#646: All I See Is You by Dusty Springfield

Peak Month: October 1966
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN’s chart
Peak Position #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #20
YouTube.com link: “All I See Is You”
Lyrics: “All I See Is You”

Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O’Brien was born in West Hampstead in north London, in 1939. Along with her oldest brother, Dion, she recorded her first tape of a song they sang while still children. Her dad was an unhappy accountant who dreamed of becoming a concert pianist, but never became one. While Mary’s mother, according to the Karen Bartlett autobiography, Dusty: An Intimate Portrait, “was continuously drunk and sat all day in cinemas.”As she grew up, Mary went to school at a Roman Catholic Convent. At the age of 18 she became a member of a female group named the Lana Sisters. The group sang backup to pop singer Al Saxton who had several Top 30 hits in the late 50’s in the UK, including a cover of Sam Cooke’s “Only Sixteen” and “You’re The Top Cha.” While Saxton enjoyed his moments of fame, Mary teamed up with her brother, Dion, and a friend of theirs named Tim Field. By the end of 1959 she had taken the stage name of Dusty Springfield. The trio, now known as The Springfields, got a record deal with Philips Records in 1961.

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#647: I’ll Cry Instead by The Beatles

Peak Month: August 1964
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN’s chart
Peak Position #4
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #25
YouTube.com link: “I’ll Cry Instead”
Lyrics: “I’ll Cry Instead”

Paul McCartney was born in Liverpool in 1942. He attended the Liverpool Institute High School for Boys and met fellow classmates  George Harrison on a school bus. When Paul was 14 his mom died from a blockage in one of her blood vessels. In his early teens McCartney learned to play trumpet, guitar and piano. He was left-handed and restrung the strings to make it work. In 1957, Paul met John Lennon and in October he was invited to join John’s skiffle band, The Quarrymen, which Lennon had founded in 1956. After Paul joined the group his suggested that his friend, George Harrison, join the group. Harrison became one of the Quarrymen in early 1958, though he was still only 14. Other original members of the Quarrymen, Len Garry, Rod Davis, Colin Hanton, Eric Griffiths and Pete Shotton left the band when their set changed from skiffle to rock ‘n roll. John Duff Lowe, a friend of Paul’s from the Liverpool Institute, who had joined the Quarrymen in early 1958 left the band at the end of school. This left Lennon, McCartney and Harrison as remaining trio. On July 15, 1958, John Lennon’s mother died in an automobile accident.

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#648: Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show by Neil Diamond

Peak Month: May 1969
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG’s chart
Peak Position #4
Hit Bound 1 week
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #22
YouTube.com link: “Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show”
Lyrics: “Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show”

Neil Leslie Diamond was born in Brooklyn in 1941. His parents were Russian and Polish immigrants and both Jewish. His dad was a dry-goods merchant. When he was in high school he met Barbra Streisand in a Freshman Chorus and Choral Club. Years later they would become friends. When he was sixteen Diamond was sent to a Jewish summer camp called Surprise Lake Camp in upstate New York. While there he heard folk singer, Pete Seeger, perform in concert. That year Diamond got a guitar and, influenced by Pete Seeger, began to write poems and song lyrics. While he was in his Senior year in high school, Sunbeam Music Publishing gave Neil Diamond an initial four month contract composing songs for $50 a week (US $413 in 2017 dollars). and he dropped out of college to accept it.

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#650: It Tears Me Up by Percy Sledge

Peak Month: November 1966
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG’s chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #20
YouTube.com link: “It Tears Me Up”
Lyrics: “It Tears Me Up”

Percy Tyrone Sledge was born in 1941 in northwestern Alabama. His dad died while he was still an infant. From a young age he picked cotton and chopped cotton. He was raised on music in the church and also loved country music. Growing up Percy dreamed about playing baseball. But his classmates thought he’d be a singer. Percy Sledge worked as a hospital orderly and later at a chemical plant. He sang on weekends with a band called the Esquire Combos. The band traveled across Alabama and Mississippi. With his untended hair cut and gap-toothed smile, Sledge was not a typical recording artist, as record companies were increasingly scouting for attractive performers to showcase on TV, even though most households still had black and white televisions in 1966.

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#651: The Touchables by Dickie Goodman

Peak Month: March 1961
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX’s chart
Peak Position #3 on CFUN
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #60
YouTube.com link: “The Touchables”
Lyrics: “The Touchables”

Richard Dorian Goodman was born in Brooklyn in 1934. His father, Saul, a Russian Jew immigrated to the USA. Saul’s brother Herman already lived in America. It was Herman who told Saul to tell the folks at Ellis Island that your surname is Goodman. No one in Dickie Goodman’s household ever learned what his father’s surname was back in Russia. The family lived in Long Island in the town of Hewlett. On July 8, 1947, the press reported that U.S. Army personnel had recovered a “flying disc” in the Roswell Army Air Field near Roswell, New Mexico. There were reports of people interviewed who had handled the debris from the flying disc. And some people said they saw aliens. Dickie Goodman was 13 and the story made a strong impression on him. In 1955 Dickie Goodman was studying for a Law degree and writing songs on the side at Hanson’s Drug Store at 51st Street and Seventh Avenue in Manhattan. He got acquainted with another struggling artist named Bobby Darin who ended up living in the Dickie Goodman’s parents home for a spell. In early ’56, Goodman had a song he wrote titled “Why Should We Break Up”. It was recorded by the Sonnets, a doo wop R&B group from Harlem.

