#817: Marcheta by Karl Denver

Peak Month: October 1961
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #5
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com link” “Marcheta”
Lyrics: “Marcheta”

Angus Murdo McKenzie was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in December 1931. He quit school at the age of fourteen. Soon he got work as a deckhand with the Scandinavian Mercantile Marine at the close of World War II. Next he went into the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and fought in the Korean War where he was wounded. Then he returned to the sea. In his 1999 obituary in The Independent, it is written, “He was such a tough, hard-living character that the Rhodesians gave him the nickname “Boaty Maseteno,” meaning “brother of Satan.” In 1953, Denver arrived in a port in America. He impressed people with his guitar playing, falsetto and yodeling abilities. He made friends with Faron Young and Lefty Frizzell. In 1956, going by the name, Karl Denver, he became the first British act to perform on the Grand Ole Opry. He would later tell the British press, “I had a son called Karl who was killed and I thought I would keep his name. For a time I lived in Fort Collins in Colorado and I thought Denver was a good place, so I became Karl Denver.”
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