2002 – For the second year running, Radiohead is honored as “best act in the world today” at the Annual Q Awards, held in London.
1999 – George Martin, who produced most of the Beatles albums, lends his reputation and four decades of music business experience to a start-up Internet company catering to unsigned bands. Martin announces that he will serve as chairman of the advisory board for Garageband.com.
1998 – Rap star Coolio pleads not guilty to concealed weapon and marijuana possession charges in Torrance, Calif. Coolio (Artis Ivey) had been arrested on the charges the preceding month.
1998 – Kiss members Paul Stanley and Bruce Kulick are sued for copyright infringement over the song “Dreamin’,” which the suit alleges sounds too similar to the Alice Cooper hit “Eighteen.”
1996 – A former executive of EMI Records, Jay Barbieri, announces the official launch of the first Internet record label, J-Bird Records at www.j-birdrecords.com. The record label is the first of its kind, a label that operates almost exclusively on the World Wide Web.
1995 – Blind Melon singer Shannon Hoon is found dead on his tour bus from an accidental drug overdose. The band rose to fame in 1993 with the hit “No Rain.”
1992 – “Sex,” a book of erotic photographs of Madonna, is released. The first run of 500,000 copies of the $50 book, which is wrapped in Mylar to prevent free peeks, sells out.
1992 – Hank Williams Jr. and his fourth wife, Mary Jane, have their first child. Katherine Diana is born in Nashville. Williams has three previous children.
1957 – The Elvis Presley film “Jailhouse Rock” premieres.
1941 – Guitarist Steve Cropper of Booker T & The MGs is born in Willow Springs, Mo. He is also a producer, having worked with Jeff Beck and Mitch Ryder, among others.
1940 – Manfred Mann (Michael Lubowitz) is born in Johannesburg, South Africa. He forms a rock group with the same name in England in 1964. The group has two No. 1 hits: “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” in 1964 and the million-selling cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Blinded by the Light” in 1977.
1917 – Jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie (John Birks Gillespie) is born. He is awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1989 for his major contributions to the development of bebop.
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