On this day in 1963, The Beatles’ career begins its meteoric rise as their debut album reaches number one in the UK

Following the success of the bands first two singles, Love Me Do and Please Please Me, an album also titled Please Please Me was quickly announced to capitalise on this unexpected surge in popularity.  

Aside from the already released singles, the majority of Please Please Me was recorded in a single, lengthy recording session at EMI Studios on the 11th of February. The songs used were simply the groups usual stage repertoire, which helped capture an authentic representation of the sounds of this early Cavern Club era. The entire session cost only £400 (equivalent to £8,600 in 2020), a far cry from some of their later, more extravagant albums.

After reaching the UK’s top spot, the album remained there for a further 30 weeks, a record at the time. Please Please Me also broke the record for being the first non-soundtrack album to spend more than one year in the top ten, which was only broken in 2013. Please Please Me is now considered one of the greatest and most significant albums of the rock era, that helped lay the foundations for the careers of arguably the most significant and influential musical artists of all time. 

On this day in 1964, The Beatles recorded their video special, Around The Beatles

Recorded at Wembley Studios in London, the show went for just over an hour and featured performances from PJ Probe, Long John Baldry, The Jets, Millie, Cilla Black, Sounds Incorporated and the Vernons Girls. 

The Beatles themselves performed and sang backup for some of the other musicians, as well as announcing PJ Proby’s performance. A skit was also recorded a parody of Act V Scene I of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Lennon, McCartney and Harrison all mimed a trumpet fanfare at the start of the show before Ringo Starr appeared to set off a cannon.

The show aired in the UK on May 6th and was very popular amongst British audiences. A bootleg of the special was released on video and segments from the show have appeared in numerous compilations and specials. 

On this day in 1970, Elton John made his stage debut

Shortly after releasing his self-titled second studio album, it was decided that a tour was in order. Despite the success of the album, John was booked as an opener for glam giants T.Rex along with Spooky Tooth, Jackie Lomax and Heavy Jelly, with their first show at the Roundhouse in London. 

The concert was held at a popular event at the Roundhouse called Pop Proms, it was marketed as a “kind of Musical Fair” with no seating in a casual atmosphere, to be held from April 20th until the 25th, with different acts every night. Hosted by John Peel, these performances would go for at least three hours per night, and stalls selling food, drinks and records were open throughout the evening. 

Little footage exists from these performances, but Johns performance certainly attracted attention as by August he was holding his first American Concert at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. John has continued touring throughout the 50 years since, despite retiring once and announcing in 2018 a second retirement tour which is still ongoing. 

On this day in 1963, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones meet for the first time

Having recently relocated to London, The Beatles were commonly visiting clubs in the area, where the Rolling Stones were up and coming performers. So on the 14th April The Beatles hard about a Stones gig through word of mouth and decided to attend.

The Stones were performing in Richmond at the Crawdaddy Club at the Station Hotel. Ringo Starr later recalled “standing in some sweaty room and watching them on stage, Keith and Brian – wow!  I knew then the Stones were great. They just had presence.” The other Beatles were all equally impressed with the performance. Shortly after, George Harrison personally recommended that Decca Records sign a deal with the Stones.

The two bands, which the media played off as rivals, were actually close friends, often communicating with each other and even trading musical ideas. John Lennon and Paul McCartney actually wrote the Stone’s second single, “I Wanna Be Your Man” and several years later Mick Jagger and Brian Jones appeared on “Yellow Submarine”. It has also been said that the bands even coordinated their release schedules so as to not both release hits at the same time and divide fanbases.

On this day in 1962, the formations for the Rolling Stones were laid when Mick Jagger and Keith Richards met Brian Jones at a London Blues Club

Jagger and Richards met as children and reconnected in 1961 over a shared love of blues music, and had started a small band.

Hearing of a small club called the Ealing Club, formerly known as the Ealing Jazz Club (the name was changed to reflect the venues newfound interest in R&B), the duo decided to go and see a show. Performing that night were Blues Incorporated, a collective that over the years featured a variety of upcoming British rock stars. The crew on that night included a drummer named Charlie Watts and a guitarist calling himself Elmo Lewis, also known as Brian Jones.

Jagger and Richards were impressed with Jones performance of Elmore James’ Dust My Broom and were introduced soon after. Soon after, Jagger and Richards worked their way into Blues Incorporated where they grew closer with Jones until the day came when Jones announced he was leaving to form his own group, Jagger followed soon after, then Richards, Watts and fellow Blues Incorporated member Dick Taylor. With that, the Rolling Stones were in motion to become one of the world’s biggest and longest lasting rock bands.

On this day in 1958, Chuck Berry released his hit song Johnny B. Goode

 Initially inspired by the piano player in his band, Johnnie Johnson, the song transformed into a song about Berry himself. Johnny B. Goode tracks the real life rise of Berry from an unknown musician to a world-famous star. The “Goode” in the song’s title is even taken from Berry’s childhood address, 2520 Goode Avenue.

