1921
Born on this day in Erick, Oklahoma, was Sheb Wooley, the singer, songwriter and actor best known for his 1958 novelty song "Purple People Eater". He played Ben Miller, brother of Frank Miller in the film High Noon, Travis Cobb in The Outlaw Josey Wales, and also had a co-starring role as scout Pete Nolan in the television program Rawhide. He died in Nashville, Tennessee on September 16th 2003.

1970 - Phil Spector

50 musicians recorded the orchestral scores for The Beatles tracks 'The Long And Winding Road' and 'Across The Universe' for the Phil Spector produced sessions. The bill for the 50 musicians was £1,126 and 5 shillings, ($1.914). When released 'The Long and Winding Road' became a US No.1 hit.

Gold Star Oldies USA pays tribute to Phillies Records in April the Wall of Sound  Phil Spector 

🎙️ What Was the Wall of Sound?

The Wall of Sound was a groundbreaking music‑production technique created by Phil Spector in the early 1960s at Gold Star Studios in Hollywood. It used large ensembles, dense layering, natural echo, and mono mixing to create a massive, emotional, orchestral pop sound that jumped out of AM radios.

The Life of Phil Spector 

🎼 How Phil Spector Developed the Wall of Sound

(This is the real origin story, not the simplified textbook version.)

🎧 1. He was chasing the emotional punch of early rock & roll

Spector grew up idolizing:

• Leiber & Stoller

• Jerry Wexler

• The Drifters / Coasters productions

• Ray Charles’ big-band R&B

Those records had weight—horns, percussion, backing vocals—but they were still relatively sparse. Spector wanted something denser, something that felt like a tidal wave.

He once said he wanted records that sounded like “a Wagner opera for teenagers.”

2. Gold Star Studios gave him the missing ingredient

When Spector first walked into Gold Star, he heard the echo chambers and realized he’d found the “instrument” he’d been missing.

Gold Star’s chambers weren’t just reverb—they were:

• thick

• swirling

• harmonically rich

• slightly distorted in a musical way

They turned a simple handclap into a cathedral. This is where the Wall of Sound truly begins.

3. The Wrecking Crew could play anything in unison

Spector discovered that if you put:

• 3 pianos

• 3 guitars

• 2 basses

• multiple percussionists

• strings

• horns

…all playing the same part, the sound didn’t get messy—it got massive.

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April 10, 1956 — Leo Fender patents the successor to his popular "Telecaster" electric guitar, this time called the "Stratocaster" (right). Introduced in 1954, it is originally designed for the country music market at a time when R&B and emerging rock 'n' roll were sax, not guitar, oriented, but it gradually becomes a rock mainstay as guitars come to dominate the genre.
                1957 — Sixteen-year-old Ricky Nelson performs his first single, a cover of Fats Domino's "I'm Walking," on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, the TV series he stars in with his real family. The song quickly climbs the charts and launches his music career.
 

April 11, 1956 — Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps record "Be-Bop-a-Lula," originally intended as the B-side of "Woman Love," but Capitol Records promotes it to the A-side when U.S. radio stations and the British Broadcasting Corporation snub "Woman Love" as being sexually suggestive.
 

April 12, 1956 — Atlantic Records releases Big Joe Turner's "Shake, Rattle And Roll," the first recording of the song covered more famously by Bill Haley & His Comets later that year.
                        — At their first session for Decca Records in New York city,  Haley & the Comets tape "Rock Around The Clock" b/w "Thirteen Women" (a Cold War nuclear bomb song that was originally the A-side of the single). Unlike "Shake, Rattle And Roll" waxed a few months later, the record reaches only moderate success on Billboard's pop chart (#23) — until "Rock Around the Clock" is used as the theme for the 1955 movie "Blackboard Jungle," causing it to soar to #1 on the music charts and become a seminal rock 'n' roll tune.
                   1966 — Jan Berry of Jan and Dean crashes his Corvette into a parked truck in Beverly Hills, California, near a stretch of road known as Dead Man's Curve, an eerie recreation of the duo's 1964 hit by that name. Berry suffers extensive brain damage and paralysis. He will require four years of rehabilitation to talk and a full decade to perform live again.
                    2010 — Hank Williams, whose R&B-tinged hillbilly bop records anticipated rock 'n' roll, is given a special award by the Pulitzer Prize committee 57 years after his death at age 29. It cites "his craftsmanship as a songwriter who expressed universal feelings with poignant simplicity and played a pivotal role in transforming country music into a major musical and cultural force in American life."

April 13, 1963 — The Beatles make their first nationwide television appearance. They had made 11 earlier appearances on British regional and independent television shows, but this is their coast-to-coast debut on the BBC. They perform three songs on the network's The 625 Show, which features "up and coming young talent."
                2009 — A jury finds famed “Wall of Sound” record producer Phil Spector (mug shot, below) guilty of second-degree murder in the 2003 shooting death of actress Lana Clarkson at his Los Angeles mansion. He dies of Covid-19 in January, 2021 at age 81 while still serving his 19 years-to-life prison sentence in California. 
 April 15, 1939 — The Ink Spots, a pop vocal group who would harmonically branch into R&B, prefigure doo wop, and greatly influence the Platters, debut on the pop chart with the first of 46 hits, "If I Didn't Care," which reaches #2. (Group guitarist Charlie Fuqua's nine-year-old nephew at the time, Harvey, grows up to become co-founder of the 1950s doo wop group Moonglows, discoverer of Marvin Gaye, and a Motown producer.)                                                                            1894 — Bessie Smith, called "The Empress of the Blues," is born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She inspires countless blues, R&B, and rock singers for generations after her 1923 recording debut and is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989 as an Early Influence.

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)

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