Hammond, Indiana

Everything Hammond is known for

3 songs mention this city 1 artist from here

Music in Hammond

Songs About Hammond

Hammond Song
The Roches
81%
"If you go down to Hammond"
Calumet Queen
Kiely Connell
53%
"Up in Hammond, Indiana, to my hometown, I give thanks"
beat it
michael jackson
45%

Artists From Hammond

K
Kiely Connell
americana Pop: 18

Rivers & Roads in Song near Hammond

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Hammond.

Interstate 65 22 songs U.S. Route 66 17 songs

Musical Heritage

The Gary Record Shop That Beat Capitol to the Beatles RoadyGoat

1953

One of the great untold stories in American music starts in a Gary record shop. Vivian Carter was a Gary radio personality who, with her husband James Bracken, ran Vivian's Record Shop. In 1953 they launched their own label and named it from their initials, V and J: Vee-Jay Records. Founded here in Gary and soon based up in Chicago, Vee-Jay grew into the most successful Black-owned record company in America before Motown. Its roster was staggering: the bluesmen Jimmy Reed and John Lee Hooker, the gospel of the Staple Singers, a young Curtis Mayfield with the Impressions, even the pop hitmakers the Four Seasons. And then came the moment almost nobody remembers. When the giant Capitol Records passed on an unknown British band, little Vee-Jay said yes. In 1963 it became the first American company to release the Beatles, and it put out their first U.S. album, called Introducing the Beatles. So before the British Invasion swept the country, the Beatles first reached America through a label born in a Gary record store. (Sources: Encyclopedia of Chicago; Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.)

8.5 mi away

Five Brothers, Four Number Ones, One Mural RoadyGoat

1970

Over in Gary's Miller neighborhood, on South Lake Street, a big mural celebrates the brothers who turned this steel town into a music legend: the Jackson 5. The full family that came out of one small Gary house is almost unbelievable, Michael, Janet, Jermaine, Jackie, Tito, Marlon, and more. But here is a record that still stuns. When the five brothers signed with Motown, their first four national singles, I Want You Back, ABC, The Love You Save, and I'll Be There, every single one of them shot to number one on the pop chart. No group had ever launched its career with four straight chart-toppers like that. The little two-bedroom house where they rehearsed is the quiet shrine a few blocks away; this bright mural is the loud, public thank-you, the city's way of putting its proudest sound up on a wall for everyone to see. (Source: city of Gary.)

13.3 mi away

History of Hammond

Wolf Lake Culvert RoadyGoat

1924

On May 21, 1924, two wealthy University of Chicago students named Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb picked up a fourteen-year-old boy named Bobby Franks as he walked home from school. They drove him across the state line to a culvert in the marshland south of Wolf Lake, on the Indiana side of the border, where they killed him and hid the body. They had committed the murder for no reason other than to see if they could get away with it. They were identified within days after Leopold dropped a pair of distinctive eyeglasses at the scene. Clarence Darrow argued against their execution in one of the most famous courtroom speeches in American history, and both men were given life sentences. The marsh around Wolf Lake is still there, a thin strip of water and reeds between the refineries and the freight lines, looking much the way it did a hundred years ago.

RoadyGoat → · 5.5 mi away

The Magic City Under Martial Law RoadyGoat

1919

Boosters called Gary the Magic City, a whole town conjured out of the dunes by U.S. Steel. But the magic was built on brutal work. Inside Gary Works, men commonly pulled twelve-hour shifts, seven days a week, in heat and danger. In September 1919, Gary's steelworkers joined a nationwide strike, demanding shorter hours and the right to a union. The city became one of the strike's flashpoints. Tension boiled over between strikers, police, and the replacement workers brought in to break them. When the local and state forces could not hold order, the federal government sent in the U.S. Army. About a thousand troops marched into Gary in October, a force that swelled toward four thousand, and their commander declared martial law over the city. U.S. Steel simply refused to bargain, and the great strike collapsed without winning its demands. The company would not even grant the eight-hour day until 1923. So the same planned streets the promoters bragged about had, for a few weeks, soldiers patrolling them, the hidden cost of the Magic City. (Sources: Encyclopedia of Chicago; Indiana University.)

8.0 mi away

The Gary Kid Who Flew Around the Moon First RoadyGoat

1928

The first human being ever to fly all the way around the moon was born right here in Gary. Frank Borman came into the world in this steel town in 1928. He grew up to become an Air Force pilot and then a NASA astronaut, and in December 1968 he commanded one of the boldest missions ever attempted: Apollo 8. Until that flight, no human had ever left Earth's gravity to circle another world. Borman, along with Jim Lovell and William Anders, rode their spacecraft a quarter million miles out and looped around the moon ten times, the first crew to see its far side and the first to watch the Earth rise over the lunar horizon, a photograph that changed how people saw our planet. It was a daring dress rehearsal that made the moon landing possible just seven months later. Not bad for a kid from Gary, Indiana. (Source: NASA.)

8.0 mi away

Jackson 5 Family Home

1950

The small Gary, Indiana house at 2300 Jackson Street where Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5 grew up and rehearsed.

8.0 mi away

Pullman Historic District

1880

America's most famous company town, built by George Pullman for his sleeping car workers, and site of the 1894 Pullman Strike.

9.5 mi away

Chicago Pile-1 - Site of First Nuclear Reaction

1942

On December 2, 1942, Enrico Fermi achieved the first controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in a squash court under the football stands at the University of Chicago.

15.4 mi away

Chess Records

1950

The legendary recording studio where Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Howlin' Wolf, and Etta James created the Chicago blues sound that became rock and roll.

18.9 mi away

Muddy Waters House

1954

The South Side home of Muddy Waters from 1954 until his death in 1983, designated a Chicago landmark in 2013.

19.6 mi away

Barack Obama Kenwood Residence

2005

The Georgian Revival home in the Kenwood neighborhood where Barack and Michelle Obama lived from 2005 until moving to the White House in 2009.

15.8 mi away

Things to Do in Hammond

historical 21.5 mi away
Route 66 Starting Point

The beginning (or end) of the Mother Road. A sign on Adams Street in Chicago.
food 22.3 mi away
Lou Malnati's Pizzeria

Chicago deep dish royalty since 1971. The buttercrust is the secret. Lou learned from the original Pizzeria Uno founders.
historical 21.6 mi away
Willis (Sears) Tower Skydeck

Stand on a glass box 1353 feet above Chicago. Your stomach will drop.
quirky 21.6 mi away
Cloud Gate (The Bean)

A liquid mercury-shaped sculpture that reflects the Chicago skyline. Everyone takes a photo.

Everything Near Hammond

75 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

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