New Year's Day, 1986: When a Los Angeles radio station began to play the song 'Garden Party,' 18-year-old Matthew Nelson smiled. It was his father's old comeback song, a Top Ten hit in 1972 for the onetime teen idol Ricky Nelson.

When the song ended, Matthew Nelson stopped smiling and began to scream. Rick Nelson, the DJ explained, had just died in a plane crash the night before.

Child star Ricky Nelson was a real American idol, playing himself on his parents' classic 1950s TV series, 'The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet' and using his show-business connections to launch a career in rock 'n' roll. Beginning with his cover of Fats Domino's 'I'm Walkin',' Nelson was a fixture on the pop charts from 1957 through 1963, scoring No. 1 hits with 'Poor Little Fool' and 'Travelin' Man.'

TV Guide picked it as one of the most memorable television moments of the 20th century. It was without doubt one of the oddest: vampiric David Bowie, just a few years removed from the glam decadence of 'Ziggy Stardust,' singing a Christmas duet with the golf-sweatered Bing Crosby.

It almost didn't happen. Not because the pairing was all wrong -- Bowie simply wasn't enamored of 'The Little Drummer Boy,' the song they were supposed to sing together. Crosby, who was 73 in Sept. 1977, was in the U.K. on a concert tour, preparing to tape a CBS holiday special called 'Merrie Olde Christmas.' The old crooner was, of course, the reigning king of Yuletide music: His version of Irving Berlin's 'White Christmas' is still recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the best-selling single of all time, with more than 100 million copies sold.

Donny Hathaway closed out his 1970 debut album with a saintly version of Nina Simone's 'To Be Young, Gifted and Black.' Not yet 25, a onetime child prodigy as a gospel singer, he'd already worked as a producer, arranger and session musician with Aretha Franklin, the Staple Singers and Curtis Mayfield by the time of his debut. This young black man from the projects of St. Louis was as gifted as they come.

The voice of Porky Pig nearly got one of the early stars of surf music killed. Jan Berry, one-half of the pioneering surf duo Jan & Dean, was inspired to write their hit single 'Dead Man's Curve' by the true story of a notoriously dangerous stretch of Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, which once almost claimed the life of voice actor Mel Blanc. The black-humored song would prove to be more ominous than Berry could have imagined.

After some success as a blue-eyed doo-wop act in the late 1950s, L.A. high school buddies Jan Berry and Dean Torrence befriended Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys on the touring circuit. Wilson, who was having trouble finishing a song called 'Surf City,' gave it to the duo, and their version shot to No. 1 in the summer of 1963. 'Dead Man's Curve,' co-written by Berry, Wilson and a drag-racing DJ named Roger Christian, immortalized the treacherous corner that had been the site of dozens of accidents, including the one that left Blanc in a three-week coma. (Fans of the cartoon voice man addressed their get-well cards to "Bugs Bunny, Hollywood.") The song was one of nine more Top 40 singles Jan & Dean would release in the next two years. Their short-lived popularity earned the pair a hosting role on the vastly influential 1964 concert film 'The T.A.M.I. Show,' featuring the Beach Boys, the Rolling Stones, James Brown and others.

To be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a band's first album must be at least 25 years old. In 2005, their first year of eligibility, the Pretenders were a shoo-in. Two original members, singer Chrissie Hynde and drummer Martin Chambers, were on hand to accept. The other two had been dead almost as long as the band's existence.

Hynde was a transplanted Akron, Ohio, native living in London in the mid-1970s, where she was writing about rock 'n' roll for the New Musical Express. After a few false starts forming bands of her own, she became musically and romantically involved with bassist Pete Farndon, a committed rebel-rocker with a penchant for samurai imagery. Farndon quickly recruited two fellow natives of the town of Hereford to join the new band. James Honeyman-Scott was a local guitarist who was growing vegetables to supplement his income; Chambers, the drummer, was working as a driving instructor.

