January 10th

 Musical birthdays today include Ronnie 'The Hawk' Hawkins (88), Rod Stewart (78), drummer Aynsley Dunbar (77), Steely Dan co-founder Donald Fagen (75), Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers guitarist Scott Thurston (71), Pat Benatar (70), heavy metal guitarist Michael Schenker (68), Shawn Colvin (67), Crash Test Dummies frontman Brad Roberts (59), Flight of the Conchords co-member Jemaine Clement (49), and Shinedown lead singer Brent Smith (45).

Shoutout to the Great Beyond for producer Jerry Wexler, born in this day in 1917... for jazz drummer Max Roach, born in 1924... for Johnnie Ray, born in 1927... for Scott McKenzie, who would have been 84... for Jim Croce, who would have been 80... for Frank Sinatra, Jr., who would have been 79... for Howlin' Wolf, who died on this date in 1976... for Anton Karas [composer and performer of the zither score in the film The Third Man], who passed away in 1985... for former Jefferson Airplane and New Riders of the Purple Sage drummer Spencer Dryden, who died in 2005... for Claude Nobs, the founder and general manager of the Montreux Jazz Festival, who died in 2012. During a 1971 Frank Zappa concert, at the Montreux Casino the venue caught fire. Nobs saved several young people who had hidden in the casino, thinking they would be sheltered from the flames. This act earned him a mention as Funky Claude in the  line 'Funky Claude was running in and out pulling kids out the ground' in the Deep Purple song 'Smoke on the Water', which is about the incident... and for David Bowie, who left us four years ago today.

Also on January 10th: In her first Columbia session, Bessie Smith records 'Easy Come, Easy Go Blues' (1924)... Big band singer Jo Stafford becomes the first woman to have a № 1 on the UK singles chart with 'You Belong to Me' (1953)... Elvis Presley makes his first recordings for RCA, including 'Heartbreak Hotel', at Methodist Studios in Memphis (1956)... The first US Beatles album, Introducing The Beatles, is released on Vee-Jay Records. The album cover shows John, Paul and George with their now famous 'mop top' haircuts, with Ringo yet to convert. Vee-Jay will be forced to stop selling the disc by the end of the year because of legal complications, but by then over 1.3 million copies will have been sold (1964)... Having grown tired of Paul's hectoring and instructions on how to play, George storms out of the recording sessions for the album that will become Let It Be and announces that he is quitting the Beatles (1969)... The Ramones release Leave Home, their second studio album (1977)... The Sex Pistols make their US TV debut on the show Variety (1978)... Just over a month after his murder, John Lennon dominates the charts on both sides of the Atlantic. In the UK , the re-release of 'Imagine' is the country's № 1 single. Double Fantasy is tops with both British and American album buyers, and 'Just Like Starting over' is the № 1 single in the USA (1981)... Cyndi Lauper becomes the first female artist since Bobbie Gentry in 1967 to be nominated for 5 Grammys in the same year (1984)... James Brown receives his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (1997)... Singer Melissa Etheridge reveals that David Crosby was the sperm donor of her two children with girlfriend Julie Cypher (2000)... An Australian woman appears in court in Melbourne charged with repeatedly stabbing her partner with a pair of scissors in the back, shoulder and thigh because he played Elvis Presley's song 'Burning Love' more than 20 times in a row (2006).