Our Day Will Come

March 26, 2006: Total Guitar magazine names Jimmy Page’s solo on “Stairway to Heaven” the top guitar solo of all time. (We talked about it here.)

March 26, 1975: The film version of Tommy has its London premiere. The only thing that exceeded my desire to see this movie when it opened here, in the summer of 1975, was my disappointment when I saw it. Although the movie left me cold, I played the hell out of my copy of the soundtrack.

March 26, 1971: Emerson Lake and Palmer record Pictures at an Exhibition. Bruce Eder’s review at Allmusic.com says it all, and says it better than I can.

March 26, 1965: During a Rolling Stones show in Denmark, Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, and Bill Wyman are electrically shocked by a faulty microphone. With all the shows that have been done in all different venues (and in all kinds of weather, although there’s no indication that this was an outdoor show), it’s a wonder more prominent artists haven’t gotten dead that way. As it was, Wyman was knocked cold for several minutes.

March 26, 1955: Three different versions of Joan Weber’s American hit, “Let Me Go Lover,” by Dean Martin, Teresa Brewer, and Ruby Murray, appear at Numbers 5, 6, and 7 on the British singles chart.

Birthdays Today:
Teddy Pendergrass is 57. One of the greatest of all Philly soul shouters, he’d have been more famous if his group had been called Teddy Pendergrass and the Blue Notes.

Steven Tyler of Aerosmith and Richard Tandy of ELO are both 59. As the keyboard player in one of the most synth-dependent bands of all time, Tandy should probably be more famous. Tyler, on the other hand, is one of the few live musicians (as opposed to iconic dead ones like Jim Morrison and John Lennon) who’s been cool in two generations.

Diana Ross is 63. I often downplay Diana’s accomplishments at Motown because she’s not remotely as gifted a performer as her contemporaries there—Smokey, Stevie, Tops, Temps, Marvin, etc.—yet her track record is impossible to deny. Between 1964 and 1967, Diana and the Supremes scored 15 straight hits, 10 of which went to Number One, including five in a row in 1964 and 1965.

Fred Parris is 71. The story is told that while serving in the Army, Parris was on guard duty one quiet night when he started writing a song in his head. By the time his group, the Five Satins, got around to recording it, Parris had been stationed in Japan. So he’s not heard on what is considered by many to be the greatest doo-wop song of all time—”In the Still of the Night.” I won’t argue with that consensus, but I also really like “To the Aisle,” on which Parris actually sings. (I’ve been corrected on this last point, and I appreciate the knowledge. Click here. Parris was in Japan while “In the Still of the Night” was a hit, but he apparently sang on it before he left. Another singer takes the lead on “To the Aisle.” Far more than you might ever want to know about the Five Satins is here. Shoulda looked there before I posted this originally.)

Number One Songs on This Date:
1998: “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It”/Will Smith. I have never actually heard this song, but it’s mentioned in a Seinfeld episode in which Jerry talks about being in charge of the music at a party he once attended: “I got jiggy with it!” He also says he “turned that mother out.” If incongruity is funny, that’s hilarious.

1992: “Save the Best for Last”/Vanessa Williams. I was doing adult contemporary radio in the early 90s. “Save the Best for Last” got as annoying after the first thousand times you played it as almost every other adult contemporary hit of the era did, but at least it was tolerable for that first thousand—which wasn’t always the case.

1983: “Billie Jean”/Michael Jackson. A notable record for lots of reasons: It was so big that it helped force MTV to stop ignoring black artists; the moonwalk Jackson did to it on the Motown 25 special made him not just famous, but for a time, godlike. In the end, however, it comes down to the groove, which is as intense as anything James Brown ever put down, and will still be making people move in 100 years.

1963: “Our Day Will Come”/Ruby and the Romantics. Despite being considered one of the classics of early 60s black pop, “Our Day Will Come” doesn’t sound like anything else in its era—or any era you can name.

1923: “Carolina in the Morning”/Van and Schenck. These guys were a Broadway and vaudeville comedy team who recorded a couple of songs that are imprinted in the DNA of people over a certain age. “Carolina in the Morning” is certainly one: “Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in the morning.” The other is probably their 1921 hit “Ain’t We Got Fun?”: “In the morning, in the evening, ain’t we got fun?” They also did some radio—very early radio, since Schenck died in 1930.

“To the Aisle”/Five Satins
“Our Day Will Come”/Ruby and the Romantics
(Both of these songs are taken from the Time-Life Classic Love Songs of Rock ‘n’ Roll Collection; Ruby is available only as part of a 10-CD set; the two-CD set containing the Five Satins is currently unavailable. Given that you probably wouldn’t want to spend $100 or more to get them, I’ve located cheaper alternatives. Buy the Five Satins here; buy Ruby and the Romantics here.)