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#652: Have A Drink On Me by Lonnie Donegan

Peak Month: August 1961
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX’s chart
Peak Position #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #72
YouTube.com link: “Have A Drink On Me”
Lyrics: “Have A Drink On Me”

Anthony James Donegan was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1931. His dad was a violinist in the Glasgow-based Scottish National Orchestra. Donegan became a fan of swing jazz and country music as he grew. When he was fourteen he got his first guitar. In the late forties “Tony” Donegan had learned how to play the banjo. Bandleader Chris Barber heard Donegan and had him audition for his Trad Jazz band. Tony Donegan played with the Trad Jazz band for a few years until he was called up for National Service that included three months of military training. While in the National Service in Southampton, England, Donegan played drum in Ken Grinyer’s Wolverines Jazz Band. In 1952 he began the Tony Donegan Jazzband. On June 28, 1952, Donegan’s band opened a concert for Lonnie Johnson at the Royal Festival Hall in London. Johnson was an American jazz and blues singer and pioneer of jazz guitar and jazz violin. Tony Donegan decided to bill himself as Lonnie Donegan in tribute to Lonnie Johnson.

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#653: Sand Storm by Johnny & The Hurricanes

Peak Month: February 1960
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN’s chart
Peak Position #7
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com link: “Sand Storm”

John Matthew Pocisk was born in rural Ohio near Toledo in 1940. He learned to play the saxophone. Poscisk formed his first band while he was in high school. Subsequently, he formed a band in October 1957 name the Orbits. The name was taken from news stories about the Space Race between the USA and the USSR that began in the mid-50’s. On October 4, 1957, the USSR had a successful launch of Sputnik 1 which was the first space craft to orbit the earth with a human on board. The Orbits were based in Toledo, Ohio. They developed a following and were soon noticed by talent agents who heard one of their demos. The Orbits were approached by Harry Balik and Ira Micahnik of Artists Inc. in Detroit. Balik and Micahnik managed Little Willie John and the Royaltones. and taken under the wing of management who had their name changed to Johnny And The Hurricanes. Johnny Pocisk was billed as Johnny Paris while performing with the Hurricanes.

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#654: The Little Girl I Once Knew by The Beach Boys

Peak Month: December 1965
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #3
1 week ~ C-FUN Twin Pick Hits
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #20
YouTube.com link: “The Little Girl I Once Knew”
Lyrics: “The Little Girl I Once Knew”

Brian Wilson was born in Inglewood, California, in 1942. In biographer Peter Ames Carlin’s book, Catch a Wave: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, he relates that when Brian Wilson first heard George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” it had a huge emotional impact on him. As a youngster, Wilson learned to play a toy accordion and sang in children’s choirs. In his teens he started a group with his cousin, Mike Love and his brother, Carl. His named the group Carl and the Passions in order to convince his brother to join. They had a performance at Hawthorne High School, where they attended. Among the people in the audience was Al Jardine, another classmate. Jardine was so impressed with the performance that he let the group know. Jardine would later be enlisted, along with Dennis Wilson to form the Pendletones in 1961. The first song Brian Wilson wrote would become “Surfer Girl.” A demo of the tune was made in February 1962 and would go on to be a Top Ten hit when it was released a year later in 1963. However, their first recording was a doo-wop-surf tune called “Surfin’” in October 1961. It was released in November ’61 on the Candix Enterprises Inc. label. The surprise for the group was that the record label had changed the group’s name from the Pendletones to the Beach Boys. Consequently, as each time the record was played by a DJ in America, radio listeners were being introduced to the Beach Boys. The name Pendletones was now history.

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#655: On The Beach by Cliff Richard

Peak Month: September 1964
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN’s chart
Peak Position #6
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com link: “On The Beach”
Lyrics: “On The Beach”

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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Peak Month: January 1992
12 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG’s chart
Peak Position #9
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com link: “Say You’ll Be Mine”

Camille Henderson was born in Vancouver, BC, in 1970. From the age of ten she was a working actor in film, stage and TV. At the age of fifteen she starred in the Canadian film directed by Sandy Wilson titled My American Cousin. She played the role of Shirley, a preteen girl. Her father, Bill Henderson, was a member of the Vancouver Sixties band The Collectors. He continued with most of his bandmates as they morphed into Chilliwack in 1970.
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