#1 R&B Song 1960: “A Woman, A Lover, A Friend,” Jackie Wilson
Born: Robert Cray, 1953
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1953 Joe Bihari of Los Angeles’ Flair Records signed a teen quintet from LA’s Jefferson High School and named them the Flairs. They included Cornelius Gunter (later of the Coasters) and Richard Berry (later of “Louie, Louie” fame).
1953 The Royals charted with their first single, “Get It” an eventual R&B hit. Within a year they would be known as Hank Ballard & the Midnighters.
1960 Aretha Franklin recorded her first secular songs upon signing with Columbia Records. The songs included “Over the Rainbow,” “Today I Sing the Blues, Right Now,” and “Love is the Answer.” She was eighteen, but had begun recording gospel music at fourteen for Checker Records of Chicago.
1960 When the originally scheduled vocalist did not show, producer Ike Turner took his twenty-two-year-old wife, Tina, and recorded her on “A Fool In Love,” which was released today. It rose to #27 and became the first of twenty Hot 100 hits for the volatile couple.
1969 B.B. King performed in front of more than 110,000 fans at the Atlantic City Pop festival in Atlantic City, NJ, along with Jefferson Airplane, the Byrds, and Creedence Clearwater revival.
1987 The rap trio Salt-n-Pepa’s debut album, Hot, Cool, and Vicious, charted, reaching #26. It lingered on the Top 200 for more than a year, finally going platinum in 1988.
1997 Wyclef Jean, Aaliyah, Salt-n-Pepa, Ginuwine, and Blackstreet, among others, performed at the Summer Jam concert in George, Washington. (Yes, there really is such a place.)
2000 William Rosko Mercer, the legendary disc jockey known as Rosko, died today at age seventy-three. He was the first Black deejay in Los Angeles (KBLA), and the first Black news announcer on WINS in New York.
Ann
