#346: Ballad of Thunder Road by Robert Mitchum
Peak Month: August 1958 and January 1962
Peak CFUN position in Vancouver ~ #2 (1958)
Peak CFUN position in Vancouver ~ #4 (1962)
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #62
YouTube: “Ballad Of Thunder Road”
Lyrics: “Ballad of Thunder Road”
Robert Charles Durman Mitchum was born in Bridgeport (CT) in 1917. His father died in a railyard accident in 1919. At the age of 12, young Robert Mitchum began performing in a Vaudeville show that appeared along the East Coast. At the age of 14 he hopped freight trains and travelled across America. He dug ditches, fought as a boxer, and worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps. In 1933 he was arrested for vagrancy and worked on a chain gang. During WWII Mitchum worked as a machine operator for Lockheed Martin. In 1942-43, he appeared in a number of episodes in Hopalong Cassidy. This included the 1943 movie Hoppy Serves a Writ.
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#268: Bachelor Boy by Cliff Richard
Peak Month: April 1963
12 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #4
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #99
YouTube: “Bachelor Boy”
Lyrics: “Bachelor Boy”
Cliff Richard was born Harry Roger Webb on October 14, 1940, in the city of Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, India. In 1940 Lucknow was part of the British Raj, as India was not yet an independent country. Webb’s father worked on as a catering manager for the Indian Railways. His mother raised Harry and his three sisters. In 1948, when India had become independent, the Webb family took a boat to Essex, England, and began a new chapter. At the age of 16 Harry Webb was given a guitar by his father. Harry then formed a vocal group called the Quintones. Webb was interested in skiffle music, a type of jug band music, popularized by “The King of Skiffle,” Scottish singer Lonnie Donegan who had an international hit in 1955 called “Rock Island Line”.
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#301: If I Had $1000000 by the Barenaked Ladies
Peak Month: February 1993
15 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “If I Had $1000000”
Lyrics: “If I Had $10000000”
Lloyd Edward Elwyn “Ed” Robertson was born in Scarborough, Ontario, in 1970. He began to play guitar when he was in grade five. Steven Jay Page was also born in Scarborough in 1970. He took piano lessons for ten years and was a member of the Toronto Mendelssohn Youth Choir. Page and Robertson crossed paths in elementary school. But they didn’t become friends until 1988 when they found themselves co-counsellors at a summer Scarborough Schools Music Camp. Later that year there was a charity and Robertson asked Page to join him in a performance. The duo named themselves the Barenaked Ladies.
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#302: Story In Your Eyes by the Moody Blues
Peak Month: October 1971
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CKVN chart
Peak Position #1
1 week Preview
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #23
YouTube: “The Story In Your Eyes”
Lyrics: “The Story In Your Eyes”
Born in 1941 in wartime England, Ray Thomas picked up harmonica at the age of nine. He was in the Birmingham Youth Choir and in October 1958 he joined a skiffle group called The Saints and Sinners. The band split up in June 1959. The Saints and Sinners helped Ray discover how well his vocals were received by audiences. Next, he formed El Riot and the Rebels, featuring Ray Thomas as El Riot dressed in a green satin Mexican toreador outfit. The band won a number of competitions in the Birmingham area. It was here that Ray became known for making an entrance onstage by sliding to center stage on his knees. On one occasion Thomas sent a row of potted tulips flying into the audience. El Riot and the Rebels appeared several times on a local variety show called Lunchbox. They made their debut on Lunchbox on November 14, 1962, and played “Guitar Tango” and “I Remember You”. Mike Pinder joined El Riot and the Rebels on keyboards. On April 15, 1963, El Riot and the Rebels performed at The Riverside Dancing Club in Tenbury Wells as the opening act for The Beatles. Pinder went off to serve in the British Army. When he returned, Thomas and Pinder left El Riot and the Rebels and formed a new band called the Krew Kats.
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#303: Armageddon by Prism
Peak Month: September 1979
15 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #7
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Armageddon”
Lyrics: “Armageddon”
In 1967 a new rock group appeared on the Vancouver scene called the Seeds of Time. They had several local hits including “My Home Town” and “Crying The Blues”. There were a number of lineup changes, but the bands personnel included drummer Rocket Norton, guitarist Lindsay Mitchell, and bassist Al Harlow. These three reunited after the Seeds of Time disbanded in 1974. After a brief stint as an R&B band called Sunshyne, they became Prism under Lindsay Mitchell’s initiative. In the band were new singer Ron Tabak, bassist Tom Lavin, keyboard player John Hall and drummer Rodney Higgs. Higgs was actually a pseudonym for Jim Vallance, the future songwriting partner of Bryan Adams. The band released a self-titled album in 1977 that included two local singles “Take Me To The Kaptin” and “It’s Over”. Anther single, “Spaceship Superstar”, made the Top Ten in Ottawa, Hamilton and London (ON) in the winter of 1977-78.
