This Date In Music History- July 8

Birthdays:

Jai Johanny "Jaimoe" Johanson, of the Allman Brothers Band, was born in Ocean Springs, Mississippi in 1944.

Steve Lawrence ("Pretty Blue Eyes") turns 73.

Jerry Vale ("You Don't Know Me") is 77.

Louis Jordan, whose humorous brand of jump jive inspired rock 'n' roll, was born in Brinkley, Arizona in 1908.

Inventive musician Beck entered the world in 1970.

Arctic Monkeys’ co founder (with Alex Turner), guitarist Jamie Cook was born in 1985.

Born on this day in 1961, Toby Keith, US country singer.

History:

In 1972, Bill Withers hit #1 with the classic song "Lean On Me.”

Today in 1957, the song "(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear" by Elvis Presley topped the charts and stayed there for 7 weeks.

Freddie & the Dreamers recorded their future No. 1 "I'm Telling You Now" in 1963. It didn't top the chart until 1965.

In 1958, the first gold record album was presented by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The award went to the soundtrack "Oklahoma!" The honor signified that the album had reached one million dollars in sales. The first gold single issued by the RIAA was "Catch a Falling Star" by Perry Como in March of 1958. A gold single represented sales of one million records.

In one of the stranger double bills. The Jimi Hendrix Experience opened for the Monkees in 1967. The Experience played only eight shows before being dropped. They’re a little too "out there" for the Monkees’ audience. Nobody was too upset and the incident garnered the Experience a whole lot of notoriety.

In what was ruled an attempted suicide, singer Marianne Faithful took an overdose of barbiturates in 1969 on the set of the Australian movie, Ned Kelly. She was dropped from the cast and entered hospital for treatment of heroin addiction.

One of Elvis Presley's teeth went up for auction on eBay in 2003. The tooth was owned by the King's former fiancée, Linda Thompson, until it went to the Elvis Presley Museum which later sold the tooth. The current owner said he'd been contacted by a European company that wanted to extract DNA from the tooth, but he refused. The opening bid on the tooth, a lock of hair from his Army induction haircut and a gold record for "Love Me Tender" was $100,000.

In 2004, Mark Purseglove, known as the world’s ‘biggest bootlegger’ was sentenced to 3 years 6 months jail by Blackfriars Crown Court. Purseglove had built up a £15 million pirate CD empire by bootlegging live concerts of some of the world's biggest stars including The Beatles, David Bowie and Pink Floyd.

The B-52's made their UK live debut at London's Lyceum Ballroom in 1979.

Gerry Rafferty's album 'City To City' went to No.1 on the US chart in 1978, knocking off 'Saturday Night Fever', which had been at the top of the charts for almost six months.