#1307: Tango by Dalbello
Peak Month: March-April 1989
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #18
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #91
YouTube.com: “Tango”
Lyrics: “Tango”
In 1959 Lisa Dal Bello was born in Weston, Ontario, a suburb of Toronto. At age 11, she taught herself to play the guitar and started writing her own songs. And she also started to perform at the Mariposa Folk Festival and the Fiddlers’ Green club in Toronto. The first song she wrote was a protest song called “Oh, Why?” In 1971 she got a summer job touring as part of a 35-member musical troupe sponsored by the Ontario Provincial Government. However, as she was only 13, she had to fib about her age to get hired for Summer Sounds ’71. The following year Lisa Dal Bello met singer-songwriter Ian Thomas at an audition. This led to her recording three songs she’d written for the CBC. The other person at the audition, Jack Budgell got Lisa connected with jingle producer Tommy Ambrose. She also was introduced to numerous producers and got to be a back-up singer on studio recording sessions.
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#1440: I Told You So by Jimmy Jones
Peak Month: April 1961
6 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX chart
Peak Position #13
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #85
YouTube.com: “I Told You So”
Lyrics: “I Told You So”
Jimmy Jones was born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1937. He got a gig as a tap dancer in the early 50s. In 1954 Jones formed a doo-wop group named the Berliners. The group changed their name later in ’54 to The Sparks of Rhythm. He moved to New York City in 1955 and formed another group called the Savoys, named after the label they recorded with. They left Savoy for Rama Records and became the Pretenders, and then the Jones Boys. When the group disbanded in 1959, Jimmy Jones embarked on a solo career. In December 1959 he released a song he’d written in the mid-50s with the Sparks of Rhythm titled “Handy Man”. It was co-written with Otis Blackwell. In 1960 the single climbed to #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #1 on CFUN in Vancouver (BC).
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#1431: Skin Tight, Pin Striped, Purple Pedal Pushers by Sheb Wooley
Peak Month: July 1961
6 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX chart
Peak Position #15
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Skin Tight, Pin Striped, Purple Pedal Pushers”
Shelby Fredrick “Sheb” Wooley was born in rural southwestern Oklahoma in 1921. His father was a farmer who also owned some horses. During his childhood Sheb learned to ride horses. He became a working cowboy and into his early teens a rodeo rider. When he was 15 Sheb formed a country and western band named the “Plainview Melody Boys.” His band occasionally appeared live on radio station KASA in Elk City, Oklahoma. When he was 19 years-old Sheb Wooley married 17-year-old Melva Miller. She was a cousin of Roger Miller. Sheb and Roger became friends and he taught Roger how to play the guitar and bought him his first fiddle while he was still a child. Due to his rodeo injuries, Sheb Wooley was not seen fit to join the United States Army. Instead he worked on the oil patch as a welder. He and his wife moved to Fort Worth, Texas, in 1946. That year he released his first single “Oklahoma Honky-Tonk Gal”. He hosted a Fort Worth-based country music radio show called Sheb Wooley and the Calumet Indians. But after three years of touring across the southern USA with a band, the marriage fell apart. Wooley remarried in 1949 and moved to Hollywood in 1950.
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#1436: Try My Love Again by Bobby Moore’s Rhythm Aces
Peak Month: December 1966
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #17
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #97
YouTube.com: “Try My Love Again”
Lyrics: “Try My Love Again”
Robert “Bobby” Moore was born in 1930 in New Orleans. When he was a teenager he joined the United States Army and was stationed at Fort Benning, near Columbus, Georgia. While in basic training, Moore learned to play the tenor saxophone. In 1952 he formed a band on the base called the Rhythm Aces made up of members of the marching band. He finished his service to the Army in 1961 and moved to Montgomery, Alabama. It was there he re-formed the Rhythm Aces with his brother Larry Moore on alto sax, Chico Jenkins on vocals and guitar, Marion Sledge on guitar, Joe Frank on bass, Clifford Laws on organ, and John Baldwin Junior on drums.
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#1421: The Twelfth Rose by The Browns
Peak Month: June 1963
6 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #17
Twin Pick Hit June 1/63
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “The Twelfth Rose”
Lyrics: “The Twelfth Rose”
Ella Maxine Brown was born in 1931. Jim Ed Brown was born in 1934, and Bonnie Jean Brown was born in 1938. All three siblings were born in Sparkman, Arkansas. The family owned a farm and their father worked in a sawmill. When the family moved to Pine Bluff, an hours drive east, the children began to sing together at church and other social functions. Maxine signed Jim Ed up for a talent contest on KLRA’s “Barnyard Frolic,”a radio station in Little Rock. Jim Ed didn’t win the contest, but was offered a spot on the radio show’s cast. In 1954 Jim and Maxine formed a duo and recorded a single titled “Looking Back To See”. They performed it on the Ernest Tubb radio show and it became a #8 hit on the Billboard Country chart that summer.
