Music History for January

2023. Beyoncé plays a private show in Dubai, her first full concert in four years, for a reported $24 million. Her 11-year-old daughter Blue Ivy joins her on “Brown Skin Girl,” the first live performance of the song.

2017.  “Raindrop… drop-top…” the Atlanta rap trio Migos hit #1 in America with the meme-worthy “Bad and Boujee.”

2014. Against Me! release the album Transgender Dysphoria Blues, their first since lead singer Laura Jane Grace came out as transgender. The album began as a concept piece about a transexual prostitute back when Grace was still presenting as a man (Tom Gabel). The personal implications became clear when she came out and her bandmates figured out what was going on. Two of the four members of the band – drummer Jay Weinberg and bass player Andrew Seward – quit before it is completed, but the album earns strong reviews and Grace becomes a leader in the fight for transgender rights.

2004. The warts-and-all Metallica documentary Some Kind of Monster makes its debut at the Sundance Film Festival.More

2002. Peggy Lee dies of complications from diabetes and a heart attack at age 81.

1999. Blues singer/pianist Charles Brown, known for “Driftin’ Blues” and “Merry Christmas Baby,” dies of congestive heart failure at age 76.

1998. James Brown is released from a South Carolina hospital after undergoing treatment for an addiction to painkillers.

1997. Elvis Presley’s controversial manager Colonel Tom Parker dies at age 87.

1996. Frankie “Cannibal” Garcia (of Cannibal and the Headhunters) dies of an AIDS-related illness at age 49.

1993. French singer Noël Rota aka Helno (of Les Negresses Vertes) dies of a heroin overdose at age 29.

1989. Kid ‘N Play’s soon-to-be-gold debut album, 2 Hype, which was released three months earlier, debuts at #96 on the Billboard 200 chart.

1984. Bon Jovi release their self-titled debut album. The first track is “Runaway,” the group’s debut single and first to get airplay. It was written by frontman Jon Bon Jovi, who recorded it with session musicians before the band formed.

1984. Jackie Wilson dies at 49. He has been incapacitated since suffering a heart attack on stage in 1975.

1983. Lamar Williams (the bassist who replaced Berry Oakley in The Allman Brothers Band) dies of lung cancer, possibly from exposure to Agent Orange during his service in the Vietnam War, at age 34.

1982. B.B. King donates his entire record collection to the University of Mississippi’s Center for the Study of Southern Culture. The 20,000-record collection includes 7,000 discs King aired as a disc jockey at Memphis’ WDIA in the ’50s.

1979. Nokio the N-Tity (of the R&B group Dru Hill) is born Tamir Mateen Raheem Hameed Ruffin in Baltimore, Maryland.

1979.Lynyrd Skynyrd reunite at the Volunteer Jam in Nashville, Tennessee. This is the first time the band have played since the 1977 plane crash that killed three of their members. Lynyrd Skynyrd perform an instrumental version of “Free Bird” alongside The Charlie Daniels Band.

1976.Emma Bunton (“Baby Spice” of Spice Girls) is born in Finchley, North London.

1974.Bob Dylan meets future president Jimmy Carter at a gathering in Georgia, where Carter is serving as governor. “Carter has his heart in the right place,” Dylan would later say. “He has a sense of who he is.”

1965.The Animals are forced to cancel a show at New York City’s famous Apollo Theater after US Immigration officials force the group to leave the country.

1959.The Kingston Trio’s “Tom Dooley” is certified Gold.

1957.Filming begins on Elvis Presley’s second movie, Loving You.

1957.An unknown singer named Patsy Cline wins on CBS’ Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts program with a rendition of the song “Walking After Midnight.”

1956.Rob Brill (drummer for Berlin) is born in California.

1950.Billy Ocean is born Leslie Sebastian Charles in Trinidad and Tobago. At age 10 he moves to London with his family. He first charts in 1976 with “Love Really Hurts Without You,” but he really breaks through with “Caribbean Queen (No More Love On The Run)” in 1984, kicking off a run of hits that includes “There’ll Be Sad Songs (To Make You Cry)” and “When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Going.”

1945.Peter Kircher (drummer for Status Quo) is born in Folkestone, Kent, England.

1944.Chris Britton (lead guitarist for The Troggs) is born in Watford, Hertfordshire, England.

1942.Count Basie records “One O’Clock Jump.”

1942.Edwin Starr is born Charles Edwin Hatcher in Nashville, Tennessee. He grows up in Cleveland but launches his career in Detroit, eventually joining Motown, where he has big hits with “Twenty-Five Miles” and “War.”

1942.Country singer-songwriter Mac Davis is born in Lubbock, Texas. He writes “In The Ghetto” and “A Little Less Conversation” for Elvis Presley.