CAMILLE
BOHANNON

Singer Madonna Louise Ciccone is 64 years young today.

The singer, songwriter, and actress is referred to as the "Queen
of Pop". Rolling Stone listed her among its greatest artists and
greatest songwriters of all time.

On August 15, 1969, the Woodstock music festival opened on a
patch of farmland in White Lake, a hamlet in the upstate New
York town of Bethel.

Promoters John Roberts, Joel Rosenman, Artie Kornfield and
Michael Lang originally envisioned the festival as a way to raise
funds to build a recording studio and rock-and-roll retreat near
the town of Woodstock, New York. The longtime artists’ colony
was already a home base for Bob Dylan and other musicians.

Despite their relative inexperience, the young promoters managed
to sign a roster of top acts, including the Jefferson Airplane, the
Who, the Grateful Dead, Sly and the Family Stone, Janis Joplin,
Jimi Hendrix, Creedence Clearwater Revival and many more.

CAMILLE BOHANNON

Stephen Glenn Martin an actor, comedian, writer, producer,
and musician. He has won five Grammy Awards, a Primetime
Emmy  Award, and was awarded an Honorary Academy Award
at the Academy’s 5th Annual Governors Awards in 2013. He’s
77 today.       
 

In 2004, Comedy Central ranked Martin at sixth place in a list
of the 100 greatest stand-up comics.    

In 2009, Martin released his first all-music album, The Crow:
New Songs for the 5-String Banjo with appearances from
stars such as Dolly Parton.The album won the Grammy
Award for Best Bluegrass Album in 2010.

1987

  Willie Mae Thornton (December 11, 1926 – July 25, 1984 

Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog” (1956) is one of the biggest and
most instantly recognizable pop songs in history. It’s a song
so closely associated with the King of Rock and Roll, in fact,
that many may mistakenly assume that it was a Presley original.
In fact, the story of the song that gave Elvis his longest-running
#1 hit (11 weeks) in the summer of 1956 began four years earlier,
when “Hound Dog” was recorded for the very first time by the
rhythm-and-blues singer Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton in
Los Angeles, California. According to Maureen Mahon, a music
professor at New York University,"the song is seen as an
important beginning of rock-and-roll, especially in its use of
the guitar as the key instrument".

Thornton was found dead at age 57 by medical personnel in a
Los Angeles boarding house on July 25, 1984. She died of heart
and liver disorders due to her longstanding alcohol abuse.

Tony Martin (Alvin Morris) (December 25, 1913 – July 27, 2012)

Martin’s career spanned over seven decades, and he scored dozens
of hits between the late-1930s and mid-1950s with songs such as
"Walk Hand in Hand", "I Love Paris", "Stranger in Paradise" and
"I Get Ideas".

In 1958, he became the highest paid performer in Las Vegas, signing
a five-year deal at the Desert Inn, earning $25,000 a week.

In an unlikely pairing, Martin recorded for the Motown Records label
in the mid-1960s, scoring a minor hit with the record "Talkin’ To Your Picture".