This Week in
Rock History
Feb. 19 (1940) — William Robinson Jr. is born in Detroit, Mich. Smokey Robinson will become the founder and front man of the Miracles, one of the original acts signed by Motown Record Corp. The group will produce 25 Top 40 hits with Robinson as lead vocalist, principal songwriter and producer, including a 1970 No. 1, “The Tears of a Clown.”
Feb. 19 (1966) — Lou Christie’s “Lightning Strikes” reaches No. 1 on the Billboard pop chart. A plea for a sexual double standard — “Listen to me, baby, it's hard to settle down/Am I asking too much for you to stick around” — it will remain atop the chart for only one week, and Christie won’t record another Top 10 hit.
Feb. 25 (1957) — Buddy Holly and the Crickets record their first charting single, “That’ll Be the Day,” in a Clovis, N.M., studio. The song is a No. 1 hit, and is considered a rock classic — but is not the first version Holly and his band recorded.
This Week in
Rock History
July 12 (1965) — Recording sessions begin for what will become the Beach Boys’ album “Pet Sounds.” The sessions will take more than nine months, at four different Hollywood, Calif., recording studios — but produced what some consider to be the best album of all time, ranking second on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums.
July 17 (1970) — Canadian rock band the Guess Who perform at the Whitehall House for Pres. Richard Nixon and the Prince of Wales (decades later, Charles III, King of the United Kingdom). First Lady Pat Nixon asks the group not to play their breakthrough hit, “American Woman” — a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 two months earlier — because of the song’s alleged anti-American lyrics.