Time to take a look back into this day in rock history: August 21
1961
Okay, let’s take a break. Patsy Cline starts work recording her version of Willie Nelson’s “Crazy” at Bradley Film and Recording Studio in Nashville. She gets sidelined by a car accident that bruises her ribs and doesn’t return until mid-September when she nails the song in one take. Nelson would tell David Letterman the original title of the song was “Stupid”. It’s later named the most played juke box song of all time.
1971
This was not a good match. Not learning from the debacle when Brewer and Shipley are razzed opening for Sweathog and Ozzy Osbourne the month before at Public Hall, and James Taylor’s acoustic set opening for the Who a few years before, folkie band Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks get the same treatment at the Steppenwolf show. In defense of the promoters, these combinations were working in other cities like New York. In places like Cleveland and Detroit, not so much.
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1972
A melee at the Akron Rubber Bowl as security storms the crowd with tear gas during the Jefferson Airplane’s appearance there. Bassist Jack Casady and Peter Kaukonen are arrested and singer Grace Slick is sidelined with mace. Members of the band mention the incident years later when Starship plays the Tangier.
2005
It took just four months for cancer to claim the life of synthesizer pioneer Robert Moog at the age of 71. He started out as a teenager building a theremin and introduced the “mini Moog” in 1970. It win Moog Sweden’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize in 2001. Keith Emerson and the Beatles are early fans, and Walter (now Wendy) Carlos gets a Grammy in 1968 for the Moog driven Switched on Bach.
2021
Seven years after the death of Phil, Don Everly of the Everly Brothers dies at the age of 84. The charter inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame had twenty seven songs in the Billboard Top 40 in a ten year period starting in 1957.
