Birthday Highlight:

Happy Birthday to Damon Albarn, lead singer of Blur, who is 50 today. Albarn is also part of two supergroups: The Good, the Bad & the Queen, and Rocket Juice & the Moon. He is also the principal songwriter of the Gorillaz. In 2016, Albarn received the Ivor Novello Award for Lifetime Achievement from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors, and was also appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2016 New Year Honours for services to music.

Also, Today In:

1956 - Fats Domino headlined the first day of a 3-day concert organized by the DJ Alan Freed in Hartford, Connecticut. Over the course of the shows, 11 fans were arrested by over-zealous police. It was a litmus test for rock concerts and their effect on young people, as psychiatrist Francis Braceland testified afterwards that rock music is "a communicable disease with music appealing to adolescent insecurity and driving teenagers to do outlandish things. It is cannibalistic and tribalistic."

1963 - Ruby and the Romantics went to No. 1 on the U.S. singles chart with "Our Day Will Come."

1972 - The film of The Concert For Bangladesh featuring George Harrison, Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton premiered in New York. The event was the first benefit concert of this magnitude in world history. The concert, which was administered by UNICEF, raised $243,418.51 to aid victims of famine and war in Bangladesh. To this day, sales of the album and DVD continue to benefit the George Harrison Fund for UNICEF.

1973 - U.S. immigration authorities ordered John Lennon to leave the United States within 60 days. Lennon then began a long battle to earn his Green Card, which he was finally granted on July 27, 1976.

1977 - Elvis Presley appeared at the Arizona State University in Tempe, Ariz., the first show in a 49-date, three-month U.S. tour, which proved to be Presley's final tour.

1978 - A&M Records sign a new, young band called The Police.

1985 - Former Creedence Clearwater Revival frontman John Fogerty went to No. 1 on the U.S. album chart with Centerfield.

1985 - Billy Joel married the "Uptown Girl" Christie Brinkley. They remained married for nine years.

1997 - U2 were at No. 1 on the U.S. album chart with Pop, the band's fifth U.S. No. 1 album.

2008 - Jack Johnson was at No. 1 on the US album chart with his fifth album, Sleep Through The Static. The album spent three weeks at the top of the charts.

2011 - Guitarist Pete Townshend told Uncut magazine that he regretted ever forming the band, The Who. "What would I have done differently? I would never have joined a band," Townshend was quoted as saying. "Even though I am quite a good gang member and a good trooper on the road, I am bad at creative collaboration."

2014- Canadian musician Dave Brockie, best known as the lead vocalist of the heavy metal band Gwar, died of an apparent heroin overdose.

2016 - Gloria Gaynor's hit "I Will Survive" was selected to enter the U.S. National Recording Registry. It joined Metallica's "Master of Puppets" and Gustav Mahler's "Symphony No. 9" on the list of culturally significant recordings.

Birthdays:

Ric Ocasek of The Cars is 69.

Chaka Khan (born Yvette Marie Stevens) is 65.

John Strohm of The Lemonheads is 51.

Highlights for Today in Music History are gathered from This Day in Music, Paul Shaffer's Day in Rock, Song Facts and Wikipedia.