Rock 'n' Roll History for
April 29


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1960 - ClassicBands.com

April 29
With the payola scandal still in the news, Dick Clark relinquished the rights to music publishing that he owned. The value of those rights, Clark indicated later, amounted to about $80 million. Up to that time, Clark was earning royalties from roughly 150 Pop songs from which he was credited as a songwriter.

1963 - ClassicBands.com

April 29
19 year old Andrew Loog Oldham signs a contract with The Rolling Stones, becoming their manager. Oldham had seen the band in concert the previous day at the Crawdaddy Club in London.

1965 - ClassicBands.com

April 29
Jimmy Nicol, the drummer who stood in for Ringo Starr during a Beatles Australian tour in 1964, appeared in a London Court faced with bankruptcy with debts of £4,000. Later in the year he would join the successful Swedish group, The Spotnicks, recording with them and twice touring the world. As for his eight show stint with The Beatles, Nicol would later say "Standing in for Ringo was the worst thing that ever happened to me. Until then I was quite happy earning thirty or forty pounds a week. After the headlines died, I began dying too."

1967 - ClassicBands.com

April 29
Aretha Franklin releases her version of Otis Redding's "Respect", a song that will become her signature tune and go on to win two Grammy Awards in 1968 for Best Rhythm & Blues Recording and Best Rhythm & Blues Solo Vocal Performance, Female. It would top the Billboard Hot 100 for four weeks starting next June and in 2021, Rolling Stone would rank it at the top of their list of The 500 Greatest Songs Of All Time.

April 29
Cindy Birdsong makes her stage debut with The Supremes at The Hollywood Bowl, replacing the increasingly unreliable Florence Ballard.

1969 - ClassicBands.com

April 29
Ringo Starr added his vocal to "Octopus's Garden" for the forthcoming Beatles "Abbey Road" album. It was only the second time that one of Ringo's own compositions had been recorded by the band, the first being "Don't Pass Me By" in 1968.

1972 - ClassicBands.com

April 29
New York Mayor John Lindsay intervened in the immigration proceedings against John Lennon. Lindsay called attempts by the US government to deport Lennon "a grave injustice in light of Lennon's unique contributions to music and art." Lennon was granted permanent resident status in the US in 1976.

April 29
A Detroit, Michigan band called Gallery enters the Billboard Hot 100 with "Nice To Be With You", which will rise to #4 during its thirteen week run. They will follow with two more Top 20 hits, "I Believe In Music" (#22) and "Big City Miss Ruth Ann" (#23) over the next eight months.

1973 - ClassicBands.com

April 29
Although he was virtually unknown in Great Britain, 29-year-old John Denver kicks off a six week UK TV series for the BBC. At the time, he had scored two Billboard Top Ten hits with "Take Me Home Country Roads" (#2) and "Rocky Mountain High" (#9), but neither of them were hits in Great Britain.

April 29
More than 15,000 people attending a Rock concert by Elvin Bishop, Canned Heat, Buddy Miles and Fleetwood Mac are routed from a baseball stadium in Stockton, California, by police firing tear-gas canisters. More than eighty people, including twenty-eight police officers, are hurt and fifty arrests are made.

1975 - ClassicBands.com

April 29
RSO Records releases The Bee Gees' "Main Course", the album that will bring the Gibb brothers back to the top of the music scene. The record contains two Billboard Top Ten hits, "Jive Talkin" (#3) and "Nights on Broadway" (#7).

1977 - ClassicBands.com

April 29
The Temptations, the most successful male vocal group of the 1960's and early '70s, left Motown Records after seventeen years. They signed with Atlantic, but after recording two unsuccessful Disco albums, the Temps were later lured back to Motown by Berry Gordy Jr.

1978 - ClassicBands.com

April 29
P.J. Proby was fired from his role in the London stage musical, Elvis, after repeatedly changing his lines from the script. Proby had been cast as the oldest of three Presleys in the play.

1980 - ClassicBands.com

April 29
Black Sabbath began their first tour with vocalist Ronnie James Dio, who had replaced Ozzy Osbourne as lead singer. Dio would appear on three studio albums with the band, "Heaven & Hell" (1980), "Mob Rules" (1981) and Dehumanizer (1992).

