October 1976

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  1
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John Belushi comes out during the second verse of Joe Cocker's rendition of "Feeling Alright" on Saturday Night Live and performs his exaggaratedly spastic imitation of the British singer. The duet brings down the house, and Cocker, already familiar with Belushi's "tribute" to him, claims that since "(my) band likes it, I'm as happy as a pig in shit."
3
Blues singer Victoria Spivey dies at age seventy in a Brooklyn hospital. Spivey, a prolific songwriter and the owner of her own successful recording label, is also remembered for giving Bob Dylan one of his first New York City gigs, accompanying her and Big Joe Williams on harmonica during a session in 1961.
 4
Although the media refrains from printing his exact words (something about the sexual, dress and bathroom preferences of blacks), Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz resigns amid controversy surrounding a racist joke he told to former White House counsel John Dean.

Former Cleveland Indians outfielder Frank Robinson becomes professional baseball's first black manager.
 5
Hall and Oates' second album, Abandoned Luncheonette -- which contained their original hit vesion of Tavares' #1 R&B hit "She's Gone" -- is certified gold three years after its release.

Dr. John Merritt receives FDA approval to prescribe marijuana to patients suffering from severe glaucoma.
 6
Rick Dees and His Cast of Idiots receive a gold record for one of the more bizarre novelty hits of the decade, "Disco Duck (Part 1)," which will hit Number One on the pop chart in ten days. On December 13, it will become the fourth single ever to be certified platinum.

In the second televised presidential candidates' debate, President Ford makes a serious current-events gaffe, asserting, "There is no Soviet domination in Eastern Europe," thereby allowing Jimmy Carter to surge ahead in the polls.
 7
Convicted murderer Gary Gilmore receives a death sentence in Utah and demands swift execution by firing squad; a three-month legal contest, intense press coverage, several book deals and a suicide attempt will follow.
 8
To the horror and consternation of England's conservative record industry, EMI signs the Sex Pistols, giving them an advance of 40,000 pounds (roughly $75,000).
 9
10
The Who and the Grateful Dead play the second of two back-to-back shows at Oakland Stadium for Bill Graham's Days on the Green series. The unique plairing of the two stylistically divergent acts seems to split the shows, however, as, surprisingly, neither of the shows sell out.

Much to the horror of the giant British record corporation's more staid executives, EMI signs up the Sex Pistols, the seminal punk band, outbidding Polydor with a contract worth forty thousand pounds (about $75,000).
 11
 12
Veteran soul vocal group the Spinners earn another gold record, for their sixth album, Happiness Is Being with the Spinners, which features their big hit single "The Rubberband Man" (#2 on the pop chart later this year, as well as Number One on the R&B chart).
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 16
Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life enters the pop album chart, where it will remain into 1978. It is Wonder's first release since signing his $13-million contract with Motown. The three-record set will become a platinum seller, yielding hit singles with "Sir Duke," "Isn't She Lovely," "Another Star" and "I Wish."

Top of the charts: Rick Dees and His Cast of Idiots' "Disco Duck (Part 1)" (pop single); Steve Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life (pop album).
17
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Parliament, half of George Clinton's Parliament- Funkadelic empire, earns a gold record for The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein, another in Clinton's long series of bizarre concept-message albums.
 20
Led Zeppelin's film The Song Remains the Same, a mixture of concert footage and fantasy sequences, premieres in London.

"Devil Woman," the first Top Ten U.S. hit for veteran British teen-idol Cliff Richard (who is by now a born-again Christian), enters the pop chart. "Devil Woman" will remain on the chart for twenty-two weeks, peaking at #6. Richard will go on to score minor hits in the U.S. with "I Can't Ask Any More Than You" (#80, late 1976), "Don't Turn the Light Out" (#57 in the summer of 1977) and "We Don't Talk Anymore" (#7 in 1979).
 21
The Cincinnati Reds overwhelm the New York Yankees in four straight games to win the World Series.
 22
Keith Moon plays his last North American show with the Who as he and the band conclude an extensive year of touring at Toronto's Maple Leaf Garden.

The third and final televised presidential debate reveals both Jimmy Carter and President Ford to be antiabortion, although Carter opposes a constitutional amendment bannin the procedure.
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Walter Murphy's Big Apple Band earns a gold record for its debut album, A Fifth of Beethoven, which features the title single, a disco treatment of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony that hit Number One. The band's only other hit, also drawn from this album, will be "Flight '76," a discofied "Flight of the Bumblebee" (#44, in early 1977).
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