What About Now? by Robbie Robertson

#926: What About Now? by Robbie Robertson

Peak Month: November-December 1991
11 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #14
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “What About Now?
Lyrics: “What About Now?

In 1943, Jaime Royal “Robbie” Robertson was born in Toronto. His biological father was a Jewish and a professional gambler named Alexander David Klegerman. He had impregnated Robertson’s mother, Rosemarie Dolly Chrysler, a Cayuga and Mohawk woman from the Six Nations Reserve, near Hamilton, Ontario. Dolly soon after met James Patrick Robertson at a jewelry plating factory in Toronto where they both worked. Dolly and James married in late 1942. And Alexander David Klegerman was killed in a hit-and-run accident just prior to their marriage. It wasn’t until “Robbie” Robertson was 14 that he was told who his real biological father was.

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#910: Don’t Ya Hide It by Stonebolt

Peak Month: February 1980
6 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #6
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Don’t You Hide It

In 1969 guitar player Ray Roper, drummer Brian Lousley and bass player Dan Atchison were high school students. They decided to form a band named Perth Amboy, possibly after the city in New Jersey. (In 1968 a band from Michigan called the Amboy Dukes had a Top 20 hit titled “Journey To The Center Of Your Mind”). Roper was from England. Perth Amboy played at high school dances and many small venues in the Lower Mainland. In 1973 they changed their name to Stonebolt. They added John Webster on keyboards and David Wills on vocals around 1976, according to an email to this website from David Wills. David Wills left the Seattle band, Shaker, to join Stonebolt.

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Never Be The Same by Chilliwack

#955: Never Be The Same by Chilliwack

Peak Month: December 1978
12 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position: #19
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com link: “Never Be The Same
Lyrics: “Never Be The Same”

Bill Henderson was born in Vancouver in 1944. He learned guitar and became the guitarist for the Panarama Trio that performed at the Panarama Roof dance club on the 15th Floor of the Hotel Vancouver. He formed the psychedelic pop-rock Vancouver band, The Collectors, in 1966. After a half dozen local hits including “Fisherwoman” and “Lydia Purple” the Collectors name was ditched in 1970. Henderson (vocals, guitar), Claire Lawrence (saxophone, keyboards), Ross Turney (drums) and Glenn Miller (bass) were all Collectors bandmates. After Howie Vickers left The Collectors, they changed their name to Chilliwack. The name was a Salish First Nations name that means “going back up” and is the name of a city in the Fraser Valley in British Columbia.
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Was It You by Stonebolt

#942: Was It You by Stonebolt

Peak Month: February 1979
11 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #18
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Was It You

In 1969 guitar player Ray Roper, drummer Brian Lousley and bass player Dan Atchison were high school students. They decided to form a band named Perth Amboy, possibly after the city in New Jersey. (In 1968 a band from Michigan called the Amboy Dukes had a Top 20 hit titled “Journey To The Center Of Your Mind”). Roper was from England. Perth Amboy played at high school dances and many small venues in the Lower Mainland. In 1973 they changed their name to Stonebolt. They added John Webster on keyboards and David Wills on vocals around 1976, according to an email to this website from David Wills. Wills left the Seattle band, Shaker, to join Stonebolt.
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Enid by Barenaked Ladies

#943: Enid by Barenaked Ladies

Peak Month: September 1992
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #9
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Enid
Lyrics: “Enid”

Lloyd Edward Elwyn “Ed” Robertson was born in Scarborough, Ontario, in 1970. He began to play guitar when he was in grade five. Steven Jay Page was also born in Scarborough in 1970. He took piano lessons for ten years and was a member of the Toronto Mendelssohn Youth Choir. Page and Robertson crossed paths in elementary school. But they didn’t become friends until 1988 when they found themselves co-counsellors at a summer Scarborough Schools Music Camp. Later that year there was a charity and Robertson asked Page to join him in a performance. The duo named themselves the Barenaked Ladies.

