#182: Paloma Blanca by the George Baker Selection
Peak Month: March 1976
14 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #26
YouTube: “Paloma Blanca”
Lyrics: “Paloma Blanca”
Hans Bouwens was born in December 1944 in Hoorn, North Holland, the Netherlands. He was born to a single mother. Months before Bouwens was born, his father, Peppino Caruso, a former Italian soldier from Calabria put to labor by the Germans in nearby Grosthuizen, had been killed while attempting to escape when he was to be transferred to Germany. Bouwens was raised by his mother and his grandparents. He sang and played guitar in a schoolband (The Jokers) with Bob Ketzers, but at the age of 14 he left school and took jobs unloading ships on the Zaan and eventually as a factory worker at a lemonade factory. In 1961, he took the stage name “Body” and formed the band Body and the Wild Cats, with Bob Ketzers and his brother Ruud as well as Gerrit Bruyn on bass, all from Wormerveer.
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#183: White Silver Sands by Owen Bradley Quintet
Peak Month: July 1957
14 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX chart
Peak Position ~ #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “White Silver Sands”
Lyrics: “White Silver Sands”
Owen Bradley was born in rural Sumner County, Tennessee, in 1915. He learned to play piano in his childhood, and started to play in local nightclubs and roadhouses while he was in his teens. In 1935, when he was 20 Bradley got a job at WSM-AM radio in Nashville, where he worked as an arranger and musician. He played piano, organ and trombone on WSM broadcasts. In 1942, Bradley was hired as the station’s musical director. As well, he was increasingly sought after as the leader of his dance band, performing for well-heeled society parties all over the “Music City.” It was also in 1942 that Owen Bradley co-wrote country singer Roy Acuff’s hit “Night Train to Memphis”, and “Deliver Me To Tennessee” for Woody Herman and His Orchestra.
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#184: Only The Good Die Young by Billy Joel
Peak Month: July 1978
14 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position ~ #4
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #24
YouTube: “Only The Good Die Young”
Lyrics: “Only The Good Die Young”
William Martin Joel was born in 1949 in The Bronx. His father, Helmut “Howard” Joel, was born in Nuremberg, Germany, and sold his textile business at a fraction of its value to be able to move to Switzerland. From there his father traveled to Cuba and was able to enter the United States from the Caribbean. Billy Joel’s mother, Rosalind Nyman, was born in Brooklyn, also to Jewish parents. Young William was coerced by his mother to take piano lessons at the age of four. He kept taking piano lessons until he was sixteen. His parents divorced when he was eight, and in his later years in high school Billy Joel played at a piano bar to make some extra income to support his single mother, his sister and himself. Though his parents were Jewish, Billy Joel did not identify as Jewish and began to attend a Roman Catholic parish at age eleven.
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#185: Indian Giver by Bobby Curtola
Peak Month: June-July 1963
12 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position ~ #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Indian Giver”
Bobby Curtola was born in Port Arthur, Ontario, in 1943. (The town would become amalgamated into the city of Thunder Bay in 1970). His cousin Susan Andrusco remembers “Bobby would always be singing at our family gatherings. The family loved him. And he loved being the centre of attention. He would sing Oh My Papa, and my grandpa would cry.” Oh My Papa was a number-one hit for Eddie Fisher in January 1954, when Bobby Curtola was still ten-years-old. In the fall of 1959, sixteen-year-old high school student Bobby Curtola went from pumping gas at his father’s garage in Thunder Bay, Ontario, to the life of a teen idol. Within a year he went from playing in his basement band, Bobby and the Bobcats, to recording his first hit single in 1960, “Hand In Hand With You”, which charted in June ’60 in Ontario, but not in Vancouver.
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#186: Stay With Me by Faces
Peak Month: January-February 1972
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position ~ #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #17
YouTube: “Stay With Me”
Lyrics: “Stay With Me”
In the summer of 1964 musician Steve Marriott met bass player Ronnie Lane and drummer Kenney Jones at a club when they were playing with their band, the Outcasts. They added Jimmy Winston on keyboards and began releasing singles, including “Sha-la-la-la-lee”, which went to #3 in the UK in 1966. The Small Faces were part of the British mod subculture, sharp-dressed and absorbed with looks and fashion. The word Faces was a nod to the new mod fashion, and Small was a reference to all of them being no taller than 5’6”.
