#746: Hey St. Peter by Flash And The Pan

Peak Month: October 1979
10 weeks on CFUN’s Vancouver Chart
Peak Position ~ #9
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #76
YouTube.com: “Hey St. Peter”
Lyrics: “Hey St. Peter”

Johannes Hendrikus Jacob van den Berg was born in the Netherlands in 1946. When he turned 13 he taught himself to play guitar in his family’s tenement home. He played guitar in a band called The Starfighters, based in The Hague. When he was seventeen his family moved to Australia in 1963. The following year, going by the anglicized name of Harry Vanda, he became the lead guitar player for a Sydney band called The Easybeats. A co-founder of the band was George Young. Also an immigrant to Australia, in his case from Glasgow, Scotland, George Redburn Young was a rhythm guitarist. After one of the coldest winters in Scotland on record in 1962, the Young family saw a Television ad from the Australian government promising travel assistance for families seeking a new start with a life in Australia. In 1964 The Easybeats often held band practices in a local laundromat. Vanda and Young became a songwriting duo and scored an international hit in 1966 titled “Friday On My Mind”. The song climbed to #9 in Vancouver, #1 in The Netherlands and Australia, #2 in New Zealand and #16 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the USA.

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#701: Absolutely Right by Five Man Electrical Band

Peak Month: November 1971
9 weeks on CKVN’s Vancouver Charts
Peak Position ~ #4
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #26
YouTube.com:”Absolutely Right”
Lyrics: “Absolutely Right”

The Five Man Electrical Band was a Canadian mainstream rock band from Ottawa. They had an international hit in 1970 called “Signs.” Les Emmerson was born in 1944. In 1963 the Staccatos were formed in Ottawa. It included lead singer and local disc jockey Dean Hagopian. After some local hits they got the attention of Capitol Records. Other bandmates included Vern Craig on guitar, Brian Rading on bass guitar and Rick Bell on drums and vocals.
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#702: Afrikaan Beat by Bert Kaempfert

Peak Month: February 1962
8 weeks on CKWX’s Vancouver Charts
Peak Position ~ #5
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #42
YouTube.com:”Afrikaan Beat”

In 1923, Berthold Heinrich Kaempfert was born in a village suburb of Hamburg, Germany, called Barmbeck. He learned piano, clarinet, accordion and saxophone during his childhood and youth. He had years of private music lessons at Wilhelm Witt’s private music school in Wilhelmsburg. He later studied at Die Musikschule HAMBURG (Hamburg School of Music). Kaempfert’s career began when his mother used a $285 insurance payment to buy a piano. Prior to the outbreak of World War II, while still 15 years of age, Kaempfert was hired to play with Hans Busch and his Orchestra. He was the youngest member of the band. But once Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, Kaempfert, along with all able-bodied young men, were drafted into the German military. Kaempfert became a bandsman in the  German Navy, initially playing on the Island of Salt on the Wadden Sea. In 1945, Kaempfert formed a band comprised of prisoners-of-war in Denmark. After the war ended, Kaempfert moved back to Hamburg. He was employed at the Esplanade Hotel and his performances were broadcast at the nearby British Forces Network. In 1959 Bert Kaempfert arranged and produced Die Gitarre und das Meer (The guitar and the sea) for Austrian Freddy Quinn. Quinn had recorded a German-language version of Dean Martin’s big hit in 1955, “Memories Are Made of This.” In 1959 Bert Kaempfert arranged and produced Die Gitarre und das Meer was a big seller in Germany in 1959.

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#703: Moon River by Jean Thomas

Peak Month: May 1962
10 weeks on CFUN’s Vancouver Charts
Peak Position ~ #6
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Moon River”
Lyrics: “Moon River”

Jean Thomas was born in Weymouth, Massachusetts, in the early 40’s. She grew up in Sarasota, Florida. Since her parents own a summer business in Nantasket Beach, one of the busiest beaches in the Greater Boston area, she returned with her family to Massachusetts each summer. At Sarasota High School, Jean was part of a singing group called Preacher John and the Five Saints. In the fall of 1959, she attended Florida State University in Tallahassee. In 1961, Jean and her brother Don went to New York City to pursue their dreams. They headed over to Paul Anka’s Spanka Publishing Company. They were promptly and signed to a songwriting contract. Jean Thomas did an audition in the Brill Building at 1650 Broadway.

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Peak Month:  January 1966
10 weeks on CFUN’s Vancouver Charts
Peak Position ~ #6
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Love Didn’t Die”

In 1959 Guy Sobell became a member of a Vancouver band called The Ken Clark Trio. They drew inspiration from The Shadows, The Beatles and Sweden’s instrumental group the Spotnicks. For the first few years the trio subsisted by playing at frat parties at the University of British Columbia. In 1962 Sobell decided to form a new band. Among the musicians responding to an ad was Terry Jacks, who was 17 years old and studying architecture and a member of a band called The Sand Dwellers. Jacks band had released a single called “Build Your Castle Higher”. Written along with bandmade John Crowe, it was Jacks’ first recording. It was covered by Jerry Cole and His Spacemen as a track on their debut album, Outer Limits. The track was retitled “Midnight Surfer” and Jerry Cole went on to be part of Phil Spector’s group of now legendary session musicians called the Wrecking Crew who played on over 40 #1 hits in the USA. Prior to His Spacemen band, Jerry Cole was a member of the instrumental group The Champs who had a #1 hit in 1958 called “Tequila”. I don’t know if The Sand Dwellers got any royalties from Jerry Cole and His Spacemen.