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#304: Mr. Songwriter by Connie Stevens
Peak Month: August 1962
12 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #43
YouTube: “Mr. Songwriter”
Lyrics: “Mr. Songwriter”
Concetta Rosalie Ann Ingolia was born in 1938 in New York City. Her father, Teddy Stevens, was born Pietro Ingoglia. Teddy Stevens was a jazz musician in Manhattan, and adopted an anglicized name. In 1950, at the age of 12, she witnessed a murder in Manhattan. Her parents decided to send Concetta to rural Missouri to live with relatives. Three years later in 1953, she moved with her father to Los Angeles, after her parents got a divorce. She enrolled at the Sacred Heart Academy for Girls, and later transferred to the Hollywood Professional School when her talents as an actress looked promising. In the mid-50s Concetta Ingolia formed a vocal quartet called “The Foremost” where she was joined by three men: Tony Butala, Mike Barnett, Dick Stewart. (Butala and Barnett and went on to form the close-harmony group The Lettermen which Barnett left after 1958). Concetta’s first professional acting job was early in 1957 when she was featured in a TV commercial for a local Los Angeles bakery.
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#367: Hand Me Down World by the Guess Who
Peak Month: August 1970
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CKVN chart
1 week Preview
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #17
YouTube: “Hand Me Down World”
Lyrics: “Hand Me Down World”
Randolph Charles Bachman was born in 1943 in Winnipeg, Manitoba. When he was just three years old he entered the King of the Saddle singing contest on CKY radio, Manitoba’s first radio station that began in 1923. Bachman won the contest. When he turned five years he began to study the violin through the Royal Toronto Conservatory. Though he couldn’t read music, he was able to play anything once he heard it. He dropped out of high school and subsequently a business administration program in college. He co-founded a Winnipeg band called Al & The Silvertones with Chad Allan in 1960.
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#305: (Boogie Woogie) Dancin’ Shoes by Claudia Barry
Peak Month: December 1978
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
1 week Playlist
Peak Position #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #56
YouTube: “(Boogie Woogie) Dancin’ Shoes”
Lyrics: “(Boogie Woogie) Dancin’ Shoes”
Claudja Barry was born in Jamaica in 1952. At the age of six, Barry and her family emigrated from to Canada and settled in Scarborough, Ontario. From an early age she was inspired by the music of Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra and Nat “King” Cole. In her mid-teens she began to take vocal lessons and started dancing. In an interview on Extraordinary Women TV in 2013, Barry relates that after graduation from high school, she travelled to Europe to study classical voice. It was there that she got cast in the musical Hair. Subsequently, she was cast in in a production of Catch My Soul which toured Europe in 1974-75. The rock musical is an adaption of Shakespeare’s Othello. In the spring of ’75 she ended up in West Germany. That same year she signed with Hot Foot label and released a single called “Reggae Bump”. In 1976 she released her debut album Sweet Dynamite.
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#306: Jojo by Boz Scaggs
Peak Month: September 1980
13 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #17
YouTube: “Jojo”
Lyrics: “Jojo”
William Royce “Boz“ Scaggs was born in 1944 in Canton, Ohio, 60 miles south of Cleveland. His father was a traveling salesman, and the family moved to Oklahoma and next to Texas. While attending a private school in Dallas, Scaggs met Steve Miller while he was 12-years-old. Scaggs was learning to play guitar and was invited to join Miller’s band the Marksmen. In 1961-62 Boz Scaggs joined Steve Miller’s band the Ardells while the pair were studying university in Madison, Wisconsin. Scaggs followed Miller to Chicago in ’62-’63. Then he went to London and Sweden to perform as a solo artist in concert. While in Sweden, Boz Scaggs released his debut album, Boz, in 1965. The album only sold in Sweden and soon went out of print.
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#307: Flying Blue Angels by George, Johnny and the Pilots
Peak Month: November 1961
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #108
YouTube: “Flying Blue Angels”
George, Johnny and the Pilots recorded one side of a single 45 RPM record in 1961. Otherwise, there was no other record credited to them. It is plausible that “George” was George Paxton, the owner of Coed Records and one of the songwriters (going by the pseudonym George Eddy). I surmise that the “Johnny” providing backing vocals on the song could be Johnny Maestro. It was Maestro who recorded, as either a solo artist or a lead singer with the Crests, five of the 18 singles Coed Records released in 1961. Maestro was also a lead singer on the first two singles Coed Records released in January 1962.
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