Ray Peterson Banned 1960

August 8, 1960 : Decca Records in England refuses to release Ray Peterson's latest single, Tell Laura I Love Her, going so far as to throw away 25,000 pressings of the teen-tragedy song, which they felt was "too tasteless and vulgar for the English sensibility." A cover by Ricky Valance proves them wrong by going straight to Number One. (The grisly song, in which a stock-car driver mutters the title words before he dies, ironically only reaches #7 in America.)