10 January:CHRIS "Daddy Mac" SMITH = American singer-songwriter, member of Kris Kross
16 January:AALIYAH HAUGHTON = American singer and actress = [died: 2001]
20 January:
ROB BOURDON = American drummer with Linkin Park
WILL YOUNG = English singer-songwriter and actor who came to prominence after winning the 2002 inaugural series of the British music contest Pop Idol
11 February:BRANDY NORWOOD = American recording artist and entertainer
21 February:JENNIFER LOVE HEWITT = American singer-songwriter and actress
8 March:TOM CHAPLIN = British singer with Keane
11 March:
BENJI MADDEN = American guitarist and backup vocalist for the band Good Charlotte
JOEL MADDEN = American lead vocalist for the band Good Charlotte
14 March:JACQUES BRAUTBAR = American photographer, producer, writer and guitarist with Phantom Planet
30 March:NORAH JONES = American singer-songwriter
10 April:SOPHIE ELLIS-BEXTOR = British singer
11 April:
CHRIS GAYLOR = American drummer and percussionist with The All-American Rejects
SEBASTIEN GRAINGER = Canadian singer and musician, member of Death from Above 1979
22 April:DANIEL JOHNS = Australian musician, singer, and songwriter, member of Silverchair
29 April:
JO O'MEARA = English singer-songwriter, television personality and actress, member of S Club 7
MATT TONG = British musician, member of Bloc Party
4 May:LANCE BASS = American singer with 'N Sync
5 June:PETE WENTZ = American musician and songwriter
8 June:DEREK TRUCKS = American guitarist, songwriter
26 June:RYAN TEDDER = American singer-songwriter, producer, member of OneRepublic
5 July:SHANE FILAN = Irish singer and songwriter, member of Westlife
16 July:IVAN TÁSLER = Slovak singer, guitarist, composer, and producer
25 July:AMY ADAMS = American singer
26 July:TAMYRA GRAY = American actress, singer and songwriter
20 August:JAMIE CULLUM = British jazz pianist and singer
27 August:
CARMEN MONARCHA = Brazilian operatic soprano
JON SIEBELS = American musician, member of Eve 6
31 August:YUVAN SHANKAR RAJA = Indian film composer and singer
8 September:PINK = American singer-songwriter, actress and model
22 September:EMILIE AUTUMN = American violinist, singer and songwriter
30 September:STEVE KLEIN = American musician, founding member of New Found Glory {1997-2014}
9 October:ALEX GREENWALD = American musician, actor, and record producer, member of Phantom Planet
12 October:JORDAN PUNDIK = American musician and songwriter, member of New Found Glory
15 October:JACI VELASQUEZ = American Contemporary Christian and Latin pop singer
24 October:BEN GILLIES = Australian drummer with Silverchair
5 November:NICK GIGGLER = American drummer with Mest
10 November:CHRIS JOANNOU = Australian bass guitarist with Silverchair
26 December:CHRIS DAUGHTRY = American rock guitarist, singer and songwriter
31 December:BOB BRYAR = American drummer and percussionist with My Chemical Romance
Timeline of Musical Events
1 January:
Bill Graham closes San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom following a New Year's Eve performance by the Blues Brothers and the Grateful Dead.
During a New Year's Eve concert in Cleveland, Ohio, Bruce Springsteen is injured when a fire-cracker is thrown onstage from the audience.
4 January: The Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany, best known for its connections to the early days of the Beatles, reopens.
9 January: The Music for UNICEF Concert in held in New York City at the United Nations, starring The Bee Gees. Highlights are aired the following evening on NBC.
13 January: Singer Donny Hathaway dies after falling 15 stories from his hotel room in New York City. According to Hathaway's record company, Atlantic, the singer had been having some psychological problems.
15 January: MCA Records purchases ABC Records for a reported $20 million.
2 February: Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious is found dead from an overdose, a day after being released on bail from Rikers Island prison.
7 February:
The Clash kick off their first concert on their first American tour at the Berkeley Community Theatre outside San Francisco, California. Bo Diddley opens the show and the Clash open their set with the song "I'm So Bored with the U.S.A.".
Stephen Stills becomes the first major rock artist to record digitally, laying down four songs at The Record Plant in Los Angeles.
