This Day in Music
On this day in music, April 6, 1998, 55-year-old country icon Tammy Wynette passed away. Born Virginia Wynette Pugh in Mississippi, she started performing in her teens. In 1967, just one year after releasing her first single, Wynette scored her first of 17 No. 1 singles on the Billboard country chart. In 1968, her signature songs “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” and “Stand By Your Man” (a UK No.1 in 1975) brought her wider fame by crossing over into the pop charts. She continued to rack up hits during the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and in 1998 was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. In a surprising 1991 collaboration with British avant-garde electronic band KLF, she recorded “Justified and Ancient,” which topped the charts in 18 countries.
In 1971, The Rolling Stones, whose Decca contract had expired the previous year, launched their own label, Rolling Stones Records, in a deal with Atlantic Records. The label introduced the band’s iconic lips and tongue logo, designed by London art student, John Pasche. The label’s inaugural release was Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan At Joujouka, regarded by some as the first world music album.
In 2016, country music troubadour Merle Haggard died on his 79th birthday. Born in California, he spent time in prison as a young man before transforming his life by pursuing a successful career as a singer/songwriter. Haggard was one of the key architects of the 1960s Bakersfield country sound, defined by jangly guitar and soaring lap steel guitar lines. He topped the US country singles chart 36 times between 1966 and 1987; his final album, Timeless, was released in 2015.
In 1974, the California Jam festival took place at a motor speedway track in Ontario, California. Over 200,000 people attended the one-day event, which was headlined by the British bands Deep Purple and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Also on the bill were Earth, Wind & Fire, the Eagles, and Black Sabbath.
In 1968, the British prog-rock group Pink Floyd announced that their co-founder Syd Barrett was no longer with the group. Barrett, who suffered from psychiatric problems, recorded two solo albums in 1970 before withdrawing from the public eye.
In 1998, 48-year-old Wendy O. Williams, who fronted the US punk rock group The Plasmatics, took her own life. Williams was renowned for her shocking onstage antics, which ranged from using explosives to destroy equipment to chainsawing guitars and performing partially nude.
BORN ON APRIL 6
1937: Merle Haggard (Singer/songwriter)
1944: John Stax (Pretty Things)
1947: Tony Conner (Hot Chocolate)
1951: Ralph Cooper (Air Supply)
1953: Christopher Franke (Tangerine Dream)
1965: Frank Black (Pixies)
1978: Robert Glasper
1978: Myleene Klass (Hear’Say)
