March 1976

Sunday

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Saturday
  1
The Arizona Senate defeats the ERA.
 2
President Ford takes 61% of the vote in the Massachusetts primary, while Senator Henry Jackson leads the Democrats. A week later, Carter upsets Democratic favorite George Wallace in the Florida primary.
 3
 4
 5
 6
Britain's EMI Records rereleases all twenty-two British Beatles singles and adds a bonus when it also puts out "Yesterday," never before a 45 in the U.K. All twenty-three records hit the chart at the same time.
7
A likeness of Elton John is put on display at London's Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum. He is the first rock figure so accorded the honor since the Beatles were first immortalized in wax in March of 1964.
 8
 9
British heavy-metal glitter-rock band Queen's breakthrough album, A Night at the Opera, is certified gold. Long popular in Britain, the group's three previous albums had made little impact in the U.S. But Opera broke big, thanks mainly to its surprise hit single, the six minute-long "Bohemian Rhapsody."

The start of the second leg of the Who's U.S. tour following their The Who By Numberss album is delayed when Keith Moon collapses onstage at the Boston Garden ten minutes into the show. The performance is immediately rescheduled for April, and the following night's show at New York's Madison Square Garden is pushed back an extra day.
 10
 11
 12
California Governor Jerry Brown enters the race for the Democratic nomination in his home state. On June 8, he will beat out Jimmy Carter and win the California primary.
 13
Philadelphia soul vocal trio the O'Jays enter the charts with the double-sided hit "Livin' for the Weekend" backed with "Stairway to Heaven" (not to be confused with the Led Zeppelin classic), which will go on to become one of the three R&B Number One hits for the group this year. The other two are "Message in Our Music" and "Darlin' Darlin' Baby."

Singer/songwriter Laura Nyro's seventh album, Smile, enters the chart. Although it will only go as high as #60, the album generates a great deal of interest and some critical acclaim. It is Nyro's first LP since her collaboration with Labelle, Gonna Take a Miracle, in 1972.
14
Jazz singer Flora Purim begins her first tour since being released from jail in December 1975, having served sixteen months for possession of cocaine. She chooses to make her first performance at the Long Beach, California, Terminal Island prison where she had served her sentence.
 15
 16
Jimmy Carter and President Ford continue to lead as presidential candidates, as each secures wins in the Illinois primary.
 17
The New Jersey Supreme Court orders a new trial for Rubin "Hurricane" Carter.
 18
 19
Former Free guitarist and Back Street Crawler leader Paul Kossoff dies on a London-to-New York plane flight, of unknown causes. The twenty-six- year-old Briton's death was not wholly unexpected, in August of the previous year his heart had stopped beating for thirty-five minutes during surgery, and he had been plagued by heart disease most of his life.

Buckingham Palace announces the separation of Princess Margaret and her husband, the Earl of Snowdon, after 16 years of marriage. Earlier this month, a scandal had broken of an illicit liason between the princess and brewery heir Roddy Llewellyn on the island of Mustique.
 20
Boz Scaggs' biggest album of his career, Silk Degrees, debuts on the chart. Although it is Scaggs' seventh solo LP, it will be the first to go platinum, largely on the strength of the #3 pop and #5 R&B smash single "Low Down." In the next four months, Scaggs' second solo album, Boz Scaggs, which was produced in 1969 by Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner, will also return to the chart. Several of the musicians on Silk Degrees will also appear on Scaggs' followup, Down Two Then Left, before coming into their own as Toto.
21
 22
Presidential candidate Jimmy Carter tells the audience at the National Association of Record Merchandisers' Scholarship Foundation Dinner that Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin and other bands had inspired him while working late nights when he was governor of Georgia. To prove that he would never lie to them, he quoted lines from the Beatles' "Yesterday" and Dylan's "Blowin in the Wind."
 23
 24
The charge of assault filed by the Dictators' lead singer Handsome Dick Manitoba against transvestite rocker Wayne County is reduced to a misdemeanor by a New York court. The case stems from an incident at CBGB a few weeks earlier, when County responds to Manitoba's epithets by smashing him with a mike stand, fracturing his collarbone.
 25
 26
Wings guitarist Jimmy McCulloch breaks a finger after slipping in his hotel bathroom after the last show of the band's European tour, in Paris. The injury pushed back by three weeks the start of Paul McCartney's first shows in the United States in a decade.
 27
28
Genesis begins its first North American tour since Peter Gabriel left the previous year, in Buffalo, New York. Drummer Phil Collins has taken the lead singing chores, while still handling some drumming duties along with veteran Bill Bruford, recruited especially for the tour.
 29
"December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night)," the Four Seasons' first Number One hit since "Rag Doll" in 1964, is certified gold.

The Supreme Court upholds states' right to enact laws making homosexual acts illegal, even between consenting adults in their own homes.

The film adaptation of Ken Kesey's classic One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest lands five Oscars, including Best Actor (Jack Nicholson), Best Director (Milos Forman) and a surprise: Best Actress (Louise Fletcher). Conductor John Williams wins for the score from Jaws.
 30
The seminal British punk group the Sex Pistols play their first show at London's 100 Club, attracting only a reported fifty people to the venue where they would begin a weekly residency in June.
 31
The New Jersey Supreme Court rules that Karen Ann Quinlan, still surviving with an artificial respirator, may be disconnected from the device as her family wishes. On May 19, it is removed and, breathing on her own, she is taken to a chronic-care facility.
  


  Previous Month  |  Next Month  






 Main Page | Music Chronicle Intro | 1976 Almanac | Top 100 Seventies Singles | Search The RockSite/The Web