Rock 'n' Roll History for
January 10


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1955 - ClassicBands.com

January 10
Alan Freed hosted his first stage show at the St Nicholas Arena in New York City, featuring The Clovers, The Drifters and Fats Domino. The audience was a rare mix of 70 per cent white and 30 per cent black.

1956 - ClassicBands.com

January 10
Elvis Presley recorded his first tracks for his new record company, RCA. Among them was the first song written especially for The King, "Heartbreak Hotel". He was backed by a drummer, D.J. Fontana for the first time, in addition to guitarist Chet Atkins and piano player Floyd Cramer in an eight hour recording session.

1959 - ClassicBands.com

January 10
Jerry Lee Lewis has his only UK #1 single with "Great Balls Of Fire". The backing musicians on the track were Sidney Stokes on bass, and a session drummer named Larry Linn. Lewis would later say, "I don't know what happened to them people. That's the last time I ever seen 'em. That's strange isn't it?"


1964 - ClassicBands.com

January 10
The first US Beatles album, "Introducing The Beatles", was released on Vee-Jay records. The album cover showed John, Paul and George with their now famous "mop top" haircuts, but Ringo had yet to convert. Vee-Jay would be forced to stop selling the disc by the end of the year because of legal complications, but by then over 1.3 million copies had been sold.

1965 - ClassicBands.com

January 10
Shindig! regulars Dick And Deedee enjoy their fifth and final Billboard Top 40 hit when "Thou Shalt Not Steal" peaks at #13. Although they would release eleven more singles before splitting up in 1969, only one of those efforts, "Be My Baby" (#87), could crack the Hot 100.

1969 - ClassicBands.com

January 10
Frustrated at Paul McCartney's dominance during the filming of Let It Be, George Harrison nonchalantly tells the rest of the band that he is quitting immediately and sarcastically says as he walked out, "See you around the clubs." George would later say that while he had a growing backlog of new material, he constantly had to work on Lennon and McCartney's songs before the group would work on his.

1976 - ClassicBands.com

January 10
The North American fascination with CB radios helped push C.W. McCall's truck driving song, "Convoy" to the top of the Billboard Pop chart. McCall, whose real name is William Dale Fries, Jr., used a pre-Rap vocal technique that wavers between singing and speaking called "sprechgesang" (German for spoken-song and spoken-voice). He would place three more songs on the Hot 100 and a dozen on the Country chart.

January 10
Foghat's "Slow Ride" becomes the first of their five Billboard chart entries and the only one to crack the Top 20. In 2009, it was named the 45th "Best Hard Rock" song of all time by VH1

January 10
66 year old Chester Arthur Burnett, better known as Howlin' Wolf, passed away at the age of 66. Although he never gained mainstream popularity, the legendary American Blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player was ranked by Rolling Stone magazine at #51 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

1979 - ClassicBands.com

January 10
Richard Carpenter enters a chemical dependency treatment center in Topeka, Kansas. He takes a year off after his treatment.

1981 - ClassicBands.com

January 10
John Lennon and Yoko Ono's "Double Fantasy" LP goes Platinum a little over a month after Lennon's assassination. The album would be number one in the US for eight weeks.

1985 - ClassicBands.com

January 10
Cyndi Lauper became the first female recording artist since Bobbie Gentry in 1967 to be nominated for five Grammy Awards: Album of the Year, Best New Artist, Best Pop Vocal Performance (Female), Record of the Year and Song of the Year. She would win Best New Artist at the February 26th show.


1997 - ClassicBands.com

January 10
James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, gets a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

2003 - ClassicBands.com

January 10
A collection of 500 Beatles tapes known as the 'Get Back sessions', which were stolen in the 1970s, were found after UK police cracked a major bootleg operation in London and Amsterdam. Five men were arrested.

2007 - ClassicBands.com

January 10
A fire razed the Clio, Michigan home of ? and The Mysterians leader Rudy Martinez, destroying all of his priceless memorabilia. He did not have insurance on the house and was forced into living at a nearby mobile home.

2008 - ClassicBands.com

January 10
Rod Allen, the last remaining original member of The Fortunes, died of liver cancer at the age of 64. The band scored a trio of Billboard Top 40 hits, including "You've Got Your Troubles" (#7 in 1965), "Here It Comes Again" (#27 in 1965) and "Here Comes That Rainy Day Feeling Again" (#15 in 1971).

2016 - ClassicBands.com

January 10
English Rocker David Bowie passed away after an eighteen month battle with cancer at the age of 69. A leader of the Glam Rock movement in the 1970s, Bowie placed thirteen songs on Billboard's Top 40 chart, including "Space Oddity", "Fame", "Golden Years", "Let's Dance", "China Girl", "Blue Jean" and "Dancing In The Street". His album "Blackstar" had been released only two days before his death.


2020 - ClassicBands.com

January 10
Nielsen Music's report on U.S. music sales in the 2010s confirmed The Beatles' Abbey Road was the best-selling vinyl album of the decade, selling 558,000 copies. In second place was Pink Floyd's "Dark Side Of The Moon" (376,00), #3 "Guardians of the Galaxy Awesome Mix Vol. 1" (367,000), #4 Bob Marley And The Wailers "Legend" (364,000), #5 Amy Winehouse "Back to Black" (351,000), #6 Michael Jackson "Thriller" (334,000), #7 The Beatles "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (313,000), #8 Fleetwood Mac "Rumours" (304,000), #9 Miles Davis "Kind of Blue" (286,000), #10 Lana Del Rey "Born to Die" (283,000).

2023 - ClassicBands.com

January 10
Guitar great Jeff Beck passed away at the age of 78 in a hospital in Surrey, England after contracting bacterial meningitis. Beck rose to fame in the English rock band The Yardbirds. A year after leaving the group in 1966, he formed The Jeff Beck Group, which included vocalist Rod Stewart and guitarist-bassist Ronnie Wood. In 1973, he formed the supergroup Beck, Bogert & Appice with former Vanilla Fudge members Carmine Appice and Tim Bogert. In 1975 he began a solo career which resulted in twelve albums that made the Billboard 200, and seven that cracked the UK chart.



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