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Courage by The Tragically Hip

#967: Courage by The Tragically Hip

Peak Month: May 1993
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #9
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Courage
Lyrics: “Courage”

In the early 1980’s bass player Gord Sinclair and guitar player Rob Baker were students at Kingston Collegiate Vocational Institute in Kingston, Ontario. They had performed at the collegiate’s Variety Show in a band they called The Rodents. In 1984 Baker and Sinclair were in their early twenties. The Tragically Hip formed in 1984 in Kingston, Ontario when the duo added drummer Johnny Fay and lead singer Gordon Downie. Their name came from a skit in the movie Elephant Parts, directed by former Monkee’s guitarist Michael Nesmith. The Tragically Hip added Paul Langois, a guitar player, to their line-up in 1986. When they performed at the Horeshoe Tavern in Toronto in the mid-80’s, they were sign to a recording contract with MCA after the company president, Bruce Dickinson, saw the band at the tavern. A self-titled EP (Extended Play) was released in 1987 with a couple of singles that got some airplay. The group was launched.

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Suspicion by Elvis Presley

#970: Suspicion by Elvis Presley

Peak Month: July 1962
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #9
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #103
YouTube.com: “Suspicion” – LP Cut
Lyrics: “Suspicion”

Elvis Aaron Presley was born on in a two-room house in Tupelo, Mississippi, on January 8, 1935. His twin brother, Jessie Garon Presley, was stillborn. When he was eleven years old his parents bought him a guitar at the Tupelo Hardware Store. As a result Elvis grew up as an only child. He and his parents, Vernon and Gladys, moved to Memphis, Tennessee, in 1948. The young Presley graduated from high school in 1953. That year he stopped by the Memphis Recording Service to record two songs, including “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin”, song #1196 on this Countdown. Elvis’ musical influences were the pop and country music of the time, the gospel music he heard in church and at the all-night gospel sings he frequently attended, and the black R&B he absorbed on historic Beale Street as a Memphis teenager. In 1954, Elvis began his singing career recording “That’s All Right” and “Blue Moon Of Kentucky” at Sun Records in Memphis.

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Nobody by Doucette

#985: Nobody by Doucette

Peak Month: September 1979
11 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #18
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Nobody
Lyrics: “Nobody”

In 1952 Jerry Doucette was born in Montreal into a musical family. At the age of four his family moved to Hamilton, Ontario. At the age of six got his first guitar. When he was eight he began to take guitar lessons. When he was eleven he joined a band called the Reefers. When he turned 16 he moved to Toronto and was a member of a number of bands including Brutus. He moved to Vancouver in 1972 and  played with the Alexis Radlin Band. Soon after he joined the Seeds of Time who were searching for a guitarist. In 1974 they changed their name to the Rocket Norton Band. Doucette remained with this band until he decided to go solo in 1977, after Mushroom Records expressed support for such a move.

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Candy Man by Roy Orbison

#901: Candy Man by Roy Orbison

Peak Month: September 1961
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #5
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #25
YouTube.com: “Candy Man
Lyrics: “Candy Man”

Roy Kelton Orbison was born in Vernon, Texas in 1936. When he turned six his dad gave him a guitar. Both his dad, Orbie Lee, and uncle Charlie Orbison, taught him how to play. Though his family moved to Forth Worth for work at a munitions factory, Roy was sent to live with his grandmother due to a polio outbreak in 1944. That year he wrote his first song “A Vow of Love”. The next year he won a contest on Vernon radio station KVWC and was offered his own radio show on Saturdays. After the war his family reunited and moved to Wink, Texas, where Roy formed his first band, in 1949, called The Wink Westerners.

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Margie by Fats Domino

#902: Margie by Fats Domino

Peak Month: June 1959
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX chart
Peak Position #8
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #51
YouTube.com: “Margie
Lyrics: “Margie”

In 1928 Antoine “Fats” Domino was born in New Orleans. Both of his parents spoke Creole, a unique twist on the French language in Louisiana. Fats had seven siblings and he was the youngest of the bunch. Harrison Verrett, a brother-in-law, taught young Fats to play piano while he was a child. Domino took to the ivories with a passion and was playing to audiences in honky tonks by the age of ten. In his teens he worked at many jobs helping to cover the families household expenses. These ranged from a position with the Crescent City Bed Factory to delivering ice from an ice truck. While these day jobs helped him make a living, by the age of fourteen he quit public school and was practicing the keyboards to develop his own unique style. After getting married in 1947, he gained a reputation as a formidable talent with his live performances at the Hideaway Club in New Orleans. This got him on the radar of bandleader, Dave Bartholomew, who helped secure a deal with Imperial Records for Domino in 1949.

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