Tommy’s Coffee Break Calendar for July 13th

Legendary heavy-osity debuts -- Underrated artist birthday -- Classic '60's single makes British and American music history...

7/13/1964 (56 years ago today) - The Animals make it to No. 1 on the British singles chart with their version of "The House Of the Rising Sun", which, somewhat amazingly, was actually recorded in just one take!!! -- Two more interesting firsts for this classic as well: it was the U.K.'s very first chart-topper to have a playing time that exceeded four minutes, and it was the first song since 1962 by a British band to hit No. 1 in America that was not written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney (insert "Wow!" here)...

7/13/1968 (52 years ago today) - Black Sabbath play their first gig...well, sort of -- At this point in time the group was known as Mythology, and only guitarist Tony Iommi and drummer Bill Ward were in this pre-Sabbath line-up -- The other members, now lost to history, were Chris Smith on vocals and Neil Marshall on bass. The bands stage debut happens in the not-too-big-of-a-town of Silloth, England, at a backstreet blues club called The Queen's Hotel -- Rough bootlegs of this historic set are out there, though the performance has never officially been issued on CD or vinyl...

7/13/1942 - Happy Birthday James Joseph McGuinn III, 78 years old today -- Giant-size/mega-well-deserved props to the much-taken-for-granted Roger McGuinn, best known for his lead vocals and guitar work with The Byrds who were most certainly one of the very, very few American acts that kept The Beatles on their toes back in the mid-Sixties -- Roger currently does most of his work online with the critically acclaimed "Treasures From The Folk Den" series, helping keep real folk music traditions alive -- Plus Tom Petty maybe would have never achieved much at all if not for Mr. McGuinn's influence, just throwing that fact out there, OK...

Share your jingle-jangle's with the Calendar here on our web site and on the WBLM Facebook and Twitter pages with the hashtag #TommysCoffeeBreak.

"Well, I got one foot on the platform/The other foot on the train...", xoxo!