Tommy’s Coffee Break Calendar for July 19th

The King begins his reign with this single... -- A totally underrated tune from Macca whose ability to carve melodies is relentless... -- Gotta Skynyrd b'day to remember today, too...

7/19/1954 (64 years ago today) - Sun Records releases "That's All Right", the debut single from Elvis Presley -- Only 7,000 copies of this cover of Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup's 1946 classic were pressed, but it didn't matter -- The soon-to-be-irresistible blueprint was in place, and the disc became a local hit in Memphis. How about this version: stunning, really, how fourteen years after it first came out, he could still kill it...

7/19/1975 (43 years ago today) - Paul McCartney scores his fourth post-Beatles U.S. No. 1 single with "Listen To What The Man Said", which proceeds to sell over a million in America alone! -- The Wings album that the track was on, "Venus And Mars", will also become Paul's fourth No. 1 solo LP since the break-up of The Fab Four. Still sounds great, actually, one of his most under-appreciated albums...

7/19/1952 - Born on this date, Lynyrd Skynyrd founding member/guitarist Allen Collins who, along with lead vocalist Ronnie Van Zant, wrote many of the bands most successful and enduring classics, including "Free Bird", "Gimme Three Steps" and "That Smell" -- The truth was, in fact, that Allen already had a reputation as a highly regarded and quite accomplished guitarist since he was 12 years old! -- While he may have survived the 1977 plane crash that took away three band members, fate wasn't done with him yet: Collins was behind the wheel in a 1986 car accident that killed his girlfriend and left him paralyzed from the waist down; he was only 37 years old when he passed away on January 23, 1990.

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"...I'm leaving town for sure/Then you won't be bothered with me hanging 'round your door...", xoxo!