September 18

industry · flagship

The Beatles write and finish Birthday in a single day

John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr arrived at Abbey Road with only a basic 12-bar riff and wrote, recorded, and completed the raw rocker Birthday in one marathon session, breaking midway to watch the British TV premiere of the rock and roll film The Girl Can't Help It, as The Beatles Bible details.

They returned to Studio Two after midnight and cut backing vocals with Yoko Ono and Patti Harrison, turning a same-day sketch into one of the Beatles' heaviest White Album tracks.

broadcast

The Doors tape a tight six-song set for Danish TV

Just three days after Jim Morrison collapsed onstage in Amsterdam and was hospitalized, the Doors filmed a half-hour black-and-white performance at the Gladsaxe TV-Byen studios in Copenhagen for Danish television, running through six songs including Love Me Two Times and When the Music's Over, part of the era's psychedelic rock touring circuit.

Morrison's eyes stayed visibly dilated on camera, but the band delivered one of the most focused, tightly played sets ever caught on film during their turbulent 1968 European tour, per Wikipedia.

The six songs performed that morning, in order:

• Alabama Song (Whisky Bar)
• Back Door Man
• The WASP (Texas Radio and the Big Beat)
• Love Me Two Times
• When the Music's Over
• The Unknown Soldier

release

The Beach Boys release the stripped-down Smiley Smile

Brother/Capitol Records released garage and surf rock mainstays the Beach Boys' twelfth studio album, Smiley Smile, a deliberately lo-fi replacement for the shelved Smile project that traded Brian Wilson's orchestral Wall of Sound for home-recorded minimalism cut largely in his Bel Air house.

The album included the massive hit Good Vibrations but otherwise confounded fans expecting another Pet Sounds, peaking at just number 41 in the US even as it reached number 9 in the UK, per Wikipedia.

release

The Who release I Can See for Miles in the US

Decca released The Who's I Can See for Miles, backed with Mary Anne with the Shaky Hands, a Pete Townshend song he had held back for nearly a year because he considered it his best shot at a US hit.

Recorded in London and mixed in Los Angeles, the single became the band's highest-charting US single, reaching number 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 and pushing them toward heavier, more experimental rock, as Wikipedia notes.

broadcast

Opera stars Corelli and Tebaldi sing on The Ed Sullivan Show

Italian tenor Franco Corelli and soprano Renata Tebaldi appeared live on CBS's The Ed Sullivan Show, performing Vicino a te from Umberto Giordano's opera Andrea Chenier for a mainstream American television audience.

The broadcast brought world-class opera into millions of living rooms alongside that week's jazz and easy listening pop acts, one of the more unlikely pairings Sullivan's variety format made possible.

festival

Charles Mingus takes the stage at the Monterey Jazz Festival

Bassist and composer Charles Mingus performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival, though his time on stage was limited to under thirty minutes after the ambitious large-ensemble pieces he had written for the occasion ran into scheduling problems.

Mingus recorded that unheard material properly a week later at UCLA's Royce Hall, but the Monterey booking itself stood as a rare mid-1960s showcase for one of jazz and easy listening's most restless composers, per Wikipedia.

concert

The Beatles play their only Dallas concert

The Beatles played the Dallas Memorial Auditorium to 10,000 fans during their first North American tour, a show delayed by a telephoned bomb threat that turned out to be a hoax, opening with Twist and Shout and closing with Long Tall Sally, as The Beatles Bible records.

It was the Beatles' only Dallas appearance, and every ticket had sold out within a day of going on sale.

culture

MLK's eulogy for the Birmingham bombing victims later shapes Coltrane's Alabama

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the eulogy at Sixth Avenue Baptist Church in Birmingham for three of the four girls killed in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, telling thousands of mourners not to become bitter in spite of the tragedy, as Wikipedia recounts.

John Coltrane later read King's published remarks and modeled the rise and fall of his tenor saxophone melody on the eulogy's cadence, recording the elegy Alabama that November.

chart

Bobby Vee hits number one with Take Good Care of My Baby

Bobby Vee reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 with Take Good Care of My Baby, a Gerry Goffin and Carole King song produced by Snuff Garrett, and held the spot for three weeks, as Wikipedia confirms.

It was Vee's only US number one, a high point of the smooth, orchestrated pop and Brill Building sound the Goffin-King team helped define.