On this day in 1970, the Guess Who single “American Woman” debuted on the US Billboard Hot 100 at #46 (March 21) “American Woman” went on to top the charts, and The Guess Who became the first Canadian band to achieve a #1 single in the United States, with the song also going to #1 in Canada, #4 in Switzerland and the Netherlands, #7 in Austria, #16 in New Zealand, and #19 in the UK. Interestingly, the song started live on stage when Randy Bachmann broke a string during a performance. After replacing the string, he was mucking around playing the new string in, and spontaneously came up with what would become the song’s main riff, and the rest of the band joined in and started jamming on it! Burton Cummings also started improvising lyrics… According to Cummings, this song also owes its creation to a piece of modern technology: a portable cassette recorder. He says that after his ad-libbed performance of the song, a kid in the crowd who was bootlegging the concert using the device (this is back when bootlegging meant literally strapping the tape recorder to your leg) came backstage after the show and played them the tape so they wouldn’t forget this new song. Listening back to his tape, they were able to jot down the words to recreate the lyric. Click on the link below to watch The Guess Who’s iconic “American Woman”: https://youtu.be/gkqfpkTTy2w