#411: Sausalito Summernight by Diesel
Peak Month: October 1981
11 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #4
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #25
YouTube: “Sausalito Summernight”
Lyrics: “Sausalito Summernight”
Wilhelmus Frederikus “Pim” Koopman was born in the North Holland town of Hilversum in 1953. In 1972 he co-founded a progressive rock band called Kayak. They had a number of Top 30 hits in the Netherlands, with “Ruthless Queen” peaking in the nation at #6 in 1979. Koopman left Kayak in 1976 due to health problems and interpersonal conflicts with the band’s manager. Next, Koopman began to focus on being a producer of other recording acts records. These included the Dutch singing duo Maywood (comprised of sisters Aaltje (“Alie”) and Doetje (“Edith”) de Vries; pop singer José Hoebee; multi-instrumentalist Valensia; and Dutch classical-pop crossover singer Petra Berger. In 1978 Pim Koopman founded Nederpop band Diesel.
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#412: Hot Love by T. Rex
Peak Month: May 1971
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CKVN chart
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #72
YouTube: “Hot Love”
Lyrics: “Hot Love”
Marc Bolan was born Mark Feld in 1947 – in Stoke Newington, a town in the borough of Hackney, in northeast London. His father, Simeon Feld, was an Ashkenazi Jew whose roots went back to Russia and Poland. His mom’s heritage was English. In September 1956, when he turned nine, Mark Feld was given a guitar and started a skiffle band. By around November of 1958 Feld played guitar in a trio called “Susie and the Hula Hoops”, inspired by a fad that began in July ’58 when 100 million plastic hoops were sold worldwide by mid-December ’58. Their singer was a 12-year-old girl named Helen Shapiro, who at the age of 14 had her first Top Ten hit in the UK in February 1961 with “Don’t Treat Me Like A Child” – followed by others including “Walking Back To Happiness” and “Tell Him What He Said“. In 1962 Mark Feld was interviewed by Town magazine and featured in a number of photos – along with several of his friends – about the new mod scene.
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#413: Lovey Dovey by Buddy Knox
Peak Month: December 1960
6 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX chart
Peak Position #4
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #25
YouTube: “Lovey Dovey”
Lyrics: “Lovey Dovey”
Buddy Wayne Knox was born in 1933, in Happy, Texas, a small farm town in the Texas Panhandle a half hour south of Amarillo. During his youth he learned to play the guitar. He was the first artist of the rock era to write and perform his own number one hit song, “Party Doll“. The song earned Knox a gold record in 1957 and was certified a million seller. Knox was one of the innovators of the southwestern style of rockabilly that became known as “Tex-Mex” music.
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#414: She’s A Star (In Her Own Right) by Nick Gilder
Peak Month: October 1976
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #4
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “She’s A Star”
In 1951 Nick Gilder was born in London, England. In his childhood he moved to Canada and grew up in Vancouver. In the summer of 1973, when he was 22 years old, vocalist Gilder and fellow former high school classmate and guitarist, Jim McCulloch, founded a band called Rasputin. John Booth on drums, Bud Marr on bass and Dan Gaudin on keyboards rounded our the band. Shortly afterward they took the name Sweeney Todd. Their name was inspired by the 1846-47 Victorian penny dreadful The String of Pearls: A Domestic Romance credited to James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest. The main antagonist of the story is Sweeney Todd, “the Demon Barber of Fleet Street”. Todd is a barber who murders his customers and turns their bodies over to Mrs. Lovett, his partner in crime, who bakes their flesh into meat pies and sells them at her pie shop. A Sweeney Todd stage play by Stephen Sondheim appeared on Broadway in 1979.
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#415: No Milk Today by Herman’s Hermits
Peak Month: April 1967
6 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #35
YouTube.com: “No Milk Today”
Lyrics: “No Milk Today”
Peter Blair Denis Bernard Noone was born in a suburb of Manchester, England, in 1947. Keith Hopwood was born in 1946, in the same suburb of Davyhulme. Karl Anthony Green was born in 1947, also in Davyhulme. Derek “Lek” Leckenby was born in Leeds in 1943. Jan Barry Whitwam was born in 1946 in Manchester. Both Leckenby and Whitwam were members of a band called the Wailers who played covers by Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and other early rock recording artists. Peter Noone originally was in an amateur band called the Cyclones. He moved on to the Heartbeats in 1961, a Buddy Holly cover band. Just after he turned 14, Noone debuted on Coronation Street, playing the role of Stanley Fairclough starting in December 1961. In the fall of 1962 Herman’s Hermits was formed. Peter Noone was the lead vocalist. Karl Green played bass guitar. Keith Hopwood played rhythm guitar. “Lek” Leckenby played lead guitar and Barry Whitwam played drums.
