Today's birthdays:
Nat Adderley (1931-2000).
Nathaniel Carlyle Adderley was an American jazz trumpeter. He was the younger brother of saxophonist Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, whom he supported and played with for many years.
Adderley's composition "Work Song" (1960) is a jazz standard, and also became a success on the pop charts after singer Oscar Brown Jr. wrote lyrics for it.
Amy Grant, 63.
Amy Lee Grant is an American singer-songwriter and musician. She began in contemporary Christian music (CCM) before crossing over to pop music in the 1980s and 1990s. She has been referred to as "The Queen of Christian Pop".
As of 2009 she had sold more than 30 million albums worldwide, won six Grammy Awards, 22 Gospel Music Association Dove Awards, and had the first Christian album to go platinum. She was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2006 for her contributions to the entertainment industry and in 2022, she was announced as a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors.
Grant made her debut as a teenager, gaining fame in Christian music during the 1980s with such hits as "Father's Eyes", "El Shaddai", and "Angels". In the mid-1980s, she began broadening her audience and soon became one of the first CCM artists to cross over into mainstream pop on the heels of her successful albums Unguarded and Lead Me On.
In 1986, she scored her first Billboard Hot 100 no. 1 song in a duet with Peter Cetera, "The Next Time I Fall". In 1991, she released the blockbuster album Heart in Motion which became her best-selling album to date, topping the Billboard Christian album chart for 32 weeks, selling five million copies in the U.S. and producing her second no. 1 pop single "Baby Baby" and produced another three top 10 on Billboard Hot 100; "That's What Love Is For", "Every Heartbeat" and "Good for Me".
On this day today:
1940 - R&B singer Percy Sledge is born in Leighton, Alabama.
1966 - The Jimi Hendrix Experience plays their first UK show at the Bag O'Nails in London.
1968 - Cream play their last concert (until their 1993 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction and 2005 reunion), taking the stage at Royal Albert Hall in London to a fanatic crowd of over 10,000 who chant "God save the Cream" as they leave the stage. The show is released three months later as the album Goodbye.
1974 - Nick Drake dies after overdosing on the antidepressant Tryptasol. Just 26 years old, the British musician released three albums in his lifetime.
1978 - Playing The Spectrum in Philadelphia, Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler is hit in the face with a bottle thrown from the audience. The band leaves the stage and the show is cancelled after Joe Perry tells the crowd, "We love you, but you can't throw things at us." A firecracker was thrown on stage during an Aerosmith show the previous year.
1984 - In London, Bono, George Michael, David Bowie, Jody Watley, Paul McCartney and a passel of other stars record vocals for "Do They Know It's Christmas?," the first big all-star charity single. Released a week later (in time for Christmas), it becomes a holiday favorite and raises over $14 million for famine relief in Africa.
1989 - Thanks to a video that gets Alice Cooper his first significant spins on MTV, "Poison" hits #7 - the rocker's first Top 40 hit in nine years.
1992 - In her first film role, Whitney Houston plays a pop diva under the protection of Kevin Costner in The Bodyguard. The highlight of the movie is Houston's rendition of "I Will Always Love You," which hits #1 three days after the movie's release.
1995 - "Exhale (Shoop Shoop)" by Whitney Houston hits #1 on the Hot 100. The song appears on the soundtrack to the film Waiting To Exhale, which stars Houston.
1997 - The original Zombies lineup — Rod Argent on organ, Colin Blunstone on vocals, Paul Atkinson on guitar, Chris White on bass, and Hugh Grundy on drums — reunites onstage for the first time in 30 years at London's Jazz Cafe, performing two songs only: "She's Not There" and "Time Of The Season" to promote their new box set Zombie Heaven.
1997 - 2Pac's R U Still Down? (Remember Me) is released posthumously.
2005 - After a nine-year hiatus, Take That announce they're getting back together and going on tour without Robbie Williams.
2021 - The Beatles: Get Back, a three-part series comprised of outtakes from their Let It Be documentary, debuts on Disney+. Directed by Peter Jackson (Lord Of The Rings), it provides a very detailed look at the 1969 recording of their album Let It Be.
2022 - Irene Cara, who had a #1 hit with "Flashdance... What a Feeling" and starred in the movie Fame, dies at 63.
