Sunday
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Cleveland shipping tycoon George M. Steinbrenner III
, heading a business association that purchases the New York Yankees for $10 million, promises that he will "not be active in the day-to-day operations" of the team.
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Rolling Stone
carries the announcement made by the
Allman Brothers Band
that
Lamar Williams
has been named to replace the late
Berry Oakley
on bass. The Mississippi-born Williams is a friend of Allman drummer
Jai Johanny Johanson
and has eight years' experience playing in Southern bands.
Rolling Stone
reports the top vote-getters in a New Musical Express
poll of 900 rock artists: John Lennon, Free
lead singer Paul Rodgers, Bob Dylan, Stone the Crows
frontwoman Maggie Bell, Mick Jagger
and Ray Charles
.
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6 Dolly Parton
reaches the country hit list with "My Tennessee Mountain Home" (#15), one of 99 charters for the country charmer through 1990.
Science News
reports a team of Belgian scientists has discovered genetic sequencing on a molecular level.
The Top Five
1. "You're So Vain"
- Carly Simon
2. "Clair"
- Gilbert O'Sullivan
3. "Me and Mrs. Jones"
- Billy Paul
4. "Superstition"
- Stevie Wonder
5. "Funny Face" - Donna Fargo
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Former singer
Sandy Denny
rejoins
Fairport Convention
for a show in Aucklund, New Zealand. The reason, says Denny, who left Fairport for the group
Fotheringay
and then opted for a solo career, was simply "for old time's sake."
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Yoko Ono
releases
Approximately Infinite Universe
as a two-record set bcause, she says, "I figured if
George Harrison
can put out a triple album, then I can put out a double album." Although the record doesn't sell especially well, it is generally better accepted than her earlier avant-garde work.
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Mick Jagger
is refused a Japanese visa on account of a 1969 drug bust, halting the Stones' plans to tour the Orient. The band seems genuinely depressed about the cancellation, although Jagger shrugs it off as a "minor frustration." Asked by a reporter about his personal drug use, Jagger replies, "I don't take drugs. I don't approve of drugs, and I don't approve of people taking drugs, unless they're very careful."
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Baseball's American League owners announce they will experiment over the next three seasons with a pinch hitter who will not force the pitcher out of the game; the "designated hitter" will become a defining fixture of AL games.
The Justice Department charges the finance arm of the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) with eight counts of election- financing-law violations for not recording over $30,000 that it gave to White House aide G. Gordon Liddy. E Howard Hunt
pleads guilty to all six counts of conspiring to spy on Democrats during the 1972 presidential campaign. Liddy and James McCord Jr.
will be found guilty of similar charges on Jan. 30.
An entranced America watches the debut of An American Family,
a groundbreaking 12-hour PBS documentary focusing on the daily lives of the pioneering reality television family the Louds of Santa Barbara, Calif. The messy, real-life drama features squabbles, spats, and husband Bill's philandering (which triggered a divorce from wife Pat). The next week, Pat visits eldest son Lance, the first openly gay person ever on American television, in New York City. Controversial and complex, it remains an unqualified watershed television event.
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Eric Clapton
, the reluctant guitar hero who'd spent the last few years troubled by drug addiction, makes a triumphant comeback at London's Rainbow Theatre, where he sells out two shows. Clapton, prodded to return to the stage by
Pete Townshend
, is accompanied by a stellar band including Townshend,
Ron Wood, Steve Winwood, Rick Grech, "Reebop" Kwaku Baah
and
Jimmy Karstein
. The set opens and closes with "Layla," and afterward Clapton tells a reporter, "I was very nervous, felt sick, the whole bit." But, he adds, referring to the enthusiastic audience, "they don't know how much it helped me."
14 Elvis Presley
draws the largest worldwide TV audience ever (over one and a half billion people) with a live concert, Elvis: Aloha from Hawaii,
telecast from the Honolulu International Center Arena. The event is later released as a two-record set
and is one of the singer's best-selling LPs of the Seventies, hitting Number One in 1973.
The Miami Dolphins defeat the Washington Redskins, 14-7, in Super Bowl VII, after a perfect 16-0 season.
Glam star Gary Glitter
celebrates six months of success with his new moniker by discarding photos, records, tapes and other momentos of his past stage personae -- skiffle bandleader Paul Russell
and rocker Paul Raven
-- into the Thames River in London.
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The
Rolling Stones
officially announce that they'll put on a benefit concert for the people of Managua, Nicaragua, which had been shattered by an earthquake on December 23, 1972. Nicaragua is the home of Jagger's wife,
Bianca
.
