This Day in Music
2005 – Bruce Springsteen kicks off his solo “Devils & Dust” tour in Michigan, at Motown’s Fox Theatre.
2004 – Jazz violinist-guitarist Claude “Fiddler” Williams dies of pneumonia in Kansas City, Mo. He is 96.
2002 – Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, the effervescent, sometimes volatile rapping member of the Grammy-winning R&B trio TLC, is killed in a car crash in Honduras. Lopes, who would have turned 31 the next month, was in the Central American nation for a vacation.
2000 – Eric Clapton is reunited on a TV stage in London with his former Derek & the Dominos keyboard player Bobby Whitlock, for their first performance together in 29 years. The setting is the recording of the latest edition of the BBC2 TV series “Later With Jools Holland.”
2000 – Putumayo Artists releases South African singer/songwriter and renowned human-rights activist Miriam Makeba’s “Homeland,” her first studio album in 10 years.
1999 – Funk star Roger Troutman, 47, dies in a hospital in Dayton, Ohio, after being shot several times. His brother, Larry Troutman, 54, was found in a car nearby the crime scene, dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.
1985 – “Big River,” a musical by Roger Miller, opens on Broadway. It later wins a Tony as Best Musical.
1976 – No. 1 Billboard Pop Hit: “Let Your Love Flow,” Bellamy Brothers.
1961 – Elvis Presley makes his last stage appearance for nearly eight years at Bloch Arena in Hawaii.
1959 – The TV show “Your Hit Parade” airs for the last time.
1918 – Jazz legend Ella Fitzgerald is born in Newport News, Va. She makes her professional debut in February 1935 and writes “A-Tisket a-Tasket” in 1938. The song sells more than 2 million copies, tops Billboard’s pop chart for 10 weeks and is inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Fitzgerald wins her first Grammy Award at the inaugural ceremony on May 4, 1959, and is awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1967.
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