheepishly explain, "I hadn't meditated that morning..."

1998 - ClassicBands.com

January 20
Bob McBride, the lead singer for Lighthouse on their 1971, Billboard #24 hit, "One Fine Morning", died of heart failure at age 51.

1999 - ClassicBands.com

January 20
Bill Albaugh, drummer for The Lemon Pipers on their 1967 US #1 single "Green Tambourine", passed away at the age of 53.

2012 - ClassicBands.com

January 20
Etta James, most often remembered for her signature song, "At Last", which reached number 2 on the Billboard R&B chart and number 47 on the Hot 100, died from complications of leukemia at the age of 73. She also placed nine other songs in the American Top 40, won three Grammy Awards, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.

2015 - ClassicBands.com

January 20
Motley Crue announced that they would perform for the last time on New Year's Eve in Los Angeles. The band went so far as signing a Cessation of Touring contract during a press conference to promise they will play no more gigs after 2015.

2016 - ClassicBands.com

January 20
The four members of ABBA, Benny Andersson, Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Agnetha Faltskog and Bjorn Ulvaeus, were together again for the opening of Bjorn's new Mama Mia restaurant in Stockholm, Sweden. It was the first time all four were photographed together since the premiere of the movie Mama Mia in London in 2008.

2017 - ClassicBands.com

January 20
Ronald "Bingo" Mundy, vocalist for the Doo-Wop group The Marcels on their 1961, #1 hit "Blue Moon", died of pneumonia at the age 76.

2018 - ClassicBands.com

January 20
Jim Rodford, bassist and founding member of the band Argent, died at his home in St. Albans, England at the age of 76. During his career he was also a member of The Kinks for eighteen years starting in 1979, and a further eighteen years with The Zombies beginning in the late '90s.

2020 - ClassicBands.com

January 20
Ozzy Osbourne revealed that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease on the US TV show Good Morning America.

January 20
Great Britain's Royal Mint announced a new series of collector coins commemorating the band Queen. It would mark the first time that any musical group received such an honor.

2022 - ClassicBands.com

January 20
Meat Loaf, the singer and actor most often remembered for his best-selling "Bat Out of Hell" albums, passed away at the age of 74. Born Marvin Lee Aday, he first found success on the Broadway stage in the ground breaking musical Hair, and he had a brief but memorable role in the Rocky Horror Picture Show as the ill-fated delivery boy Eddie. Over the course of his career he sold more than eighty million albums worldwide and appeared in over fifty movies and television shows.

2023 - ClassicBands.com

January 20
Marshall Tucker, the man who the famous band took their name from, passed away at the age of 99. The group was still trying to settle on a handle in 1972 when they found a key chain with Tucker's name on it in an old warehouse they had rented for rehearsal space. The group went on to place thirteen albums on Billboard's 200 Album Chart and seven singles on the Hot 100, including "Heard It In A Love Song", a #14 hit in 1977.



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