The Current Music Blog: October 23, 2009 Archive

Today In Music History: There's a Battle Outside And It Is Ragin'

Posted at 6:19 AM on October 23, 2009 by Steve Seel
Filed under: Music History

Birthdays:

Singer "Weird Al" Yankovic is 50.
Bassist Robert Trujillo of Suicidal Tendencies, Ozzy Osbourne's band and Metallica is 45.

Today in:

1962 - A 12-year-old named Little Stevie Wonder recorded his first single for Motown Records. It was called "Thank You For Loving Me All The Way."
1976 - Led Zeppelin made their US television debut on Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, they performed "Black Dog" and "Dazed And Confused".
1978 - Maybelle Carter, the matriarch of the musical Carter family, died. Maybelle was the mother of June Carter, who became Mrs. Johnny Cash. Maybelle Carter was 69.
1984 - Musician Bob Geldof watched a documentary on the BBC about Ethiopia's famine. He was so moved he called his friend, Midge Ure, and together they wrote the charity song "Do They Know It's Christmas."
2004 - Ashlee Simpson walked off stage after the wrong vocal track was played during her performance on Saturday Night Live, which revealed she was lip-synching.

Today in 1963, Bob Dylan recorded "The Times They Are A-Changin" at Columbia Recording Studios in New York City. In the liner notes for the 1985 collection Biograph, Dylan notes, "This was definitely a song with a purpose. I wanted to write a big song, with short concise verses that piled up on each other in a hypnotic way. The civil rights movement and the folk music movement were pretty close for a while and allied together at that time." It would become one of Dylan's signature songs.