Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe (Jan. 2) Today's birthdays include the late Roger Miller, who was born in 1936; and Ten Years After keyboardist Chick Churchill in 1942 (age 60). Advertisement Today's musical milestones: In 1963, the Beatles returned from what turned out to be the band's final stay in Hamburg, West Germany. In 1969, U.S. customs officials in Newark, N.J., confiscated the entire shipment of the John Lennon-Yoko Ono album "Unfinished Music No.1 -- Two Virgins," which featured a full frontal photograph of the naked couple on the album's cover. Copies of the album were allowed into the United States only after Tetragrammaton Records agreed to wrap them in plain brown paper before putting them on sale. In 1973, when Robert Plant's car broke down, he and Jimmy Page were forced to hitchhike in the rain to that night's show in Sheffield, England. In 1974, singing cowboy Tex Ritter died of a heart attack in a Nashville jail, where he was trying to bail out a member of his band. He was 67. In 1975, the Georgia State Department of Corrections honored the Allman Brothers Band, naming the band the Outstanding Community Organization of the Year. Advertisement In 1979, Sid Vicious -- former bassist with The Sex Pistols -- went on trial in New York City for killing his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen. In 1980, Larry Williams -- who had a couple of hits in 1957, including "Bony Moronie" -- died at age 44, an apparent suicide. In 1993, Chicago-based blues singer Valerie Wellington died of an aneurysm after falling ill before a performance. She was 34. In 1996, the husband of former Pointer Sisters singer Patricia "Bonnie" Pointer pleaded innocent to spousal battery. The charges stemmed from a Christmas Eve incident at sister June Pointer's Hollywood house. Today's musical quiz: Early in his career, how did Roger Miller make a living? Answer: He worked as a bellhop at a Nashville hotel, as a drummer for Faron Young and a fiddler for Minnie Pearl.
