Firsts

Promoter Jean Thomas stages the first American Folk Song Festival, at Four Mile Fork Of Garner, on the Mayo Trail fifteen miles south of Ashland, Kentucky, USA. The event features eighteen acts but, by 1938, it will feature 42 acts playing to an audience of 20,000.

The first chart of popular record sales is published in American trade magazine Billboard, showing jazz violinist Joe Venuti in the No1 position with Stop! Look! Listen!

A new gossip column, Hedda Hopper's Hollywood, makes its debut in the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, California, USA. Miss Hopper will become a famed gossip columnist, known for her extraordinary hats. Her hats will become so famous that, in the 1946 film Breakfast in Hollywood, Del Porter, backed by Spike Jones and his City Slickers, will sing a novelty song, A Hat For Hedda Hopper, while Hopper sits in the audience wearing an extravagantly large milliner's creation.

Bob Wills And The Texas Playboys record the fiddle tune Ida Red for Vocalion Records in Dallas, Texas, USA. In 1955, Chuck Berry will be inspired to base his first hit, Maybellene, on this version of Ida Red.

Singer Jeri Sullavan performs the song Rum And Coca Cola for an American audience for the first time, during an engagement at the Versailles Restaurant, Manhattan, New York City, USA. The song, written by calypso star Lord Invader has been given to her by comedian Morey Amsterdam who heard it while working in Trinidad. Rum And Coca Cola will later become a huge hit for The Andrews Sisters but Lord Invader will have to go to court to win his royalties.

Ray McKinley And His Orchestra with vocalist Jeannie Friley, make a live CBS radio broadcast on the show One Night Stand, from The Hotel New Yorker, New York City, USA. The first tune played is I'm An Old Cowhand.

The Ink Spots, Borah Minevitch's Harmonica Rascals and Woolf Phillips And His Orchestra play the first of seventeen nights at The Palladium, London, UK.

Because of blizzard conditions, young jazz trumpeter Maynard Ferguson arrives three hours late for his very first rehearsal with the Stan Kenton Orchestra.

Actress, singer and dancer Shirley Temple's divorce from her first husband, John Agar, is finalised.

Guitar Slim records his first [and only] major hit single, The Things That I Used To Do, in Cosimo Matassa's J&M Studio, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, for Specialty Records. Pianist on the session is Ray Charles.

R'n'B pianist Bill Doggett records his classic Honky Tonk for King Records in New York City, USA. This is widely considered to be the first rock'n'roll instrumental hit.

Les Brown And His Band Of Renown, featuring Jo-Ann Greer, Butch Stone and Stumpy Brown, play the first of three nights at The Lagoon, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.

A rocked-up version of the country music standard Shortnin' Bread by Paul Chaplain And His Emeralds becomes the first No1 record on the WLS Silver Dollar Survey in Chicago, Illinois, USA.

Rockabilly vocalist Wanda Jackson plays the first night of a six-week season at The Golden Nugget, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.

The Montgomery Brothers, one of whom is virtuoso jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery, record their debut album, Groove Yard, at Plaza Sound Studios in New York City, USA, for Riverside Records. )

An advertisement in UK jazz periodical Jazz News announces, "Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated : The Most Exciting Event of this Year. Rhythm and Blues Clubs No 1: The Ealing Club, Ealing Broadway, W.S. [immediately opposite Tube station]. Debut of Britain's First Rhythm & Blues Band. This Saturday & Every Saturday: 7.30pm."

The Kentucky Colonels play the first of three nights at Club 47, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

Connie Francis spends the first of two days of recording sessions in EMI Recording Studio, 3 Abbey Road, St John’s Wood, London, England, UK. Over the two days she records songs including Mack The Knife, What Now My Love, The Girl From Ipanema, Milord and Stardust.

Germany's most successful rock band of the 60s, The Rattles, enter the German singles charts with their first hit, La La La, which will peak at No19.

