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.