Rock 'n' Roll History for
April 21


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1956 - ClassicBands.com

April 21
Elvis Presley's first release for RCA Victor, "Heartbreak Hotel" tops the Billboard Top 100 for the first of eight weeks. The song would stay on the chart for a total of twenty-seven weeks, selling over a million copies in the process. It also reached the Country And Western chart and the R&B chart, becoming only the second record to accomplish that feat, behind Carl Perkins' "Blue Suede Shoes".

1958 - ClassicBands.com

April 21
The Platters' version of "Twilight Time" reaches number one on the Billboard Top 100, marking the third time the Los Angeles quintet achieved that mark. They would go on to place fourteen more songs on the US Top 40, bringing their total to twenty-three. "Twilight Time" climbed to #3 in the UK.

1960 - ClassicBands.com

April 21
Dick Clark testifies before a Congressional committee investigating the payola scandal. He admits he had a financial interest in twenty-seven percent of the records he played on the show over a two year period, but is cleared of all charges.

1962 - ClassicBands.com

April 21
"Good Luck Charm" by Elvis Presley claims Billboard's top spot for the first of two weeks. It would also top the Cashbox Best Sellers list and the UK Singles Chart. Presley is joined on the chorus by Jordanaires first tenor Gordon Stoker. The single was certified Platinum by the RIAA on March 27th, 1992.

1963 - ClassicBands.com

April 21
The Beatles and The Rolling Stones meet for the first time during a Stones' performance at the Crawdaddy Club. "We got all nervous," said Bill Wyman, "but then we had a chat with them afterwards and stayed up all night rapping and became really good mates."

1965 - ClassicBands.com

April 21
The Beach Boys appear on ABC-TV's Shindig!, performing their current hit, "Do You Wanna Dance?". The record will reach #12 in the US, making it the highest charting Beach Boys' song to feature Dennis Wilson on lead vocals. As was often the case, most of the instruments on the actual recording were played by studio musicians, with the exception of Brian Wilson (piano) and Carl Wilson (guitar).

1969 - ClassicBands.com

April 21
Janis Joplin makes her first London concert appearance at Royal Albert Hall, a performance considered by many to be one of the best of her career.

1970 - ClassicBands.com

April 21
Elton John makes his solo concert debut, opening for T. Rex in London, England.

1973 - ClassicBands.com

April 21
Alice Cooper had the #1 album in the US with their sixth studio LP, "Billion Dollar Babies". The effort also topped the chart in the UK. In keeping with the band's controversial style, the lyrics covered topics such as necrophilia, the fear of dentists, horror, and sexual harassment. The album would be certified Platinum in 1986.

April 21
Tony Orlando And Dawn topped both the US and the UK singles chart with "Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Ole Oak Tree". It became the biggest hit of the year, selling over six million copies. L. Russel Brown would later say that he and his song writing partner Irwin Levine wrote the song in about fifteen minutes, updating the lyrics from a story about a soldier coming home from Andersonville Prison during the Civil War.

1976 - ClassicBands.com

April 21
Former Raspberries lead singer Eric Carmen enters the US Pop chart with his first and biggest solo hit, "All by Myself". The record would reach #2 on Billboard's Hot 100, #1 on the Cash Box Top 100 and #12 in the UK.

1978 - ClassicBands.com

April 21
British Folk-Rock singer Sandy Denny died of a brain hemorrhage after falling down the stairs at a friend's home in London. She was just 31 years old. Denny was one of Britain's most popular singer / songwriters in the early 1970s and was voted top female vocalist in the '70 and '71 Melody Maker polls.

1979 - ClassicBands.com

April 21
23-year-old Amii Stewart went to #1 on the US singles chart with a remake of Eddie Floyd's 1966 hit, "Knock On Wood". It made #6 in the UK the same year and #7 when re-issued in 1985.

1981 - ClassicBands.com

April 21
Weird Al Yankovic makes his TV debut, performing "Another One Rides The Bus", a parody of Queen's "Another One Bites The Dust", on Tom Snyder's The Tomorrow Show.

1984 - ClassicBands.com

April 21
Phil Collins started a three week stay at #1 on the US singles chart with "Against All Odds". It was a #2 hit in the UK.

April 21
The sound track LP from the movie Footloose begins a ten week run at the top of the Billboard album chart on the strength of the title track by Kenny Loggins and "Let's Hear It For The Boy" by Deniece Williams.

1990 - ClassicBands.com

April 21
A record setting crowd of 184,000 jammed a soccer stadium in Rio de Janeiro to see Paul McCartney's final show of his 33-city tour. The previous record was held by Frank Sinatra, who attracted 175,000 to the same stadium in 1980.

1993 - ClassicBands.com

April 21
La Toya Jackson was admitted to hospital in New York after her husband, Jack Gordon, allegedly beat her and threw a chair at her. Gordon claimed Jackson provoked the incident by coming at him with a knife. Jackson refused to press assault charges.

