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Ditson's Musical Instruments on Broadway, New York City, USA, is advertising instruments for sale at the following prices - Guitars and mandolins from $3 to $75, banjos from $1.50 to $50, violins from $1.50 to $300. The shop also sells musical boxes, music rolls, metronomes and music satchels.
S. H. Dudley records Then I'd Be Satisfied With Life for Victor Records in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. The song is composed by George M. Cohan.
In the wake of persistent torrential rains, The Alabama Flood reaches its peak, with water ten feet or more deep in the towns of Elba and Geneva. Thousands of people are stranded on rooftops for three days, and damage is estimated at over $9m. Amazingly, only one fatality occurs, when a blind Negro man named "Phoe" Larkins is swept from a box car in New Town. Within a few days, Andrew Jenkins will record the song Alabama Flood for OKeh Records, and Vernon Dalhart will record Alabama Flood for Harmony Records, both songs being inspired by the calamity.
With blues record sales falling in the USA, Raymond R. Sooy, chief recording engineer for RCA Victor, sends round a memorandum stating that only one recording of each song should be made during recording sessions, as an economy measure.
Frank Sinatra is appearing at The Paramount Theater, New York City, USA. According to a report in today's edition of Billboard magazine, he is earning between $4,000 and $5,000 at the Paramount, with a weekly bonus of $7,500. His three week stint is expected to clear him earnings of $36,000.
Gene Ammons And His Orchestra record Pennies From Heaven, The Last Mile, Chabootie and Full Moon (aka More Moon) for Chess/Aristocrat records in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis make a non-union-authorised appearance at The Vagabonds Club, Miami Beach, Florida, USA. Six months later they will be fined $1,000 by The American Guild Of Variety Artists, Florida, USA.
Elvis Presley pays a visit to a dentist in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA, to have two of his teeth crowned at a cost of $170.
A riot breaks out at a Rolling Stones' concert in The Empress Ballroom, Blackpool, England, UK, when guitarist Keith Richards aims a kick at a fan who has scrambled onto the stage. As a result, The Stones will be banned from playing in Blackpool, and the ban will remain in force for 44 years. Support band for this show is The Executives.
The Hollies spend the second of two days in EMI's Abbey Road studio, London, UK, recording their psychedelic single, King Midas In Reverse.
Private companies owned by UK pop stars Cliff Richard and Frank Ifield are bought by Constellation Investments, earning the two stars £474,000 between them.
US promoter Sid Bernstein visits The Beatles manager Brian Epstein at the Waldorf Towers, New York City, USA, to pay a $100,000 advance for the group's upcoming Shea Stadium concert.
The Walker Brothers, The Merseybeats, The Four Pennies and The Dawn Breakers play at The Queen's Hall, Leeds, England, UK, Europe.
Motown Records files a £4m suit against songwriters Holland, Dozier and Holland for breach of contract, on the basis that the trio has not delivered any new songs since 1967.
The soundtrack album to the underground movie Easy Rider is awarded a gold disc by the R.I.A.A in the USA.
EMI Records in London, UK, advances
The Bee Gees begin a $200m legal action against manager Robert Stigwood, alleging fraud and misrepresentation. Jean-Michel Jarre releases his new album, Music For Supermarkets, in a limited edition of one copy, which is immediately sold at auction in the Hotel Drouot, Paris, France, Europe, to a French collector for 69,000 francs.
WEA Records in the UK is fined £6,000 by the BPI (British Phonographic Industry) for unethical practices.
Ozzy Osbourne donates $15,000 to AIDS research after a concert in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
Chubby Checker files a lawsuit against McDonald's in Canada seeking $14m and alleging that the burger chain had used an imitation of his voice when his hit single The Twist had been used on a tv commercial. (This is a particularly intriguing allegation, given that Chubby's own version of the song was a barely concealed impersonation of the original by Hank Ballard.)
Former Guns N'Roses drummer Steven Adler collects a back-payment check of $2.25m and is granted 15% of the royalties for everything he recorded prior to his departure after suing the band for wrongful dismissal. He claims he was “impaired” when he signed the original contract.
It is announced at The Rhythm And Blues Foundation Pioneer Awards at Sony Pictures, Culver City, Los Angeles, California, USA, that The Artist (aka Prince) has made a sizeable donation, rumoured to be $100,000, to help the Foundation do its work.
Mariah Carey receives a $28m buyout from EMI/Virgin Records after completing just one album of a five-album deal.
The Rolling Stones, AC/DC, Justin Timberlake, Rush, The Guess Who, The Isley Brothers, The Flaming Lips and Sass Jordan play in Canada's biggest-ever rock concert, attended by over 450,000 people in Downsview Park, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The show is intended to counteract the effects on tourism of the recent SARS epidemic which had killed over three dozen Canadians earlier in the year. Facing a heavily rock-oriented audience, Justin Timberlake is booed and pelted with bottles when he takes the stage.
Jamie Cullum ends the year as the UK's biggest selling jazz artist of all time, having signed a £1m record deal eight months earlier and released Twentysomething - his major label debut - which became the fastest-selling jazz album in British chart history.
