April 16 1969 This will not help sales.  Elektra Records drops Detroit’s MC5 after the band takes out an ad in a local paper with the company logo and reads…

April 15 1956 Mitch Miller made it clear that he hated rock and roll.  He carried a lot of weight in the business as music director at Columbia Records, but…

April 14 1969 The Monkees aren’t done with TV yet.  Their special, 33 1/3 Revolutions per Monkee, airs on NBC with musicians Brian Auger and Julie Driscoll as mad scientists looking for…

April 13 1964 Bobby Darin is nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar at the 36th Academy Awards in Santa Monica, California. It’s for his role as the traumatized war hero,…

April 12 1966 A stellar career path is sidelined when Jan Berry of Jan and Dean rams his Corvette into a parked truck on a side street in Beverly Hills…

April 11 1961 Bob Dylan just 19 years old at the time, debuts as a solo artist opening for John Lee Hooker at Gerde’s Folk City in New York.  Amazingly, a…

April 10 1956 The Stratocaster electric guitar is patented by Leo Fender, the heir apparent to his famed Telecaster model. 1962 The Beatles‘ original bass player died of a brain…

1860 Okay, don’t listen to this in a dark room.  It’s not rock and roll but opened the door for all future recordings (if only by accident.)   It’s thought…

April 8 1961 BBC Radio bans Gene McDaniel’s song “100 Pounds of Clay” because it has a reference to women being created from building materials.  Britain’s censors considers that lyric…

1956 It was designed to look like a stack of records.  The Capitol Records Tower opened as “The world’s first circular office building” . Located just north of the Hollywood…