Rock 'n' Roll History for
April 11


<-- Previous Day -- Home Page -- Next Day -->



1956 - ClassicBands.com

April 11
While flying from Amarillo to Nashville, Elvis Presley's plane is forced to make an emergency landing in Arkansas. The incident will leave him with a permanent fear of air travel.

April 11
James Brown has his first chart entry when "Please, Please, Please" debuts on the Billboard R&B chart. Rising slowly at first, the record would climb to #6 by the Summer and sell over a million copies. In 2004, it was ranked number 142 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

1959 - ClassicBands.com

April 11
After the BBC lifts its ban on The Coasters' new single "Charlie Brown", the song is played on radio's Pick of the Pops. It will go on to become the group's best selling UK hit, reaching #6.

1961 - ClassicBands.com

April 11
19 year old Bob Dylan debuted as a solo artist when he opened for John Lee Hooker at Gerde's Folk City in New York.

1962 - ClassicBands.com

April 11
Follow That Dream, starring Elvis Presley, premieres in Ocala, Florida, near where it was filmed. Reviews range from "by Presley pix standards, it's above average," to "absurd nonsense."

1963 - ClassicBands.com

April 11
Nat King Cole records "Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days Of Summer" at Capitol Studios in Hollywood, California. The song will reach #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 and, amazingly, #11 on the Hot R&B Singles chart.

April 11
Gerry And The Pacemakers were at #1 on the UK singles chart with "How Do You Do It?" The song wouldn't catch on in the US until the Fall of 1964 when it went to #9.

1964 - ClassicBands.com

April 11
The Beatles set another music industry record when they had fourteen songs on the Billboard Hot 100. The songs ranged from "Can't Buy Me Love" at #1 to "Love Me Do" at #81.

1965 - ClassicBands.com

April 11
The New Musical Express, the most important music trade paper in Britain, hosted a concert at London's Wembley Empire Pool, featuring The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Tom Jones, The Seekers, Freddie And The Dreamers, The Animals, The Kinks, Herman's Hermits, The Moody Blues, Them, Cilla Black and Donovan.

1966 - ClassicBands.com

April 11
NBC broadcasts the last episode of the Rock and Roll TV show, Hullabaloo, which features Paul Anka, Lesley Gore, Peter And Gordon and The Cyrkle. The show had been on the air since January 1965, a year after ABC came up with Shindig!

April 11
Frank Sinatra records "Strangers In The Night" at United Recording in Hollywood. Forty-one musicians were used on the track, including Glen Campbell on guitar and Hal Blaine on drums. The song would top the UK singles chart two months later and the Billboard Hot 100 four weeks after that. Despite giving Old Blue Eyes his first number one record in eleven years, the singer actually hated the song, calling it "a piece of sh**" and "the worst f***ing song that I have ever heard." He allegedly improvised the famous "dooby, dooby doo" scat at the end of the track.

1967 - ClassicBands.com

April 11
While flying back to London from the US, Paul McCartney writes "Magical Mystery Tour" and lays out some ideas for the film.

1968 - ClassicBands.com

April 11
Janis Joplin, along with Big Brother And The Holding Company, made their national TV debut on ABC-TV's Hollywood Palace.

1970 - ClassicBands.com

April 11
The Beatles' "Let It Be" tops the Billboard Hot 100 for the first of two weeks. When it debuted on the chart at #6, it was the highest new entry of all time up to that date.

April 11
Peter Green, a founding member of Fleetwood Mac, announces he is leaving the band to follow his religious beliefs.

April 11
Canadian singer/songwriter R. Dean Taylor releases "Indiana Wants Me". The song, which Taylor wrote after hearing sirens and someone breaking a store window, would climb to #5 in the US, #2 in Canada and #2 in the UK. On early copies of the record, it opens with the wail of a police siren, which was so realistic that some drivers pulled over to the side of the road when they heard it on their car radios. When the confusion was discovered, the Rare Earth label sent radio stations a second version without the siren. The record became Taylor's only hit as a performer in the US, but in the UK he scored with "Gotta See Jane" (#17 in 1968), "There's A Ghost In My House" (#3 in 1974) and "Window Shopping" (#36 in 1974).

1977 - ClassicBands.com

April 11
After being paid $40,000 for a show in Sydney, Australia, Alice Cooper is placed under house arrest at his hotel until he posts a bond for $59,632. That amount was the sum that a local promoter claimed to have paid Cooper for a 1975 Australia tour he never made. The two settle when it is found that the promoter did not fulfill his part of the agreement either.

1978 - ClassicBands.com

April 11
Just under ten years after her turbulent first marriage to former manager Ted White came to an end, Aretha Franklin marries her second husband, actor Glynn Turman, in New York City. The Four Tops sang Stevie Wonder's "Isn't She Lovely" at the ceremony. The couple would separate in 1982, largely due to the strain of keeping a long-distance relationship going. They divorced in 1984, but remained close friends until Aretha's death in 2017.

