March 24

Birthdays

1937: Billy Stewart (R&B Singer)

1948: Lee Oskar (War)

1949: Nick Lowe (Singer)

1951: Dougie Thomson (Supertramp)

1960: Nena (Singer)

1970: Sharon Corr (Vocals & Violin for The Corrs)

Events

1935: The godfather of all broadcast talent shows, Major Bowes' Original Amateur Hour, moves from a New York show to national prominence with a new slot on the NBC radio network. In 1952, the show, now hosted by Ted Mack, made it to NBC-TV. It would run on various networks until 1970.

1941: Glenn Miller begins filming his first motion picture, Sun Valley Serenade.

1945: Billboard begins publishing its first album chart. The first Number One: A Collection Of Favorites by Nat King Cole.

1956: Elvis Presley visits friend and fellow Sun labelmate Carl Perkins in a Dover, DE hospital, where he is recovering from his near-fatal car crash.

1958: At 6:35 in the morning, Elvis Presley reports to the offices of Memphis' Local Draft Board 86, accompanied by his parents and longtime friend Lamar Fike, then is bused with twelve other new recruits to Kennedy Veterans Memorial Hospital. There, he is inducted into the US Army, a Private with serial number 53 310 761. Dozens of photographers and reporters attend. He will serve two years, and get paid $78 a month.

1962: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards take the stage for the first time in Ealing, England with their first band, unfortunately named Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys.

1965: While playing in Odense, Denmark, Rolling Stone bassist Bill Wyman is shocked by a poorly grounded mic stand, and is instantly knocked unconscious.

1966: The first major US bootleg law is passed in New York State, a bill that makes the processing of unlicensed recordings a misdemeanor. A dozen years later to the day, England grants their record companies the right to seize bootleg recordings.

1973: An overzealous male fan climbs onstage during Lou Reed's show in Buffalo, NY, and bites him on the butt. The audience member is, not surprisingly, thrown out.

1991: The Black Crowes were dropped as the support act on ZZ Top's tour after repeatedly criticising the tour sponsor Miller Beer.

1992: A Chicago court settled the Milli Vanilli class action suit by approving cash rebates of up to $3 to anyone proving they bought the group’s music before November 27, 1990, the date the lip synching scandal broke.

1997: Harold Melvin (Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes) dies of a stroke ate age of 57.

1998: R&B singer Mark Morrison was jailed for a year after trying to con his way out of doing community service in the UK.

2001: The segment of Hwy 19 that runs through Macon, GA, is renamed Duane Allman Boulevard, in remembrance of the famed Allman Brothers guitarist who died in a motorcycle crash near there three decades earlier.

2002: After a record fifteen nominations, Randy Newman wins his first Oscar award for Best Song: the Monsters Inc. composition "If I Didn't Have You.”

2009: Motown drummer Uriel Jones of The Funk Brothers, died ataged 74 after suffering complications from a heart attack.