Jan. 23 in history

21 Years Ago --- Young Star Debuts Song Tri-State Defender January 23, 1985 Stardom is something all talented people perhaps dream of from time to time. Ten year old TaRess Nakia "Nikki" McGee, with her mature sounding voice and little girl captivating smile, is currently traveling the road to stardom. Nikki, who has been singing for only a little more than a year, performed her first solo at age eight for her pastor's anniversary. This fifth grade honor student is now "turning out" every concert hall she performs in. Being a professional singer for only three months, Nikki has already sung on programs with such greats as Slim and the Supreme Angels, The Soul Stirrers, the Violinaires, The Truthettes, The Canton Spirituals and many more. Nikki's record company, Capitol J Enterprises, is now promoting her as gospel's youngest new recording artist... Although her interest is in gospel music, she admires the talent of Michael Jackson. "I like his music because it's clean and still has a good beat to it" said Nikki. Reared with a religious background, Nikki acknowledged more money could be made singing secular music commercially. "But, Mama asked me to sing gospel and I think that's best" she stated. --- 17 Years Ago --- Original Videos Falter Los Angeles Times January 23, 1989 Five or six years ago, when home video was still a fast-growing infant, some forecasters were predicting that it would become a haven for original programming. How-tos, they insisted, would be a dominant force. So would videos about such subjects as exercise, cooking, comedy, music, handling your own divorce, etc. So what happened? Movies took over. Original programming is still just a small part of the business - less than 20 percent, said Jim Jimirro, president of J2 Communications, which markets the hit comedy video "Dorf on Golf," starring Tim Conway. "The original programming market never opened up like people thought it would," said Jeff Peisch, vice president of non-theatrical programming at Vestron, which put out "The Making of Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' " in 1983, a smash hit that sold more than 500,000 copies and created great expectations for original programming. Now, selling just 10,000 copies of an original-program video through various outlets is considered impressive. That does not compare well to the figures for movies: 200,000 to 300,000 copies of the latest hit movie usually are shipped to video outlets... --- 14 Years Ago --- Revised Billboard Chart Chicago Tribune January 23, 1992 Somehow, it seemed fitting that when Billboard magazine unleashed its new state-of-the-art, highly computerized system for tracking the nation's most popular singles, the first extended run at No. 1 would be scored by Michael Jackson's "Black or White." ... --- 13 Years Ago --- Rock's Memorabilia Is On An Auction Roll International Herald Tribune January 23, 1993 ...On Jan. 8, thousands of Elvis Presley fans, stamp collectors and ordinary citizens mobbed post offices across the United States to buy the first-day issue of Elvis stamps. At the Richard M. Nixon Library in California, tourists snapped up watches picturing Elvis and the former president on the face, commemorating their meeting at the White House in 1970, and the confluence of the "King's" birthday, Jan. 8, and Mr. Nixon's 80th birthday, Jan. 9... Among the most sought-after collectibles are classic Beatles material, with John Lennon commanding top dollar, the Rolling Stones, Elvis, and more contemporaneously, Michael Jackson, Prince and Madonna. An icon of the turbulent '60s with a large following among Americans is Bob Dylan, because of his grass-roots political awareness. "He's still alive, but he does well because he's low profile and therefore has more mystique," notes Mr. Levine... Clothing owned by rock stars is the priciest part of the market: A leather jacket worn by John Lennon in the early '60s was hammered down for