Yesterday in La Crosse
Beatlemania begins in 1964
On February 9th, 1964, the Fab Four made their famous first live appearance on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show,’ sandwiched on Sunday night TV between ‘My Favorite Martian’ and ‘The Judy Garland Show.’ The Beatles were featured three weeks in a row on Sullivan…and they weren’t very well known before their arrival. The La Crosse Tribune ran a front-page picture of the band that weekend, but Ringo was the only one identified correctly.
La Crosse was hosting other big-name performers that week. Monday night, movie musical star Jane Powell headlined a show at the Sawyer Auditorium, and the next night, a country show featured Jim Reeves and Stringbean. Reeves would die in a plane crash later that year.
Three months after the shooting of President Kennedy in Dallas, designs were being proposed for a large marble monument at the crime scene in that city’s Dealey Plaza. It was never built. The La Crosse City Council was getting ready to buy new fluorescent street lights for downtown, at a cost of around $120,000.
