Don't Stop the Music

FEBRUARY

1 FEBRUARY

1965 Unable to record for a year due to contractual disputes, James Brown and his band are on their way to a show when they stop off at a North Carolina studio to record 'Papa's Got a Brand New Bag'.

According to Arthur Smith, who owns the studio, Brown 'had the run of the house. He'd play the piano the way he wanted it played and ask, "You got that?" Then he'd go to the person on the guitar and play it and say, "You got it?" He did that with the horn section - all the instruments. He could play everything.'

On the full unedited seven-minute recording of 'Bag', just before guitarist Jimmy Nolen kicks proceedings off with the now-familiar riff, Brown shouts, 'This is a hit!' And it will be a hit. Nine years after breaking the R&B charts with 'Please, Please, Please', 'Bag' will become Brown's first top 10 pop hit in the US. It also becomes his first UK hit, and wins a Grammy Award for the year's best R&B recording.

'Bag' also marks Brown's break away from the soul market, of which he was known as the Godfather, and a move into funk. Its urgency is enhanced when the track is edited and sped up, to help it with radio play. It will transform Brown's career.

1972 ROTD: Neil Young's Harvest features the London Symphony Orchestra, and backing vocals from James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt on the single 'Heart of Gold', but Young later says of the latter that it 'put me in the middle of the road. Travelling there soon became a bore, so I headed for the ditch.'

1995 Richey Edwards checks out of the Embassy Hotel on Bayswater Road in London, and drives to Cardiff. It marks the last confirmed sighting of Manic Street Preachers' guitarist.

2004 ROTD: Scissor Sisters' debut of the same name - with songs about friendship, cruising, coming out to one's parents, and the effects of crystal meth on America's gay community - will become the year's best-selling album in the UK.

2 FEBRUARY

1968 The band previously known as Candy Coloured Rain, Navy Blue and Ian Henderson's Bag o'Nails perform for the first time under their new name of Jethro Tull, opening for Savoy Brown at London's Marquee Club.

1980 Bob Dylan has never had a #1 single in the UK or US, but today he begins five weeks at the top of the Spanish charts with the reggae-tinged kids' favourite 'Man Gave Names to the All the Animals'.

1982 Overtaking the likes of The Human League, Soft Cell and OMD - all of whom cite them as inspirational - German electronic heroes Kraftwerk belatedly reach #1 in the UK with a reissue of 1978's 'The Model'. On the flip side is a newer track, 'Computer Love', which will form the basis in 2005 for Coldplay's 'Talk'.

1988 ROTD: Leonard Cohen's I'm Your Man tackles the state of the world ('Everybody Knows'), 'psychic terrorism' ('First We Take Manhattan') and the craft of songwriting itself ('Tower of Song').

3 FEBRUARY

1959 Just before 1 a.m., and only a few minutes after its take-off from Mason City, Iowa, a four-seater Beechcraft Bonanza crashes into a cornfield at Albert Juhl farm. All four people on board - pilot Roger Peterson, J. P. Richardson (aka The Big Bopper, 28 years old), Ritchie Valens (17) and Buddy Holly (22) - are killed.

The three musicians had just played a concert at Clear Lake's Surf Ballroom and were heading to Moorhead, Minnesota. Their travelling manager, Sam Geller, later explains their reasons for wanting to fly rather than share a rigorous bus journey with the other performers: 'Buddy wanted to get a suit cleaned, Valens wanted a haircut, and Richardson just wanted to get some sleep.' Because there are only four seats on the plane, Valens is said to have agreed to flip a coin with a fellow musician and, on calling correctly, exclaimed: 'That's the first time I've ever won anything in my life.'

In the wake of the tragedy, 'It Doesn't Matter Anymore' becomes Holly's biggest hit, and the event will inspire many tribute songs, most famously Don McLean's 'American Pie' in 1971, and The Clash's 'If Music Could Talk' (1980).

