AUGUST 9, 2008

HAPPY BIRTHDAY
1910 - Glenn Wallichs, electronics inventor, founder of the Wallichs' Music City chain of record and music shops, co-founder (as well as vice president and eventually president and chairman of the board) of Capitol Records and it's associated companies, is born Glenn Everett Wallichs in Grand Island, Nebraska. Wallichs will also become the first record executive to come up with the idea (and implementing it) of giving free copies of upcoming releases to radio disc jockeys to encourage airplay.

ON THIS DAY IN CAPITOL RECORDS HISTORY
1947 - Tex Williams' Capitol Records single "Smoke! Smoke! Smoke!", with "Roundup Polka" on the flip side, hits #1 on the U.S. pop charts. The single is also the first release (40001) on the red and gold Capitol Americana label.
1976 - Capitol Records releases Tennessee Ernie Ford's last album for the label, "For The 83rd Time", whose title references how many albums Ford had, in various configurations, released on Capitol.

ON THIS DAY NOT QUITE IN CAPITOL RECORDS HISTORY
1957 - Flutist Herbie Mann (with Jimmy Rowles on piano, Howard Roberts on guitar, Buddy Clark on bass, Mel Lewis on drums, and Frank DeVol conducting a string section) records the tracks "Moonlight In Vermont", "Body And Soul", "Oodles Of Noodles", and "Stardust", then (with just Rowles, Clark and Lewis) the tracks "Let's Dance", "Strike Up The Band", St. Louis Blues", and "Tenderly", and then (with Laurindo Almedia and Tony Rizzi on guitar, Tony Reyes on bass, Milt Holland on drums, and Frank "Chico" Guerrero on congas) the tracks "Frenesi", "Baia", "Peanut Vendor", and Evolution of Man(n)" for his Verve Record albums "The Magic Flute of Herbie Mann" at The Capitol Tower Studios. Some of the tracks will also appear on the Verve/VSP album "Big Band Mann".
50 Years Ago Today In 1958 - EMI, Capitol Records parent company, signs singer Cliff Richards
1976 - Brother Records releases two singles by The Beach Boys - "It’s O.K." with "Had To Phone Ya" on the flip side and "Everyone's In Love With You" with "Susie Cincinnati" on the flip side. Capitol Records currently distributes Brother Records catalog.

ON THIS DAY NOT IN CAPITOL RECORDS HISTORY
1945 - Nagasaki, Japan is the second, and so far last, city to have a United States atomic bomb dropped on it. After this bomb is dropped the Japanese military forces, under orders by its emperor, will surrender to the United States, not knowing that the U.S. has used up all it's existing atomic weapons.
1967 - Joe Orton, English playwright and author who had been commissioned by The Beatles' manager Brian Epstein to write the screenplay for The Beatles' next movie "Up Against It", is found murdered and his lover, Kenneth Halliwell, is dead from an overdose of sleeping pills in their Islington flat. Their bodies were discovered by The Beatles' PR man Derek Taylor.
1969 - The bodies of Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, Voytek Frykowski, and Steven Parent are found, murdered by Charles Manson's "family". They are found in a house that Tate and her husband, Roman Polanski, had recently leased. It's previous tenant was The Beach Boys' producer (as well as the son of Doris Day and, at the time, boyfriend of Candice Bergen) Terry Melcher. When Manson sent his "family" to "kill everyone in the house", he didn't know that Melcher had moved out. Manson, after meeting The Beach Boys' drummer Dennis Wilson, wrote a song originally titled "Cease To Exist", but released as "Never Learn Not To Love" (after Wilson changed some of the lyrics and took sole writing credit), the flip side of The Beach Boys' Capitol Records single "Bluebirds Over The Mountain", on December 2, 1968. Wilson also produced tracks for a demo for Manson at The Capitol Tower Studios in 1968 and had gotten Melcher to listen to Manson at an audition for a possible recording contract with Capitol. Melcher turned Manson down, earning Manson's hatred. Manson's "family" also killed Leno and Rosemary LaBianca at their nearby residence.
1974 - Richard Nixon resigns from the presidency of The United States of America and Gerald Ford is sworn in as the country's thirty eight president.
1995 - Jerry Garcia, guitarist and vocalist with The Grateful Dead, dies at the Serenity Knolls drug rehabilitation center in Forest Knolls, California at age 53 of a heart attack exacerbated by sleep apnea