#20: Love Is Like Champagne by Jane Morgan
City: Hull, QC
Radio Station: CKCH
Peak Month: June 1959
Peak Position in Hull ~ #2
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Love Is Like Champagne”
Lyrics: “Love Is Like Champagne”
Florence Catherine Currier was born in 1924 in the suburbs of Boston. Her family moved to Florida when she was four-years-old. When she was five, Florence started taking voice lessons as well as piano. In the summertime, she was a child actor in theater productions at the Kennebunkport Playhouse in Kennebunkport, Maine. The Playhouse was founded by her brother. At the age of 17, in the summer of 1941, she was listed as the Treasurer of the Kennebunkport Playhouse. During her years at school, she competed in singing competitions with other students across Florida and the Southeast. Upon graduating from high school in Daytona Beach, she was accepted into the Juilliard School of Music in Manhattan. She had plans to become an opera singer, and studied opera at the school.
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#6: Bowling Green by the Everly Brothers
City: Fredericton, NB
Radio Station: CFNB
Peak Month: July 1967
Peak Position in Fredericton: #1
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #35
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #40
YouTube: “Bowling Green”
Lyrics: “Bowling Green”
Isaac Donald “Don” Everly was born in 1937 and Phillip Jason “Phil” Everly was born in 1939. Don was born in Muhlenberg County in Kentucky, and Phil was born in Chicago. Their dad, Ike, had been a coal miner who decided to pursue music as a guitar player. From the mid-40s Ike and his wife, Margaret, sang as a duo in Shanendoah, Iowa. Later they included their sons “Little Donnie and Baby Boy Phil,” on local radio stations KMA and KFNF. In time they were billed as The Everly Family. In 1953, the family moved to Knoxville, Tennessee. Family friend and musician Chet Atkins got a record deal for the Everly Brothers with RCA Victor in 1956. However, their first single release was a commercial failure and they were dropped from the label. Next, Atkins got them connected with Archie Bleyer, and the boys were signed to Cadence Records. In 1957, their first single on the label, “Bye Bye Love“, became a million-seller and launched their career.
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#21: Love Me In The Daytime by Doris Day
City: Hull, PQ
Radio Station: CKCH
Peak Month: May 1959
Peak Position in Hull ~ #1
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #41
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #100
YouTube: “Love Me In The Daytime”
Lyrics: “Love Me In The Daytime”
Doris Mary Anne Kappelhoff was born in 1922 in Cincinnati, Ohio. For most of her life, Day stated that she was born in 1924, but on the occasion of her 95th birthday, the Associated Press found her birth certificate that showed a 1922 date of birth. She was part of a dance duo into the mid-30s, but an October 1937 car accident with a freight train resulted in her having a broken leg. As she recovered, she found herself singing along with variety songs on the radio. She took singing lessons. During the eight months when she was receiving singing lessons, Day secured her first professional jobs as a vocalist on the WLW-Cincinnati radio program Carlin’s Carnival and in a local restaurant, Charlie Yee’s Shanghai Inn. During her radio performances, she first caught the attention of Barney Rapp who was seeking a female vocalist and asked her to audition for the job. According to Rapp, he had auditioned about 200 other singers.
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#22: Belonging To Someone by Patti Page
City: Hull, QC
Radio Station: CKCH
Peak Month: March 1958
Peak Position in Hull ~ #1
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #25
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #13
YouTube: “Belonging To Someone”
Lyrics: “Belonging To Someone”
Patti Page was born on November 8, 1927. The New York Times writes “She was born Clara Ann Fowler in Claremore, Oklahoma, the second youngest of 11 children of a railroad laborer. Her mother and older sisters picked cotton. She often went without shoes. Because the family saved money on electricity, the only radio shows Miss Page heard as a child were Grand Old Opry, The Eddie Cantor Show and Chicago Barn Dance.”
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#23: Time And The River by Nat “King” Cole
City: Hull, QC
Radio Station: CKCH
Peak Month: February 1960
Peak Position in Hull ~ #5
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #44
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #30
YouTube: “Time And The River”
Lyrics: “Time And The River”
Nathaniel Adams Coles was born in 1919 in Montgomery, Alabama. His family headed by his Baptist minister father, moved to Chicago in 1923. Cole learned to play the organ from his mother, Perlina Coles, the church organist. Coles first performance was the Billy Jones chart-topping 1923 hit, “Yes! We Have No Bananas”, at the age of four. Cole began formal piano lessons at 12, learning jazz, gospel, and classical music. As a youth, Cole joined the news delivery boys’ “Bud Billiken Club” band for an African-American newspaper called The Chicago Defender. At the age of 15, Nat Cole left school to follow a path in music. In 1936, with his bassist brother Eddie, Nat Cole became part of a sextet named Eddie Cole’s Swingsters. Cole was married in 1937 and moved to Los Angeles. He formed a band called the King Cole Swingsters. They were named after the British nursery rhyme Old King Cole (was a merry old soul…). ” The name next was changed to the King Cole Trio in anticipation of making radio transcriptions, and recording for small record labels.
