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
Sept. 29 (1962) — Aretha Franklin’s “Try a Little Tenderness” enters the Billboard Hot 100, at No. 100. That’s as far as the Queen of Soul’s version of the Jimmy Campbell song, sung from a first-person, woman’s perspective, will go; Otis Redding will do a harder-edged version four years later, which reaches No. 25 and ranks No. 204 in Rolling Stone magazine’s “500 Greatest Songs of All Time.” Aretha, who had been recording for six years in 1962, had four other singles that year that barely charted; her career won’t really catch fire until 1967.
Oct. 5 (1962) — EMI’s Parlophone label releases “Love Me Do,” the Beatles’ first single. Originally written two years earlier by Paul McCartney, before he begins his songwriting partnership with group co-founder John Lennon, the song will be rewritten slightly by the two. It will be recorded three times with three different drummers: Pete Best, his replacement, Ringo Starr; and session musician Andy White. The Ringo version will be on the single — which goes as high as No. 4 on the U.K. charts, and is a No. 1 in the U.S. 17 months later — although the one with White’s drumming will be included on the group’s first English album.