Music History for
December 2


Today's:


1943 - The musical "Carmen Jones" opened on Broadway.

1949 - Gene Autry's song "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer," hit the record charts.

1959 - Bobby Darin was the subject of the TV show "This Is Your Life."

1967 - Jimmie Rodgers was found in his car with a fractured skull after a serious accident. He recovered from the auto accident, but his singing career ended.

1967 - David Bowie's single "Rubber Band" was released in the U.K.

1969 - Cindy Birdsong (Supremes) was kidnapped at knifepoint. She later managed to escape her captor. The kidnapper was a maintenance man that worked in the building she lived in.

1971 - Taj Mahal played for the men on death row at Wilmington State Penitentiary.

1973 - The Who and some companions were jailed overnight for $6,000 worth of destruction they imposed on a hotel room after a show.

1973 - Bob Dylan began taking ticket requests by mail. Over 658,000 tickets were sold.

1974 - Ravi Shankar was hospitalized in Chicago after suffering chest pains. He rejoined the George Harrison Tour a week later.

1983 - MTV aired Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video for the first time.
Today in Michael Jackson History







1986 - Jerry Lewis checked into the Betty Ford Clinic to overcome a painkiller addition.

1986 - Annie Lennox (Eurythmics) ripped off her bra while performing in front of 10,000 fans in Birmingham, England.

1988 - Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, and Willie Nelson appeared on "Geraldo" to discuss "Sex on the Road."

1991 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Shirelles, B.J. Thomas and Gene Pitney were owed $1.2 million in unpaid royalties.

1995 - The Guinness Book of World Records confirmed that Ace of Base's "The Sign" was the best-selling debut of all time, with 19 million copies sold.

1996 - Adam Duritz (Counting Crows) severed a ligament and tore cartilage in his knee after he fell during a concert at the Beacon Theatre in New York. Duritz underwent orthoscopic surgery during the band's Christmas break.

1997 - Third Street Jazz and Rock Holding Corp., a Philadelphia record store, filed a class-action lawsuit against the six major U.S. record distributors. The suit claimed that EMI, Sony, WEA, Universal, Bertelsmann Music Group and Polygram conspired "to raise, fix, and maintain at artificially high and non-competitive levels the wholesale prices" of CDs.

1998 - U.S. first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and Garth Brooks turned on the lights on the Christmas tree in Manhattan's Rockefeller Center.

1998 - Shania Twain's video "That Don't Impress Me Much" debuted on CMT: Country Music Television.

2000 - In Chicago, The Smashing Pumpkins played their final concert.

2014 - The DVD "One Direction: Where We Are Live From San Siro Stadium" was released in the U.S.