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#43: Doin’ The Shotfish by Al Casey
City: Edmonton, AB
Radio Station: CJCA
Peak Month: October 1962
Peak Position in Edmonton: #5
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Doin’ The Shotfish”
Alvin Wayne Casey was born in Long Beach, California, and moved to Phoenix, Arizona, when he was two years old. His father played the guitar and tried to teach six-year-old Casey to play. But when his father realized young Alvins fingers were too small, he gave him a ukulele instead. At the age of eight, Al Casey switched to the steel guitar and began taking formal music lessons. By the time he was 14, he was playing the steel guitar for various clubs in Phoenix. In his later teens he performed five to six nights a week. When Al Casey was 20 he became serious about playing a traditional guitar.
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#12: Happy Anniversary by the Four Lads
City: Hull, PQ
Radio Station: CKCH
Peak Month: January 1960
Peak Position in Hull ~ #1
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #36
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #77
YouTube: “Happy Anniversary”
Lyrics: “Happy Anniversary”
The Four Lads are a Canadian male quartet from Toronto, Ontario. They were originally made up of Corrado “Connie” Codarini, James F. “Jimmy” Arnold, John Bernard “Bernie” Toorish and Frank Busseri. They met as members of St. Michael’s Choir School. Originally, they named themselves the Otnorots (made up mostly of spelling the place name Toronto backwards. They changed their name to the Four Dukes. But after they found out a group in Detroit had the same name, then they settled on the Four Lads. They got a break when Mitch Miller noticed them when they were recruited by talent scouts to go to New York. Mitchell had them sing back-up on Johnny Ray’s 1951 smash hit, “Cry”, and his big follow up, “The Little White Cloud that Cried”.
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#24: Talk To Me by Frank Sinatra
City: Hull, QC
Radio Station: CKCH
Peak Month: February 1960
Peak Position in Hull ~ #2
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #32
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #38
YouTube: “Talk To Me”
Lyrics: “Talk To Me”
Francis Albert Sinatra was born in 1915 in Hoboken, NJ. Sinatra spent much time at his parents’ tavern in Hoboken, working on his homework and occasionally singing for spare change. After leaving school before graduating, Sinatra began performing in local Hoboken social clubs and sang for free on radio stations such as WAAT in Jersey City. In New York, Sinatra found jobs singing for his supper or for cigarettes. He got his first break in 1935 when his mother persuaded a local singing group called the 3 Flashes to let him join. Baritone Fred Tamburro stated that “Frank hung around us like we were gods or something”, admitting that they only took him on board because he owned a car and could chauffeur the group around. Sinatra soon learned they were auditioning for the Major Bowes Amateur Hour show, and “begged” the group to let him in on the act. With Sinatra, the group became known as the Hoboken Four, and passed an audition from Edward Bowes to appear on the show. They each earned $12.50, and ended up attracting 40,000 votes to win first prize—a six-month contract to perform on stage and radio across the U.S. Sinatra quickly became the group’s lead singer, and, much to the jealousy of his fellow group members, garnered most of the attention from girls.
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#25: I’m Sorry I Made You Cry by Connie Francis
City: Hull, PQ
Radio Station: CKCH
Peak Month: July 1958
Peak Position in Hull ~ #2
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #29
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #36
YouTube: “I’m Sorry I Made You Cry”
Lyrics: “I’m Sorry I Made You Cry”
Concetta Rosa Maria Franconero was born on December 12, 1938. Francis was born in the Italian Down Neck neighborhood of Newark, New Jersey. She spent her firsts years as an infant and toddler in Brooklyn before the family moved back to New Jersey during her childhood. From the age of three, George Franconero recognized his daughter’s promising talent and insisted she start taking accordion lessons. However, her musical ingenuity wasn’t advanced by playing the accordion. An impoverished roofer, her father convinced Concetta to appear on stage at the age of four at the Olympic Amusement Park in Irvington, New Jersey. She played her accordion and then sang Anchors Aweigh in English and O Solo Mio in Italian. When she was ten years old she won third place The Ted Mack Amateur Hour radio for singing St. Louis Blues at the Mosque Theatre in Newark. Growing up in an Italian-Jewish neighborhood, Francis became fluent in Yiddish, which would lead her to later record songs in Yiddish and Hebrew.
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#42: Pink Canary by the Club 93 Rebels
City: Edmonton, AB
Radio Station: CJCA
Peak Month: March 1960
Peak Position in Edmonton: #9
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #30
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Pink Canary”
In 1938, Wes Dakus was born in Mannville, Alberta. He moved to Edmonton and formed The Rebels in 1958. The Rebels quickly became one of the most popular predominantly instrumental groups on the prairies. They performed in rural hotels and seniors drop-in centres. Initially the band was known as the CJCA Rebels. It was Edmonton radio station that promoted them. CJCA gave The Rebels air-time on its local talent features and helped them with the bookings. The Rebels became one of the regular bands at The Commercial and The Rainbow Ballroom in Edmonton. By the time Dakus caught the attention of Quality Records’ VP Lloyd Dunn, he and The Rebels had gotten to know Alberta’s roads like the backs of their hands. By this time The Rebels were making tours across western Canada. The band travelled to Clovis, New Mexico where they recorded with Buddy Holly’s producer Norman Petty. He ultimately became their manager, and two singles were released under the name of The Club 93 Rebels, a nod to their radio station sponsor CJCA 930-AM.
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