Rock 'n' Roll History for
August 16


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1957 - ClassicBands.com

August 16
Buddy Holly And The Crickets played the Apollo Theatre in Harlem and were booed by the mostly Black crowd who were expecting to see an R&B group that also used the name 'The Crickets'. By the end of the night however, the audience was cheering for the Lubbock, Texas band. Also on the bill that night were Roy Hamilton, Shep And The Limelites, and Clarence "Frogman" Henry.

August 16
For his first effort at Imperial Records, Ricky Nelson records "Be Bop Baby", which already has 750,000 advance orders. The song will go on to sell over a million copies and reach #3 on the Billboard Top 100 and #5 on the R&B chart.

1962 - ClassicBands.com

August 16
Two years and four days after joining, Pete Best was fired from The Beatles by manager Brian Epstein, who was told by record producer George Martin that he wanted to use a more experienced session drummer on the band's recordings. John, Paul and George had long admired the work of Rory Storm And The Hurricanes' drummer Ringo Starr, who jumped at the chance to join them. After his dismissal, Pete Best would never have any further communication with his former mates. Although they did pass each other in a hallway when Pete's new band, Lee Curtis And The All Stars played The Tower in New Brighton the same night as The Beatles, neither one spoke or made eye contact.

August 16
The first single by Little Stevie Wonder, "I Call It Pretty Music, But the Old People Call It the Blues" was released by Motown Records. Marvin Gaye played drums on the track that bubbled under the Hot 100 and peaked at #101. Two follow-up singles, "Little Water Boy" and "Contract on Love" would follow, but neither found success. Stevie would have his first hit a year later with "Fingertips Pt. 2".

August 16
Warner Bros. issues Peter, Paul And Mary's first US Top 10 hit, "If I Had a Hammer", a standard Folk song that had been around since 1949. It would climb to #10 on the Hot 100 and win the Grammy Awards for Best Folk Recording and Best Performance by a Vocal Group.

1966 - ClassicBands.com

August 16
Colgems Records releases The Monkees' "Last Train To Clarksville". The tune would rise to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, #5 in Ireland, #10 in Finland, but was not a hit in England.

1968 - ClassicBands.com

August 16
A Blues/Rock trio called Earth debuts in a Red Bank, N.J. coffee house. The guitarist and singer was 18-year-old Bruce Springsteen.

August 16
The Jackson 5 play their first concert, opening for Diana Ross And The Supremes at the Forum in Los Angeles.

1969 - ClassicBands.com

August 16
Hippie leader Abbie Hoffman is knocked off the stage by Pete Townshend while attempting to make a political statement during the Who's set at Woodstock. Later, Townshend says he didn't know it was Hoffman at the time.

1975 - ClassicBands.com

August 16
Peter Gabriel announced that he was leaving Genesis. The group auditioned more than four hundred singers during the next eighteen months before deciding that Phil Collins, who had been the drummer for Genesis since 1970, could front the band.

1977 - ClassicBands.com

August 16
42-year-old Elvis Presley died at his Graceland mansion in Memphis, Tennessee. Presley's girlfriend, Ginger Alden awoke in the afternoon and noticed that he was not in bed and found him lying on the floor of the bathroom. He was rushed to Baptist Hospital where he was pronounced dead at 3:30 p.m. After an examination it was revealed that Presley's body contained butabarbital, codeine, morphine, pentobarbital, Placidyl, Quaalude, Valium and Valmid. It had been five years since Presley had a US Top Ten hit with the #2 song, "Burning Love". His last US #1 was 1969's "Suspicious Minds". He left an estate valued at 4.9 million dollars, which by 1993 had grown to over 50 million. In his last conversation with Ginger Alden, he told her "I'm going to the bathroom to read." When she cautioned him not to fall asleep in there, his final words were, "Okay, I won't."

1979 - ClassicBands.com

August 16
The biggest single of the summer, The Knack's "My Sharona" is awarded a Gold record for selling one million copies. The Knack's Doug Fieger wrote the song for his girlfriend, Sharona Alperin, whose picture appeared on the single's cover.

1983 - ClassicBands.com

August 16
After dating for six years, Paul Simon marries actress Carrie Fisher, who played Princess Leia in the first Star Wars trilogy. The marriage would last less than two years, but the two continued to date off and on after they split.

1985 - ClassicBands.com

August 16
Madonna married actor Sean Penn in Malibu. She would file for divorce the following year.

1995 - ClassicBands.com

August 16
The Beach Boys' Brian Wilson performs for the first time in concert with his daughters Carnie and Wendy at the SOB Club in New York.

1997 - ClassicBands.com

August 16
On the 20th anniversary of Elvis Presley's death, over 30,000 fans descended on Memphis, Tennessee for a ten minute mourning, circling his grave. A poll found that almost a third of the fans were keeping an eye out for him in the crowd.

2000 - ClassicBands.com

August 16
Alan Caddy, guitarist for The Tornados on their 1962 US and UK #1 hit, "Telstar", passed away at the age of 60.

2011 - ClassicBands.com

August 16
Thousands of silent mourners paid their respects to Elvis Presley at his grave site at Graceland, on the 34th anniversary of his death. Flower arrangements and heart-shaped wreaths decorated the burial site as Presley's music played softly in the background.

2018 - ClassicBands.com

August 16
Aretha Franklin, "The Queen Of Soul", passed away at the age of 76. During her career she amassed twenty Billboard R&B chart toppers, forty-five Billboard Top 40 hits and won eighteen Grammy Awards. In 1987, she became the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

2021 - ClassicBands.com

August 16
Gene Simmons of KISS confirmed that the band had dropped former Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth as an opening act on their current tour because they felt he was past his prime.

2024 - ClassicBands.com

August 16
A Missouri woman, 53-year-old Lisa Jeanine Findley, was arrested on charges she orchestrated a scheme to defraud Elvis Presley's family by trying to auction off his iconic Graceland property. Police said she fabricated loan documents and then published a bogus foreclosure notice in a Memphis newspaper announcing that Graceland would be auctioned off to the highest bidder. Riley Keough, Presley's granddaughter, inherited ownership of the home after the death of her mother, Lisa Marie Presley, in 2023.

August 16
The auction house, GottaHaveRockandRoll.com placed Carl Perkins' original 1953 Gibson Les Paul up for bid. The axe was the instrument that he wrote "Blue Suede Shoes" on and also played on all of the Sun Records recordings that he made. The estimated sale price was $150,000.



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