Kathy And Carol play the first of two nights at Club 47, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

Pioneering San Francisco hippy band The Grateful Dead play the first of two nights at the Electric Theater, Chicago, Illinois, USA.

The Youngbloods and October Country play the first of four nights at the Whisky-A-Go-Go, Los Angeles, California, USA.

The Rolling Stones spend the first of nine consecutive days in Olympic Studios, London, England, UK, Europe, working on tracks for their seventh album, Beggar's Banquet.

Neil Young completes recording of Here We Are In The Years for his solo debut album on Reprise Records, in Wally Heider Studio, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA.

The first day of the Pop And Blues Festival in The Grugahalle, Essen, Germany features The Flock, It's A Beautiful Day, The Groundhogs, Black Sabbath, Missus Beastly, Ekseption and The Oscar Benton Bluesband.

Michael Jackson releases his debut solo album Got To Be There, in the USA.

Rory Storm, leader of the Liverpool, UK, beat era band Rory Storm and the Hurricanes which boasted Ringo Starr (later of The Beatles) on drums, dies from an overdose of sleeping pills, taken in a suicide pact with his mother. On the same day, UK hard-rock quartet Free spend the first of four days recording Wishing Well at Island Studios, London.

Planet Waves by Bob Dylan and The Band reaches No1 in the Billboard US albums chart in the USA - his first album to do so.

R'n'b and jazz guitarist George Benson scores his first Billboard US Top 40 singles chart entry with This Masquerade, which will peak at No10 during an eleven-week run on the chart. The song is written by Leon Russell.

the Jutta Weinhold Band, Novalis, Puhdys, Rumpelstilz, Snowball, Udo Lindenberg And Das Panikorchester and Wir play in the first Rock Pop In Concert show at the Eissporthalle, Berlin, Germany, Europe.

Pure Hell, hailed as the world's first black punk band, play at the Fan Club, Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK.

Why Not Me by The Judds becomes their first platinum album, awarded by the R.I.A.A. in the USA.

With So Emotional, Whitney Houston becomes the first woman to score six consecutive US No1 hits, a feat previously achieved only by The Beatles and The Bee Gees.

Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em by M.C. Hammer reaches No1 in the Billboard albums chart in the USA, for the first of twenty-one non-consecutive weeks.

Garbage release their eponymous debut album in the UK. On the same day, Paul McCartney flies to America with his wife Linda, to promote her new book, Linda's Kitchen.

Tim McGraw releases his self-titled debut album on Curb Records in the USA.

Ozzy Osbourne sustains a stress fracture in his leg when he slips in the shower at the first gig of this year's Ozzfest in Tucson, Arizona. It will take more than a week before he has the condition diagnosed, at which point ten subsequent dates will be cancelled.

Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Mudvayne and others play in The Ozzfest on the first of two nights at The PNC Bank Arts Center, Holmdel, New Jersey, USA.

When a new NBC tv series, The Philanthropist, receives its first media screening at the Paley Center, New York City, Sting is on hand, because he and his wife Trudie Styler were involved in the show being made.

Christopher John Holmes, best-known as guitarist of the heavy metal band W.A.S.P., releases his first solo LP, Nothing To Lose.

Ariana Grande, Bastille, Blake Shelton, Ed Sheeran, Kendrick Lamar, Luke Bryan, Pharrell Williams, Pitbull, Shakira and Thirty Seconds to Mars are among the performers at the first ever iHeart Radio Music Awards in Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles, California, USA.

Vance Joy releases a new single, First Time, as a digital download on Liberation Music in Australia, Oceania.

Billboard magazine's latest tally of Hot Tours shows Depeche Mode in the top position with $46.5m in box office revenue reported from 613,701 seats sold at the first 17 venues on their Global Spirit tour. Ed Sheeran is second with $20.2m, Take That third with $18.3m, The Weeknd fourth with $3,6m and Micky Flanagan fifth with $2.7m.

A Girl Called Eddy releases her second LP, Been Around, on Elefant Records in the UK. (Her debut album was released fourteen years earlier).