Rock 'n' Roll History for
June 1


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1956 - ClassicBands.com

June 1
Doris Day signed a five-year recording contract with Columbia Records worth $1 million. By late June, "Whatever Will Be, Will Be" (Que Sera, Sera) entered the US charts and eventually climbed to #2 for a three week stay. She would have only one more Billboard Top 40 hit with "Everybody Loves A Lover" which would reach #6 in 1958.


1957 - ClassicBands.com

June 1
Sam Cooke records his debut single, "You Send Me" at Radio Recorders Studio in Los Angeles. The song will rise to the top of the US chart next December and become the first of Cooke's 29 Billboard Top 40 hits. The song reached #29 in the UK.

1958 - ClassicBands.com

June 1
Private Elvis Presley completes basic Army training at Ft. Hood, Texas. To the press, he expressed his enjoyment of the tank's obstacle course. To friends and family, he described his homesickness and insisted that he hated the training.

1959 - ClassicBands.com

June 1
"The Battle Of New Orleans" by Johnny Horton hits the top of both the Country and Pop charts in the US, where it will stay for an amazing two months straight. The song was originally a poem written by high school teacher James Morriss in 1936, which he put to the music of an old fiddle tune known as "The Eighth Of January". Horton's version would become one of the largest selling records of the year and later won a Grammy Award.

June 1
The first edition of Juke Box Jury airs on the BBC in Britain. The show's host, David Jacobs, led a revolving panel of guests in critiquing the week's top record releases. Although the songs were never played in their entirety, the four judges gave a verdict on whether each would be a "hit" or a "miss". The show was eventually canceled in 1967 due to falling ratings.

1961 - ClassicBands.com

June 1
FM stereo was heard for the first time by listeners in Schenectady, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. The FCC would adopt the standard a year later.

1963 - ClassicBands.com

June 1
Four weeks after it entered the Billboard chart, 17 year old Lesley Gore's "It's My Party" hit the number one spot. It was a song that was chosen for her by Quincy Jones, then a staff producer for Mercury Records, who had seen Leslie sing for the first time just a few weeks earlier.

1964 - ClassicBands.com

June 1
The Rolling Stones, consisting of Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Bill Wyman, Brian Jones and Charlie Watts, arrived at JFK Airport, set to kick off their first tour of America five days later.

1968 - ClassicBands.com

June 1
Simon And Garfunkel reached the top of the US charts with "Mrs. Robinson", which was featured in the soundtrack of the film The Graduate, starring Dustin Hoffman and Ann Bancroft. The song went on to win a Grammy Award for the Best Contemporary Pop Performance by a Vocal Duo or Group.

June 1
24-year-old Merrilee Rush enters the Billboard Top 40 for the first and only time with "Angel Of The Morning", which will reach #7. Juice Newton would take the same song to #4 in 1981. "Angel of the Morning" was written by Chip Taylor (James Wesley Voight), the younger brother of the actor Jon Voight and the uncle of actress Angelina Jolie.


1971 - ClassicBands.com

June 1
Elvis Presley's birthplace, a two room house in Tupelo, Mississippi, was opened to the public as a tourist attraction.

June 1
Gladys Knight is the last musical guest to appear on the Ed Sullivan Show, which was canceled the next day after 23 years on the air. It was TV's longest running variety show and was a springboard for nearly every major music act in the '60s. Sullivan was so angry about the cancellation that he refused to do a final show, although he would return for several TV specials and a 25th-anniversary show in 1973. Ed Sullivan died of esophageal cancer at age 73 on October 13th, 1974.

1973 - ClassicBands.com

June 1
Robert Wyatt, drummer for the British progressive rock band Soft Machine, fell out of a fourth story apartment window and broke his spine, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. Without the use of his legs, he would continue with the band by concentrating on singing and playing keyboards.