From the time he got his first gramophone, little Herbert Khaury was obsessed with the earliest days of recorded vaudevillian music. Born, by his own account, in 1932, he got his first break in the 1950s in Greenwich Village, performing, according to legend, in a lesbian cabaret. After appearing with his ever-present ukulele under various pseudonyms -- Larry Love, Judas K. Foxglove -- he eventually took his famous stage name from a manager who'd had some luck booking midget acts: Tiny Tim.

Tall and heavy-set, with a protruding nose, a used car salesman's plaid jacket and a rat's nest of long dark hair parted to the side, Tiny Tim stood out even before he opened his mouth. When he did, the sound was like no other: an impossibly high, quavering falsetto that was all the more astounding for its apparent sincerity. "Discovered" by the producers of the comedy-show phenomenon 'Laugh-In,' Tim quickly became a fixture of network television in the late 1960s, making frequent appearances with Johnny Carson and Ed Sullivan.

"This must be one stupid broad," Frank Sinatra said in the summer of 1990, headlining the Garden State Arts Center in Holmdel, N.J. the night after an appearance by a young, shaved-headed Irishwoman named Sinéad O'Connor. O'Connor, having spent a month atop the charts earlier in the year with her version of Prince's 'Nothing Compares 2 U,' had threatened to boycott unless the theater agreed not to play 'The Star-Spangled Banner' before the show, as was its custom.

Two years before she ripped up a photo of a certain religious figure on a certain high-impact comedy-and-music show, the outspoken young singer was already making international news with her fearless principles. In May 1990, she refused to honor her first invitation on 'Saturday Night Live' when she learned about the misogynistic comedy of host Andrew "Dice" Clay. In August, riding the runaway sales of her album 'I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got,' O'Connor succeeded in getting the Arts Center to forgo the national anthem. She was, she explained, no fan of warmongering anthems in general.

When the members of the Band shared Big Pink, their famous house near Woodstock, N.Y., they had a dog. The dog's name was Hamlet. Almost 20 years later, Richard Manuel -- the aching voice who introduced the group with 'Tears of Rage,' the first cut on its 1968 debut -- finally addressed Hamlet's timeless question: To be or not to be? At age 42, Manuel chose the latter.

Despite Manuel's reckless, hard-partying attitude, the hurt was always evident in his remarkable voice, from his version of Bob Dylan's 'I Shall Be Released' to the posthumously released 'Country Boy.' "He had a voice like a hug," his second wife would recall.

Crackerjack guitarist Danny Cedrone liked to tell his wife that he just needed one bona fide hit and their family would be set for life. In the meantime, he pieced together a living with his band the Esquire Boys and as a session player for a spit-curled country-and-western bandleader named Bill Haley.

Well-versed in jazz and western swing, by the early 1950s Haley and his group, the Saddlemen (later cleverly renamed the Comets), were toying with a new sound. They covered 'Rocket 88,' the Ike Turner stomper recorded as Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats, which is sometimes nominated as the first rock 'n' roll song. On another boogie remake called 'Rock the Joint,' Cedrone laid down a flash-fingered solo with his hollow-body Gibson ES-300, a bit of foreshadowing for the wild guitar showcasing that would soon help define the rock 'n' roll sound.

As a Miami disc jockey known as "DJ Uncle Al," Albert Leroy Moss was instrumental in promoting the city's unique blend of reggae, Latin and hip-hop music. Moss got his start on WEDR 99.1 FM ("99 Jamz") alongside 2 Live Crew's Luther Campbell, quickly establishing himself as a prolific recording artist, producer and remixer. "Uncle Al was one of the few people who made me like Miami music," said ex-New Yorker Supa Cindy, a friend and colleague.

Uncle Al was also relentless in his calls for peace in the hood, imploring his listeners to stop the violence. At that, he was less successful: Seven years ago, the radio personality sometimes known as DJ Peace answered the door of his Liberty City duplex and was gunned down at point-blank range.