Seventies Daily Music Chronicle - May 1976

May 1976
Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
						1 President Ford suffers his worst primary loss as Ronald Reagan captures all 96 Republican delegates in Texas, and a majority in Indiana three days later. Over the next ten days, Reagan will gain momentum by winning four more primaries. The Top Five 1. "Let Your Love Flow" - Bellamy Brothers 2. "Right Back Where We Started From" - Maxine Nightingale 3. "Boogie Fever" - Sylvers 4. "Welcome Back" - John Sebastian 5. "Sweet Love" - Commodores
2	3 Paul McCartney makes his first concert appearance in America in almost ten years as he and Wings commence their Wings Over America tour in Forth Worth, Texas, three weeks after its scheduled start. A hand injury to Jimmy McCulloch on the last date of their March European tour had forced the postponement of the earlier shows. Paul Simon organizes a benefit show at Madison Square Garden for the financially troubled New York City Public Library. Phoebe Snow, Jimmy Cliff and the Brecker Brothers pitch in for the concert, which nets over $30,000 for the institution.	4	5	6	7	8 Bob Dylan and entourage return to Houston, the city where the less than triumphant Benefit II for Rubin "Hurricane" Carter had been held just five months earlier. For the show, Dylan requests that Willie Nelson and company join him, and the two sing "Will the Circle Be Unbroken." Backstage, Nelson is slapped with a subpoena for an upcoming grand jury investigation centering on drug trafficking. The Top Five 1. "Welcome Back" - John Sebastian 2. "Right Back Where We Started From" - Maxine Nightingale 3. "Boogie Fever" - Sylvers 4. "Fooled Around and Fell in Love" - Elvin Bishop 5. "Silly Love Songs" - Wings
9	10	11	12 Look Out for #1, the Brothers (George and Louis) Johnson's debut LP, is certified gold. The album features two Top Ten soul hits -- "I'll Be Good to You" and "Get the Funk out of My Face" -- and is produced by Quincy Jones. Three months later, the album will go platinum. Senator Frank Church (ID) wins Nebraska's Democratic primary by a narrow margin.	13 Bitches Brew, jazz trumpeter Miles Davis' 1969 jazz-fusion landmark LP, is certified gold. Among the musicians appearing on the double album are Chick Corea, Larry Young, John McLaughlin, Wayne Shorter, Lenny White, Joe Zawinul and Jack DeJohnette. The recording sessions, which were held with neither rehearsals nor charts, set the tenor for the use of electrified instruments and free-form improvisation utilitzing rock rhythm in jazz.	14 Former Yardbirds lead singer and co-founder of Renaissance Keith Relf is electrocuted in his West London home. The thirty-three- year-old musician, working again with his sister Jane and hopeful of some summer touring, was found alongside a plugged-in electric guitar by his eight-year-old son and was pronounced dead on arrival at a local hospital.	15 The Top Five 1. "Boogie Fever" - Sylvers 2. "Welcome Back" - John Sebastian 3. "Silly Love Songs" - Wings 4. "Fooled Around and Fell in Love" - Elvin Bishop 5. "Love Hangover" - Diana Ross
16 A New York City company known as AB&D Productions takes out an ad in the New York Times to announce a spectacular four-day Bicentennial event at Philadelphia's 100,000-seat JFK Stadium. Acts scheduled to play include the Band, Chicago, the Ohio Players, Ike and Tina Turner, the Beach Boys, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Maxine Nightingale, Elvin Bishop and Rufus. The planned gala event never takes place, as within two weeks all acts cancel or maintain that no contracts had ever been signed. Eight thousand supporters of the Equal Rights Amendment from 30 states convene in Springfield, Ill., to rally for its passage in Illinois, Indiana, and Missouri.	17 The Mary Tyler Moore Show sweeps most of the comedy awards at the Emmys: Best Comedy; Best Actress - Comedy Series (Mary Tyler Moore); Best Supporting Actor - Comedy Series (Ted Knight); Best Supporting Actress - Comedy Series (Betty White); Best Writer - Comedy Series (David Lloyd). Police Story is named Best Drama; Columbo's Peter Falk Best Dramatic Actor and The Waltons' Michael Learned Best Dramatic Actress.	18 President Ford breathes life back into his campaign, winning primaries in Maryland and his home state of Michigan. Jimmy Carter narrowly defeats Morris Udall in Michigan but loses to Jerry Brown in Maryland. New York City's venerable Carnegie Hall hosts a combination 85th birthday party and benefit concert. Corporations, foundations, financiers and more snap up tickets to the event, which features performances by Leonard Bernstein, Vladimir Horowitz, Yehudi Menuhin and Isaac Stern, among others.	19 Rolling Stone Keith Richards crashes his Bentley into a highway divider in Newton Pagnell, a town fifty miles north of London. Police confiscate various substances from his car, and Richards is charged in August with possession of cocaine and marijuana. Responding to years of startling revelations of improper and illegal activities in the name of national security, the Senate creates a 15-member panel, the Select Committee on Intelligence, to oversee and police all intelligence- gathering agencies.	20	21 Aerosmith receives a gold LP for Rocks. The album will eventually go to #3 on the album chart and will prove to be their last big hit. By the time their next LP, Draw the Line, is released, the group that was once touted as America's answer to the Rolling Stones will have fallen from popular favor. The Rolling Stones open a six-night stand at London's Earl's Court Theatre. The seeming indifference of the Stones' performances results in their being among the first bands targeted as "dinosaurs" by the burgeoning British punk movement.	22 The Top Five 1. "Silly Love Songs" - Wings 2. "Love Hangover" - Diana Ross 3. "Fooled Around and Fell in Love" - Elvin Bishop 4. "Boogie Fever" - Sylvers 5. "Get Up and Boogie" - Silver Convention
23	24 Arista Records president Clive Davis pleads guilty in New York City to a charge of failing to report $8,800 of income in 1972. The money had been given to him for nonbusiness vacations by CBS Records during his tenure as president there. A greater charge of not reporting sums totalling $90,000 over three years was dismissed upon entering a plea. Davis is fined $10,000 in September for the offense. The first commercial SST to cross the Atlantic, the Anglo-French Concorde, lands at Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C. The Republican race remains tight as President Ford and Ronald Reagan win three primaries each, while among the Democrats, Jimmy Carter wins three, Frank Church takes two and Jerry Brown carries Oregon as a write-in candidate.	25 In a sex-for- employment scandal on Capitol Hill, Ohio congressman Wayne Hays admits a relationship with House staffer Elizabeth Ray, but denies she was hired in exchange for sleeping with him. After weeks of investigations, Hays will step down as chairman of the Democratic National Congressional Committee and eventually resign.	26	27	28	29 The Top Five 1. "Love Hangover" - Diana Ross 2. "Silly Love Songs" - Wings 3. "Fooled Around and Fell in Love" - Elvin Bishop 4. "Get Up and Boogie" - Silver Convention 5. "Misty Blue" - Dorothy Moore
30	31 The Who headline a bill at the Charlton Athletic Grounds in England and put their name into the Guiness Book of World Records as the loudest rock band ever, when their set measures at 120 decibels. As the Lebanese civil war heats up, Syria sends approximately 5,000 troops into the northern Lebanon. On June 16, American ambassador Francis Melroy Jr. and an economic advisor are assassinated, and President Ford calls for the evacuation of the remaining 1,400 U.S. personnel. By year's end, more than 32,000 Lebanese will have died in more than 20 months of fighting, and a pan-Arab peacekeeping efort will find Syrian forces occupying virtually the entire country.

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