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#416: China Doll by Bobby Swanson
Peak Month: November 1960
11 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “China Doll”
Bobby Swanson was born in Denver, Colorado, in January, 1943. He attended South High School. When he was just 15, in the summer of 1958, Bobby Swanson traveled with his parents to Memphis. The Swansons went to Sun Records and Bobby auditioned for Sam Philips. Bobby remembers “I kept thinking this is the same microphone that Elvis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash recorded into!” Philips told Bobby to come back to Memphis when he was 18-years-old. Subsequently, Bobby’s dad was doing a job as an electrician at the home of Officer Carol MacTavish. The officer told Bobby’s father that she’d written a song titled “Rockin’ Little Eskimo”, and was trying to get it recorded by someone. Bobby’s father suggested his son. Subsequently, Bobby Swanson recorded a demo backed with a song he wrote titled “Ballad Of Angel”. It was sent to Igloo Records in Anchorage, Alaska.
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#417: Jenny Let Him Go by Antoinette
Peak Month: April 1964
9 weeks on CFUN’s Vancouver Chart
Peak Position ~ #4
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Jenny Let Him Go”
Marie Antoinette Daly was born in Southend, Essex, UK in 1951. She landed her first recording contract, with the Decca label, in 1964, at the age of just 13. Her debut single, “Jenny Let Him Go”, was produced by Charles Blackwell, who worked with a number of gems for girl singers of the period, including French yé-yé singer Françoise Hardy and Britain’s Samantha Jones. “Jenny Let Him Go” sounded like a cover of an American song – albeit with a distinctly British tang – and suited Antoinette’s bratty vocals perfectly.
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#418: The Flower Children by Marcia Strassman
Peak Month: July 1967
9 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Chart
Peak Position ~ #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #103
YouTube: “The Flower Children”
Lyrics: “The Flower Children”
Marcia Ann Strassman was born in New York City in 1948. She replaced Liza Minelli in the Off-Broadway musical reprise of Best Foot Forward in 1963, after Minelli left to rehearse for Carnival! In their September 11, 1963, issue Variety described Strassman as “a winning comedienne.” At the age of 15, Strassman appeared in three episodes of The Patty Duke Show in 1964 in the role of Adeline. In the summer of ’64, Strassman worked with Shelley Winters and Robert Walker in a Westport (CT) production of Days of the Dancing, described by Variety as a story of “beatniks wasting their lives in at a beach bar in Venice, Cal.” When she turned 18 in 1966, Marcia Strassman moved to Los Angeles in search of new opportunities. One of the first things she did was get a recording contract with Uni Records.
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#419: You Won’t Dance With Me by April Wine
Peak Month: May 1977
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “You Won’t Dance With Me”
Lyrics: “You Won’t Dance With Me”
April Wine is a Canadian rock band that has released 34 singles, 16 studio albums and 9 live albums. They formed in Waverly, Nova Scotia, in 1969. The founding members were brothers David Henman (guitar) and Ritchie Henman (drums) and Myles Goodwyn (lead vocals, guitar). The Henman brothers cousin Jim Henman was also part of the band, but was replaced by bass player Jim Clench in 1971, a year after the band moved to Montreal and released their self-titled debut album. With the release of their second album, On Record, the band had a Top Ten hit nationally in Canada in 1972 with “You Could Have Been A Lady”.
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#420: The Cheater by Bob Kuban & the In-Men
Peak Month: February 1966
9 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Chart
Peak Position ~ #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #12
YouTube: “The Cheater”
Lyrics: “The Cheater”
Robert “Bob” Kuban was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1940. In 1963 he graduated from the St. Louis Institute of Music and became a music teacher at Bishop DuBourg High School. Kuban was also in a local brass band By 1964 Kuban was also interested in forming a pop group and found organist and songwriter Greg Hoeltzel, who agreed to join his band. Hoetzel was a pre-med student at Washington University in St. Louis. Next, Kuban searched for a lead singer and frontman for the group. One night he heard a singer named Walter Scott, who was part of a lounge act named The Pacemakers. Scott was born Walter Simon Nothius Jr. and grew up in St. Louis. He worked a day job as a crane operator. Immediately, Kuban offered Scott the position as lead singer for Kuban’s band. The name of the band was the Rhythm Masters. Other bandmates were bass guitarist and songwriter John Mike Krenski (born in St. Louis in 1944), tenor saxophone and trumpet player Patrick Hixon, a vocalist from the Carolinas. Krenski was doing a Masters Degree in Math at St. Louis University, and a Bachelor’s in aeronautical engineering. Other members, Harry Simon and Skip Weisser, were students at the St. Louis Institute of Music. The eighth member of the band was lead guitarist Ken Smith.
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