April 30

Births

1925: Johnny Horton (Country Singer)

1933: Willie Nelson (Country Singer)

1948: Wayne Kramer (Guitar and Lead Vocals in MC5)

1964: Barrington Levy (Reggae Artist)

1967: Turbo B (Rapper in Snap!)

1967: J.R. Richards (Singer for Dishwalla)

1968: Ben Ayres (Guitar & Vocals for Cornershop)

1968: Paulo 'Destructor' JR (Bass for Sepultura)

1971: Darren Emerson (DJ for Underworld)

1971: Chris Henderson(Guitarist for 3 Doors Down)

1973: Jeff Timmons (Singer in 98 Degrees)

1982: Lloyd Banks (Rapper)

Events

1941: Jazz giant Charlie Parker makes his first appearance on wax, blowing on Jay McShann's song "Swingmatism” on Decca Records.

1953: Frank Sinatra begins working with his new arranger, Nelson Riddle.

1957: Elvis Presley recorded "Jailhouse Rock".

1960: Fats Domino recorded "Walking To New Orleans".

1965: Manchester group Herman's Hermits began their first US tour supported by The Zombies.

1966: Richard Farina (Folk Singer) died in a motorcycle accident on this day.

1969: The Beatles recorded "Let It Be".

1968: Organist Al Kooper announces he's leaving Blood, Sweat and Tears.

1968: The Cilla Black Show, featuring the theme song "Step Inside Love" written by Paul McCartney, debuts on the BBC, making Cilla the first Englishwoman with her own TV show.

1970: Allman Brothers tour manager Twiggs Lyndon is arrested for stabbing a club manager to death over a contract dispute. Incredibly, Lyndon gets off by pleading temporary insanity caused by being the tour manager for the Allman Brothers.

1976: The Who's Keith Moon pays $100 to nine different New York cabdrivers to block off a full city block, allowing the drummer to throw all his furniture through the hotel room window and onto the street.

1977: Led Zeppelin break the single-act attendance record for a concert when 76,229 fans pay to see them at the Silverdome in Pontiac, MI, breaking the previous record set by the Who, also set at the Silverdome.

1980: Roger Daltrey of the Who premieres his first major acting vehicle, the crime drama film McVicar.

1982: Lester Bangs (Rock journalist for Creem and Rolling Stone Magazine) died of an overdose of Darvon, Valium and Nyquil.

1983: Blues legend Muddy Waters (McKinley Morganfield) died in his sleep from Heart Failure, at his home in Westmont, Illinois.

1983: To celebrate the 25th anniversary of London's legendary Marquee Club, Manfred Mann reforms in their original Sixties incarnation to play the venue they (and so many others) started in.

1988: For the first time since its release 11 years earlier, Pink Floyd's landmark LP Dark Side Of The Moon leaves the Billboard charts, only to return a few months later.

1990: Prince played a concert at Rupert's Night-club, Minneapolis. The $100 a head ticket proceeds all went to the family of his former bodyguard Charles 'Big Chick' Huntsberry who had died from a heart attack.

1991: Nirvana signed a recording contract with Geffen's DGC label for $290,000.

1998: Boyzone singer Ronan Keating married Yvonne Connolly on the Caribbean island Nevis.

2001: A light aircraft carrying Sting went off the runway as it landed in Florence. None of the four aboard, Sting a friend and two pilots were hurt. Brake failure was suspected as the cause of the accident.

2002: Roger Daltrey guest stars a music teacher on tonight's "That '70s Musical" episode of Fox-TV's That 70's Show.

2003: Sixties soul icon Earl King is buried in his hometown of New Orleans with an authentic jazz funeral. Paul McCartney and Eric Clapton send their condolences.

2004: Michael Jackson is arraigned on his child molestation charges, pleading not guilty to ten different criminal counts, also including extortion and false imprisonment.

2004: In Los Angeles, CA, Courtney Love (Hole) entered a plea of "not guilty" for two charges of felony drug possession.

2004: Ray Charles appears at his Los Angeles recording studio to attend a ceremony marking it as a national historic landmark. It will be the last public appearance he ever makes.

2005, The Dave Matthews Band agreed to pay $200,000 after their tour bus dumped human waste on a boatload of tourists in Chicago in August 2004. Bus driver Stefan Wohl who was alone on board the bus at the time the sewage was dumped was fined $10,000, the band had already donated $100,000 to two group's that protect the Chicago River and its surrounding area. The Dave Matthews Band offered their "deepest apologies" to more than 100 boat passengers who were on an architectural tour.

2005: American guitarist Norma-Jean Wofford died. Known as 'The Duchess', she worked with Bo Diddley as a Bo-ette from 1962 to 1966.

2007: Zola Taylor (The Platters) died in Los Angeles at age 69, from pneumonia.

2008: Mariah Carey married actor Nick Cannon in the Bahamas following a whirlwind two-month romance. The pop diva met Cannon, 27, while shooting the music video for her single 'Bye Bye.' It was the second marriage for Carey, who married Columbia Records executive Tommy Mottola in 1993, which ended in 1998.

2008: A giant inflatable pig which floated away during a Roger Waters concert was recovered in tatters in California. Two families from La Quinta who found what was left of the inflatable, decided to share four life tickets to the Coachella festival that were offered as part of the reward.