1981 - ClassicBands.com

April 11
Van Halen lead guitarist Eddie Van Halen marries Valerie Bertinelli, co-star of the 1980s television hit, One Day at a Time. The two had met eight months earlier when Bertinelli's brother dragged her to a Van Halen concert in Shreveport, Louisiana. Their marriage would last twenty-five years.

April 11
Daryl Hall And John Oates reached the top spot on Billboard's Hot 100 with their 10th Top 40 hit, "Kiss On My List". The tune was a #33 hit in the UK.

1983 - ClassicBands.com

April 11
Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes perform "Up Where We Belong" at the Academy Awards in Los Angeles, where the song wins in the Best Original Song category. The record had reached #1 in America in November, 1982, selling over two million copies.

1985 - ClassicBands.com
April 11
A court ruling gave the Rock group Boston the right to record for MCA instead of CBS. The legal dispute had prevented the release of the band's third album for more than five years.

1988 - ClassicBands.com

April 11
Neil Young releases "This Note's for You", his 16th studio album. The title song mocks the marketing industry and the corporate music scene. The LP would reach #56 in the UK and #61 on the Billboard 200.

April 11
Cher wins the Best Actress Oscar for her performance in the film Moonstruck.

1991 - ClassicBands.com

April 11
Ringo Starr's appearance on The Simpsons, titled "Brush With Greatness", airs on the Fox Network. The installment finished thirty-seventh in the ratings for the week of April 8–14, 1991, with a Nielsen rating of 12.0, equivalent to approximately eleven million viewing households.

1997 - ClassicBands.com

April 11
Grand Funk reformed for a three concert tour to raise money for the Bosnian-American Relief Fund. Further gigs were booked over the following eighteen months and a 3-CD collection was released in 1999.

2006 - ClassicBands.com

April 11
June Pointer, the youngest of the four Pointer Sisters, died of cancer at the age of 52. The quartet went from teenage Gospel singers to the top of the Pop charts with such hits as "Fire" (US #2 in 1979), "He's So Shy" (US #3 in 1980), "Slow Hand" (US #2 in 1982) and "Neutron Dance" (US #6 in 1985).

2011 - ClassicBands.com

April 11
Ray Davies of The Kinks told RollingStone.com that he was scheduled to meet with his brother Dave to discuss a possible reunion. Earlier attempts were derailed when Dave suffered a stroke in 2004. Unfortunately, nothing musically ever came of it.

2013 - ClassicBands.com

April 11
With an estimated fortune of $1.05 billion, Paul McCartney once again topped the Sunday Times' Rich List, a rundown of Britain's wealthiest musicians. Macca has been at the top of every Rich List since the London newspaper began compiling it in 1989.

2015 - ClassicBands.com

April 11
The UK's charts compiler, www.OfficialCharts.com began publishing weekly charts tracking sales of the Top 40 vinyl albums and Top 40 singles for the first time. The new charts were said to reflect Britain's "renewed interest in music on vinyl," according to a spokesperson for OCC. In 2014, vinyl sales in the United Kingdom cracked the 1 million mark for the first time since the mid-nineties, but that still only accounted for roughly 2% of the UK's recorded music market.

2017 - ClassicBands.com

April 11
J. Geils, who led his band to ten Billboard Top 40 hits between 1972 and 1982, died of natural causes at the age of 71. Among his best known songs were the chart topping "Centerfold" in 1981, and "Freeze-Frame", #4 in 1982.

2020 - ClassicBands.com

April 11
REO Speedwagon found four of their songs on Billboard's Hot Rock Songs chart, plus an album charting on Top Rock Albums after appearing in an episode of Netflix's award-winning drama Ozark. Coming in at #10 was "Keep On Loving You" (#1 in 1981, "Can't Fight This Feeling" at #13 (#1 in 1985), "Time for Me to Fly" at #15, and "Take It On The Run" at #16 (#5 in 1981). The band's 1988 compilation album "The Hits", which includes all four songs, entered the Top Rock Albums chart at #49.

April 11
A virtual concert hosted by Farm Aid co-founder Willie Nelson to support American farmers affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, raised more than $500,000. The show also featured at-home performances from Farm Aid co-founders Neil Young and John Mellencamp, as well as board member Dave Matthews.

2023 - ClassicBands.com

April 11
84-year-old Gordon Lightfoot canceled all of his US and Canadian concert dates for 2023 due to health issues. Sadly, he would die of natural causes three weeks later. Gord placed four songs on the Billboard Top Ten, "If You Could Read My Mind" (#5 in 1971), "Sundown" (#1 in 1974), "Carefree Highway" (#10 in 1974) and "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald" (#2 in 1976).



<-- Previous Day -- Home Page -- Next Day -->