This Day in Music History: The Beach Boys score their first #1 hit, The Doors play their first gig

1960 – The Everly Brothers record “Cathy’s Clown.”

1964 – The Beach Boys score their first #1 hit with “I Get Around.”

1964 – Ella Fitzgerald becomes the first artist to have a hit with a Beatles cover when “Can’t Buy Me Love” enters the UK chart.

1966 – The Doors play their first show. The gig is at the The Whisky A-Go-Go in West Hollywood, where they become the house band for a while.

1970 – Grateful Dead play outside North America for the first time, doing a 4-hour set at the Hollywood Music Festival in England. Mungo Jerry and Steppenwolf are also on the bill.

1970 – Paul McCartney’s debut solo album, McCartney, starts a three-week run at #1 on the US album chart. Apart from Linda McCartney’s vocal contributions, McCartney performed (and recorded) the entire album solo.

1971 – Iron Butterfly breaks up.

1974 – George Harrison announces the launch of his own record label, Dark Horse.

1977 – When San Francisco outlaws “electronic instruments” in public, a free Jefferson Airplane concert in Golden Gate Park is canceled. This inspires the group to later write “We Built This City.”

1991 – Photographer Michael Lavine takes what would be the publicity shots for Nirvana’s Nevermind album at Jay Aaron Studios in Los Angeles. The idea for the front cover shot of the baby comes from when Kurt Cobain and Dave Grohl see a TV documentary on water babies. Several babies were used in that shoot taken by Kirk Weddle; five-month old Spencer Eldon’s photo came out best.

2007 – The US Library of Congress hands out the first Gershwin Award to Paul Simon for being a “performer whose lifetime contributions exemplify the standard of excellence associated with the Gershwins.”

Information for this post was gathered from This Day in Music, The Music History Calendar, On This Day, and Wikipedia.