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#705: My Home Town by Seeds Of Time

Peak Month:  October 1970
7 weeks on CKVN’s Vancouver Charts
Peak Position ~ #5
1 week Hit Bound
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com:”My Home Town”

The Seeds of Time were a garage rock band formed in 1965 in Vancouver by a number of high school buddies. Co-founder, Gary Wanstall, was nicknamed “Rock.” At the time Norton Motorcyles made a motorcycle model named the Rocket. The newly formed band agreed that extending his nickname from Rock to Rocket, and adding Norton as the surname had a good ring to it. Norton played drums while Frank Brnjak and Bob Kripps played guitar, there was John Hall on organ and Steve Walley on bass. It was Bob Kripps who suggested the band’s name, after several underwhelming ideas had been run up the flagpole. Kripps had been reading a science fiction book by John Wyndham called the Seeds of Time. He proposed the book title be the name of the band and everyone agreed. The band got financing help from the very entrepreneurial Steve Grossman. Grossman was a DJ on CKLG and began his stint on the station under the moniker of Stevie Wonder in the fall of 1966 while he was still in Grade 12 at Kitsilano High School. Those 45 RPM singles and albums were recorded between 1969 and 1971, with Grossman’s help.

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#731: Spanish Eyes by Al Martino

Peak Month: January 1966
9 weeks on CFUN’s Vancouver Charts
Peak Position ~ #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #15
YouTube.com:”Spanish Eyes”
Lyrics: “Spanish Eyes”

Jasper Cini was born in 1927 in Philadelphia. His first name was an Anglicization of his father’s name, Gasparino. His parents were immigrants from Abruzzo, Italy. His family were bricklayers. He worked in his father’s construction business. When he was still in his teens he joined the United States Navy. But during World War II he got a shrapnel injury and was sent back home. Next, he was inspired by his boyhood friend, Alfredo Cocozza, and hoped to pursue a singing career. Alfredo Cocozza later changed his name to Mario Lanza. At night, Jasper Cini sang in local Philly bars and clubs. Mario Lanza convinced Jasper Cini to change his name to Al Martino. Al moved to New York City in 1948 and became roommates with Eddie Fischer and Guy Mitchell, fellow crooners also hoping for a big break. Martino got noticed and was invited to appear on the Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scout Show in 1952. He won the context singing a #1 hit from 1951 by Perry Como titled “If (They Made Me A King)”. In 1952 Al Martino had a breakthrough #1 hit in America, Canada and Britain with “Here In My Heart”.
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#706: I Must Have Been Blind by The Collectors

Peak Month:  March 1970
7 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Charts
Peak Position ~ #4
1 week Hit Bound
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “I Must Have Been Blind”

The Vancouver rock band The Collectors, was formerly named The Classics who were a Vancouver group led by Howie Vickers in the mid-60s. The Classics were part of the regular line-up on Let’s Go, a show on CBC TV. Though the Classics released several singles the group needed room to grow and reformed as The Collectors. They would become one of the most innovative of Vancouver’s recording acts through the rest 60s. In the spring of 1967, Vickers was asked to put together a house band at the Torch Cabaret in Vancouver. Along with Claire Lawrence on horns, they recruited guitarist Terry Frewer, drummer Ross Turney and Brian Newcombe on bass. Within a couple of months, fellow Classics member Glenn Miller replaced Newcombe on bass and Bill Henderson, a student at UBC, replaced Frewer on guitars. With Vickers now handling vocals, their sound changed from doing covers of R&B tunes to psychedelic rock. This led them to gigs along the Canadian and US west coast. Their strongest fan base in America was in California. There audiences welcomed their complex arrangements mixed with harmonies and extended solos and musical ad-libs.

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#707: Barabajagal by Donovan

Peak Month: August 1969
7 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Charts
Peak Position ~ #4
1 week Hit Bound
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #36
YouTube.com:”Barabajagal”
Lyrics: “Barabajagal”

Donovan Phillips Leitch was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1946. As a child he contracted polio and was left with a limp. At the age of 14 he began to play the guitar and when he was 16 years old he set his artistic vision to bring poetry to popular culture. He began busking and learned traditional folk and blues guitar. Music critics began branding him as mimicking Bob Dylan’s folk style. Like Dylan, Donovan wore a leather jacket, the fisherman’s cap, had a harmonica cradle and a song with “Wind” in the title. Dylan wrote “Blowing In The Wind” and Donovan had a hit in 1965 titled “Catch The Wind”.  Donovan was nicknamed by music critics in the UK as the “British Dylan.” In 1965 Bob Dylan flew to London for a concert tour of England in from April 28,  to May 10, 1965. In a 1967 documentary titled Don’t Look Back, by D. A Pennebaker, Donovan appears with Dylan. In a concert performance of “Talkin’ World War Three Blues,” Dylan sings, “I looked in the closet – and there was Donovan.” During the film Dylan and Donovan each play some songs at a hotel party with a concert poster in the background headlined by Donovan, Unit Four Plus 2 and Wayne Fontana and Mindbenders. Dylan patronizes Donovan, while Donovan suggests “I can help you, man.” However, in the by the release of his second studio album, Fairytale, Donovan was forging new musical territory. “Sunny Goodge Street” featured some jazz elements and psychedelia.  And Dylan bid farewell to acoustic guitar and picked up an electric guitar.

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#709: Anna Marie by Susan Jacks

Peak Month:  November 1975
9 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Charts
Peak Position ~ #8
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Anna Marie”
Lyrics: “Anna Marie”

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.” In the summer of 1966 Pesklevits formed a trio with Tom Northcott and Howie Vickers called The Eternal Triangle who released one single titled “It’s True”. Vickers went on to form The Collectors which later morphed into Chilliwack.

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