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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

      June 8 (1944) William Royce Scaggs is born in Canton, Ohio, the eldest child of a traveling salesman. Getting the nickname Boz from a private-school classmate, he will learn to play the guitar at age 12, meet future rock star Steve Miller and become lead vocalist for Miller’s band, the Marksmen, at age 15. Scaggs will play with Miller in Madison, Wis., blues bands while in college, and play on the first two Steve Miller Band albums. He will make his biggest mark as a solo artist, recording chart-topping albums and Grammy Award-winning singles in the 1970s.

      June 13 (1969) — Mick Taylor joins the Rolling Stones as their second guitarist, replacing original member Brian Jones, who left earlier in the year over disagreements with the other bands members. Taylor, age 20 at the time, had already played with the legendary band John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, where he replaced Peter Green, who had left to former Fleetwood Mac. Taylor will make his on-stage debut a month later at the free concert in London’s Hyde Park, where he plays in front of an audience estimated at a quarter of a million. Although he will only be a member of the Stones for five years, he will play on some of the band’s classic early albums, including Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main St., and will be rank 37th on Rolling Stone magazine’s 2011 list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time.

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