Tommy’s Coffee Break Calendar for July 20th

Elvis on a truck -- Yes, it's a drum solo! -- Slowhand's fave soloist is...

7/20/1954 (63 years ago today) - For the grand opening of a brand new drug store in Memphis, Tennessee, a group called The Blue Moon Boys make their live performance debut from the back of a flatbed truck -- They took their name from a song they had just recorded two weeks earlier, "Blue Moon Of Kentucky"; the line-up of the band is Scotty Moore on guitar, Bill Black on bass, and the singer is a kid called Elvis Presley...

7/20/1968 (49 years ago today) - The second album from the pseudo-heavy-would-love-to-be-taken-seriously Iron Butterfly makes its debut on the Billboard album chart: quite notoriously, the title track of "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" fills up all 17 minutes of Side Two, composed mostly of the now-legendary bup-bup-takka-takka-bup-bup drum soloing of co-founder Ron Bushy -- It's the bands moment of glory, no doubt, and the LP goes on to sell over four million copies in the U.S. alone! Psychedelic, baby...

7/20/1947 - Happy Birthday Carlos Santana, 70 years old today -- Fact: no other musician was leading a band that fused melodic-blues-based guitar with Latin and African rhythms, plus incorporated all kinds of exotic percussive instruments never used before to such dynamic effect in any kind of rock sound -- Ahhh, in other words, Total Mind-Blowing Innovation!!! Not easy to accomplish either... -- Stats: Ten Grammys, three Latin Grammys, No. 15 on Rolling Stone's Top 100 Greatest Guitarists Of All Time (we think he should be Top Ten, after all, Eric Clapton has name-checked Carlos as his favorite guitarist!); plus, throw in a handful of prog-and-jazz-fusion albums that he's done which are, frankly, incapable of being imitated by anyone anywhere: Well done, Carlos!!!

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"Please take my hand...", xoxo!