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#187: Beyond The Clouds by the Poppy Family
Peak Month: November 1968
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
1 week Hit Bound
Peak Position ~ #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Beyond The Clouds”
Lyrics: “Beyond The Clouds”
Susan Pesklevits was born in 1948 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. When she was seven years old she was a featured singer on a local radio station. At the age of eight her family moved to the Fraser Valley town of Haney, British Columbia. When she was 13 years old she had her own radio show. In a December 1966 issue of the Caribou newspaper, the Quesnel Observer noted that Susan Pesklevits had auditioned for Music Hop in the summer of 1963 when she was only 15 years old. She had her first public performance at the Fall Fair in Haney when she was just 14 years old. It was noted she liked to ride horseback, ride motorcycles and attend the dramatic shows. Asked about what she could tell the folks in Quesnel about trends in Vancouver, Pesklevits had this to report, “the latest things in Vancouver are the hipster mini-skirts, bright colored suit slacks, and the tailored look. The newest sound is the “Acid Sound,” derived from L.S.D…. it is “pshodelic” which means it has a lot of fuzz tones and feed back. As an example, she gave “Frustration” recorded by the Painted Ship” a local band from Vancouver. Pesklevits added that on the West Coast “the latest dance is the Philly Dog. It mainly consists of two rows, one of girls and one of boys. The idea is to take steps, move in unison, while doing jerking motions and using a lot of hand movement.”
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#188: Refugee by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Peak Month: March 1980
12 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position ~ #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #15
YouTube: “Refugee”
Lyrics: “Refugee”
Thomas Earl Petty was born in 1950 in Gainesville, Florida. His father was a traveling salesman, and his mom worked at a tax office. While still ten years old, Tom Petty met Elvis Presley on the film set for Follow That Dream. But it was seeing the Beatles on TV in February 1964, that gave Tom Petty his inspiration. He recalls, “The minute I saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show—and it’s true of thousands of guys—there was the way out. There was the way to do it. You get your friends and you’re a self-contained unit. And you make the music. And it looked like so much fun. It was something I identified with. I had never been hugely into sports. … I had been a big fan of Elvis. But I really saw in the Beatles that here’s something I could do. I knew I could do it. It wasn’t long before there were groups springing up in garages all over the place.” He dropped out of high school at age 17 to play bass with his newly formed band.
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#189: No Regrets by Tom Cochrane
Peak Month: February 1992
18 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position ~ #5
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “No Regrets”
Lyrics: “No Regrets”
Tom Cochrane was born in Lynn Lake, Manitoba, in 1953. When he was eleven he got his first guitar. In his late teens and early twenties, he performed in coffee houses across Canada in the early 70’s. His debut album, Hang On To Your Resistance, was released in 1974. Then Tom Cochrane made his way to Los Angeles. In 1975, Cochrane got work composing theme music for the movie My Pleasure Is My Business. This was a film about Xavier Hollander, the call girl and adult film star who authored her own memoir, The Happy Hooker, in 1971. Unable to get subsequent work in Hollywood, Cochrane returned to Canada for drive a taxi and work on a cruise line. At a concert at the El Mocambo for Red Rider in 1978, Tom Cochrane met the band. Soon after Cochrane was invited to join Red Rider.
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#190: Lucky Devil/There’s A Little Song Singing In My Heart by Carl Dobkins Jr.
A-side: “Lucky Devil”
Peak Month: February 1960
11 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position ~ #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #25
YouTube: “Lucky Devil”
Lyrics: “Lucky Devil”
B-side: “(There’s A Little Song Singing) In My Heart”
Peak Month: February 1960
12 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX chart
Peak Position ~ #12
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #52
YouTube: “(There’s A Little Song A-Singing) In My Heart”
Carl Dobkins Jr. was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in January 1941. He was raised in a musical family. At the age of nine Carls’ mom and dad bought him a ukulele with a plastic Arthur Godfrey attachment that played chords by pushing buttons. He soon took off the attachment and learned over fifty hillbilly songs as a child. At the age of sixteen, young Carl made a demo of two songs he wrote with his backup group, The Seniors. In Cincinnati Gil Sheppard was a popular deejay. Friends in Carls’ neighborhood introduced him to Gil Sheppard. The deejay was taken with young Dobkins Jr. and his musical ability and the demo he had recorded. Sheppard offered to become his his manager. Carl Dobkins Jr. was promoted as “The Teenage Rage.” As a result of the buzz that happened as a result of his singing at dance parties and record hops, Carl was signed up with Fraternity Records in Cincinnati. His only release with Fraternity was his 1958 single “Take Hold of My Hand” b/w “That’s Why I’m Asking”.
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#191: Everybody Knows Matilda by Duke Baxter
Peak Month: September 1969
11 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
2 weeks Hit Bound
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #52
YouTube: “Everybody Knows Matilda”
Lyrics: “Everybody Knows Matilda”
Who was Duke Baxter? According to Rate Your Music, he was born in the UK, and moved to Canada in his early childhood. West Coast Fog writer, Erik Bluhm writes that Duke Baxter was a “Canadian, he was in L.A. by ’66 and working with the Rob Roys on their great “Do You Girl?” 45 for Accent… He’s also the guy behind a group called Revelation.” Bluhm contacted Duke Baxter (born James Blake), who remembers Revelation being a tight, inventive group. “We played some concerts at the Hollywood Palladium with the Seeds and the Grateful Dead; UC Irvine with Canned Heat and the Buffalo Springfield (January 26, 1967 at Campus Hall)… The band got signed with MGM Records and worked with the very successful TV theme producer Mike Post who was a protégé of Jimmy Bowen of the Dean Martin hit fame.”
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