#14: Need You by Donnie Owens
City: London, ON
Radio Station: CKSL
Peak Month: November 1958
Peak Position in London ~ #3
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #26
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #25
YouTube: “Need You”
Lyrics: “Need You”
Donald Lee Owens was born October 30, 1932, in Chester, Pennsylvania. Out of high school Owens went into the U.S. Air Force where he served as Airman First Class. He was a veteran of the Korean War. Taking the stage name, Donnie Owens, for five years Donnie Owens and the 4 Jacks played at a Harry’s Capri Lounge in Phoenix, Arizona. Owens recorded three 45’s on the Guyden Records label. Each featured Duane Eddy on guitar. Owens was a pop singer and guitarist. He played guitar for Duane Eddy’s backing band, the Rebels. In that capacity, Donnie Owens was one of the guitarists heard on “Because They’re Young” and other hits by Duane Eddy. Though he was American, Donnie Owens only had one hit record in the USA. On October 6, 1958 Owens made his Billboard Hot 100 debut with “Need You”.
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#9: Mean Mean Man by Wanda Jackson
City: London, ON
Radio Station: CKSL
Peak Month: October 1958
Peak Position in London ~ #3
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Mean Mean Man”
Lyrics: “Mean Mean Man”
Wanda Lavonne Jackson was born in 1937 in Maud, Oklahoma. According to Wolf Kurt in his essay, “You Can’t Catch Me: Rockabilly Bursts Through The Door,” Jackson’s dad was a musician. In search of a better life, he relocated the family to Bakersfield, California, in the 1940’s. While in Bakersfield, her dad purchased Wanda a guitar and taught her to play. Tom Jackson also took his daughter to live concerts by Spade Cooley, Tex Williams and Bob Wills, which opened her eyes and ears to the exciting world of country and western music. It was when she was eleven years old that her family returned to Oklahoma in the fall of 1948. In 1954, while she was still sixteen years old, Wanda Jackson started to sing professionally in Oklahoma City. While in high school, Jackson had been discovered by country music recording artist, Hank Thompson, who heard Wanda singing KLPR-AM in Oklahoma City. Thompson asked Wanda to sing with his band, the Brazos Valley Boys. This led to her recording several songs with Capitol Records. Among those was a duet with the Brazos Valley Boys bandleader, Billy Gray titled “You Can’t Have My Love”. The song climbed to #8 on the Billboard country chart.
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#50: When The White Lilacs Bloom Again by Lawrence Welk
City: Edmonton, AB
Radio Station: CFRN
Peak Month: October 1956
Peak Position in Edmonton: #7
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #70
YouTube: “When The White Lilacs Bloom Again”
Lawrence Welk was born in 1903 in the hamlet of Strasburg, North Dakota. His German-speaking parents emigrated to American from Odessa, Russian Empire (now Ukraine). The Welk family lived in a homestead in Strasburg that is now a tourist attraction. When he was nine years old, Lawrence Welk left public school to work full-time on the family farm. Welk decided on a career in music and persuaded his father to buy a mail-order accordion for $400 (equivalent to $5,843 in 2023). He promised his father that he would work on the farm until he was 21, in repayment for the accordion. He was good on his word and after reaching age 21, he set his sights on a music career.
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#10: Tom Sawyer by Rush
City: London, ON
Radio Station: CJBK
Peak Month: June 1981
Peak Position in London ~ #3
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #44
YouTube: “Tom Sawyer”
Lyrics: “Tom Sawyer”
Rush is a Canadian rock band formed in Toronto in 1968. The classic lineup was comprised of Geddy Lee (vocals, bass guitar, keyboards), Alex Lifeson (guitar) and Neil Peart (drums, percussion). After Lee joined, the band went through a few line-up changes before arriving at its classic power trio line-up with the addition of drummer Neil Peart in July 1974.
Aleksandar Živojinović was born in Fernie, British Columbia, in 1953. His parents were Serbian immigrants from Yugoslavia. His stage surname, Lifeson, is a rough translation of the Serbian to English (which can literally be translated ‘son of life”). Lifeson was in a band in 1968 named The Projection. Geddy Lee joined the band. Geddy Lee Weinrib was born in North York, Ontario, in 1953. His parents were Jewish Holocaust survivors from Poland.
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#7: Love Is All We Need by Tommy Edwards
City: London, ON
Radio Station: CKSL
Peak Month: November 1958
Peak Position in London ~ #3
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #14
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #15
YouTube: “Love Is All We Need”
Lyrics: “Love Is All We Need”
Tommy Edwards was born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1922. In 1939, when he turned 17 years of age, The Tommy Edwards Show began a one-year run on WRNL 910-AM in Richmond, Virginia. Edwards sang popular songs, played piano and was often joined by his talented siblings: Nathan on trumpet and Harriet on vocals. In 1943, at age 21, Tommy Edwards moved to New York. He was a regular at Small’s Paradise, an integrated nightclub in Harlem. He made connections and sometimes performed with the bands at the club. In addition, he write and recorded demos of his songs to try to stir up the interest of music publishers. He wrote “That Chick’s Too Young to Fry“, which became a hit record for Louis Jordan in 1946.