RAM Squad rapper John ‘Tommy Hill’ Wilson, recently arrested on cocaine charges in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, is refused a lower bail. Prosecutors state that Wilson had maintained several aliases and addresses and also posed a flight risk. Bail remains set at $145,000.A burglar breaks into the Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire, UK, mansion of Ozzy Osbourne and steals jewellery estimated at about £2m. Ozzy struggles with the man, but he escapes.
An Asian Tsunami Benefit concert is held at The GM Place, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, featuring Avril Lavigne, Barenaked Ladies, Sum 41, Sarah McLachlan and Delirium. The event raises $3.6m.A lwasuit - Parks vs LaFace Records - brought on behalf of civil rights campaigner Rosa Parks against the hip-hop duo Outkast and their producer and record labels, is settled with Parks being paid an undisclosed cash settlement and the duo agreeing to work with the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development in creating educational programs about the life of Rosa Parks. The record labels and Outkast admitted to no wrongdoing.
Rapper Ludacris performs the ceremony of ringing the opening bell at the NASDAQ stock market in New York City, USA.
It is announced that Madonna has applied for planning permission to build a swimming pool at Ashcombe House in Berwick-St-John, her £9m, eight-bedroomed, South Wiltshire, England, UK, home.
When smart phone manufacturer Palm Inc's shares soar by 34 per cent, U2's Bono earns a tidy $84m (£56.4m). The singer had invested $100m (£67.1) in the company a month earlier to help rescue it.
It is reported that tickets for Michael Jackson's comeback gigs at the O2 in London, England, UK, Europe, are changing hands on the internet for nearly $10,000 (£6,900) - just hours after going on sale.
It is announced that poem about a dead dog, written by 
New York City's legendary Madison Square Garden announces a $500 million renovation and expansion that is projected to be completed in three years.
Michael Jackson's 7-year-old will is filed in court in Los Angeles, California, USA. The document leaves his entire estate to a family trust, cuts out his former wife Debbie Rowe and makes his mother Katherine the guardian of his children. Court documents estimated the current value of his estate at more than $500 million.
Johnny Marr's 1964 cherry red Gibson SG guitar is returned to him after police track down the thief, Stephen White, who had stolen it during a gig at The Scala, London, England, UK, Europe. The guitar has an estimated value of £30,000.
Ke$ha appears on tv show Saturday Night Live in the USA, performing Tik Tok and Your Love Is My Drug.
U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner rules that Joel Tenenbaum, a Boston University student ordered to pay $675,000 for copyright infringement, need only pay one tenth of that fine. The judge states that the fine was "unconstitutionally excessive." . Tenenbaum had downloaded and shared music files to millions of people by uploading the files onto P2P networks including Napster and Limewire.
Jay-Z goes Christmas Eve shopping at Herm's, New York City, USA. While there, he reportedly buys his wife, Beyonce Knowles, $350,000 worth of designer handbags and purses for Christmas.
The 1-800-Law-Firm of Michigan, USA, files a $5m (£3.1m) class action lawsuit against Lady Gaga claiming that she is profitting from the sale of charity wristbands created to raise funds for earthquake relief efforts in Japan, Asia. The lawsuit alleges that Gaga has overcharged fans for shipping costs on the wristbands and pocketed some of the extra postal costs.A warranty deed filed on this date with the Sumner County Register of Deeds office, shows that Lakehouse Holdings, a limited liability company, has purchased the property at 200 Caudill Drive, Hendersonville, Tennessee, USA, for $2m. The property was sold by Barry Gibb of The Bee Gees, and had previously been home to Johnny Cash for forty years.
Spotify drops a totally silent LP called Sleepify, by a Los Angeles funk band called Vulfpeck, citing "violations of the service's content policies" as a reason. The album was intended as a protest against Spotify as well as a means of raising tour funding. Up to the time it was pulled off Spotify it had been streamed 5.5m times, earning the band almost $20,000.
It is announced that Madonna is to contribute funds to three organizations attempting to improve conditions in her home city of Detroit, Michigan, USA.
Beyonce, with an estimated $115m income for the past year, tops the Forbes 100 List of the World's Most Powerful Celebrities. Other musicians high in the listing include Dr. Dre, Jay Z, Rihanna and Katy Perry.Paul McCartney files a lawsuit against Sony/ATV in the Southern District of New York City, USA, in hopes of regaining ownership of the songs he co-wrote with John Lennon, which The Beatles' pair lost in 1969.
It is revealed that Ed Sheeran has, over the past few years, bought up all of the properties surrounding his first home in a small village near Framlingham, Suffolk, England, UK, Europe, in order to create his own country estate. Land registry records show that he bought his family home for $1.26m (£895,000 and a neighbouring 16th Century farmhouse for $634,000 (£450,000) in 2012. Then, in 2016, he bought another adjacent property for $1.3m (£925,000), and a neighbouring bungalow for $740,000 (£525,000) in October 2017.
A court in Stockholm, Sweden, Europe, rules that rapper A$AP Rocky, currently held in custody on charges relating to a violent incident on June 30, is a flight risk and must be detained in Stockholm for two weeks while the charge is investigated.1902 |
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