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
Nov. 17 (1964) — In Detroit’s Hitsville USA studio, the Temptations finish recording “My Girl,” the first of their four No. 1 singles. Written by Smokey Robinson and Ronald White of the Miracles and inspired by the former’s wife, the song was ranked No. 43 on the most-recent edition of Rolling Stone magazine’s “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time”; in 2017, it was selected for inclusion in the National Recording Registry of the Library Congress.
Nov. 21 (1970) — Hitting No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 —ending a five-week run by the Jackson 5’s “I’ll Be There” — is “I Think I Love You” by the Partridge Family. A “band” that was spun off from an ABC-TV sitcom that had debuted on the network two months earlier, the only actual cast members performing on the group’s recordings are stars of the show David Cassidy and Shirley Jones. The Family will follow that chart-topper with two more Top 10 hits in 1971, but will see declining success after that, their last charting single coming out two years later and peaking at No. 99. ABC will drop the TV show in 1974.