Today in Music History: Little Richard Is 80
December 05, 2012
Today In:
1960 - Paul McCartney and Pete Best were arrested for pinning a condom to a brick wall and then igniting it. The two were told to leave Germany and The Beatles returned home, discouraged.
1976 - Music weekly NME reviewed the Sex Pistols debut single 'Anarchy In The UK' saying "Johnny Rotten sings flat, the song is laughably naive, and the overall feeling is of a third-rate Who imitation."
1987 - The Jesus And Mary Chain were banned from appearing on a US music TV show after complaints of blasphemy when the group's name was flashed across the screen.
2004 - U2 went to No.1 on the US album chart giving them their sixth US No.1 album, with How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb.
2006 - Beatles lyrics handwritten by Sir Paul McCartney to an early version of Maxwell's Silver Hammer sold for $192,000 at an auction in New York. A guitar owned by Jimi Hendrix fetched $168,000, a notebook containing lyrics written by Bob Marley, sold for $72,000 and a poem penned by Doors frontman Jim Morrison made $49,000 at the Christie's sale.
2011 - After spending 45 weeks at the top end of the UK charts, singer Adele's second album 21 become the biggest selling LP in Britain this century, surpassing the late Amy Winehouse's 2006 LP Back to Black.
Birthday Highlight:
Little Richard, born Richard Wayne Penniman, is 80 today. Little Richard is considered one of the key figures in the invention of rock n' roll, alongside the likes of Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry. He charted seventeen original hits in less than three years, including the towering classics "Tutti Frutti," "Good Golly Miss Molly," and "Long Tall Sally." At the height of his popularity in 1957, he quit popular music and became a born-again preacher, but returned to the spotlight mixing both secular and spiritual music later in life.