June 1st

Musical birthdays today include Pat Boone (88), Ron Wood (75), Little River Band bassist Wayne Nelson (72), singer-songwriter & DJ Tom Robinson (72), country singer Ronnie Dunn (69), producer & former Depeche Mode multi-instrumentalist Alan Wilder (63), The Cure bassist Simon Gallup (61), ex-Smiths drummer Mike Joyce (59), Mindy Smith (50), Alanis Morrissette (48), Brandi Carlile (41), and multi-instrumentalist & film score composer Ari Herstand (37). 

Shoutout to the Great Beyond for composer Mikhail Glinka, born on this day in 1804... for bandleader & arranger Nelson Riddle, born in 1921... for bluegrass singer Hazel Dickens, who would have been 87... for blues singer & harmonica player Sonny Boy Williamson I [né John Lee Curtis], who died on this date in 1948... for ex-Temptations lead singer David Ruffin, who died in 1991... for former Hi-Five lead singer Tony Thompson, who passed away in 2007... and for jazz saxophonist Faruq Z. Bey [né Jesse Davis], who left us today in 2012. 

Also on June 1st: Lesley Gore hits № 1 in America with 'It's My Party' (1963)... The Rolling Stones are met by some 500 fans as they disembark from British Airways flight BA 505 at JFK to begin their first American tour. They will make promotional appearances between now and the first scheduled date on the 5th in San Bernardino, CA (1964)... The John Coltrane quartet finish recording the album Crescent at the Van Gelder Studio (1964)... Luciano Pavarotti makes his Covent Garden debut, as Tonio in Donizetti's La Fille du Regiment... The Beatles continue to add overdubs to 'Yellow Submarine'. Roadie Mal Evans plays on a bass drum strapped to his chest, marching around the studio with The Beatles following behind in a conga line of sorts, singing the refrain (1966)... David Bowie's eponymous debut is released on Deram Records (1967)... Simon & Garfunkel top the Billboard singles chart with 'Mrs. Robinson' (1968)... The two-room shack in Tupelo, MS where Elvis was born on January 8, 1935 is opened to the public as a museum (1971)... Miles Davis goes into Columbia Studio E in NYC to begin recording On the Corner (1972)... Soft Machine founder & former drummer Robert Wyatt fractures his spine after attempting to leave a party by climbing out of a window and down a drainpipe. He falls three stories, sustaining injuries that leave him permanently confined to a wheelchair (1973)... On his 28th birthday, Ron Wood officially replaces Mick Taylor as the Stones' second guitarist, as the band launch their biggest tour of the US to date with a concert at LSU in Baton Rouge, LA (1975)... U2 are the band for the end of the year dance at Mount Temple Comprehensive School in Dublin (1978)... Prince & the Revolution have a US № 1 with the album Around the World in a Day... Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band kick off the European leg of the Born in the USA world tour with a show at Slane Castle in Dublin (1985)... Spice Girl Emma Bunton AKA Baby Spice arrives back in the UK after breaking her ankle making a leap from a stage during an appearance on Turkish TV (1997)... Jack White marries girlfriend Karen Elson in a ceremony in a canoe on the Amazon (2005)... Contemporary musicians record their own versions of songs from the Sgt Pepper album to mark the 40th anniversary of its release. Acts including Oasis, Travis, The Fray, Kaiser Chiefs, Razorlight, Bryan Adams and The Magic Numbers all worked with Geoff Emerick, the engineer in charge of the original 1967 sessions, using the original analogue 4-track equipment to demonstrate the techniques employed for the recording at Abbey Road studios (2007).