Time for another look back at some famous moments in music history, and the chart-topping hits that go along with them…

Starting with a birth and a death. March 20th 2020 saw the passing of country icon Kenny Rogers, who had managed two UK number ones in the late seventies and early eighties. Both songs were slightly out-of-kilter for the disco, punk and new-wave sounds of the time, but if listening to every single number one single has taught me anything, it’s that country and western (and reggae) are immune to popular tastes, and keep popping up time and again.

Here’s his first chart-topper, ‘Lucille’ (original post here), about a man who meets a downtrodden woman drowning her sorrows. I am a fan of a good opening line, and there have been few finer than In a bar in Toledo, Across from the depot, On a barstool she took off her ring…

Over a century before, March 20th 1917 saw the birth of Vera Lynn. A legendary name in British popular music, she began performing aged seven, released her first single in 1935 (aged eighteen), and scored her final Top 10 album in 2017 (aged one-hundred), giving her a career spanning ninety-six years! Despite this astounding longevity, Lynn only managed one UK #1: ‘My Son, My Son’ (original post here).

I won’t claim to particularly enjoy this very old-fashioned record, but Dame Vera doesn’t half sing the life out of it. And you can really make out what she’s singing, something my dear departed Gran was very particular about. Plus, I think it prominently features a clarinet, something not many other #1s have. I also did a Remembering post on Lynn, when she died in 2020.

Meanwhile, on this day in 1991, Michael Jackson signed what was the biggest record contract in history, with Sony. Both the advance, and his share of future record profits, were beyond anything seen before. You can see why the execs went out their way to keep hold of Jackson, given that his previous LPs, ‘Thriller’ and ‘Bad’, had been two of the highest sellers of all time. But you can also argue that this was the start of Jackson’s slow slide into creative inertia and over-indulgence, as little of his nineties output can rival that of his eighties hits. Still, here’s ‘Black and White’ the first single from the first album to be released under the new contract, ‘Dangerous’ (original post here).

March 20th 1969 was also the day on which John Lennon married Yoko Ono at the British Consulate in Gibraltar (near Spain), before heading to the Amsterdam Hilton and talking in their beds for a week… Of course, these are not my own words, and so why don’t we let ‘The Ballad of John and Yoko’ tell the full story. This seemed for a long, long time to have been the Beatles’ final number one (though it famously only features John and Paul), until ‘Now and Then’ in 2023 (original post here).

Lastly, on this day in 1977, T. Rex played their final British concert at the Locarno in Portsmouth. Their final ever live appearance would come a couple of months later in Stockholm, and three months after that Marc Bolan would die in a car crash. Neatly bookmarking T. Rex’s career, though, is the fact that ‘Hot Love’ was two weeks into a six-week residence on top of the charts on this day in 1971 (see original post here). Whether or not it was indeed the first glam rock #1 is up for debate. What is not up for debate is the song’s audacity (half of it is just nanananas), or its brilliance.

That one goes out to all those who are faster than most and who live on the coast… Regular posting resumes in a few days!