10 February: Rod Stewart's "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy" hits #1 on the Billboard magazine charts, and stays there for 4 weeks.
11 February: 43 million viewers watch "Elvis!" on ABC, a made for TV movie starring Kurt Russell as Elvis.
15 February: Minnie Riperton appears on the Grammys as a presenter with Stephen Bishop. The Bee Gees collect 4 Grammys for Saturday Night Fever.
23 February: Dire Straits begin their first U.S. tour in Boston.
24 February:
Friedrich Cerha's completion of Alban Berg's opera Lulu is premiered at the Opera Garnier in Paris.
Singer Johnnie Wilder, Jr. of Heatwave is paralyzed from the neck down in a car accident in his hometown of Dayton, Ohio.
26 February: B.B. King becomes the first blues artist to tour the Soviet Union, kicking off a one-month tour there.
2-4 March: Weather Report, The CBS Jazz All-Stars, the Trio of Doom, Fania All-Stars, Stephen Stills, Billy Swan, Bonnie Bramlett, Mike Finnegan, Kris Kristofferson, Rita Coolidge and Billy Joel, plus Cuban acts Irakere, Pacho Alonso, Elena Burke, Los Papines, Tata Güines and Orquesta Aragón play at the historic three-day Havana Jam festival at the Karl Marx Theater, in Havana, Cuba.
5 March: MCA Records dissolves ABC Records.
10 March: James Brown performs at the Grand Ole Opry.
15 March: Elvis Costello gets into a heated argument with members of Stephen Stills' touring entourage at a Holiday Inn in Columbus, Ohio. After Costello makes disparaging remarks about America and puts down James Brown and Ray Charles using a racial slur, he is punched by Bonnie Bramlett. Costello suffers a wave of negative press coverage after the incident is made public.
21 March: The Pretenders sign a contract with Sire Records.
23 March: Van Halen releases their second album, Van Halen II.
27 March: Eric Clapton marries Patti Boyd, ex-wife of Clapton's friend George Harrison.
31 March: The Eurovision Song Contest, the biggest music festival in the world, takes place for the first time in a country outside Europe – Israel. The show is broadcast live from Jerusalem to Europe and a few countries in Asia. The big winner of this night is Israel for the second time in a row. The winning song is "Hallelujah" sung by Gali Atari and the backing group Milk and Honey. A few months after winning the song had been translated into more than 82 languages, and broke a new record by entering the Guinness Book of Records as the most translated song in the world.
2 April: Kate Bush begins her first, and to date, only tour. She becomes the first artist to use a wireless microphone, enabling her to sing and dance at the same time.
6 April: Rod Stewart marries Alana Hamilton.
7 April: 110,000 people attend the California Music Festival at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum. Performers include Aerosmith, The Boomtown Rats, Cheap Trick, Ted Nugent and Van Halen.
12 April: Mickey Thomas replaces Marty Balin as the lead singer of Jefferson Starship.
13 April: During a concert by Van Halen in Spokane, Washington, David Lee Roth collapses from exhaustion. A local doctor treats him for a stomach virus and advises him to "calm down".
22 April: The New Barbarians and The Rolling Stones perform two concerts in Oshawa, Ontario to benefit the CNIB, as part of Keith Richards' 1978 sentence for heroin possession.
24 April: The New Barbarians open their US tour at Ann Arbor, Michigan.
27 April: Ozzy Osbourne is fired as lead singer of Black Sabbath. He is replaced in May by Ronnie James Dio.
2 May: The Who play their first concert following the death of drummer Keith Moon. The band perform with new drummer Kenney Jones at London's Rainbow Theatre.
8 May: Iron Maiden, Samson, and Angel Witch share a bill at the Music Machine in Camden, London. Critic Geoff Barton coins the term "New Wave of British Heavy Metal" in a review of the show for Sounds magazine.
19 May: Three of the four ex-Beatles perform on the same stage, as Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr jam with Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, Mick Jagger and others at a wedding reception for Clapton at his Surrey home.
