1950: Whether you call him “Miami Steve” or “Little Steven” or even “Silvio” (from The Sopranos), wish a Happy birthday today to E Street Band legend Steve Van Zandt.

1974: After spending years apart, Marty Balin is talked into going onstage with his old band (once known as Jefferson Airplane -- now called Jefferson Starship) at San Francisco’s Winterland ballroom. It goes well and Marty officially rejoins the band for their super-successful Red Octopus album. 

1955: Good deal or bad deal? Sun Records owner and producer Sam Phillips sold Elvis Presley's contract to RCA for $35,000, at the time the largest amount ever paid to sign a recording artist. Phillips then gives Elvis $13,500 of the total!

While RCA goes on to make mega-millions off of Presley, Phillips invests his remaining money in a risky start-up company in the hotel/motel business - Holiday Inns.  Maybe Sam was a pretty shrewd businessman after all.

1968: A new band, calling itself Pogo, debuts as L.A.’s famed Troubadour club. They go over well, but Pogo’s creator Walt Kelly threatens a lawsuit. The band quickly changes their name to the very similar sounding Poco. Some of the original line-up of Randy Meisner, Jim Messina, Richie Furay, George Grantham, and Rusty Young go on to even greater fame as future members of the Eagles, Loggins & Messina and the Souther-Hilman-Furay Band.

1942: Happy Birthday to Bob Gaudio. Gaudio got his start as a member of the Royal Teens, co-writing their one and only hit, “Short Shorts.” He left that band and formed a partnership with a young Frankie Valli, the duo becoming half of the legendary Four Seasons. Gaudio teamed with the Seasons’ producer Bob Crewe to pen most of the group’s big hits, right up through “Who Loves You” and “December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night).” Guadio turns 82 today.

1962: On this very same day, the Four Seasons’ “Big Girls Don’t Cry” (yes, co-written by Gaudio) hit #1 on the American charts.

2001: After finding a six-minute recording of a Beatles interview at a flea market, a fan snaps it up for $5 turns around and sells on this day for $10,400 at an online auction.

1972: Harry Chapin becomes a proud papa on this day. The birth of his first child, Joshua, will eventually inspire him to set his wife’s poem, “Cat’s in the Cradle,” to music. That song will provide Chapin with his only #1 hit.

A productive day for recording studios…

1961: The Everly Brothers are recording both “Crying in the Rain” and “That’s Old Fashioned (That’s the Way Love Should Be)”

1962: Just one year later, Bob Dylan is in the studio recording “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright.”

1968: The Beatles’ 3^rd feature film, Yellow Submarine, premieres in New York. While the Beatles appear briefly at the end of the film, their cartoon personas are voiced by professional voice actors.

Happy Birthday today to…

Br1an Hyland (1943)

Booker T. Jones (Booker T. & the MG’s) (1944)

Neil Young (1945)