History Spotlight:

Ric Ocasek of the Cars died on this day in 2019 at the age of 75. The Cars formed in Boston in the mid-1970s by Ocasek and band-mate Benjamin Orr after they met at high school. Their early hits included 'Just What I Needed', 'My Best Friend's Girl' and 'Good Times Roll'. Their 1984 ballad 'Drive' was used as background music for footage of the Ethiopian famine, and its re-release as a single after Live Aid helped raise money for the cause. After the band broke up in the late 1980s, Ocasek embarked on a solo career as well as working as a producer for artists including Weezer, Bad Religion and No Doubt.

Also, Today In:

1903 - Country singer and legend Roy Acuff was born in Maynardville, Tennessee. Along with Fred Rose, he founded the Acuff-Rose music publishing company and signed Hank Williams and Roy Orbison, among others.

1956 - Elvis Presley started a five-week run at No. 1 on the U.S. charts with "Don't Be Cruel." The song went on to become Presley's biggest-selling single recorded in 1956, with sales topping six million by 1961.

1961 - A group from Hawthorne, Calif., called The Pendletones attend their first real recording session at Hite Morgan's studio in Los Angeles. The band recorded "Surfin," a song that would help shape their career as The Beach Boys.

1962 - The Four Seasons started a five-week run at No. 1 on the U.S. singles chart with "Sherry."

1965 - The Ford Motor Company became the first automaker to offer an 8-track tape player as an option for its entire line of new vehicles. Tapes were initially only available in auto-parts stores, as home 8-track equipment was still a year away.

1968 - The Doors were forced to perform as a trio at a concert in Amsterdam after singer Jim Morrison collapsed while dancing during the Jefferson Airplane's performance.

1970 - Vice President Spiro Agnew said in a speech that the youth of America were being "brainwashed into a drug culture" by rock music, movies, books and underground newspapers.

1979 - Led Zeppelin scored their sixth U.S. No. 1 album when In Through The Out Door started a seven-week run at the top of the charts.

1980 - David Bowie opened on Broadway as The Elephant Man.

1997 - A court ruling in France awarded more than $30,000 to a French citizen after he lost his hearing when he stood too close to loudspeakers at a U2 concert four years earlier.

2003 - Johnny Cash was buried in the Cash family cemetery in Hendersonville, Tennessee, next to his wife, June Carter Cash. Among the mourners at the private ceremony: Al Gore, Emmylou Harris, and Sheryl Crow. Cash was widely considered one of the most influential musicians and one of the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold more than 90 million records worldwide.

2004 - Ramones guitarist Johnny Ramone (John Cummings) died in Los Angeles after a five-year battle with prostate cancer. A statue was dedicated in his honor at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles on Jan. 15, 2005. Known for his fast, high-energy guitar playing, Johnny's style consisted of rapid downstrokes and barre chord shapes. This unique playing style, combined with heavy gain from his amplifier, created the bright, buzzsaw-like sound Johnny's guitar parts were known for, and it was highly influential on many rock guitarists. In 2003, Johnny was number 16 on Rolling Stone's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time."

2008 - Pink Floyd keyboard player and founding member Richard Wright died at age 65 from cancer.

2014 - Apple released a tool to remove U2's album, Songs of Innocence, from its customers' iTunes accounts six days after giving away the music for free. Songs of Innocence was meant to be the biggest album launch in history, and on Sept. 9, 2014, it was immediately gifted to all of Apple's iTunes customers worldwide (more than 500 million people). Some users had complained about the fact that U2's latest album had automatically been downloaded onto their devices without permission. In response, Apple's one-click tool immediately removed the U2 album from users' iTunes music libraries and iTunes purchase histories.

Birthdays:

Abba drummer Ola Brunkert was born today in 1946.

Crash Test Dummies drummer Michel Dorge is 60.

Franz Ferdinand drummer Paul Thomson is 44.

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