1978: Randy Newman had a lot of people upset when his song "Short People" hit the top of the Cash Box best sellers list. The song was meant to poke fun at all prejudice and did just that with the line "short people got no reason to live". Before "Short People", Newman was most noted for writing Three Dog Night's 1970 chart topper, "Mama Told Me Not To Come". More recently, he could be heard singing "It's a Jungle Out There", the theme to the US TV show Monk.
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1965: North America finally caught on to Petula Clark when her hit "Downtown" made her the first British female to have a number one hit on this side of the Atlantic in the Rock era. She would go on to rack up many more smashes, including "I Know a Place", "My Love", "I Couldn't Live Without Your Love", "This is My Song" and "Don't Sleep in the Subway". Clark had already been very successful in the UK, chalking up hits since 1954.
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1966: After twelve previous releases that failed to catch on, Frank Sinatra's daughter Nancy enters the Billboard Hot 100 with what will be her biggest hit, "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'". The song would later go to number one for one week and spend three and a half months on the chart.
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1961: Del Shannon records his first single, "Runaway", which will top the US charts by April. The song was written by Shannon and keyboardist Max Crook, and would later be rated as #466 on Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
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1958: "Get A Job" by The Silhouettes was released. The song will climb to #1 in the US and is considered to be a Rock and Roll classic, although the Philadelphia quartet who sang it never had another Top 40 hit.
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