Rock 'n' Roll History for
August 20


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1920 - ClassicBands.com

August 20
America's first commercial radio station began operations in Detroit, Michigan. They were assigned the call letters 8MK by the United States Department of Commerce Bureau of Navigation. In 1922 the call letters were changed to WWJ and today the station's listenership ranks as one of the highest in its market. You can find it at 950 on the AM frequency,

1955 - ClassicBands.com

August 20
Sun Records releases Elvis Presley's "I Forgot to Remember to Forget". The song would go on to top the Billboard National Country Music Chart and reach #4 on the Billboard Most Played By Jockeys chart in February, 1956, giving Elvis his first national exposure.

1960 - ClassicBands.com

August 20
Connie Francis begins working on her acting debut as filming for MGM's Where the Boys Are starts in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. The movie would prove to be a box office success, but a planned sequel called Where The Girls Are was never produced.

1966 - ClassicBands.com

August 20
14,000 fans crowded into the Forest Hills Music Festival in Queens, New York to hear The Supremes, Stevie Wonder and The Temptations.

August 20
Following the success of their million selling hit, "Time Won't Let Me", Cleveland Ohio's The Outsiders enter the Hot 100 again with a cover version of an Isley Brothers' song called "Respectable", which would rise to #15. Although the band placed four songs on the Billboard chart, and four more that bubbled under, none of their records ever caught on in the UK.

1968 - ClassicBands.com

August 20
The director of the University of Tennessee's audio lab, Dr. David M. Lipscomb, reported that a guinea pig subjected over a three month period to eighty-eight hours of Rock music recorded at a Knoxville disco at 120 decibels suffered acute damage to the inner ears. Steve Paul, the owner of a New York disco replied, "Should a major increase in guinea pig attendance occur at The Scene, we'll certainly bear their comfort in mind."

1969 - ClassicBands.com

August 20
Frank Zappa temporarily disbands The Mothers of Invention right after an eight day tour in Canada. Zappa says he's "tired of playing for people who clap for all the wrong reasons."

August 20
August 20th marks the last time that all four of The Beatles were at EMI Studios in London. Although no actual recording took place, they completed mixing "I Want You" and discussed the sequence of songs that would appear on the "Abbey Road" album.

1970 - ClassicBands.com

August 20
Creedence Clearwater Revival's fifth studio album "Cosmo's Factory" reaches #1 on the Billboard Hot 200, a position it would hold for nine weeks. The LP would also top the charts in the UK, Norway, France, Finland, Canada and Australia. It contained the hit singles "Up Around The Band" (US #4), "Lookin' Out My Back Door" (US #23), and "Who'll Stop The Rain" (US #2)

1973 - ClassicBands.com

August 20
The Rolling Stones release "Angie", which will top the Billboard chart and reach #5 in the UK. At the time, the Mick Jagger/Keith Richards composition was rumored to have been written about David Bowie's first wife Angela, the actress Angie Dickinson, Keith Richards' newborn daughter Dandelion Angela, and Marianne Faithfull. However, in his 2010 memoir Life, Richards said that he had chosen the name at random when writing the song, before he knew that his baby would be named Angela or even knew that his baby would be a girl.

1977 - ClassicBands.com

August 20
The Emotions hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with a Disco track called "Best Of My Love" for the first of five weeks. Two years earlier, the Eagles had reached the top of the chart with a song with the same title. The Chicago trio would earn a Gold record for their effort and win a Grammy for Best R&B Vocal Performance By A Duo, Group Or Chorus.

1979 - ClassicBands.com

August 20
Columbia Records releases Bob Dylan's nineteenth studio album, "Slow Train Coming". It was his first LP following his conversion to Christianity, and the contents express his personal faith. The album would peak at #3 in the US and #2 in the UK, with the single "Gotta Serve Somebody" winning the Grammy Award for Best Rock Vocal Performance by a Male in 1980.

1980 - ClassicBands.com

August 20
John Lennon begins recording his final album, "Double Fantasy". It would be released on November 17th by the newly-formed Geffen Records and would win the 1982 Grammy Award for Album of the Year.

1981 - ClassicBands.com

August 20
Bruce Springsteen performs at the Los Angeles Sports Arena to benefit the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation and Mental Health Association.

August 20
Thin Lizzy's Phil Lynott was fined £200 at Kingston Crown Court in London, England for possessing cocaine. He said afterwards he was very concerned about the effect the conviction would have on his career.

1983 - ClassicBands.com

August 20
The compilation album "18 Greatest Hits" by Michael Jackson and The Jackson 5 started a three week run at #1 on the UK chart.

