History Highlight:

Brittany Howard was born today in 1988, making her 31 today. She's best known for her work in Alabama Shakes and Thunderbitch, but she recently released her first solo album entitled Jaime, and played a show at the Palace. (You can watch the full concert here.) The album is named after her older sister who taught her to write poetry and play the piano before she passed away from retinoblastoma in 1998. On recently going solo, Howard wrote, "I turned 30 and I was like, 'What do I want the rest of my life to look like?' Do I want to play the same songs until I'm 50 and then retire, or do I do something that's scarier for me? Do I want people to understand me and know me, do I want to tell them my story? I'm very private, but my favorite work is when people are being honest and really doing themselves."

Also, Today In:

1959 - Fifteen Elvis Presley fans were arrested in Germany after marching through the streets of Leipzig shouting, "Long live Elvis Presley," and making unkind remarks about German music.

1965 - The McCoys were at No. 1 on the U.S. singles chart with "Hang On, Sloopy."

1967 - All six members of The Grateful Dead were busted by California narcotics agents for possession of marijuana at the group's 710 Ashbury Street House in San Francisco.

1971 - Rod Stewart started a five-week run at No. 1 on the U.S. singles chart with "Maggie May / Reason To Believe," his first solo No. 1. Perhaps not coincidentally, Stewart's album, Every Picture Tells A Story, also started a four-week run at No. 1 on the U.K. and U.S. charts.

1982 - "Jack And Diane," a little ditty about two American kids growin' up in the heartland, hit No. 1 in America.

1982 - Despite minimal airplay, Bruce Springsteen's acoustic and stark Nebraska album cracked the charts. Sparsely recorded on a cassette-tape Portastudio, Nebraska remains one of the most highly regarded albums in Springsteen's catalogue.

1983 - Welsh singer Bonnie Tyler was at No. 1 on the U.S. singles chart with "Total Eclipse Of The Heart." The song, which was Tyler's biggest hit of her career, made her the only Welsh artist to score a U.S. No. 1 hit. Worldwide, the single has sales in excess of 6 million copies. Fun fact about the song -- it was written and produced by Jim Steinman, who said of the song in an interview with Playbill: "with 'Total Eclipse of the Heart', I was trying to come up with a love song and I remembered I actually wrote that to be a vampire love song. Its original title was 'Vampires in Love' because I was working on a musical of Nosferatu, the other great vampire story. If anyone listens to the lyrics, they're really like vampire lines. It's all about the darkness, the power of darkness and love's place in the dark."

1995 - Oasis released their much-anticipated second album, (What's The Story) Morning Glory.

1997 - Juanita L. Evans filed a suit against Wu-Tang Clan members RZA and Method Man, rapper Redman, and a Pennsylvania university and its student government. Evans claims that she was distracted by Redman and therefore did not see Method Man when he leapt off stage and landed on her. Evans was knocked unconscious.

1998 - America's singing cowboy Gene Autry died at age 91. During his career, he scored 25 successive Top 10 country hits. In addition to his signature song, "Back in the Saddle Again", Autry is still remembered for his Christmas holiday songs, "Here Comes Santa Claus", which he wrote, "Frosty the Snowman", and his biggest hit, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." With his earnings from music, Autry was a successful investor; he owned television and radio stations as well as Major League Baseball's Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. In 1995, it was estimated Autry was worth $320 million.

2002 - Adam Ant escaped a prison sentence after a judge ruled that an incident in which he threatened drinkers with a replica pistol in a London pub was a result of mental illness.

2002 - At the 2002 Jammy Awards, Trey Anastasio picked up two awards; his band Phish won one.

2002 - Twenty-five years after his death, Elvis Presley has a No. 1 album in 17 countries - including the United States - when Elv1s 30 #1 Hits makes its debut.

2010 - On Season 7 of The X Factor (U.K.), One Direction performed as a group for the first time, singing a cover of "Torn" for judge Simon Cowell at his villa in Marbella, Spain. The guys had been eliminated as soloists and tried their luck as a group. They finished the competition in third place.

2012 - The Mumford & Sons single "Babel" became the highest-selling debut single of the year, officially, with 600,000 copies sold.

2017 - Tom Petty, 66, went into cardiac arrest at his Malibu home. Later that night, after his friends and family gather, he was taken off life support.

Birthdays:

"American Pie" singer Don McLean is 74.

Richard Hell (born Richard Lester Meyers) is 70.

Sting is 68.

Damon Gough, aka Badly Drawn Boy, is 50.

Tiffany ("I Think We're Alone Now") is 48.

Highlights for Today in Music History are gathered from This Day in Music, Paul Shaffer's Day in Rock, Song Facts and Wikipedia.