2008, Gail Renard, who was given the hand written lyrics to 'Give Peace A Chance' by John Lennon in 1969, announced plans to sell the lyric sheet at a Christie's auction. At the time, Lennon told Renard to hang on to the piece of paper, saying "It will be worth something someday." The piece of music history was expected to fetch around $400,000, but when it was actually sold in July of this year, it went for $790,000.

2011: Mariah Carey gives birth to twins, one boy and one girl.

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.

April 26

Births

1938: Maurice Williams (Doo-Wop Singer)

1938: Duane Eddy (Guitarist)

1940: Giorgio Moroder (Electronic Music producer)

1943: Gary Wright (Piano Player & Singer)

1952: Neol Davies (Selecter)

1960: Roger Taylor (Drums for Duran Duran)

1961: Chris Mars (Drums for The Replacements)

1970: T- Boz (Tionne Watkins) (Vocals for TLC)

1975: Joey Jordison (Drums for Slipknot)

1976: Jose Antonio Pasillas (Drummer for Incubus)

Events

1957: Calypso star Harry Belafonte resigns to his record label, RCA Victor, for an unprecedented million dollars.

1962: Jerry Lee Lewis, still stricken from the tragedy of losing his three-year-old son Steve Allen Lewis in a swimming pool drowning, arrives in the UK to tour for the first time since he was forced out in 1958 for marrying his 13-year-old cousin.

1963: Teen idol Frankie Avalon agrees to star in Beach Party, the first of what would become known as the "Beach Movies" starring himself and Annette Funicello.

1964: The Beatles attend a birthday party for Roy Orbison in London (Orbison had actually turned 28 three days earlier). That night, the group headlines the poll winner's concert for the magazine New Musical Express, which also features fan favorites The Rolling Stones and the Dave Clark Five.

1965: Bob Dylan makes his first trip to England to promote his new album, called Bringing It All Back Home. The tour is chronicled by filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker for a film that will eventually become the iconic Don't Look Back.

1966: According to the New York Times, Ray Charles is being forced to undergo tests in Boston to confirm that he has kicked the heroin habit, as ordered by a court after a drug-possession rap the previous year.

1967: Janis Ian, then only sixteen, appears on Leonard Bernstein's CBS special Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution, singing her single from a year earlier, "Society's Child." Though the song, which details a forbidden interracial relationship, was banned from airwaves in its initial run, this exposure turns it into a Top 20 hit.

1967: The Mamas and the Papas' "Mama Cass" Elliot gives birth to her one and only child, daughter Owen Vanessa. She would take the father's name to the grave.

1969: The Original Cast of 'Hair' started a 13-week run at No.1 on the US album chart.

1977: The disco boom gets rolling in earnest with the opening of Steve Rubell's new glitzy and ultra-exclusive club, Studio 54, in New York. Among the guests invited opening night: Cher, Mick Jagger and wife Bianca, Debbie Harry, Donald and Ivana Trump, Liza Minnelli, Jerry Hall, Halston, Margaux Hemingway, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Salvador Dali, Brooke Shields, Martha Graham, and Robin Leach.

1978: Ringo Starr plays two roles in a musical version of Prince and the Pauper entitled simply Ringo, also starring Art Carney, John Ritter, Carrie Fisher, Vincent Price, Angie Dickinson, Mike Douglas, and featuring George Harrison's narration. Airing on NBC, the show is a dismal flop.

1980: The Carpenters' fifth TV variety special, entitled Music, Music, Music and also starring John Davidson and Ella Fitzgerald, airs on ABC.

1982: While shopping for clothes on Hollywood Boulevard in the middle of the day, Rod Stewart is robbed at gunpoint of, among other things, his $50,000 Porsche.

1982: Joe Strummer disappears for about a month causing the Clash to cancel their U.K. tour.

1984: Count Basie died of pancreatic cancer in Hollywood, Florida.

1988: A jury in White Plains, New York ruled that Mick Jagger did not pirate an unknown reggae musician's song and turn it into his 1985 hit, 'Just Another Night'. Patrick Alley of New York City had accused Jagger of copyright infringement.

1990: New Kids On The Block's Danny Wood injured his ankle while on stage in Manchester when he tripped over a toy animal thrown on stage by a fan; he was forced to fly back home to the US for treatment.

1994: The Jefferson Airplane's Grace Slick pleads guilty to assault after turning a shotgun on police who visited her California home the previous month. Although she claims she was edgy due to a recent fire, the judge nonetheless sentences her to a short stint in Alcoholics Anonymous.

1995: Courtney Love reportedly turned down an offer of $1m from Playboy to pose nude for the magazine.

1997: Ernest Stewart, keyboard player with KC and the Sunshine Band, died of an asthma attack.

2003: The Morgan Creek Bridge in Chapel Hill, NC, is renamed the James Taylor Bridge in honor of the city's native son.

2004: June Pointer of the Pointer Sisters is arrested in Los Angeles for possession of cocaine.

2008: Amy Winehouse spent the night in custody after being arrested on suspicion of assault. Police said Winehouse had been "in no fit state" to be questioned when she arrived at the London station and she was kept in the cells. The 24-year-old was to be questioned about an incident said to have occurred 3 days earlier after a 38-year-old man claimed he was assaulted.