1972 Supported by Slade and Billy Preston, Chuck Berry headlines the Lanchester Arts Festival in Coventry, from which an eleven-and-a-half-minute live version of Dave Bartholomew's 1952 novelty song 'My Ding-a-Ling' is whittled down to four minutes. It will become Berry's only #1 in the UK and (surprisingly) in the US.

1978 ROTD: 'Denis', a cover of Randy and the Rainbows' 'Denise' (US #10 in 1963), will provide new wave group Blondie with their breakthrough British hit, eventually peaking at #2.

1992 ROTD: 'Leave Them All Behind' by Ride. The Oxford band's eight-minute epic will become the first UK top 10 single for Alan McGee's Creation label.

2017 ROTD: Sampha's debut album, Process, which explores his experience of bereavement and sudden success, will go on to win the year's Mercury Prize.

4 FEBRUARY

1948 BOTD: Vincent Furnier in Detroit. Beginning his career in high-school band The Earwigs (parodying songs by The Beatles), Furnier later finds fame as pantomimic shock-rocker Alice Cooper.

1977 ROTD: Rumours by Fleetwood Mac. Recorded under the working title 'Yesterday's Gone', the album, which is heavily influenced by the fractured personal relationships within the group, will sell 10 million copies in its first year.

1980 After its owners are convicted of tax evasion, New York's Studio 54 club closes, with Diana Ross and Liza Minnelli performing there on its swansong night.

1991 ROTD: Innuendo, Queen's final album within Freddie Mercury's lifetime, and My Bloody Valentine's queasy, hypnotic EP, Tremolo.

2014 ROTD: Future Islands' 'Seasons (Waiting On You)'. A clip of lead singer Samuel T. Herring beating his chest while performing the song on David Letterman's talk show later goes viral. 'Lots of people said, "This guy dances like nobody's watching",' says Herring. 'But no. I knew everyone was watching.'

5 FEBRUARY

1929 BOTD: Hal Blaine in Massachusetts. As part of the Wrecking Crew pool of session musicians, he will play drums on 39 US #1 hits including 'Be My Baby', 'Good Vibrations' and 'Bridge Over Troubled Water'.

1941 BOTD: Mississippi songwriter Barrett Strong. The first artist to score a US hit single for the Motown label with 1959's 'Money (That's What I Want)', Strong will also co-write some of the label's finest songs including 'I Heard It Through the Grapevine', 'War' and 'Papa Was a Rollin' Stone'.

1986 ROTD: As a song, 'Kiss' was originally given by Prince to the Minneapolis funk band Mazarati, but their background vocals end up on his own version, with the Revolution, which will become his third US #1.

1996 ROTD: Murder Ballads by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Described by the NME as 'grotesque, horrifying, and vaudevillian all at once', the album features vocal cameos from Kylie Minogue, PJ Harvey, Shane McGowan and Blixa Bargeld.

2023 A year after winning a Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award, Californian singer-songwriter and guitarist Bonnie Raitt (whose first album was released in 1971) wins a further three Grammy Awards bringing her career tally to 15. One of the accolades comes in the Song of the Year category, where her composition 'Just Like That' beats off rival artists Taylor Swift, Lizzo, Beyoncé, Steve Lacy and Adele.

6 FEBRUARY

1967 As The Monkees' 'I'm a Believer' continues its UK #1 run, drummer-singer Micky Dolenz arrives in London for a five-day visit, having just completed the filming of the group's first television series. He meets Paul McCartney, who treats him to a spin of The Beatles' imminent single, 'Penny Lane'/'Strawberry Fields Forever', before the pair head to a party at the Speakeasy nightclub attended by, among others, Mama Cass Elliot from The Mamas and the Papas.

The events of that night will find their way into the lyrics and spirit of a new, darker Monkees song, which will take its name from a phrase Dolenz overhears earlier that evening while watching the BBC sitcom Till Death Us Do Part.

'The father figure calls the young son a "randy scouse git",' Dolenz later recalls. 'I didn't know what...