February 14, 1847 — A saxophone school is created in Paris, France at the military band school Gymnase Musical one year after the instrument's Belgian inventor, Adolfe Sax, patents the instrument. For decades, the sax is limited mostly to military bands and classical orchestras, mainly in Europe, until American vaudeville, ragtime, and jazz expand the demand for it in the early 20th century.

February 15, 1961 — Jackie Wilson is shot in his New York apartment by either a zealous female fan or a jilted girlfriend (reports differ). He survives, but loses a kidney.
                            1969 — Hairstylist Vickie Jones is arrested for impersonating Aretha Franklin at a club in Fort Myers, Florida. Asked to sing in the courtroom, the Virginia native sounds so much like the Queen of Soul that the judge spares her because the audience couldn't tell the difference.

February 16, 1963 — The Beatles top the British rock charts for the first time with "Please, Please Me," their second record.

February 17, 1955 — Little Richard sends an audition tape to Specialty Records in Los Angeles "wrapped in a piece of paper looking as though someone had eaten off it," according to a label producer. Later in the year, the Macon, Georgia native would blaze a rock 'n' roll path on the label singing "Tutti Frutti."


February 18, 1940 — Rudy Wiedoeft, the dynamic early 20th century saxophonist most responsible for popularizing the instrument in pop and jazz, dies at age 47 in Queens, New York. Before him, as noted above, the sax had been played primarily in military bands, but he is one of the first musicians to blow it for popular entertainment.







February 19, 1878 — Inventor Thomas Edison patents the phonograph.






 

                             1952 — Seventeen-year-old Gene Vincent of Norfolk, Virginia enters the U.S. Navy under his real name, Vincent Eugene Craddock.

                             1956 — The Five Satins record the doo wop classic "In The Still Of The Nite" in the basement of Saint Bernadette Church in New Haven, Connecticut.
                             1958 — Carl Perkins leaves the small Sun Records in Memphis to join the major New York label Columbia as its first rockabilly artist. He has no hits there. In fact,  he has had none since his second Sun release, "Blue Suede Shoes" in 1955, became the first record to appear simultaneously on the pop, R&B, and country music charts (reaching #1 or #2 on all three), but he is a major influence on the Beatles and other rockers and is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.
                            1958 — The Miracles' first single, "Got A Job," is issued by End Records on Smokey Robinson's 18th birthday. It's an answer to the Silhouettes' #1 hit, "Get A Job," but it does not chart.
                             1981 — ABKCO Music, owner of the publishing rights to the 1963 Chiffons hit "He's So Fine," is awarded $587,000 from George Harrison, who had been found guilty five years earlier of subconsciously plagiarizing the song in his 1969 composition "My Sweet Lord," which he said he had written in praise of the Hindu god Krishna.

Sources:
Eight Days a Week (Ron Smith)
On This Day in Black Music History (Jay Warner)
Chronology of American Popular Music, 1900-2000 (Frank Hoffman)
calendar.songfacts.com
onthisday.com/music