Tommy’s Coffee Break Calendar for September 14th

Little Richard gets it done!!! -- Cartoon rock debuts...eh... -- Slowhand tops it off with a cover...

Eric Clapton, c 1973. (Express/Getty Images)

9/14/1955 (61 years ago today) - Things get off to a sloppy and rather infuriating start for a Little Richard recording session in New Orleans. Taking a break seems like a good idea, so Richard and producer Bumps Blackwell (wotta great name!) decide to have lunch at The Dew Drop Inn which happens to have a piano in the bar. Like lightning in a bottle, Little Richard seizes the moment, banging out a loud and lewd version of "Tutti Frutti" -- with only 15 minutes left in the session, they pop back into the studio and lay down the classic version we know today: "A-Wop-Bop-A-Loo-Bop-A-Lop-Bam-Boom!!!"

9/14/1968 (48 years ago today) - Yeah, Don Kirshner was behind this fake rock s@#!t, too!: The first episode of "The Archies" was aired on U.S. TV. Contributions from the likes of Andy Kim and Jeff Barry only added to the misery, while Kirshner was put in charge of the studio group recordings. Weird fact: one year later, over in Merry Olde England, the nausea-inducing "Sugar Sugar" would spend eight weeks at No. 1 on the U.K. singles chart, making it the longest running One-Hit-Wonder in British chart history.

9/14/1974 (42 years ago today) - Now you know who Bob Marley is...: It's Eric Clapton's first No. 1 single as a solo artist when his cover of Bob Marley & The Wailers' "I Shot The Sheriff" goes to the top of the singles chart; the album it appears on, "461 Ocean Boulevard", is a world-wide smash too, going to No. 1 in the U.S. and Canada as well as the Top 5 all throughout Europe. A major comeback and the best of what was to become a blueprint of sorts for E.C.'s solo albums over the next twenty years...