#21: You Were On My Mind by Crispian St. Peters

City: Fredericton, NB
Radio Station: CFNB
Peak Month: August 1967
Peak Position in Fredericton: #2
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #36
YouTube: “You Were On My Mind”
Lyrics: “You Were On My Mind”

Robin Peter Smith was born in 1939 in Swanley, in Kent, UK, adjacent the the boundary of Greater London. At the age of fifteen, he learned the guitar and left school in 1954 to become an assistant cinema projectionist and also worked in a paper mill. In 1956, he gave his first live performance, as a member of The Hard Travellers. Through the late 1950s and early 1960s, as well as undertaking National Service, he was a member of The Country Gentlemen, Beat Formula Three, and Peter & The Wolves. While a member of Beat Formula Three in 1963, he was heard by David Nicholson, an EMI Record publicist who became his manager. Nicholson suggested he use a stage name, initially “Crispin Blacke” and subsequently Crispian St. Peters.

Nicholson promoted Crispian St. Peters as being nineteen years of age, when his actual age was 24. In 1964, as a member of Peter & The Wolves, St. Peters made his first commercial. Subsequently, he was signed in 1965 with Decca Records. His  first Decca release, “At This Moment”, was unsuccessful. The followup, “No, No, No”, made the Top 50 in Australia.

In 1965, Crispian St. Peters released a cover of a song written in 1963 by Sylvia Fricker (of Ian & Sylvia) titled “You Were On My Mind”. The song had been successfully covered earlier in 1965 by the San Francisco folk band the We Five (#3 on the Billboard Hot 100). In the UK Crispian St. Peters’ version reached #2 on the pop chart in January 1966.

St Peters gave an interview to the New Musical Express in which he opined that his songs were better than those of the Beatles and that his stage show made Elvis Presley seem like the Statue of Liberty. He bragged he was “more talented than Sammy Davis Jr.,” “sexier than Dave Berry” (of the UK pop band the Rockin’ Berries), and “more exciting than Tom Jones.” He later claimed that it was all tongue in cheek. The mild furore helped the sales of his next record, “The Pied Piper”.

However, he was not on the radar of American or Canadian DJs. This changed with his 1966 release of “The Pied Piper”.

In 1965, a folk duo in the USA called The Changin’ Times wrote “The Pied Piper”. Their recording stalled at #87 on the Hot 100 in America. (A side note: Artie Kornfield of The Changin’ Times became the music promoter for the Woodstock festival in 1969). Crispian St. Peters covered “The Pied Piper” and it was released in the spring of 1966. In Canada, the single peaked at #1 in Vancouver, Windsor (ON), Lloydminster (AB), and Toronto, #2 in Regina (SK), Edmonton (AB), Medicine Hat (AB), Winnipeg (MB), Lindsay (ON), and Hamilton (ON), and #3 in Kitchener (ON). Internationally, Crispian St. Peters “The Pied Piper” peaked at number-one in Canada and South Africa, #2 in New Zealand, #4 in the USA, #5 in Australia and the UK, and #9 in Ireland.

Expectations were great for a followup hit. But Crispian St. Peters’ cover of Phil Ochs’ “Changes” was a minor Top 50 hit later in ’66. Three subsequent singles were commercially unsuccessful. In a 2010 obituary, the Guardian wrote “By now he was a fully paid-up denizen of swinging London, later recalling that people “called me the Cassius Clay of pop because me and PJ Proby were always arguing”. But his period in the spotlight was coming to an end.” His comments in the 1966 interview with the New Musical Express continued to dog him. And the pop music press began to treat him as a conceited outcast.

Meanwhile, in 1967 Decca Records released Crispian St. Peters’ recording of “You Were On My Mind” in North America. Among the radio markets that gave the song a spin was Fredericton, New Brunswick.

Sylvia Fricker wrote “You Were On My Mind”. She was born in Chatham (ON) in 1940. At the age of 18, she left Chatham to pursue a career in music by moving to Toronto. From 1959 to 1974, she was half of the popular folk duo Ian & Sylvia with Ian Tyson. The two met after a friend of Ian’s heard her sing at a party and let Ian know about her. Ian had been performing in Toronto clubs as a solo artist, but after he and Fricker met, they decided to work together as a duo. Their full-time collaboration began in 1961 and continued for a decade. “You Were On My Mind” was the first song she wrote, and among her most successful. Ian & Sylvia recorded the song in 1964 for their album Northern Journey. They were married in June ’64.