21 May: Elton John plays the first of eight concerts in the Soviet Union.
1 June: Alternative Tentacles record label established by Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra.
8 June: Marianne Faithfull marries Ben Brierly of The Vibrators.
28 June: Bill Haley makes his final studio recordings at Muscle Shoals, Alabama. (He dies in 1981.)
1 July: The Sony Walkman goes on sale in Japan.
7 July: The Bee Gees play to a sold-out crowd at Los Angeles' Dodger Stadium as part of their Spirits Having Flown tour.
10 July: Chuck Berry is sentenced to four months in prison for tax evasion by a Los Angeles judge.
12 July: "Disco Demolition Night", an anti-disco promotional event for a Chicago rock station involving exploding disco records with a bomb, causes a near-riot between games during a baseball major league doubleheader, forcing the cancellation of the second game.
28 July: Aerosmith and Ted Nugent headline the World Series of Rock at Municipal Stadium in Cleveland, Ohio. Also on the bill are Journey, Thin Lizzy, AC/DC and the Scorpions. Following the concert, Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry quits the group after an argument with bandmates.
31 July: 250,000 turn out in Central Park for a free concert by James Taylor in a campaign to restore Sheep Meadow.
4-11 August: British rock band Led Zeppelin played what were to be their last British concerts (until 2007) at Knebworth in Hertfordshire. Total attendances for the two concerts approached 400,000.
18 August: Nick Lowe and Carlene Carter are married at Carter's Los Angeles home.
19 August: Dorsey Burnette dies of a massive coronary in Canoga Park, California.
25 August: "My Sharona" by The Knack hits #1 on the Billboard charts. This is the first time in over a year that a song hits #1 that is not either a disco song or a ballad, signalling the potential resurgence of rock.
1 September: INXS perform for the first time, at the Oceanview Hotel in Umina, New South Wales.
2 September: U2 enters the studio for the first time to record a locally released single.
13 September: ABBA begins ABBA: The Tour in Edmonton, Alberta, leading off a month of dates in North America.
17 September: Keith Richards' legal problems are finally over, as the Ontario Court of Appeals rejects a government appeal of last year's sentence that allowed him to avoid jail time for his 1977 arrest in Toronto for heroin possession.
19-23 September: Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE) stages a series of five 'No Nukes' concerts at Madison Square Garden. Jackson Browne, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Bonnie Raitt, Tom Petty, James Taylor and Carly Simon are among the participants.
22 September: The NewMusic, a Canadian weekly music and culture program, debuts on Citytv.
27 September: Elton John collapses on stage at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles County, California while performing "Better Off Dead". He refuses to stop the show and resumes playing fifteen minutes later.
10 October: Joe Perry officially leaves Aerosmith.
9 November: The single "Rapper's Delight" by The Sugarhill Gang is released. Its success marks the commercial emergence of hip hop music.
16 November: Infinity Records is shut down and absorbed into parent company MCA.
26 November: Bill Haley & His Comets perform at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, in a command performance for The Queen. This was Haley's final recorded performance of "Rock Around the Clock".
3 December: In Cincinnati, Ohio, a stampede for seats at Riverfront Coliseum during a Who concert kills 11 fans (band members were not made aware of the deaths until after the show).
26-29 December: The Concerts for the People of Kampuchea are held over four nights at the Hammersmith Odeon in London to raise funds for victims of war in Cambodia. Queen, The Who, The Clash, Wings, Elvis Costello and members of Led Zeppelin all take part.
31 December: The eighth annual New Year's Rockin' Eve special airs on ABC, with appearances by The Oak Ridge Boys, Village People, Chic, Blondie and Barry Manilow.
Also in 1979
The Welsh Philharmonia becomes the Orchestra of Welsh National Opera.
Michael Schenker leaves Scorpions during their tour in France and was replaced by Matthias Jabs.
Stevie Wonder uses digital audio recording technology in recording his album Journey through the Secret Life of Plants.
Ry Cooder releases the first pop/rock record made entirely using digital recording technology, "Bop Til You Drop".
EMI's first digital recording – at Abbey Road Studios – of a non-classical music track is released – UK jazz-funk duo Morrissey-Mullen covered the Rose Royce hit Love Don't Live Here Anymore. Released as a limited edition vinyl EP.
