This Date In Music History- July 12

Birthdays:

Christine McVie (born Christine Anne Perfect) was born in 1943.

John Wetton, bassist for Uriah Heep and Asia, was born in 1949.

Bill Cosby ("Little Ole Man") is 71.

Walter Egan ("Magnet & Steel") turns 60.

Barbara (Mama) Cowsill of the Cowsills ("Hair") was born in 1928.

Bassist Phil Kramer of Iron Butterfly ("In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida") was born in Youngstown, Ohio in 1952.

History:

In 1954, Scotty Moore became Elvis Presley's first manager with the signing of a contract (Sun Records) that also bore the signatures of Elvis's parents. Elvis quit his job as a truck driver.

In 2004, nearly four decades after their major hit "I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night," two former members of the Electric Prunes, vocalist James Lowe and bassist Mark Tulin, filed separate suites against their record label and music publisher claiming $1 million in owed royalties.

In 1965, the Velvet Underground recorded a demo tape at viola player John Cale's Manhattan apartment. It represents their first recordings and was later released, in 1995 as Disc 1 of their self-titled five-CD box set.

The first Rollin' Stones concert (they would later add the g) was held at the Marquee Club in London in 1962. Their line-up consisted of lead vocalist Mick Jagger, guitarists Keith Richards and Brian Jones, Dick Taylor on bass, pianist Ian Stewart and Mick Avory, later of the Kinks, on drums. Avory and Taylor were later replaced by Tony Chapman on drums and Bill Wyman on bass. Chapman didn't work out and drummer Charlie Watts completed the Stones' line-up in January 1963.

What hard work does for a band: In 2007, the Rolling Stones were paid $5.5 million (or $67,500 per minute) to perform a 14 song set at a private Deutsche Bank party for top-level employees held at the National Art Museum of Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain.

DJ Steve Dahl tries to kill off disco with a Disco Demolition Night at Chicago's Comiskey Park in 1979. A bonfire was started into which disco records were pitched, while the crowd chanted "Disco sucks." The ensuing riot causes the White Sox to forfeit a baseball game when the field becomes unplayable.

Today in 1969, the song "In the Year 2525 (Exordium and Terminus)" by Zager & Evans topped the charts and stayed there for 6 weeks. After getting a lot of requests to sing the song that they included in their live act, Denny Zager and Rick Evans had invested just $500 to press 1000 copies of the tune. After a Texas radio station added it their play list, RCA signed the duo, but the record would prove to be their only US chart entry.

Blind Faith began their one and only tour with a sold-out show at New York's Madison Square Garden in 1969.

The Monroe Brothers make their first recordings for the Bluebird label, an RCA subsidiary in 1936.

In 1970, Janis Joplin debuted with her new group, the Full Tilt Boogie Band, before 4,000 people in Louisville, Kentucky. Less than three months later, she would be dead from a heroin overdose.

K.C. & the Sunshine Band make their US Pop chart debut in 1975 with "Get Down Tonight". It's the first of four singles by the band to make it to Billboard's number one spot.

The Beach Boys recorded "Sloop John B" in 1965, a 1927 Folk song that featured Al Jardine on lead vocal. The record would climb to number three in May, 1966.

The O'Jays ("Love Train," "Back Stabbers") formed in Canton, Ohio in 1958. They were originally known as the Triumphs.

Minnie Riperton ("Lovin' You"), certainly a unique voice in pop music, died of breast cancer in 1979.