April 29

Births

1899: Duke Ellington (Composer & Bandleader)

1942: Klaus Voorman (Bass for Manfred Mann & The Plastic Ono Band)

1945: Hugh Hopper (Bass for Soft Machine)

1945: Tammi Terrell (R&B Singer)

1947: Tommy James (Singer in The Shondells)

1954: Deborah Iyall (Singer for Romeo Void)

1957: Mark Kendall (Guitar for Great White)

1960: Phil King (Bass for Lush)

1966: Greg Christian (Bass for Testament)

1967: Master P (Rapper)

1968: Carnie Wilson (Wilson Phillips)

1973: Mike Hogan (Bass for The Cranberries)

1979: Matt Tong (Drums for Bloc Party)

1981: Tom Smith (Guitarist & Lead Vocals for Editors)

Events

1942: Bing Crosby recorded "White Christmas".

1959: Herndon Stadium in Atlanta holds one of the first outdoor rock concerts, featuring Ray Charles, Jimmy Reed, and B.B. King. Nine thousand people attend.

1960: Dick Clark told the U.S. House of Representatives that he had never taken payola for the records he featured on his show "American Bandstand."

1967: The 14 hour Technicolour Dream benefit party for The International Times was held at Alexandra Palace in London. Seeing the event mentioned on TV, John Lennon called his driver and went to the show. Coincidentally, Yoko Ono was one of the performers. Other acts to appear included The Flies, Pink Floyd, Arthur Brown, The Move and Susie Creamcheese.

1967: Aretha Franklin's single "Respect" was released.

1971: Three dozen audiences members attending today's Grateful Dead show at San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom are treated for hallucinations after drinking apple juice purposefully spiked with LSD (some say by the band themselves).

1972: After seeing his protest song "Give Ireland Back To The Irish" banned by the BBC for its content, Paul McCartney puckishly rush releases a version of the nursery rhyme "Mary Had A Little Lamb" as the follow up. In the US, where no one is in on the joke, it actually makes it to #28.

1973: The Byrds officially disband for good (or so it seems) when founder and leader Roger McGuinn performs his first solo concert at New York's Academy of Music.

1973: John Denver began a weekly live UK BBC 2 TV special, 'The John Denver Show'.

1973: Mike Oldfield released the Album Tubular Bells.

1975: The Osmonds' appearance at Wembley Pool in London sets off a riot amongst fans.

1976: After a gig in Memphis, Bruce Springsteen took a cab to Elvis Presley's Graceland home and proceeded to climb over the wall. A guard took him to be another crank fan and apprehended him

1977: Elvis Presley leaves his show in Baltimore, MD for a full half-hour, angering and bewildering fans.

1980: Black Sabbath began their first tour with vocalist Ronnie James Dio, who had replaced Ozzy Osbourne.

1983: KISS play their last concert in their traditional makeup (although, reformed with all original members, they would return to the painted faces in 1996).

1987: Michael Jackson's reputed offer of $50,000 for the bones of John Merrick, the infamous "Elephant Man," is first made public.

1988: Eric Clapton filed for a divorce from Patti "Layla" Boyd.

1989: John Cipollina (Guitarist for Quicksilver Messenger Service) died on from chronic emphysema at the age of 45.

1989: Elvis Presley's first grandchild, Danielle Riley Keough, is born to Lisa Marie Presley.

1992: After the recent AIDS-related death of lead singer Freddie Mercury, the Queen song "We Are The Champions" is banned from the graduation ceremony at Sacred Heart private school in Clifton, NJ.

1992: Singer Paula Abdul and actor Emilio Estevez were married in a judge's chambers in Santa Monica, California. One of Abdul's managers and Estevez's mother witnessed the ceremony. Abdul filed for divorce two years later.

1993: Guitarist & producer, Mick Ronson died of liver cancer aged 46. Ronson recorded and toured with David Bowie from 1970 to 1973.

1993: An animated Barry White was a guest on "The Simpsons."

1995: Rapper Tupac Shakur married Keisha Morris inside the Clinton Correctional Facility, where he was serving a four-year jail term for sex abuse.

1998: Steven Tyler broke his knee at a concert in Anchorage, Alaska delaying Aerosmith's 'Nine Lives' tour and necessitating camera angle adjustments for the filming of the video for 'I Don't Want to Miss a Thing.'

1999: Tommy Lee announced that he had quit Motley Crue to devote time to his new band, Methods of Mayhem, and his family.

1999: Photographers taking shots of old cars wrecked at the bottom of Malibu's Decker Canyon discover the body of Iron Butterfly bassist Philip Kramer, who had gone missing on February 12, 1995. His death is ruled a suicide.

2003: A $5 million lawsuit against former Creedence Clearwater Revival leader John Fogerty was dismissed after a personal-injury lawyer claimed that he suffered hearing loss in his left ear from attending a Fogerty concert. The Judge said the plaintiff assumed the risk of hearing damage when he attended the concert in 1997.

2005: Peter, Paul and Mary's own Mary Travers has bone-marrow transplant surgery to attempt to stave off the leukemia that will take her life in 2009.

2011: Toby Keith is forced to take cover in a bunker when four mortars explode nearby just before he was to go on stage for a performance for American soldiers in the Middle East.