Disco reigns supreme in 1979, with several #1 hits from The Bee Gees and Donna Summer that year. Several artists who were not regarded as dance/disco acts, scored major successes by releasing disco singles, including New Wave band Blondie with their first US number one single "Heart of Glass", Rod Stewart with "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy" and rock band Electric Light Orchestra go disco this year with their UK #1 LP Discovery. Country star Kenny Rogers also issues a disco influenced album, entitled Kenny. Hard rock band Kiss also has a disco hit this year with "I Was Made For Lovin You".
Elton John reunites with lyricist Bernie Taupin after a three-year break. The duos recent songs are recorded in August 1979, to be released a year later on "21 at 33".
Published Popular Music
"Don't Cry Out Loud" = lyrics by CAROLE BAYER SAGER; music by PETER ALLEN
"The Facts of Life" = lyrics & music by ALAN THICKE, GLORIA LORING, and AL BURTON, from the TV series of the same name
"I'd Rather Leave While I'm In Love" = lyrics & music by CAROLE BAYER SAGER & PETER ALLEN
"Knots Landing theme" = music by JERROLD IMMEL
"New York State of Mind" = lyrics & music by BILLY JOEL
"The Rainbow Connection" = lyrics & music by KENNY ASCHER & PAUL WILLIAMS, from the film The Muppet Movie
"Sultans of Swing" = lyrics & music by MARK KNOPFLER
Classical Music
ARNO BABADJANIAN
Third String Quartet
OSVALDAS BALAKAUSKAS
Symphony no 2
GEORGE CRUMB
Apparition for soprano and amplified piano
Celestial Mechanics (Makrokosmos IV) for amplified piano (four hands)
Star-Child (1977, revised 1979) for soprano, antiphonal children's voices, male speaking choir, bell ringers, and large orchestra
London production opened at Her Majesty's Theatre on March 22.
CARMELINA
(Book: Alan Jay Lerner & Joseph Stein Lyrics: Alan Jay Lerner Music: Burton Lane)
Broadway production opened at the St. James Theatre on April 8 and ran for 17 performances. Starring Georgia Brown and Cesare Siepi
EVITA
(Music: Andrew Lloyd Webber, Lyrics and Book: Tim Rice)
Broadway production opened at the Broadway Theatre on September 25 and ran for 1567 performances
THE KING AND I
London revival opened at the Palladium on June 12 and ran for 538 performances
MY OLD FRIENDS
(Music, Lyrics and Book: Mel Mandel and Norman Sachs)
Off-Broadway production opened at the Orpheum Theatre on January 12 and transferred to the 22 Steps Theatre on Broadway on April 12 for a total run of 154 performances.
OKLAHOMA!
(Music: Richard Rodgers, Lyrics and Book: Oscar Hammerstein II)
Broadway revival opened at the Palace Theatre on December 13 and ran for 310 performances
PETER PAN
(Music: Mark Charlap, Lyrics and Book: Carolyn Leigh with additional songs, Music: Jule Styne and Lyrics: Betty Comden & Adolph Green)
Broadway revival opened at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on September 6 and ran for 551 performances
SARAVÀ
(Music: Mitch Leigh, Lyrics and Book: N. Richard Nash)
Broadway production opened at the Mark Hellinger Theatre on February 23 and ran for 140 performances
SUGAR BABIES
Broadway revue opened at the Mark Hellinger Theatre on October 8 and ran for 1208 performances
SWEENEY TODD
(Music and Lyrics: Stephen Sondheim, Book: Hugh Wheeler)
Broadway production opened at the Uris Theatre on March 1 and ran for 557 performances
THEY'RE PLAYING OUR SONG
(Music: Marvin Hamlisch, Lyrics: Carole Bayer Sager, Book: Neil Simon)
Broadway production opened at the Imperial Theatre on February 11 and ran for 1082 performances
TOMMY
London production opened at Queen's Theatre on February 6 and ran for 118 performances
THE VENETIAN TWINS
(Music: Terence Clarke, Lyrics and Book: Nick Enright)
Opened at the Sydney Opera House Drama Theatre on October 26
WHOOPEE
(Music: Walter Donaldson, Lyrics: Gus Kahn, Book: William Anthony McGuire)
Broadway revival opened at the ANTA Theatre on February 14 and ran for 212 performances
Please address any comments concerning this page to The Music Maestro
Mark Chard BSc, PLY
Page created: 25th August 2011
Last edited: 21st February 2024
