July 1977

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  1
Secretary of State Cyrus Vance states the official U.S. policy on South Africa, demanding an end to apartheid.
 2
A Ku Klux Klan rally in President Carter's hometown of Plains, Georgia, ends when a Jaguar XKE driven by a truck mechanic plows through a crowd of 250.

Swedish tennis star Bjorn Borg defeats Jimmy Connors for his second-straight Wimbledon title.

Author Vladimir Nabokov dies.
3
 4
Original Blondie bassist and cowriter of "Touched by Your Presence, Dear," Gary Valentine, leaves the band.
 5
 6
Citing its high price and limited supply, the National Institute of Drug Abuse reports cocaine has become the new status drug, with eight million Americans and 9% of high school seniors having tried it.
 7
Against medical advice, a limping Bob Marley refuses to have an infected toe amptuated, following a Rasta principle forbidding such surgery. Despite an apparently successful skin graft on the toe about a month later, remaining cancerous cells will later settle in the brain, bringing about his death in 1981.
 8
 9
Bernard Brook-Partridge of the Greater London Council explains to the New Musical Express the G.C.C.'s intentions regarding the ban against public appearances in Greater London by the Sex Pistols: "I think the Sex Pistols are absolutely bloody revolting. There are two members of this authority, Mr. John Branagan of the Labour Party and myself, who would do anything they could within the law to stop them form ever appearing in London again. I'd be quite unscrupulous in the way I lobbied my colleagues. No way do we want them back here."
10
Elijah Blue Allman is born to Gregg Allman and Cher.
 11
 12
Protesting the construction of a gymnasium on the site where four students were killed in 1970, 194 Kent State demonstrators are arrested without incident.
 13
A city-wide power outage in New York City brings Boz Scaggs' Avery Fisher Hall concert to a premature end. But at the Bottom Line, NRBQ, taping flashlights to their microphone stands, transform their concert into an acoustic set, and the Happy Trails Dance Band does the same at the Lone Star nightclub where, ironically, an annual party held by Con Edison, the city's power company, had just ended.
 14
British television has either forgotten or forgiven the Sex Pistols' scatological utterances on their first TV appearance in December 1976, for the BBC has brought them back for an appearance on Top of the Pops to perform "Pretty Vacant."
 15
 16
The Commodores attain their second R&B Number One with "Easy." It is a considerably different kind of song from their first Number One, "Just to Be Close to You" in 1976, which was a conventional soul harmony ballad. "Easy" is a country & western song, and it shows the Commodores - Motown's most successful act in the second half of the Seventies -- diversifying beyond the mix of soul ballads and funky dance songs for which they are known.
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Gary Kellgren, operator and part owner of two of the most popular recording studios on the West Coast -- the Los Angeles Record Plant and the Sausilito Record Plant -- drowns in a Hollywood swimming pool. He had engineered or produced albums by Jimi Hendrix, Rod Stewart, Sly and the Family Stone, John Lennon, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and Barbra Streisand. he was thirty-eight.
 21
 22
Stiff Records releases Elvis Costello's first album, My Aim Is True, in Britain. The Nick Lowe-produced album includes "Less Than Zero," "Mystery Dance," "Watching the Detectives," "Miracle Man," "Alison" and other songs about "guilt and revenge," as Costello will describe them. The album will be released in the U.S. by Columbia on October 15.
 23
Led Zeppelin's drummer, John Bonham, manager, Peter Grant, and two security guards are arrested backstage at the Oakland Coliseum in Oakland, California, and charged with battery after allegedly beating up three employees of Bill Graham, who served as promoter for Led Zeppelin's Oakland concert. After pleading guilty to misdemeanors, the Zep four will settle out of court a $2 million suit filed by the Graham three.
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Led Zeppelin's American tour, which got off to an uncertain start because of illness in the band, ends abruptly with seven dates remaining when vocalist Robert Plant's six-year-old son Karac dies unexpectedly of a respiratory ailment in England.

Elvis Costello is fined for performing on the street outside London's Hilton Hotel, where an international conference is being held by CBS Records. The misdemeanor proves worthwhile, as the Stiff Records artist soon signs with the larger label.
 27
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Punk is the fall's most distinctive fashion arrival, says Women's War Daily.
 30
Slave reaches Number One on the R&B chart with its first single, "Slide." This twelve-man funk and rock band from Dayton, Ohio, led by vocalist Steve Arrington, will go on to issue such hits as "Just a Touch of Love," "Watching You," "Snap Shot" and "Funkentown."
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