This Date In Music History- June 30, 2008

Birthdays:

Sweet's Andy Scott was born in Wrexham, Wales in 1951.

Ageless pop vocalist Lena Horne ("Love Me or Leave Me") was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. in 1917.

Glenn Shorrock (The Little River Band)-1944.

Hal Lindes (Dire Straits)-1953.

History:

James Brown's 'Live at the Apollo, Vol. 1,' was released in 1963. Reaching #2 on the album charts, it was the most successful album issued by Syd Nathan's King Records.

Frank Zappa joined The Mothers in 1964, later to be ammended to the Mothers of Invention.

In 1922, Eck Robertson and Henry Gilliland layed down six fiddle tunes recorded at New York's Victor studio, in what's later called the first country music recording session.

The late Florence Ballard of the Supremes ("Back In My Arms Again") was born in 1943.

Chet Atkins (country star and guitarist on many Elvis Presley classics) died in 2001 at age 77.

The Rockabilly Hall of Fame in Jackson, Tennessee opened in 2001.

25 people were hospitalized after a melee at a Bill Haley concert in Asbury Park, New Jersey in 1956. The city council will later vote to ban all Rock and Roll concerts.

Pink Floyd founder Syd Barrett died aged 60 in 2006. He defined British psychedelic eccentricity with songs like "Arnold Layne" and "See Emily Play," but LSD and a mental breakdown forced him out of the band in 1968.

Buddy Holly recorded "Peggy Sue" in 1957. In real life, she was Peggy Sue Gerron, the girlfriend of Crickets drummer Jerry Allison. The song was initially titled "Cindy Lou", but Allison convinced Buddy to change the title just before the recording session. Allison and Gerron were later married.

In 1979, one of the first records to use a synthesized drum track, "Ring My Bell" reached number one in the US for Anita Ward. It also topped the charts in the UK.

Also in 1979, Donna Summer held the number two and number three positions on the Billboard Hot 100 chart with "Hot Stuff" and "Bad Girls". She was the first solo entertainer to hold two of the top three positions simultaneously.

At a New York auction in 1985, John Lennon's psychedelic Rolls Royce sold for $2 million.

In 1976, cops raided Neil Diamond's home looking for drugs, but find less than one ounce of the stuff. Diamond gives the police copies of his new album, Beautiful Noise.

The Beatles played the first of three concerts at the Nippon Budokan Hall in Tokyo in 1966.

The KISS comic book arrived in 1977. Legend has it the red ink was mixed with blood from each member. Yeah, right.

Nine people are crushed to death at a Copenhagen Pearl Jam concert in 2000. People push forward because they can’t hear due to broken speakers. Vocalist Eddie Vedder tells the audience to move back but to no avail.

In 2005, the record industry said that Led Zeppelin has sold 107.5 million albums in the U.S. That secured the #3 spot on the all-time list. Only The Beatles (168.5 million) and Elvis Presley (116.5 million) have done better.

Huey Lewis and the News went to No.1 on the US album chart with 'Sports' in 1984.

The Everly Brothers announced plans for a reunion tour in 1983, ten years after they had split up.