1985 - ClassicBands.com

April 29
During a period in which Queen were on hiatus from recording, Freddie Mercury releases his solo album "Mr. Bad Guy". The LP stalled at #159 on the Billboard 200, but was much more popular in the UK, where it went to #6 on the Official Albums Chart.

1988 - ClassicBands.com

April 29
Eric Clapton's wife, Patti "Layla" Boyd, files for divorce, citing Clapton's affair with an Italian TV personality who bore his child.

1990 - ClassicBands.com

April 29
The TV movie Summer Dreams: The Story of the Beach Boys airs on ABC. The film is a dramatization of the stormy relationships that existed between Brian and Dennis Wilson and their father, Murry.

April 29
Floyd Butler of The Friends of Distinction, died of a heart attack at the age of 49. The band is most often remembered for two Top Ten hits, "Grazing In The Grass" in 1969 and "Love Or Let Me Be Lonely" in 1970.

1992 - ClassicBands.com

April 29
Singer Paula Abdul and actor Emilio Estevez were married in a judge's chambers in Santa Monica, California. One of Abdul's managers and Estevez's mother witnessed the ceremony. Abdul filed for divorce two years later.

1993 - ClassicBands.com

April 29
An animated Barry White appears on The Simpsons.

April 29
Mick Ronson, guitarist for David Bowie's band Ziggy Stardust's Spiders From Mars, died of liver cancer at the age of 46.

1997 - ClassicBands.com

April 29
Lynyrd Skynyrd release their ninth studio album, "Twenty". It is titled after the fact that it was released twenty years after the plane crash that killed original lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, and backup singer Cassie Gaines. The LP reached #97 on the Billboard 200 chart.

2003 - ClassicBands.com

April 29
A $5 million lawsuit against former Creedence Clearwater Revival leader John Fogerty was dismissed after a personal-injury lawyer claimed that he suffered hearing loss in his left ear from attending a Fogerty concert. The Judge said the plaintiff assumed the risk of hearing damage when he attended the concert in 1997.

2007 - ClassicBands.com

April 29
Nancy Sinatra made a rare TV appearance in an episode of The Sopranos where she sang "Bossman" to a small gathering of the main characters.

2013 - ClassicBands.com

April 29
Scottish singer Emeli Sande made UK chart history when her first album, "Our Version Of Events", notched sixty-three consecutive weeks in the Top Ten of the UK's Official Album Chart. That broke a 50-year-old record held by The Beatles' "Please Please Me", which spent sixty-two weeks in the Top Ten in 1963 and 1964.

2014 - ClassicBands.com

April 29
Atlanta Rhythm Section bassist Paul Goddard died of cancer at the age of 68. The band placed seven songs on the Billboard Hot 100 between 1974 and 1981, including "So Into You" (#7 in 1977) and "Imaginary Lover" (#7 in 1978).

2015 - ClassicBands.com

April 29
71-year-old Pattie Boyd, the model and artist whose relationships with George Harrison and Eric Clapton inspired the classic love songs "Something" and "Layla", married property developer Rod Weston. She married Harrison in 1966 at the height of Beatlemania, but they split in 1974. Clapton and Boyd were wed in 1979, separating five years later before officially divorcing in 1989.

2016 - ClassicBands.com

April 29
Scott Bennett, a multi-instrumentalist who has recorded and toured steadily with Brian Wilson since 1998, was convicted of rape by instrumentation and sexual battery. Bennett's attorney vowed to appeal the conviction, maintaining that both parties were inebriated.

2021 - ClassicBands.com

April 29
Johnny Crawford, a singer and actor who placed four songs on the Billboard Top 40, including "Cindy's Birthday" (#9 in 1962) and "Rumors" (#14 in 1962), passed away at the age of 75. He was one of the original Mouseketeers and later went on to co-star in the TV Western The Rifleman with Chuck Connors. Other acting roles included appearances on The Donna Reed Show, Mr. Novak, Mr. Ed, Hawaii Five-O, Little House On The Prairie and Murder She Wrote.

2022 - ClassicBands.com

April 29
Dolly Parton appeared as an angel in the final episode of the TV series Grace And Frankie, reuniting her with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, her co-stars in the 1980 movie 9 to 5.



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