April 21
Former Rolling Stone bassist Bill Wyman married for the third time. Wyman, who was 56, married 33-year-old American fashion designer Suzanne Accosta in the medieval French village of Saint-Paul-de-Vence. Wyman's second marriage to teenager Mandy Smith in 1989 ended after less than two years.

2000 - ClassicBands.com

April 21
Neal Matthews of The Jordanaires died of a heart attack. He sang back-up on Elvis Presley's "Don't Be Cruel" and "Hound Dog" and also worked with Ricky Nelson, Marie Osmond, Tom Jones and Merle Haggard.

2003 - ClassicBands.com

April 21
Brother Records launched a lawsuit against former Beach Boy Al Jardine for using the band's name when he tours, contrary to a January 28th court ruling. Jardine appeared under variations of the Beach Boy name, including Beach Boys Family And Friends and Al Jardine Of The Beach Boys. Jardine would win the lawsuit the following November.

April 21
Universal Music Group and EMI Recorded Music filed a lawsuit in the US District Court in Los Angeles against the file-sharing service Napster for copyright violations. During its heyday, millions of people logged onto the peer-to-peer community to exchange digital music files.

2008 - ClassicBands.com

April 21
Al Wilson, Soul singer and songwriter who had a number of US hits including "The Snake" (#32 in 1968) and the Billboard #1 smash "Show and Tell" in 1974, died of kidney failure at the age of 68.

2009 - ClassicBands.com

April 21
Don Henley filed a lawsuit against Republican politician Charles DeVore for using two of his songs, "The Boys of Summer" and "All She Wants To Do Is Dance" in campaign ads that appeared on YouTube. After judge James V. Selna ruled in favor of Henley in 2012, DeVore issued a statement apologizing for the copyright infringement.

April 21
Bob Seger was named in a negligence lawsuit filed by a man who says he suffered injuries when his motorcycle was struck by the rocker's 2004 Lexus driven by Seger's bass player Christopher Campbell. Campbell was ticketed for failure to stop after the accident, which happened about thirty miles northwest of Detroit.

2010 - ClassicBands.com

April 21
Elton John made an appearance on American Idol's Idol Gives Back, where he seemed to struggle vocally to get through his 1970 composition "Your Song". Also appearing were Jeff Beck, Black Eyed Peas, Alicia Keys and Carrie Underwood.

2011 - ClassicBands.com

April 21
Los Angeles Judge Michael Pastor agreed to allow prosecutors to show autopsy photos of Michael Jackson to the jury in Dr Conrad Murray's involuntary manslaughter trial. Dr Murray's defense lawyers had objected, saying the photographs would inflame jurors' passions.

2015 - ClassicBands.com

April 21
Wally Lester, backing vocalist for The Skyliners on their 1959, Billboard #12 hit, "Since I Don't Have You", died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 73.

April 21
60-year-old Phil Rudd, drummer for the Australian band AC/DC, plead to guilty to a charge of making a threat to kill, at a court in Tauranga, New Zealand. A month after firing a number of employees over a lack of security at a launch party for his latest solo album in August, 2014, Rudd admitted he telephoned an associate and said he wanted one of the people he fired "taken out." Rudd was released on bail until his next hearing in June. On July 9th, 2015, Rudd was sentenced to eight months of home detention and ordered to pay NZ$120,000 in reparation.

2016 - ClassicBands.com

April 21
Prince, the flamboyant singer / songwriter and multi-instrumentalist died at the age of 57 after suffering flu-like symptoms for several weeks. Born Prince Rogers Nelson, he had thirty-two Billboard Top 40 entries between 1979 and 1999, including "Little Red Corvette" (#6 in 1983), "When Doves Cry" (#1 in 1984), "Purple Rain" (#2 in 1984) and "Raspberry Beret" (#2 in 1985). Over the course of his career he sold over 100 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling artists of all time. He won seven Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe and an Academy Award and was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame in 2004, the first year of his eligibility.

April 21
Lonnie Mack, considered by many as a ground breaking guitar soloist, died of natural causes at the age of 74. He reached the Billboard Top 40 twice in 1963 with the instrumentals "Memphis" (#5) and "Wham!" (#24). According to Guitar World magazine, Mack's early solos influenced every major Rock guitarist from the 1960s through the 1980s, from "Clapton to Allman to Vaughan" and "from Nugent to Bloomfield."

April 21
After a Saturday Night Live skit parodied his latest film, God's Not Dead 2, Pat Boone asserted that SNL is hostile towards Christians. Appearing on the Glenn Beck radio show, Boone said "I'd like to ask Lorne Michaels: If somebody did a funny sketch and portrayed his mother as a diseased whore, would he find that funny, or would there be some limit to what he and the show can ridicule?"

2024 - ClassicBands.com

April 21
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame officially announced this year's inductees in the Performer category: Cher, Dave Matthews Band, Foreigner, Peter Frampton, Kool & The Gang, Ozzy Osbourne, Mary J. Blige, and A Tribe Called Quest.



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