#442: Three Wheels On My Wagon by Dick Van Dyke
Peak Month: February 1961
7 weeks on CKWX’s Vancouver Chart
Peak Position ~ #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Three Wheels On My Wagon”
Lyrics: “Three Wheels On My Wagon”
Richard Wayne Van Dyke was born in 1925 in West Plains, Missouri, in south-central Missouri. His family moved to Danville, Illinois, and after high school Dick Van Dyke joined the United States Air Force in 1944. He was eventually assigned to be a radio announcer and entertained the troops, given he was “underweight.” After World War II Dick Van Dyke became a radio DJ in Danville. In 1947 he became part of a pantomime duo called The Merry Mutes. They toured Washington, Oregon and California and eventually brought the act to Atlanta.
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#448: I Thank You by ZZ Top
Peak Month: March 1980
12 weeks on CFUN’s Vancouver Chart
Peak Position ~ #6
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #34
YouTube: “I Thank You”
Lyrics: “I Thank You”
ZZ Top was formed in 1969 in Houston, Texas. The band has had three members since it began. Guitar player, Billy Gibbons, is the lead vocalist for the trio. Dusty Hill also shared lead vocals and plays bass guitar. The bands’ drummer is Frank Beard. Gibbons and Hill wear beards, however Frank Beard is clean-shaven. The band has sold over 25 million records of their blues-rock infused recordings. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004. They credit the rock group Cream as one of their major influences. William Frederick Gibbons was born in Houston (TX) in December 1949. He saw Elvis Presley in concert when he was just five years old in 1955, when Elvis was with Sun Records. In 1957 Billy Gibbons was taken to a recording studio to hear BB King. Gibbons learned to play percussion and got his first electric guitar in 1963 while he was still 13-years-old. He was in a number of bands while in art college in Hollywood. Back in Houston, Gibbons founded a psychedelic band named The Moving Sidewalks, who opened a concert for the Jimi Hendrix Experience and also The Doors.
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#447: Time Out Of Mind by Steely Dan
Peak Month: June 1981
9 weeks on CFUN’s Vancouver Chart
Peak Position ~ #4
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #22
YouTube: “Time Out Of My Mind”
Lyrics: “Time Out Of My Mind”
Donald Jay Fagen was born into a Jewish household in Passaic, New Jersey, in 1948. The first record he bought was “Reelin’ and Rockin'” by Chuck Berry in 1958. In 1959, when he was eleven years old, a cousin of Donald Fagen suggested he explore jazz music. So he attended the Newport Jazz Festival. Fagen recalled later “I lost interest in rock ‘n’ roll and started developing an anti-social personality.” By 1960, after he’d turned twelve, Fagen began frequenting the Village Vanguard jazz club. He was able to see Charles Mingus, Thelonius Monk, and Miles Davis. He learned to play the piano, and he played baritone horn in the high school marching band. Fagen also drew inspiration from the Boswell Sisters, Henry Mancini, Ray Charles, Sly and the Family Stone and a variety of Motown recording acts.
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#465: Don’t Take Away My Heaven by Aaron Neville
Peak Month: June 1993
13 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Chart
Peak Position ~ #6
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #56
YouTube: “Don’t Take Away My Heaven”
Lyrics: “Don’t Take Away My Heaven”
Aaron Joseph Neville was born in New Orleans in 1941. When he was fifteen he made his first visit to a recording studio and was a backing vocalist. When he was sixteen he went to a tattoo parlor and got a facial tattoo of a cross. At seventeen, his dream to be a singer was derailed when he was arrested for joy-riding. He also was doing drugs and drinking heavily. When he was nineteen in 1960, Aaron Neville recorded “Over You”, a song penned by Alan Toussaint. The single made the Top 50 on the CFUN chart in Vancouver (BC), but stalled at #111 below the Billboard Hot 100 in the USA. This was the first of five singles on the Minit record label between 1960 and 1962. Neville returned to the Top 40 on CFUN in early 1962 with “How Many Times”, putting his quivering vibrato on display. His career continued under the radar for the next four years until he had a huge Top Ten hit in the winter of 1966-67. In January 1967 Aaron Neville reached number-one on the CKLG Boss 4o with “Tell It Like It Is” in its third week on the chart. The single also topped the charts in Chatham (ON) and Montreal, #2 in Windsor (ON) and Belleville (ON), #4 in Hamilton (ON) and #5 in Regina (SK).
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#456: Letting Go by Straight Lines
Peak Month: January 1982
12 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Chart
Peak Position ~ #6
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Letting Go”
Lyrics: “Letting Go”
David Walter Sinclair grew up in Vancouver’s Kitsilano neighborhood. From the age of twelve he became a guitar player in a series of high school bands. While still in high school in 1965 he was part of a band called Little Judas and the Sinners. Sinclair recalls that the school principal refused to allow the band to continue with that name as it was considered sacrilegious. So, they shortened their name to the Sinners. The Sinners were winners in a “Battle of the Bands” contest in Vancouver that year. In 1966, Sinclair was part of a band called the Blue Knights, who also went on to win a “Battle of the Bands” contest. The Blue Knights performed at venues like Afterthought on 4th Avenue. Years later, Sinclair’s wife Christine said “He started playing in clubs when he was really, really young, like when he shouldn’t have been there — the old strip clubs and stuff in the Downtown Eastside.” In addition, Sinclair was a backing vocalist on both the CBC variety shows Let’s Go and Where It’s At. In 1968-69 he toured as an opening act for the Poppy Family. From 1970 to 1976 David Sinclair was a member of the Vancouver rock/jazz/r&b band Sunshyne. In 1973 he released his first solo album, Take My Hand. Later in 1976, when Sunshyne morphed into Prism, David Sinclair played as a session musician on their first three albums. But he didn’t join Prism.
