Rock 'n' Roll History for
September 8


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1954 - ClassicBands.com

September 8
Radio personality Alan Freed begins broadcasting on New York's WINS at an annual salary of $75,000. Although the phrase "rock and roll" had been around since the 1940s, Freed is generally given credit for making it popular by using it to describe upbeat music.

1956 - ClassicBands.com

September 8
Elvis Presley appears on the cover of TV Guide. The cost of the magazine was 15 cents.

September 8
Eddie Cochran signs with Liberty Records where he will have three US Top 40 hits, "Sittin' In The Balcony" (#18), "Summertime Blues" (#8) and "C'mon Everybody" (#35).

1962 - ClassicBands.com

September 8
Dickey Lee cracks the Billboard Top 40 for the first time with a song called "Patches". Despite some US radio stations refusing to play the record because of its teen suicide theme, it would still climb to #6 on the Hot 100 and enjoy an eleven week stay in the Top 40.

1971 - ClassicBands.com

September 8
The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences presents Elvis Presley with the Bing Crosby Award, given to performers who "during their lifetimes, have made creative contributions of outstanding artistic or scientific significance to the field of phonograph records."

1973 - ClassicBands.com

September 8
Marvin Gaye enjoyed his second #1 hit on the Billboard Pop chart with "Let's Get It On". He would place seven more records on the list by 1982, giving him a total of forty.

September 8
The Allman Brothers started a five week run at the top of the Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart with "Brothers And Sisters", the group's only US #1 LP. Led by the single, "Ramblin' Man", the album sold 760,000 copies in its first three weeks,

1976 - ClassicBands.com

September 8
Disco band Wild Cherry's self-titled album, which includes their number one single, "Play that Funky Music", is certified Gold. The LP, which peaked at #5 on the Billboard 200 chart, would eventually go Platinum for sales of one million copies.

1977 - ClassicBands.com

September 8
Guitarist Jimmy McCulloch quits Paul McCartney And Wings to join a reformed line-up of the Small Faces. Sadly, he died on September 27th, 1979 in his flat in Maida Vale, North West London at the age of 26.

1988 - ClassicBands.com

September 8
Elton John holds an auction of his stage costumes in London, England and nets $6.2 million.

2002 - ClassicBands.com

September 8
Gordon Lightfoot undergoes an emergency stomach operation in a suburban Toronto hospital. He would eventually recover.

2007 - ClassicBands.com

September 8
Lynyrd Skynyrd are inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in Atlanta at the Georgia World Congress Center.

2011 - ClassicBands.com

September 8
Jury selection began for the involuntary manslaughter trial of Michael Jackson's doctor, Conrad Murray. Prospective jurors were asked to fill out a thirty-page questionnaire to determine their level of knowledge of the case and any strong views about Jackson or Murray.

2014 - ClassicBands.com

September 8
Cher was forced to postpone the second leg of her Dressed to Kill tour due to an acute viral infection. The 69-year-old entertainer was expected to return to the stage a couple of days later.

2015 - ClassicBands.com

September 8
The Who postponed four shows of their 50th Anniversary Tour to give singer Roger Daltrey time to recover from an unspecified virus.

2017 - ClassicBands.com

September 8
Don Williams, the renowned Country singer who scored a #24 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1980 with "I Believe In You", died after a short illness at the age of 78. During his career, Williams reached the top of the Country And Western chart seventeen times.

September 8
Just over forty-one years after it was recorded in a single night, Neil Young's album "Hitchhiker" is finally released. Executives at Reprise Records balked at issuing the LP back in 1976, saying that it "wasn't a real record, but a collection of demos." The record buying public of 2017 felt differently, as they sent it to #20 on the Billboard 200, #6 on the UK Official Album Chart, and into the Top 20 in thirteen other European countries.

2022 - ClassicBands.com

September 8
Aerosmith set a new record for the most tickets sold for a concert at Boston's iconic Fenway Park after selling over 38,700 tokens. The crowd watched the legendary Rock band kick off their 50th anniversary tour.



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