#12: Something To Sing About by the Raftsmen
City: Montreal, PQ
Radio Station: CJAD
Peak Month: December 1963
Peak Position in Montreal ~ #4
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #21
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Something To Sing About” (Travellers version)
Lyrics: “Something To Sing About”
The Raftsmen was formed by Louis Leroux, Martin Overland and Marvin Burke. Overland had been the lead singer, guitarist, and music arranger for the 1950s Montreal trio The Strangers, along with his sister Arlene on claves and drummer Leon Segal. They began getting regular gigs at folk clubs in Montreal and Toronto in the early ’60s. They sang for NASA astronauts in Cap Canaveral, Florida, the Chicago Playboy Club and the Famous Grill of the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City. They also began to tour in Canada and the USA with Ian & Sylvia, The Travellers’ and Joan Baez. On the Raftsmen III album in 1967 the bio for Louis Leroux states “One day while practicing to be Attorney-General, in the local phone booth, with his wire-tapping kit and armed with his genuine replica oof a C.I.A. badge (Canadian version), he decided to call his U.N.C.L.E. As fortunes of the Cold War would have it, his A.N.T. answered “Hello? Napoleon?” In a fit of frustration he screamed back T.H.R.U.S.H.” You guessed it – all screamers get hit records.” This flavor of folk humor from the Sixties may be lost on some readers today.