Tommy’s Coffee Break Calendar for December 21st

Interesting LP-chart-stats, Sixties and Eighties; plus a revered icon's birthday...

12/21/1968 (48 years ago today) - Glen Campbell hits No. 1 on the Billboard LP Hot 100 with the mega-polished "Witchita Lineman" -- It stays on the chart for 46 consecutive weeks, but it would turn out to be Glen's only No. 1 album.

12/21/1985 (31 years ago today) - Bruce Springsteen's "Born In The U.S.A." passes "Thriller" by Michael Jackson to become the second longest-lasting LP to remain in the Billboard Top Ten, where it stayed for 79 weeks-in-a-row! So what album could possibly have lasted longer in The Top 10? "The Sound Of Music" Soundtrack with Julie Andrews at an unbelievable run of 109 weeks! That's a spicy meatball!

12/21/1940 - Born on this date, multi-instrumentalist-composer-producer extraordinaire, the truly unique Frank Zappa, whose ferocious catalog of work remains in a league of its own, especially in terms of its sheer scope: no one (and we mean no one) else melded nonconformity, free-form improvisation, sound experiments, musical virtuosity and stinging satires of American culture like Frank did, either with The Mothers Of Invention or as a solo artist. Totally fearless, imaginative and (excuse the pun) quite Frankly funny as hell. Sadly missed; Frank died from cancer on December 4, 1993, seventeen days before his 53rd birthday.

Share your freak-outs with the Calendar here on our web site and on the WBLM Facebook and Twitter pages with the hashtag #TommysCoffeeBreak.

"Vegetables dream/Of responding to you...", xoxo!