Rock & Roll Tidbits

Michael Jackson was just five years old when the Jackson Five played their first professional gig. Their fee for the night was only eight dollars, but they collected over one hundred dollars in money tossed on the stage.

The music business is hard on a marriage. Paul Revere has been married six times. Jerry Lee Lewis, Kenny Rogers and Tammy Wynette have each been married five times. James Brown, Glen Campbell and Peggy Lee have been married four times.

Diana Ross, Florence Ballard and Mary Wilson were not the first group in the rock and roll era to call themselves The Supremes. An all male quartet from Columbus, Ohio used the name on a 1957 single called "Just You And I" and Ruby and the Romantics, who had a number one US hit with "Our Day Will Come" in 1963, started out as The Supremes.

The Guess Who performed at The White House during the Nixon administration, but were asked not to perform their #1 hit "American Woman" because of its' anti-U.S. establishment lyrics.

Fats Domino's 1956, US #2 hit, "Blueberry Hill" was originally a number one hit for big band leader Glen Miller in 1940.

According to Rolling Stone magazine, The Young Rascals were surprised by the success of "Good Lovin". Felix Cavaliere admitted, "We weren't too pleased with our performance. It was a shock to us when it went to the top of the charts."

Although Jerry Lee Lewis received a lot of bad press for marrying his 13 year old second cousin, Jerry's sister Linda Gail first married at 14 and another sister, Frankie Jean, first married at age 12.

When song writer Burt Bacharach asked B.J. Thomas to sing "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head" for the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, he neglected to tell Thomas that the song had already been turned down by Bob Dylan and Ray Stevens.

Buddy Holly's drummer, Jerry Allison played drums on The Everly Brothers 1959 hit "Til I Kissed You".

Songwriter Hoyt Axton once revealed that the first line of "Joy To The World", Jeremiah was a bullfrog, was never intended to be in the song. It was just a fill-in line he used until he could come up with better lyrics. He pitched the tune to Three Dog Night when they toured together and they ended up recording it "as is."

George Harrison expressed his feelings about the break-up of The Beatles by saying: "The saddest thing was actually getting fed up with one another."

A race running the route described in the song "Dead Man's Curve", from Hollywood and Vine to Sunset and Doheny, would have covered 4.5 miles. If it were extended to the real "dead man's curve" near UCLA, it would have been a drag race of 8.7 miles.

The Beach Boys' 1966 hit, "Caroline, No" was originally titled "Carol, I Know".

After Jan Berry of Jan and Dean was seriously injured in a car accident on April 12, 1966 and could no longer perform, his partner Dean Torrence formed a graphics design company that was responsible for over 200 album covers including "The Turtles Golden Hits", nine for The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and several for Harry Nilsson. He won a Grammy Award for Best Album Cover of the Year in 1972 for the LP "Pollution" by the group of the same name and was nominated on three other occasions.

In 1956, entertainer Jackie Gleason said of Elvis Presley, "He can’t last, I tell you flatly, he can’t last."

The Recording Industry Association of American began certifying recordings as Gold on March 14th, 1958 to recognize records that sold over 500,000 copies. The first Gold plaque was presented to Perry Como for his hit single, "Catch A Falling Star". Four months later, the cast album to "Oklahoma" sung by Gordon Macrae became the first official Gold album. In 1976, because of booming record sales, the RIAA created a new platinum award, for singles that sell in excess of 2 million copies and an album that sells 1 million units. The first platinum single was Johnnie Taylor's "Disco Lady", and the first platinum album went to the Eagles for their "Greatest Hits 1971-1975". On March 16, 1999, the RIAA launched the Diamond Awards, honoring sales of 10 million copies or more of an album or single. Awards were presented to AC/DC, The Eagles, and Metallica.

On February 14th, 1977, singer / songwriter Janis Ian received 461 Valentine's day cards after indicating in the lyrics of her 1975, number 3 hit "At Seventeen", she had never received any. (The valentines I never knew, The Friday night charades of youth, Were spent on one more beautiful, At seventeen I learned the truth)

According to Paul Anka, who appeared with Buddy Holly on some of the Winter Dance Party tour before the plane crash that took Holly's life, Buddy had plans to take flying lessons when the tour was over.

On Sunday, February 10th, 1964, the night that the Beatles made their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan show, an estimated 73 million viewers watched on TV, with over 45 percent of all sets in the US tuned in. The crime rate among American teenagers dropped to nearly zero that night.