1975 - ClassicBands.com

June 1
Guitarist Ron Wood joins The Rolling Stones on tour for first time, replacing Mick Taylor as The Stones kick off their latest tour of the US in Baton Rouge Louisiana.

1977 - ClassicBands.com

June 1
28 year old, Long Island native, Billy Joel wraps up a four month tour of the US by appearing at Carnegie Hall in New York.

1984 - ClassicBands.com

June 1
Nate Nelson, lead singer of the Doo-Wop group The Flamingos, died at the age of 52. He was with the group when they recorded their biggest hit, "I Only Have Eyes For You" in 1959 and joined the Platters three years later.

1987 - ClassicBands.com

June 1
"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" is released in CD format in the UK, where it will rise to #3, twenty years after it was first issued.


1989 - ClassicBands.com

June 1
Twenty-one years after its release, the LP "The Association Greatest Hits" was certified Platinum for sales of 1,000,000 copies by the RIAA. It is a compilation of their singles from 1966-1968.

1991 - ClassicBands.com

June 1
50 year old David Ruffin, formerly of The Temptations, died of an overdose of crack cocaine. Ruffin sang lead vocal on some of the Temps biggest hits, "My Girl" and "Ain't Too Proud Too Beg". As a solo artist, he had hits with "My Whole World Ended The Moment You Left Me" and "Walk Away From Love", as well as "The Way You Do the Things You Do / My Girl medley" with Hall And Oates.

1996 - ClassicBands.com

June 1
Alan Blakely, rhythm guitar player for The Tremeloes, who scored a pair of 1967 hits in North America, "Here Comes My Baby" and "Silence Is Golden", died of cancer at the age of 54.

1997 - ClassicBands.com

June 1
Re-issued to mark the 40th anniversary of its release, The Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" re-entered the UK album chart at #47. To this date, the album spent a total of 201 weeks on the UK charts.

June 1
Bob Dylan is discharged from hospital after being treated for histoplasmosis, a potential life threatening fungal infection that causes swelling of the sac surrounding the heart. Dylan was quoted as saying, "I'm just glad to be feeling better. I really thought I'd be seeing Elvis soon."

June 1
58-year-old Kenny Rogers gets married for the fifth time, this time to his production assistant Wanda Miller. They would remain together for the next 22 years, until he died of bladder cancer on March 20th, 2020 at the age of 81.


1999 - ClassicBands.com

June 1
Napster, the file sharing program invented by 18 year-old Northeastern University drop-out Shawn Fanning, becomes available on the internet. It would shut down in 2001 after a ton of lawsuits, and a steep decline in sales of CDs.

2005 - ClassicBands.com

June 1
Closing arguments and rebuttals in the Michael Jackson child-molestation trial came to an end.

2006 - ClassicBands.com

June 1
The UK Official Albums chart turns 50 years old. Fans respond to a survey and choose "Definitely Maybe" by Oasis as the greatest album of all time. The Beatles hold down second and third place with "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and "Revolver". Radiohead's "OK Computer" places fourth and "(What's the Story) Morning Glory?" by Oasis is fifth.

2008 - ClassicBands.com

June 1
A fire broke out on the back lot of Universal Studios Hollywood, an American film studio and theme park in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles County, California. As a result, between 40,000 and 50,000 archived digital video and film copies were feared destroyed. Hundreds of major artists claimed that their original, master recordings were lost, although Universal disputes those claims.

2011 - ClassicBands.com

June 1
The British Recorded Music Industry (BPI) announced that digital songs and music videos containing explicit lyrics will now be marked with Parental Guidance logos or the word 'EXPLICIT'.

2023 - ClassicBands.com

June 1
Cynthia Weil, who co-wrote several Classic Rock hits, passed away at the age of 82. With her husband and songwriting partner, Barry Mann, Weil composed The Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'", The Animals' "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place", Paul Petersen's "My Dad", The Drifters' "On Broadway" and Tony Orlando's "Bless You".



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