1955: M-I-C… All right, it doesn’t have much to do with rock & roll (unless you count Annette’s singing career or Cubby winding up as the drummer for the Carpenters), but The Mickey Mouse Club had its debut on ABC-TV on this day.

Originally a 60-minute 5-day-a-week show, the cast of Mousketeers was constantly in flux, with only a select group being included in the roll call that opened each show.

1963: The Yardbirds debut a new lead guitar player when a 17-year-old kid named Eric Clapton performs with them at the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond, England.

1971: The long-running musical TV show Soul Train makes its debut with guests Gladys Knight and the Pips, Eddie Kendricks and the Honey Combs.

We’re still wishing you love, peace and sooooooooooul!

1968: John Sebastian leaves the Lovin’ Spoonful to pursue a solo career.

1998: Paul McCartney holds a memorial service in Trafalgar Square for his wife Linda, who had succumbed to breast cancer just a few months earlier.

Among the 700 people who attend are George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Elton John and Billy Joel. The crowd sings Paul’s “Let It Be” as a tribute to her life and activism.

1975: A sad day in rock history. While performing his hit “Lonely Teardrops” as part of a Dick Clark “Good Ol’ Rock ‘n’ Roll Revue” at the Latin Casino in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, Jackie Wilson collapses from a heart attack on stage and slips into a coma.

Wilson never really recovers from the coma, passing away in 1984.

1963: New York disc jockey, Murray the K obtains a copy of a record that has really caught on in Great Britain. For two weeks, he plays “She Loves You” by the Beatles on his show. He gets little in the way of response.

Four months later, when Beatlemania finally overtakes the United States, Murray will be able to claim he was the first American deejay to play the band.

2004: A sad day for fans of great rock music. Famed producer and composer Phil Spector (“Da Doo Ron Ron,” “Be My Baby,” “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” and so many more) is indicted for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson at his mansion in Alhambra, California. He will be found guilty and spend the rest of his life behind bars.

1961: Bob Dylan plays his first major gig in New York City, opening for the Greenbriar Boys at Gerde’s Folk City. The New York Times reviewer, Robert Shelton, gives the young singer a very positive review, which in turn helps launch Dylan’s career.

The Life & Times of Howdy Doody – Part 2

It wasn’t all smiles and squirting seltzer bottles. There were plenty of show biz squabbles behind the scenes of The Howdy Doody Show. And the first (and most important) took place barely six months into the show’s 13-year run! We’ll also tell you how a puppet was killed by a mouse.

As the first year of The Howdy Doody Show wore on, the man pulling the strings, puppeteer Frank Paris, grew to feel he was being cheated out his fair share of the royalties being generated by the bumper crop of Howdy Doody merchandise that had begun to appear. Thinking he had real leverage, Paris took his puppet and stormed out of the NBC studios in the spring of 1948, only hours before that day’s live telecast was to take place.

The show’s writers quickly created a crazy scenario where the kids were told that Howdy had left suddenly on a whirlwind tour of the U.S. to campaign for President of the Children of the United States (1948 was an election year). During each thrice-weekly show, he would phone in a report from the road (Buffalo Bob had always provided Howdy’s voice). So the kids could still hear, if not see, their favorite TV star.

(Frank Paris' original Howdy puppet)

After a few days, Howdy dropped the big bombshell. He revealed that he had decided to get some plastic surgery (and really, what TV star hasn’t?). In reality, puppeteer Velma Dawson was being paid $2,000 to create a new Howdy puppet. After a huge publicity build-up, her design was unveiled on June 8, 1948. Dawson’s Howdy is the face we all remember – the face that graced NBC’s test pattern (remember those?) for years.

By the end of June 1948, public demand for Howdy Doody was so great that NBC was broadcasting Howdy Doody Time, Monday through Friday from 5:30 to 6:00 pm.

For 8 years, it remained there until June, 1956 when huge ratings from ABC’s first season of The Mickey Mouse Club forced NBC to move the show to Saturday mornings. There, it ran from 10:00 to 10:30 am until it went off the air with an hour-long final episode on Saturday, September 24, 1960.

Along the way, Howdy Doody became the first show to be regularly broadcast in color. In those days, NBC was owned by RCA Victor. That company was manufacturing television sets and really wanted to stimulate sales of their new and expensive color sets. Just as Milton Berle had sold a lot of black & white TV’s back in the day, Howdy and the gang are given credit for helping the nation convert to color TV as we moved toward the 60’s.

When it comes to colorful, nothing was more colorful in network television than the amazingly large cast of Puppet-Americans and other creatures who populated Doodyville. We’ll take a look at them next time.