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#12: Ten Commandments Of Love by Harvey and the Moonglows
City: London, ON
Radio Station: CKSL
Peak Month: October 1958
Peak Position in London ~ #3
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #40
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #22
YouTube: “Ten Commandments Of Love”
Lyrics: “Ten Commandments Of Love”
Harvey and The Moonglows were a doo-wop group from Louisville (KY). In 1951, with Bobby Lester (born in 1930 in Louisville, Kentucky), Alexander “Pete” Graves (born in Alabama in 1936), and Prentiss Barnes (born in 1925 in Magnolia, Mississippi), Harvey Fuqua (born in 1927 in Louisville, Kentucky), formed a vocal group, the Crazy Sounds, in Louisville. They added Billy Johnson. The group next moved to Cleveland, Ohio. There they were taken under the wing of disc jockey Alan Freed, who renamed them the Moonglows, after his own nickname, “Moondog”. The Moonglows’ first releases were for Freed’s Champagne label in 1952, beginning with “I’ve Been Your Dog (Ever Since I’ve Been Your Man)”. They recorded for the Chance label in Chicago, and released “Hey Santa Claus”, co-written by Fuqua and Alan Freed. The single “219 Train” was a solid R&B rocker. Another Chance label release was a cover of the Doris Day chart-topper “Secret Love”.
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#49: A Nice Young Girl From Houston by Stu Mitchell
City: Edmonton, AB
Radio Station: CHED
Peak Month: December 1970
Peak Position in Edmonton ~ #8
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “A Nice Girl From Houston”
Neville Stuart Mitchell was born in Saskatchewan in 1942. In his teens he played for a Saskatchewan band called the T-Birds. He learned how to play the drums and moved to Edmonton. It was there Mitchell joined Wes Dakus’ Rebels in 1960. With Wes Dakus, Mitchell was in the recording studio for “Cavalier Twist” in 1962, “Dog Food” in 1963,”Sour Biscuits” in 1964, and “Manipulator” in 1967, among others. In 1965, Stu Mitchell and Doug Roberts released “Wildcat”, which was a non-charting Capitol Records single. In 1966, Mitchell released a solo cover of the mid-50s R&B tune “Bo Diddley”. In 1966, Stu Mitchell and Doug Roberts recorded a duet titled “Say I Am” which charted in Edmonton. In 1967, Mitchell was in the recording studio while Wes Dakus and his band backed Barry Allen for his local Top Ten hit “Armful of Teddy Bears”.
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#13: Adam And Eve by Paul Anka
City: London, ON
Radio Station: CKSL
Peak Month: March 1960
Peak Position in London ~ #5
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #46
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #90
YouTube: “Adam And Eve”
Lyrics: “Adam And Eve”
Paul Anka was born in Ottawa, Canada, in 1941. His father was Syrian-American and his mother was Canadian-Lebanese. While growing up in Ottawa he was part of a vocal trio at Fisher Park High School called the Bobby Soxers. In the fall of 1956, Anka signed with the RPM label and released his first single, “Blau-Wile-Deveest-Fontaine”. It made the Top Ten in Smith Falls (ON). He had a #1 hit in 1957 titled “Diana”, and performed in concert at the Georgia Auditorium in Vancouver on October 23, 1957. Others on stage were Buddy Holly and The Crickets, Buddy Knox, Eddie Cochran, and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers.
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#27: I Want To Be Happy Cha Cha by Enoch Light and the Light Brigade
City: London, ON
Radio Station: CKSL
Peak Month: November 1958
Peak Position in London ~ #8
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #30
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #48
YouTube: “I Want To Be Happy Cha Cha”
Enoch Light was born in Canton, Ohio, in 1907. He was a leader of various dance bands, forming his first at Johns Hopkins University while he was a student. Light’s first dance band recorded as early as March 1927 and continuing through at least 1940. Light and his band primarily worked in various hotels in New York. For a time in 1928, Enoch Light also led a band in Paris, France. He also studied classical conducting at the Opéra-Comique (founded in 1714). In the 1930s, Light also studied conducting with the French conductor Maurice Frigara in Paris. Throughout the 1930s, Light and his outfits were steadily employed in the generally more upscale hotel restaurants and ballrooms in New York that catered to providing polite ambiance for dining and functional dance music of current popular songs rather than out-and-out jazz.Continue reading →
#15: The Dawn Of Correction by the Spokesmen
City: London, ON
Radio Station: CFPL
Peak Month: October 1965
Peak Position in London ~ #4
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #43
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #36
YouTube: “The Dawn Of Correction”
Lyrics: “The Dawn Of Correction”
The Spokesmen were a folk trio consisting of David White, John Madara and Ray Gilmore. David White Tricker was born in Philadelphia in 1939. In 1955 he joined a doo-wop group named The Juvenaires. In 1957, White, John Madara and fellow bandmate Artie Singer cowrote a song called “Do The Bop”. When they introduced the song to Dick Clark, he suggested they change the title to “At The Hop”. The group changed the lyrics a bit and also changed their name to Danny & The Juniors. “At The Hop” a number-one hit for the first seven weeks of 1958. It later was featured in the 1973 film American Graffitti. A followup Top 20 hit for the group was “Rock and Roll is Here to Stay”, cowritten by David White. With Danny & the Juniors, White appeared in Patti Page’s TV show The Big Record, Merv Griffin’s Saturday Night Prom, The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom, and Dick Clark’s Saturday Night Beechnut Show.
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