#7: Love Is All We Need by Tommy Edwards
City: London, ON
Radio Station: CKSL
Peak Month: November 1958
Peak Position in London ~ #3
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #14
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #15
YouTube: “Love Is All We Need”
Lyrics: “Love Is All We Need”
Tommy Edwards was born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1922. In 1939, when he turned 17 years of age, The Tommy Edwards Show began a one-year run on WRNL 910-AM in Richmond, Virginia. Edwards sang popular songs, played piano and was often joined by his talented siblings: Nathan on trumpet and Harriet on vocals. In 1943, at age 21, Tommy Edwards moved to New York. He was a regular at Small’s Paradise, an integrated nightclub in Harlem. He made connections and sometimes performed with the bands at the club. In addition, he write and recorded demos of his songs to try to stir up the interest of music publishers. He wrote “That Chick’s Too Young to Fry“, which became a hit record for Louis Jordan in 1946.
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#12: Ten Commandments Of Love by Harvey and the Moonglows
City: London, ON
Radio Station: CKSL
Peak Month: October 1958
Peak Position in London ~ #3
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #40
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #22
YouTube: “Ten Commandments Of Love”
Lyrics: “Ten Commandments Of Love”
Harvey and The Moonglows were a doo-wop group from Louisville (KY). In 1951, with Bobby Lester (born in 1930 in Louisville, Kentucky), Alexander “Pete” Graves (born in Alabama in 1936), and Prentiss Barnes (born in 1925 in Magnolia, Mississippi), Harvey Fuqua (born in 1927 in Louisville, Kentucky), formed a vocal group, the Crazy Sounds, in Louisville. They added Billy Johnson. The group next moved to Cleveland, Ohio. There they were taken under the wing of disc jockey Alan Freed, who renamed them the Moonglows, after his own nickname, “Moondog”. The Moonglows’ first releases were for Freed’s Champagne label in 1952, beginning with “I’ve Been Your Dog (Ever Since I’ve Been Your Man)”. They recorded for the Chance label in Chicago, and released “Hey Santa Claus”, co-written by Fuqua and Alan Freed. The single “219 Train” was a solid R&B rocker. Another Chance label release was a cover of the Doris Day chart-topper “Secret Love”.
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#49: A Nice Young Girl From Houston by Stu Mitchell
City: Edmonton, AB
Radio Station: CHED
Peak Month: December 1970
Peak Position in Edmonton ~ #8
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “A Nice Girl From Houston”
Neville Stuart Mitchell was born in Saskatchewan in 1942. In his teens he played for a Saskatchewan band called the T-Birds. He learned how to play the drums and moved to Edmonton. It was there Mitchell joined Wes Dakus’ Rebels in 1960. With Wes Dakus, Mitchell was in the recording studio for “Cavalier Twist” in 1962, “Dog Food” in 1963,”Sour Biscuits” in 1964, and “Manipulator” in 1967, among others. In 1965, Stu Mitchell and Doug Roberts released “Wildcat”, which was a non-charting Capitol Records single. In 1966, Mitchell released a solo cover of the mid-50s R&B tune “Bo Diddley”. In 1966, