#15: Love Is A Thing by Debbie Reynolds
City: Hull, QC
Radio Station: CKCH
Peak Month: July-August 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 A Thing”
Lyrics: N/A
Mary Frances Reynolds was born in 1932 in El Paso, Texas. He father was a carpenter. Her mother took in laundry for income, while they lived in a shack on Magnolia Street in El Paso. “We may have been poor,” she said in a 1963 interview, “but we always had something to eat, even if Dad had to go out in the desert and shoot jackrabbits.” When she was seven, her family moved to Burbank, California. Attending public school, Reynolds recalled later, “when I started, I didn’t even know how to dress. I wore dungarees and a shirt. I had no money, no taste, and no training.” In 1948, Reynolds was a 16-year-old student at Burbank High School, and she won the Miss Burbank beauty contest. Soon after, she was offered a contract with Warner Brothers and was given the stage name “Debbie” by studio head Jack L. Warner.
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#9: Dancin’ Shoes by Nigel Olsson
City: Fredericton, NB
Radio Station: CFNB
Peak Month: March 1979
Peak Position in Fredericton: #2
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #17
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #18
YouTube: “Dancin’ Shoes”
Lyrics: “Dancin’ Shoes”
Nigel Olsson was born in Cheshire, England, in 1949. He began his musical career playing the guitar in small bands, and took up the drums at a gig where the drummer did not show up at the last minute. His first appearance on a record album was in the band Plastic Penny, which released Two Sides of a Penny in 1968. Olsson was spotlighted on one song on that album, “I Want You,” performing both lead vocals and a drum solo. In 1969 he played drums on the flower power pop single “Mr. Boyd” by Argosy, a one-off group which also included Reginald Dwight (later known as Elton John), and future Supertramp band member Roger Hodgson. Olsson also had a brief stint with the English hard rock band Uriah Heep, playing drums on two songs on their 1970 debut album, Very ‘easy… Very ‘umble.
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#17: Baciare Baciare by Dorothy Collins
City: Hull, PQ
Radio Station: CKCH
Peak Month: February 1960
Peak Position in Hull ~ #1
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #41
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #43
YouTube: “Baciare Baciare”
Lyrics: “Baciare Baciare”
Dorothy Collins (birth name Marjorie Chandler) was born in 1926 in Windsor, Ontario. She adopted her stage name in her mid-teens. From late childhood, she sang on radio stations in Windsor and Detroit. In 1940, at age 14, she and her family were introduced to bandleader/composer Raymond Scott in Chicago. Shortly thereafter, she became Scott’s protégée. In early 1942, at age 15, she became a featured vocalist with Scott’s orchestra, performing on radio and on tour. Scott groomed her for stardom, which included coaching her vocals (pitch, phrasing, and delivery) and mentoring her performance skills. In the late 1940s, she contributed vocals to the revived Raymond Scott Quintette, a sextet that released records on the bandleader’s own Master label and served as house band on the radio program Herb Shriner Time.
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#19: Starlight Starbright by Jimmy Dean
City: Hull, QC
Radio Station: CKCH
Peak Month: April 1958
Peak Position in Hull ~ #1
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Starlight Starbright”
Lyrics: N/A
In 1928 Jimmy Ray Dean was born in Plainview, Texas. His mother taught him to play piano. He dropped out of high school to work to help his mother. Next he joined the U.S. Air Force. He later and a professional entertainer around the time Dean married his first wife Mary Sue (Sue) in 1950. He had his first Top Ten hit on the Billboard Country charts in 1952 called “Bumming Around.” In 1954, Jimmy Dean became the host of radio program Town and Country Time on WARL in Washington D.C. Dean and his Texas Wildcats grew in popularity across the Mid-Atlantic region. Among the singers who got their start on the show were Patsy Cline, Roy Clark and Billy Grammar. He gained more fame with several more radio shows in Maryland and Virgina. In 1957, Dean had a minor country hit titled “Little Sandy Sleightfoot”. That year Jimmy Dean released the album Jimmy Dean Sings His Television Favorites.
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#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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