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#1414: Aces High by The Classics
Peak Month: August 1964
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #19
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Aces High”
The Classics were the house band for CFUN 1410-AM in Vancouver (BC). They formed in 1962 with Howie Vickers on trombone and lead vocals, Tom Baird on keyboards, Claire Lawrence on saxophone, organ and flute, Brian Russell on guitar, Glenn Miller on bass guitar, and Gary Taylor on drums. Fred Latremouille also played drums with the band. Tom Baird was born in Vancouver in 1943. Before he joined the CFUN Classics, he had previously been a vocalist with Roger Jerome and The Casuals. The Classics became the house band on the CBC variety show Let’s Go. They were managed by Les Vogt.
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#1420: Copper Kettle by Bob Dylan
Peak Month: August 1970
6 weeks on Vancouver’s CKVN chart
Peak Position #16
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Copper Kettle”
Lyrics: “Copper Kettle”
Robert Allen Zimmerman was born in Duluth, Minnesota, in 1941. In his childhood he took up piano and guitar. He was fond of poetry as well as music, especially Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis. In university he studied the poetry of Dylan Thomas. When he began to perform folk music in public, Zimmerman chose the name Bob Dylan as a tribute to Dylan Thomas. He moved to New York City and hung out in Greenwich Village, playing in folk clubs. In 1962 he released a self-titled album that reached #13 on the UK albums chart. However, back in North America the album got little notice. But when he released The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan in May 1963. One of the tracks from the album was “Blowin’ In The Wind”, a #2 hit for two weeks for Peter, Paul and Mary on the Billboard Hot 100 in August ’63. President John F. Kennedy has signed the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the USSR on August 5, 1963. And on September 23, by a vote of 80-19, the United States Senate approved the treaty. “Blowin’ In The Wind” was on the Hot 100 throughout the push to ratify the treaty.
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#1347: Feel Your Love by Alanis Morissette
Peak Month: October 1991
6 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #20
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Feel Your Love”
Lyrics: “Feel Your Love”
Alanis Nadine Morissette was born in Ottawa in 1974. At the age of six she began to take piano, and the following year took up dance. In Junior High School she appeared on five episodes of a local CTV comedy show called You Can’t Do That on Television. In 1987 she recorded a demo with the help of Rich Dodson of The Stampeders. Four years later she released her debut album, Alanis. Her debut single was titled “Too Hot”.
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#1412: Pretty Girls by Lisa Dal Bello
Peak Month: October 1978
5 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #17
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Pretty Girls”
Lyrics: “Pretty Girls”
In 1959 Lisa Dal Bello was born in Weston, Ontario, a suburb of Toronto. At age 11, she taught herself to play the guitar and started writing her own songs. And she also started to perform at the Mariposa Folk Festival and the Fiddlers’ Green club in Toronto. The first song she wrote was a protest song called “Oh, Why?” In 1971 she got a summer job touring as part of a 35-member musical troupe sponsored by the Ontario Provincial Government. However, as she was only 13, she had to fib about her age to get hired for Summer Sounds ’71. The following year Lisa Dal Bello met singer-songwriter Ian Thomas at an audition. This led to her recording three songs she’d written for the CBC. The other person at the audition, Jack Budgell got Lisa connected with jingle producer Tommy Ambrose. She also was introduced to numerous producers and got to be a back-up singer on studio recording sessions.
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#1333: Say You Love Me by Shirley Eikhard
Peak Month: July 1976
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #13
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Say You Love Me”
Lyrics: “Say You Love Me”
Shirley Rose Eikhard was born in Sackville, New Brunswick, in November 1955. In 1969, at the age of 13 she won an audition for the Mariposa Folk Festival’s New Songwriters Workshop on Centre Island in Toronto. At the age of 15 she wrote “It Takes Time”, which became a Top Ten hit for Anne Murray in Canada in 1971. In 1973, and again in 1974, she won the Juno Award for Best Country Female Artist. She won BMI songwriting awards for “It Takes Time” in 1971, for “Something In Your Face” in 1972, and “Right On Believing” in 1973. The latter was a single release only. “Something In Your Face” and “It Takes Time” were both from Eikhard’s debut self-titled album.
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