From the late 1960s to the early 1970s, Sylvia and Ian Tyson fronted the country rock band Great Speckled Bird. After she and Ian Tyson got a divorce in 1975, after eleven years of marriage, she pursued a solo career. Between 1975 and 2023 she released eleven studio albums. She also released fourteen singles between 1972 and 1993. One of these was her own solo recording of “You Were On My Mind”, which became a Top 40 Canadian country music hit in 1989. In 1994, she was made a member of the Order of Canada. She has been nominated for a Juno Award on seven occasions.

“You Were On My Mind” depicts someone who has the blues. They wake up in the morning with a) aches, b) pains, and c) wounds to bind. In the original Ian & Sylvia recording, in the second verse the character goes to the corner “just to ease my pain…. I got drunk and I got sick and I came home again.” Drinking liquor first thing in the morning and getting drunk to the point of getting sick describes someone who is down and out and likely has a drinking problem. This was also unlikely to take the tune into Top 40 AM radio, no matter how appealing the vocals. In both the We Five and Crispian St. Peters covers of “You Were On My Mind”, references to getting drunk and sick were replaced with “I got troubles, I got worries…”

In the third verse, this character has a feeling “way down in my shoes,” that they have to “ramble… move on… (and) walk away my blues.” Despite the subject of the song having aches, pains, wounds to bind, troubles and worries, the song is sung in an upbeat major chord progression. The upbeat musical arrangement has the impact of lifting listeners spirits despite the lyrical portrayal of someone who has the blues.

“You Were On My Mind” peaked at #2 in the UK in January 1966. With its North American release in 1967, the song climbed to #2 in Fredericton (NB), #3 in Watertown (NY), #7 in Endicott (NY), #8 in Toledo (OH), #9 in Waycross (GA), and Salt Lake City, #10 in Pendleton (OR), and Evansville (IN), and #13 in Lowell (MA), and Akron (OH).

“You Were On My Mind” has also been recorded by Barry McGuire, a successful Italian-language version “Io Ho In Mente Te” by Paul Anka, the (Chad) Mitchell Trio, the Surfaris, the Staccatos, the Vogues, the Lettermen, Jay & the Americans, the Fleetwoods, the Mike Curb Congregation and others. A phrase from the song is found in the title of We Five co-founder Jerry Burgan’s Wounds to Bind: A Memoir of the Folk-Rock Revolution.

“You Were On My Mind” was an original track from Crispian St. Peters debut studio album, Follow Me, released in 1966.

In 1967, Crispian St. Peter had a minor hit with a cover of the David Houston 1966 country hit “Almost Persuaded”. In 1968, “Look into My Teardrops” struggled beneath the Billboard Hot 100 stalling at #133. That single appeared in Crispian St. Peters second studio album, Simply, in 1970.

Crispian St. Peters continued to perform in clubs, pubs and hotel lounges to the end of the 90s. In 1986, he released a cassette on Square Records titled The Gospel Tape. A second cassette, New Tracks on Old Lines was released in 1990. Crispian St. Peters third cassette, Night Sessions, Vol. 1 was released in 1993.

In 1995, at the age of 55, he suffered a stroke which, along with emphysema, severely limited his music career. He announced his retirement in 2001. After 2003, Crispian St. Peters was hospitalised several times with pneumonia. He died in 2010, after a long illness, at the age of 71.

May 17, 2025
Ray McGinnis

References:
Dave Laing, “Crispian St. Peters Obituary,” Guardian, June 14, 2010.
David Friend, “Ian Tyson and Sylvia Tyson to be inducted separately into Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame,” CBC, July 17, 2019.
Jerry Burgan, Wounds to Bind: A Memoir of the Folk-Rock Revolution, (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2015).
Paul Anka, “Io Ho In Mente Te,” Ricordi Records, 1966.
We Five, “You Were On My Mind“, Quality Records, 1965.

CFNB 550-AM Fredericton (NB) Top 15 | August 19, 1967