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#443: Can’t Seem To Make You Mine by the Seeds
Peak Month: April 1967
7 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Chart
Peak Position ~ #2
1 week Hit bound
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #41
YouTube: “Can’t Seem To Make You Mine”
Lyrics: “Can’t Seem To Make You Mine”
The Seeds were a garage rock band based in Los Angeles that formed in 1965. They coined the phrase, “Flower Power,” and are regarded as pioneering a sound that would later evolve into 70’s punk rock. The band’s leader, Sky “Sunlight” Saxon, was born in Salt Lake City in 1937. His birth name was Richard Elvern Marsh. Saxon began his career performing doo-wop pop tunes in the early 1960s under the name Little Richie Marsh. In 1962 he changed his name to Sky Saxon and formed the Electra-Fires. Subsequently, he became frontman for Sky Saxon & the Soul Rockers.
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#444: I’m Gonna Capture You by Terry Jacks
Peak Month: July 1970
7 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Chart
Peak Position ~ #2
1 Hit Bound
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “I’m Gonna Capture You”
Terrence Ross Jacks was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1944. March 29, 1944, Winnipeg, Manitoba. During his career as a recording artist he became a household name and recognized as a singer, songwriter, record producer and environmentalist. His family moved to Vancouver in 1961 and he formed a band named The Chessmen along with local guitarist, Guy Sobell. The Chessmen had four singles that made the Top 20 in Vancouver, two which were double-sided hits. These included three Top Ten hits: “Love Didn’t Die”, “The Way You Fell” and “What’s Causing This Sensation”. In 1966 Terry Jacks met Susan Pesklevits on a local CBC music show called Let’s Go.
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#445: Happy by The Sunshine Company
Peak Month: September 1967
7 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Chart
Peak Position ~ #2
1 Hit Bound
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #50
YouTube: “Happy”
Lyrics: “Happy”
In Ritchie Unterberger’s liner notes for The Best of The Sunshine Company, he writes that “Guitarist/keyboardist Maury Manseau, guitarist Larry Sims, singer Mary Nance, and drummer Merel Brigante met as students hanging around the same cafeteria table at Los Angeles Harbor Junior College, where Maury and Many sang in the choir. Manseau had sung in a folk duo with John Bettis (who later co-wrote Carpenters songs with Richard Carpenter) that often opened for Hoyt Axton. The future Sunshine Company members moved in a circle of acoustic-oriented singer-songwriters based a little south of L.A., in Orange County and beach towns like Huntington Beach. Jackson Browne, Tim Buckley, Steve Noonan, Pamella Polland, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and Steve Gillette, all of whom went on to be recording artists with widely varying degrees of success, were some of their friends in this fertile SoCal scene.”
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#446: Cool Water by Jack Scott
Peak Month: August 1960
8 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Charts
Peak Position ~ #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #85
YouTube: “Cool Water”
Lyrics: “Cool Water”
Giovanni Dominico Scafone Jr. was born in 1936 in Windsor, Ontario, and spent some of his years growing up in the Detroit suburb of Hazel Park, Michigan. In 1954 he formed a band called the Southern Drifters. In 1957 he got a record deal with ABC-Paramount. He released two singles that year that sold little outside of Detroit and Cleveland. He scored four Top Ten hits on the Billboard Hot 100 and two more in the Top 30 in the USA. In Vancouver Jack Scott was a teen idol with his good looks and classic rock ‘n roll. He enjoyed eight Top Ten hits on the Vancouver charts including “What In The World’s Come Over You” and his most successful hit in town, “Goodbye Baby” that peaked at #2 and spent 17 weeks on the CKWX charts in 1958. At the time, Scott had more US singles in the Billboard Hot 100 (19), in a shorter period of time (41 months), than any other recording artist – with the exception of The Beatles, Elvis Presley, Fats Domino and Connie Francis. Scott charted twenty songs on the local record surveys in Vancouver between July 1958 and November 1962.
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#447: Immigrant Song by Led Zeppelin
Peak Month: January 1971
10 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Charts
Peak Position ~ #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #16
YouTube: “Immigrant Song”
Lyrics: “Immigrant Song”
Robert Anthony Plant was born in 1948 in West Bromwich, six miles northwest of Birmingham, England. He became the lead singer of Led Zeppelin, along with bandmates Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and John Bonham. At an early age Robert Plant was interested in being a pop singer. He said in an interview in 1994 on the Denton Show in Australia, “When I was a kid I used to hide behind the curtains at home at Christmas and I used to try and be Elvis. There was a certain ambience between the curtains and the French windows, there was a certain sound there for a ten-year-old. That was all the ambience I got at ten years old … And I always wanted to be … a bit similar to that.”
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