1991 - ClassicBands.com

August 20
The movie Harley Davidson and The Marlboro Man debuted in US theatres. The film featured a song called "The Bigger They Come" by Peter Frampton and Steve Marriott, which was their first work together since their days in Humble Pie, twenty years earlier.

1992 - ClassicBands.com

August 20
Still embroiled in the controversy over his song "Cop Killer", Ice-T appears on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine dressed in a police officer's uniform. Inside the periodical is an interview titled "You Gotta Problem With That?".

2009 - ClassicBands.com

August 20
Famed session artist Larry Knechtel died in Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital, Washington, at the age of 69 after suffering an apparent heart attack. In 1970 he won a Grammy Award for his piano work on Simon And Garfunkel's "Bridge over Troubled Water" and was featured on Johnny Rivers' "Rockin' Pneumonia And The Boogie Woogie Flu" two years later. He also worked with the Soft Rock band Bread from 1971 to 1973. In 2007, Knechtel, along with other members of the group of studio musicians known as The Wrecking Crew, was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, Tennessee.

2010 - ClassicBands.com

August 20
A New York judge dismissed a $300 million lawsuit brought against Michael Jackson's estate by Allgood Entertainment, who accused Jackson and his agent, Frank Dileo of pulling out of the company's planned Jackson 5 shows. The turning point it seems was the fact that Michael and his brothers never signed the deal.

2011 - ClassicBands.com

August 20
Ross Barbour, the last original member of the influential 1950s group The Four Freshmen, died in Southern California at the age of 82. The group's biggest hit was "Graduation Day", which reached #17 in 1956.

2015 - ClassicBands.com

August 20
A Los Angeles police task force investigating Internet crimes against children served a search warrant at the home of KISS rocker Gene Simmons. Police emphasized that neither Simmons nor anyone in his family was suspected in the case.

August 20
Michael McDonald sat in with The Doobie Brothers for an appearance on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon, where they performed a medley of their hits, "Long Train Runnin'" and "Takin' It To The Streets".

2016 - ClassicBands.com

August 20
Canada's The Tragically Hip performed their last concert to a sell-out crowd in Kingston, Ontario at the end of an emotional fifteen date farewell tour. Lead singer Gord Downie revealed earlier in year that he was battling terminal brain cancer. Sadly, he would succumb to the disease on October 17th, 2017.

August 20
Alice Cooper told CNN that he had decided to run for President Of The United States and had chosen actor Tom Hanks as his running mate. With tongue firmly in cheek, he said that his campaign slogan is "I can do nothing as well as they can do nothing," referencing Democratic and Republican Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, adding that his platform is "nonexistent."

2017 - ClassicBands.com

August 20
Jerry Lewis, an actor and comedian who also scored a Billboard #10 hit in 1956 with "Rock-A-Bye Your Baby With A Dixie Melody", died of natural causes at the age of 91. After making seventeen movies with Dean Martin, Lewis struck out on his own and found further success with films such as The Bellboy and The Nutty Professor. As host of the Labor Day Muscular Dystrophy Association Telethon he helped raise over $1.5 billion for that charity. A month after his death however, his will would reveal that he excluded all six of his sons, including musician Gary Lewis, from any inheritance. Instead, Lewis left his entire estate to his second wife of thirty-four years, SanDee Pitnick, and their adopted daughter, Danielle.

2018 - ClassicBands.com

August 20
The Recording Industry Association of America announced that The Eagles' "Greatest Hits 1971 - 1975" had passed Michael Jackson's "Thriller" to become the best selling album of all time in the US The collection was now certified 38X Platinum, which means sales and streams have reached 38 million copies.

2019 - ClassicBands.com

August 20
74-year-old Rod Stewart attended his daughter Kimberly's 40th birthday party in Los Angeles along with three of his ex-wives, Alana Stewart, who is Kimberly's mum, Kelly Emberg, and Rachel Hunter. In total, Stewart had eight children with five different women.

2021 - ClassicBands.com

August 20
Singer, songwriter and Country Music Hall of Fame member Tom T. Hall passed away at the age of 85. Along with writing Jeannie C. Riley's 1968 Pop/Country crossover hit "Harper Valley P.T.A.", Tom also reached #12 on the Billboard Hot 100 with a song called "I Love" in 1974.

2024 - ClassicBands.com

August 20
Auction house Gottahaverockandroll.com placed twenty-four performance contracts for The Beatles' 1964 North American Summer Tour up for bid. Each document was signed by the band's manager, Brian Epstein or NEMS employee Bernard Lee.



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