01/09/2026
ON THIS DAY IN MUSIC HISTORY: 1.9
1963 - Charlie Watts left the group Blues Incorporated and his job working as a graphic designer to join an up-and-coming band called the Rolling Stones.
Charlie: “I was always brought up under the theory the drummer was an accompanist,” he said on the YouTube video titled If It Ain’t Got that Swing.
“My thing whenever I play is to make it a dance sound. It doesn’t matter if it’s blues or whatever. It should swing and bounce.
Mick Jagger: “Charlie was a heartbeat for the band."
Keith Richards: “If you’ve got Charlie Watts on it, man, that’s it.”
1967 - The Byrds release So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star. A tongue-in-cheek treatise on fame and the pop music industry. Many interpreted it as a swipe at the success of manufactured rock bands like The Monkees, but Roger McGuinn of The Byrds confirmed that he and his bandmate Chris Hillman were not writing about about The Monkees, but instead the whole music business.
The esteemed South African jazz musician Hugh Masekela contributed the clarion trumpet solo.
1969 - CCR release Proud Mary. In the beginning, "Proud Mary" had nothing to do with a riverboat. Instead, John Fogerty envisioned it as the story of a woman who works as a maid for rich people. "She gets off the bus every morning and goes to work and holds their lives together," he explained. "Then she has to go home."
It was Stu Cook who first introduced the riverboat aspect of the song. The idea came to him as the group watched the television show Maverick and Stu made the statement, "Hey riverboat, blow your bell."
Fogerty wrote the lyrics based on three song title ideas: "Proud Mary," "Riverboat," and "Rolling On A River." He carried around a notebook with titles that he thought would make good songs, and "Proud Mary" was at the top of the list.
1973 - Mick Jagger is refused a Japanese visa because of a 1969 drug bust, putting an end to the Rolling Stones' plans to tour the Orient. Asked by a reporter about his personal drug use, Jagger replied, "I don't take drugs. I don't approve of drugs and I don't approve of people taking drugs... unless they're very careful."
1984 - Van Halen releases 1984. At the time of its release, much of the fuss surrounding 1984 involved Van Halen's adoption of synthesizers on this, their sixth album -- a hoopla that was a bit of a red herring since the band had been layering in synths since their third album, Women and Children First. Those synths were either buried beneath guitars or used as texture, even on instrumentals where they were the main instrument, but here they were pushed to the forefront on "Jump," the album's first single and one of the chief reasons this became a blockbuster, crossing over to pop audiences Van Halen had flirted with before but had never quite won over.
1984 places an emphasis on the songs, and they're uniformly terrific, the best set of original tunes Van Halen ever had. Surely, the anthems "Panama" and "Hot for Teacher" grab center stage -- how could they not, when the former is the band's signature sound elevated to performance art, with the latter being as lean and giddy. It's the best showcase of Van Halen's instrumental prowess as a band, the best showcase for Diamond Dave's glorious shtick, the best showcase for their songwriting, just their flat-out best album overall.
2007 - The iPhone is introduced. Steve Jobs makes good on his promise that "Apple is going to reinvent the phone." With the introduction of the iPhone, it's clear that clunky smartphones with bulky buttons and keyboards are a thing of the past. The new touchscreen device will allow users to literally have all their media at their fingertips, functioning as a three-in-one iPod, Internet browser, and mobile camera phone (video recording, GPS, and third-party apps would come with future incarnations).
For music lovers, who have bought two billion songs on iTunes, the iPod capability is a big draw and allows them easier access to their libraries, including songs, albums and playlists, as well as TV shows, movies, and music videos at the swipe of a finger.
2012 - The White Stripes frontman Jack White appears on the History Channel show American Pickers. In the episode, White buys a stuffed elephant head for the sticker price of $12,500.
2014 - Rolling Stone magazine published their Readers Poll: The 10 Greatest Double Albums of All Time. The top 5 were: Led Zeppelin Physical Graffiti, Bruce Springsteen, The River, The Rolling Stones, Exile on Main Street, Pink Floyd, The Wall, and winning the poll was The Beatles, with their ninth studio album and only double album released in November 1968 The White Album. Dylan's Blonde On Blonde, The Who's Quadrophenia, The Allman's At Fillmore East, The Clash London Calling, and Smashing Pumpkins Mellon collie and the Infinite Sadness, rounded out the top 10.
