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
May 27 (1975) — Capitol Records releases Venus and Mars, the fourth studio album by Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles group Wings, and the first not to be put out by the Fab Four-founded Apple Records. It was the group’s second and last No. 1 LP in the U.S., following up on the huge success of its predecessor, Band on the Run, and the first for a Wings lineup expanded beyond McCartney, wife Linda and ex-Moody Blue Denny Laine. It includes the band’s second of six No. 1 singles, “Listen to What the Man Said.”
May 30 (1966) — Them, the British Invasion band from Northern Ireland, begin a three-week gig headlining at the Whisky a Go Go, the legendary West Hollywood, Calif., nightclub. Their opening act the final night of the stint is the Doors; Them lead vocalist Van Morrison and Doors frontman Jim Morrison duet on the former’s garage-band classic, “Gloria.”