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Famed gospel singer
Clara Ward
dies after suffering her second stroke within several weeks. She was forty-eight. Ward, who
Aretha Franklin
once called "my inspiration," was born in Philadelphia and first gained recognition at the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival. After that, she appeared at Carnegie Hall, was twice called upon to perform before
President Lyndon Johnson
and become a regular act -- of all places -- the New Frontier Hotel Lounge in Las Vegas.
The Soviet eight-wheeled remote lunar probe Lunokhod 2 lands and explores the moon's surface.
Steve Carlton
signs a one-year, $167,000 contract with the Philadelphia Phillies and becomes professional baseball's highest-paid pitcher.
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Daniel Ellsberg
and Anthony Russo
again face charges for leaking state secrets as the second Pentagon Papers trial opens.
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The
Rolling Stones
' benefit concert for Nicaraguan earthquake victims is a huge success, raising over $400,000. The show's a musical success, took with sets turned in by
Santana, Cheech and Chong
and then the Stones, who perform an almost two-hour set before a crowd of nearly 19,000.
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Jerry Lee Lewis
makes his debut at the Grand Ole Opry. By this time, stories of Lewis' drinking and numerous arrests were well enough known that Opry officials had allowed him to perform only if he agreed to keep his repertoire to country and abstain from using obscenities. All starts off well enough, but by the end of the half-hour set, Lewis has played "Great Balls of Fire," "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" and "Good Golly Miss Molly" and proclaimed "I am a rock & rollin', country & western, rhythm & blues singin' motherfucker."
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In the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, the Supreme Court rules that no state may prevent a woman from having an abortion during the first three months of pregnancy. Within three weeks, the National Council of Catholic Bishops warns that any Catholic woman undergoing an abortion will immediately face excommunication.
Heavyweight champion Joe Frazier
loses the title to George Foreman
, a young, three-to-one underdog, in a second-round TKO in Kingston, Jamaica. Knocking him down time and time again in the first round and into the second, Foreman finishes with a perfect right uppercut. Cable subscribers see the power-packed main event on new network HBO, in its first televised boxing match.
Former president Lyndon B. Johnson
dies of a heart attack in Johnson City, Texas.
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Jazz trombonist
Edward "Kid" Ory
dies in Honolulu of pneumonia and heart failure at age 93. Ory was the composer of such jazz classics as "Muskrat Ramble" and "Savoy Blues," and was a highly influential horn player.
Philadelphia radio station WMMR-FM celebrates the cease-fire in Vietnam by broadcasting the ringing of bells at 7:00 a.m. for twelve minutes -- one minute for each year of the war.
Neil Young
interrupts a New York City concert to read a message handed to him. "Peace has come," he announces, sending the audience into a joyful ten-minute fit of hugging and kissing. Young and the Stray Gators then launched into a powerful version of "Southern Man."
President Nixon
announcs that the Paris Peace Talks have yielded an agreement between Henry Kissinger
and North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho
, ending the Vietnamese conflict. The terms are revealed the next day: a cease-fire beginning Jan. 28 complete withdrawal of all U.S. forces within sixty days and a total POW exchange throughout Indochina.
The Associated Press names Mark Spitz
and Olga Korbut
male and female athletes of the year.
24 The ABC TV drama Go Ask Alice,
based on the book about a high school student's battle with drug addiction, premieres.
25 National Lampoon
magazine, known for its gleefully tasteless humor, branches beyond its print roots as its Woodstock (dubbed Woodchuck) parody "Lemmings," featuring future Saturday Night Live
stars John Belushi
and Chevy Chase
, opens on Broadway after a successful run at a local NYC club. Also this month the magazine publishes its most (in)famous magazine cover, a shot of a docile pooch with a gun to its head and the tagline, "If You Don't Buy This Magazine We'll Kill This Dog."
26 Veteran actor Edward G. Robinson
dies in Los Angeles at age 79. Shortly before his death, Robinson starred in his last film, Soylent Green,
and portentously appeared in a scene that showed him dying in a death clinic.
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The Defense Department declares that Lieutenant Colonel William Nolde
is the last U.S. casualty in Vietnam as the cease-fire takes effect at 0800 hours, Saigon time. Over the next two weeks, sporadic fighting continues as the U.S. resumes bombing raids in Laos, and on Feb. 12 the first exchange of 142 American, 250 Communist and 140 South Vietnamese POWs takes place.
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Kiss
play their first-ever live show, at the Coventry Club in Queens. The group's makeup at this early stage is slightly different from the look audiences eventually will know them for.
Paul Stanley
later recalls that it's more of a "
New York Dolls
look." Through 2002 they will perform live another staggering 1,809 times.
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