Loading time…
--

Gold Star Oldies Radio

Your front-row seat to retro music events, legendary artist birthdays, tributes, and timeless rock 'n' roll stories powered by our cutting-edge AI DJs.

Celebrating the golden age of rock 'n' roll

At Gold Star Oldies USA, we live and breathe the best eras in music history. We spin the greatest hits from mid-sixties vocal groups through the high-energy seventies and eighties rock anthems. Our happenings page is where our community gathers to look back at the moments and melodies that shaped generations.

Happenings  The Week Of October 16th - 23rd 

nes, cover his songs

.October 21, 1908 — Columbia Records offers first two-sided 78 r.p.m records for sale in an ad in the Saturday Evening Post. The ad exclaims "Two records at a single price" of 65 cents and adds that it fits any machine that will spin a flat disc record. Executives at Victor  Records are furious and counter-advertise, complaining the Columbia is disrupting the business and consumers don't want two-sided records. History proves them wrong.                    

 1958 — Buddy Holly's last recording session takes place in New York City, yielding "True Love Ways," "It Doesn't Matter Any More," "Moondreams," and "Raining In My Heart."
   1962 — The influential American Folk Blues Festival concludes its first European tour at Manchester, England, featuring Willie Dixon, John Lee Hooker, T-Bone Walker, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, and others. In the audience, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones, and Jimmy Page get their first glimpse of the artists who will influence their music. It is a treat enjoyed by other up and coming British rock and R&B legends when more U.S. blues performers join the European tour in subsequent years.

October 22, 1966 — The Supremes become the first girl group with a #1 album in the U.S. when The Supremes A' Go-Go bumps the Beatles' Revolver from the top spot.

October 23, 2002 — Johnnie Johnson, Chuck Berry's longtime pianist and the "Johnny" in "Johnny B. Goode," loses his lawsuit against Berry in which he claims he co-wrote many of the rock pioneer's hits and is due half of the royalties. A federal district court judge in St. Louis rules that the statute of limitations has expired.








Sources:
Eight Days a Week (Ron Smith)
Eight Days a Week (Kenneth Best)
On This Day in Black Music History (Jay Warner)

Chronology of American Popular Music, 1900-2000 (Frank Hoffman)
calendar.songfacts.com
onthisday.com/music

 

Latest music happenings and tributes Birthdays, Those Lost But Not Forgotten

 

 

Birthdays 

jazz pianist Jelly Roll Morton in 1890

Jazz sax great Eddie Harris (“Listen Here”) in 1934

Country singer Wanda Jackson (“Let’s have A Party”) in 1937

Tokens lead singer Jay Siegel (“Lion Sleeps Tonight”) in 1939

10 Years After drummer Ric Lee in 1945

Tom Petty (&The Heartbreakers / Traveling Wilburys) in 1950

Foreigner keyboardist Al Greenwood in 1951

 

 

 

People we have lost but not forgotten 

:

3 members of Lynyrd Skynyrd [Steve Gaines / Ronnie Van Zandt / Cassie Gaines] in 1977

Songwriter Merle Travis (“16 Tons”) in 1983

Guitarist Henry Vestine of Canned Heat in 1997

C.P. Spencer of the Voice Masters and the Originals (“Baby I'm for Real”) in 2004

Country singer Leon Ashley in 2013

Cory Wells of 3 Dog Night (“Eli's Coming”) in 2015

Lucy Simon, folk singer-songwriter (Simon Sisters), Grammy Award-winning record producer (In Harmony) and theater composer (The Secret Garden; Doctor Zhivago) in 2022.

Barbara Dane [Spillman], folk, blues, jazz, and protest song singer in 2024

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Honoring the musical icons Present and Past 

From sixties harmony groups to the powerhouse rock bands of the seventies and eighties, we pay tribute to the performers who gave us timeless soundtracks. Check out our photo spotlight celebrating classic recording artists.