Birthdays:
Joan Baez is 85. With the exception of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez is the most important artist to rise from the folk music movement that first blossomed in the late 1950s and early '60s. Baez was also the finest and most influential interpretive singer in contemporary folk; blessed with a soprano voice of uncommon clarity, her performances were emotionally compelling without resorting to histrionics. Early on, she recorded striking renditions of classic folk standards, as on her 1960 debut album Joan Baez, while later she would help popularize the work of songwriters such as Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, and Richard Fariña; songs by all three appeared on 1964's Joan Baez 5. Her early recordings were austere acoustic sessions, but in time she would learn to work effectively with a band, as well as adding her own songs to her repertoire, and the title track to 1975's Diamonds & Rust, a biographical recollection of her relationship with Dylan, would prove to be one of her most enduring hits. Baez would become nearly as well-known for her political activism as her music, lending her talent and media profile to a long list of progressive causes from the early stages of her career to her farewell concert tour in 2019.
Scott Walker, of the Walker Brothers, was born today in 1943. Signature song: "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore".
James Patrick “Jimmy” Page was born on this date in 1944, making him 82. Unquestionably one of the all-time most influential, important, and versatile guitarists and songwriters in rock history. And while he was a session man in the '60s and briefly in The Yardbirds, he's best remembered for Led Zeppelin.
What the Beatles were to the '60s, Led Zeppelin were to the '70s: a band so successful and innovative they wound up creating the prism through which their entire epoch was seen. Zeppelin ushered in the era of album rock -- they refused to release singles off their albums, even when they were garnering massive radio play -- and of arena rock, playing ever-larger stadiums as their ticket sales skyrocketed. Other bands played on a similar field but Led Zeppelin carried a unique mystique cultivated by cryptic album art, distance from the press, and, of course, their music. Drawing upon postwar electric blues, early rock & roll, and psychedelia, Zeppelin created a titanic roar in their earliest days but even then they weren't merely heavy. Underneath the wattage, there was a strong undercurrent of folk-rock and the quartet would soon thread in world music, funk, country, and synthesizers, creating an adventurous body of work that had a long, lasting influence on hard rock, heavy metal, and alternative rock. (Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images for The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame)
David Johansen / Buster Poindexter was born today in 1950. Best known for his tenure fronting the hugely influential band the New York Dolls, David Johansen was a true chameleon. Throughout the course of a career which saw him transform from a lipstick-smeared proto-punk hero into a soulful hard rocker, a tuxedo-clad lounge lizard, and a rough-hewn blues shouter, he remained a rock & roll original, an unpredictable iconoclast and a true cultural innovator. Johansen first made his name with the New York Dolls' self-titled debut album, and after their breakup, he stepped out as a solo act with 1978's David Johansen, which paired his swaggering style with a more accessible hard rock sound. What began as a fun local side project evolved into 1987's Buster Poindexter, which spawned an enduring hit, his cover of Arrow's "Hot Hot Hot." Johansen poured his love of acoustic blues into 2000's David Johansen & the Harry Smiths, and the Dolls enjoyed a surprise second run, cutting One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This in 2006. (Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images)
Dave Matthews is 59. Along with his band, he emerged from the jam band underground of the 1990s to become an enduring American musical institution. Steeped in the progressive, multi-cultural sounds of the '80s -- the group spliced bar band college rock with the jazz and worldbeat explorations of Paul Simon and Sting -- Dave Matthews Band built a following through word-of-mouth cultivated by traded cassettes of live performances, a trick learned from the Grateful Dead. Where the Dead concentrated on psychedelic explorations, DMB was groove-based, anchored by fusion drummer Carter Beauford and given slippery life by Matthews, a singer/songwriter who specialized in exuberant exhortations and moody introspection alike.
On This Day In Music History was sourced, curated, copied, pasted, edited, and occasionally woven together with my own crude prose, from This Day in Music, Winnipeg Free Press, Music This Day, All Music, Classic Bands, Rolling Stone, American Songwriter, Far Out Magazine, Song Facts and Wikipedia.
