Rock 'n' Roll History for
October 12


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1955 - ClassicBands.com

October 12
The Chrysler Corporation introduces high fidelity record players for their 1956 line-up of cars. The unit measured about four inches high and less than a foot wide and mounted under the instrument panel. The seven inch discs spun at 16⅔ rpm and required almost three times the number of grooves per inch as an LP. A set of thirty-five Classical recordings were available that provided between forty-five and sixty minutes of uninterrupted music. The players would be discontinued in 1961.

1957 - ClassicBands.com

October 12
Johnny Mathis topped the Cashbox Best Sellers chart with "Chances Are", a song that currently sat at #7 on Billboard's Most Played By Disc Jockeys chart. The record would go on to sell over two million copies and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998.

October 12
On tour in Sydney, Australia, Little Richard denounces Rock 'n' Roll, saying "If you want to live for the Lord, you can't take Rock and Roll too. God doesn't like it." When his sax player, Clifford Burks, dares Richard to prove his faith in God, Little Richard tosses four diamond rings, valued at $8,000, into Sydney's Hunter River and soon after launches a Gospel career. Five years later, he would switch back to Rock 'n' Roll.

1962 - ClassicBands.com

October 12
The Beatles, still just an up and coming local group, open for one of their idols, Little Richard at a concert at New Brighton Towne, Liverpool.

1963 - ClassicBands.com

October 12
"Sugar Shack" by Jimmy Gilmer and the Fireballs hit the top of the Billboard singles chart. It would go on to be the best selling record of the year with sales of over one million copies. In the UK, the song climbed to #45 on the Record Retailer chart. Gilmer's distinctive organ sound was played on a Hammond Solovox, Model J.

October 12
The Ronettes' "Be My Baby" peaked at #2 during its ten week chart run in America. Producer Phil Spector wasn't satisfied with his results until the 42nd take and engineer Larry Lavine would later recall, "The things Phil was doing were crazy and exhausting, but that's not the sign of a nut. That's genius."

1965 - ClassicBands.com

October 12
At Abbey Road Studios in London, The Beatles record "Run For Your Life" and "Norwegian Wood" for their upcoming "Rubber Soul" album.

1966 - ClassicBands.com

October 12
The Jimi Hendrix Experience play their first major concert at the Olympia Theatre in Paris in front of an audience of 14,500. The British press call Hendrix "The wild man of Pop."

1968 - ClassicBands.com

October 12
The LP "Cheap Thrills" by Big Brother And The Holding Company hit #1 on the Billboard album chart for the first of eight non-consecutive weeks. It would prove to be the most successful LP of the year, selling over a million copies. On March 22, 2013, the album was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the US Library of Congress and was preserved into the National Recording Registry.

1971 - ClassicBands.com

October 12
Gene Vincent, most often remembered for his 1956 hit "Be Bop A Lula", died of a bleeding ulcer at the age of 36. Although he had only three Billboard Top 100 hits, he was a much bigger star in Great Britain, where he enjoyed eight Top 40 hits between 1956 to 1961.

1972 - ClassicBands.com

October 12
Diana Ross makes her feature film debut when Lady Sings the Blues opens in theatres across America. Loosely based on Billie Holiday's 1956 autobiography, the movie also stars Billy Dee Williams, Richard Pryor, James T. Callahan, and Scatman Crothers. The picture was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Actress in a Leading Role for Diana Ross, which she lost to Liza Minnelli in Cabaret.

1973 - ClassicBands.com

October 12
Elton John is awarded a Gold record for his two disc set, "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road", his third straight number one album.

1974 - ClassicBands.com

October 12
Olivia Newton-John had the number one album in America with "If You Love Me Let Me Know". Two hit singles were included on the LP, the title track, which would reach #5, and "I Honestly Love You", which would become her first Billboard Hot 100 chart topper.

1975 - ClassicBands.com

October 12
Rod Stewart performs his last concert with his backup band, The Faces, in Long Island, New York. They had been together since October, 1969 and released four albums, "First Step" (1970), "Long Player" (1971), "A Nod Is As Good As a Wink... to a Blind Horse" (1971) and "Ooh La La" (1973).

1978 - ClassicBands.com

October 12
20-year-old Nancy Spungen, the girlfriend of former Sex Pistol, Sid Vicious, is found dead of abdominal knife wounds in their room at Chelsea Hotel in New York. Vicious, nearly unconscious due to the effects of several different drugs, is charged with her murder, jailed and then released. He would die of a heroin overdose on February 2nd, 1979, before the case could come to trial. The New York City Police Department closed the case after his death.

1979 - ClassicBands.com

October 12
At a Madison Square Garden concert, Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull suffers a minor injury when a rose is thrown at him by a fan and one of the thorns pierces his eye. Two shows have to be canceled before Tull resumes the tour.

1980 - ClassicBands.com

October 12
Seven people are stabbed during a fight at a Blood, Sweat And Tears concert in Los Angeles.

1985 - ClassicBands.com

October 12
Ricky Wilson, guitarist and founding member of the B-52s, passed away at the age of 32.

1991 - ClassicBands.com

October 12
Mariah Carey breaks The Jackson 5's record of four straight number one hits when "Emotions" becomes the fifth of her first five singles to reach the top of the Billboard chart. In April, 2008, she would pass Elvis Presley's record when she achieved her eighteenth Billboard chart topper, second at the time to only The Beatles twenty.

1996 - ClassicBands.com

October 12
The film documentary The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus was released. It had been taped in December, 1968, but was held back for nearly twenty-eight years, allegedly because The Stones felt that The Who had upstaged them.

1997 - ClassicBands.com

October 12
John Denver was killed when the handmade, experimental airplane he was flying ran out of gas and crashed off the coast of Monterey Bay, CA. The 53-year-old star of the 1977 film Oh God had placed fifteen songs on Billboard's Top 40 Pop chart, ten of which reached number one on either Billboard's Adult Contemporary or Country chart.

1999 - ClassicBands.com

October 12
Six stamps honoring The Bee Gees were issued by The Isle Of Man, where they were born.

2002 - ClassicBands.com

October 12
Twenty-five years after his death, an album of Elvis Presley's best selling songs entitled "Elvis - 30 #1 hits", tops the Billboard album chart. It would also reach number one in fourteen other countries and went on to be certified 6X Platinum for sales of six million copies in the US on March 8th, 2018.

2006 - ClassicBands.com

October 12
Yusuf Islam, who rose to fame as Cat Stevens, was named Songwriter Of The Year for the second consecutive year at ASCAP's annual UK awards ceremony.

2009 - ClassicBands.com

October 12
Blue Cheer singer/bassist Dickie Peterson dies from liver cancer at the age of 63, in Erkelenz, Germany. The band's Heavy Metal cover of Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues" reached #14 on the Hot 100 in 1968. Peterson was the only constant member of the group, which had thirty official members between 1967 and 2009.

2016 - ClassicBands.com

October 12
50-year-old Janet Jackson confirmed that she was expecting her first child. She and her husband, Wissam Al Mana, were wed in 2012.

2021 - ClassicBands.com

October 12
Fifty years after it was released, John Lennon's single, "Imagine" was certified Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. It was the only track pulled from the album of the same name and reached #3 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song wasn't issued as a single in the UK until 1975 as a tie-in with Lennon's "Shaved Fish" hits collection. "Imagine" made it to #6 on the British charts.



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