Some details on the song differ from Berry’s life, such as him growing up in St. Louis rather than Louisiana as suggested by the songs lyrics. Unlike Johnny, Chuck could also read and write wetland studied hairdressing and cosmetology at a night school. Berry also changed a lyric to read “That little country boy can play” where he had originally used “coloured boy”. The change was made to ensure the song would get radio airtime.

Johnny B. Goode went on to peak at number 8 on the charts, and received a number of honours as time went on, including a number of covers, features in films and an induction into the Grammy Hall of Fame. A copy of the song was also placed on the Voyager spaceship to represent life on Earth for aliens or people of the future to discover.

On this day in 1945, Billboard Magazine published their first album chart, with the King Cole Trio as the first number one

Billboard had already been producing lists of top songs since 1940, originally having seperate charts for differing measures of popularity including record and sheet sales, disc jockey plays and jukebox song selection. 

In 1945 these charts were joined by the Best-Selling Popular Record Albums list. This chart included only ten positions based on reports from more than 200 record dealers throughout the US. The new list opened with the King Cole Trio’s self-titled debut holding the top spot, where it remained for three weeks. 

Eventually many of these charts were consolidated and formed into an early version of the Top 100 format we see today, where sales, streaming and radio play all form the data that makes up the chart. Billboard also maintain charts for different music genres, including rock, country, dance, bluegrass, jazz, classical, R&B, rap, electronic, Latin and pop.

On this day in 1968, The Bee Gees made their first appearance on American television

The band had originally been planning to visit the US to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1965, as told by a Sydney newspaper that ran a story on the fresh group. That appearance however ended up being delayed and cancelled until nearly four years later.

The band later stated how quickly success came for the group, coming from Brisbane, Australia only months earlier, they suddenly began traveling first class, staying in luxury hotels and performing in New York. The Ed Sullivan Show appearance demonstrated how much the bands status had changed.

Though the visit wasn’t a long one, it was important for the band as it allowed them to introduce their music to the mainstream consumers in America, an essential component of a successful music career at that point. Soon after their appearance where they played two new songs Words and To Love Somebody, their second album Horizontal was released and the band reaped the rewards as it quickly reached number 12 in the US and number 16 in the UK.

On this day in 1963, Little Stevie Wonder recorded his hit song Fingertips

A 12 year old Wonder’s first two albums were released in 1962 but failed to garner any significant attention, and so the artist was added to a Motown tour known as “The Motortown Revue” where he quickly started thrilling audiences with his high energy shows. On March 10 the tour stopped in Chicago for a performance at the Regal Theatre where it was decided Wonder’s performance would be recorded. 

Wonder decided to play a highly improvised version of his song Fingertips, which extended the song to 10 minutes in length as the crowd went wild for the new version.  The stage manager, concerned about the show running late tried to usher Wonder off the stage while the next band, The Marvelettes began setting up. At this point, Wonder started playing an impromptu encore, where he was joined by several members of The Marvelettes. This improvised encore would be released as Fingertips Pt. 2.

The song quickly shot to number one, becoming the first live recording to reach the top spot, as well as making Little Stevie Wonder the youngest ever artist to top the chart. Fingertips is also an important part of Ritchie Yorke’s story. A young Ritchie was working at a radio station in Tamworth when he first play Fingertips Pt. 2. Higher ups at the station told him to stop playing the song due to the artists race. Ritchie’s response was to lock himself in the studio and play the song repeatedly, making it to 8 plays before he was taken off air and promptly fired, causing Ritchie’s relocation to Brisbane and to expand his travel plans for the future so as to be closer to the music he loved.

On this day in 1956, Elvis Presley first appeared in the charts with his first hit, “Heartbreak Hotel”

Originally written by high school teacher Mae Boren Axton and singer/songwriter Tommy Durden in 1955, the song was reportedly inspired by a newspaper report about a man who had destroyed all of his identity papers and jumped to his death from a hotel window, leaving a note that read “I walk a lonely street”.

The song was offered to popular singing duo the Wilburn Brothers who promptly declined, claiming they found the song “strange and almost morbid”. After obtaining a publishing deal with Nashville bass player Buddy Killen, Axton was able to arrange through Presley’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker, to present the song to Presley at the annual Country Music Disc Jockey Convention in Nashville.

Presley was said to be enamoured with the song, asking Axton to play it for him a further ten times so he could memorise the lyrics, and he soon agreed to a deal in which Axton agreed to give him a third of the royalties if he could make it a hit. Rumours had already begun swirling about Presley moving from Sun Records to RCA Victor to launch his career at a national level, and Presley used Heartbreak Hotel as his first big hit for the label. 

The song became one of Presley’s most renowned and soon after entering the charts, it shot to number one on both the Pop and the Country and Western charts, as well as number five on the R&B charts, making it only the second song to have appeared on all three lists. By April, Heartbreak Hotel earned Presley his first certified gold record and the best selling single of 1956.