13 February: Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison
During the last century, it was common for artists to perform in prisons to lighten prisoners’ long days. Frank Sinatra, B.B. King, The Cramps, The Sex Pistols, Fugazi are only some of the names of artists who joined this type of trend.
Johnny Cash is probably the first name to come to one’s mind when thinking about this particular kind of concert. In fact, the country singer performed multiple times for prisoners. However, among the others, the most famous one happened on February 13th, 1968.
The artist first became interested in Folsom Prison after watching the film Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison with his Air Force unit in 1953. After watching the movie, he was also inspired to write “Folsom Prison Blues.”
In fact, the song was particularly popular among prisoners, and many sent letters to Cash asking for exhibitions. Since his first performance, the artist never stopped performing in prison structures.
“Hello, I’m Johnny Cash,” he began. What follows is history.
14 February: Oasis’ (What’s the Story) Morning Glory
Today in 1996 Oasis reached the top of the main music charts worldwide with their sophomore album, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory. Released in October of the previous year, the album included timeless hits, now classics, like “Some Might Say,” “Cast No Shadow” and “Don’t Look Back In Anger.” The band’s biggest single ever, “Wonderwall,” is part of the album as well.
In a time when the band wasn’t particularly excited for the future and their ideal success was yet to come, the Gallagher brothers Liam and Noel released the album that made them the icons they still are today. The brit pop phenomenon grew (What’s the Story) Morning Glory, which became the album-representation of a generation.
(What’s the Story) Morning Glory is to date one of the most influential and successful albums ever.
15 February: Mark Ronson’s record breaking Uptown Funk
In 2015, Mark Ronson was controlling the top positions of every chart with his previous year’s hit, Uptown Funk. Released in collaboration with pop and soul icon Bruno Mars, the song reached the one million sales mark on this day, only ten weeks after its release. The song became also the 158th track to reach the million sales mark in British charts history. It is also the most-streamed track ever in the UK.
16 February: BBC Launches First Rock‘N’Roll Program
Today in 1957 the first ever rock‘n’roll program was launched on BBC. Disc jockey Pete Murray became the host of the channel’s new TV show The Six-Five Special. The show first appeared after previous a television program to put children to bed, “Toddlers’ Truce,” was canceled. Every day at five minutes after six – from which The Six-Five Special got his name, Pete Murray would begin his show saying “Time to jive on the old six-five.”
During the show, Don Lang and His Frantic Five were the resident band and main musical point of the show.
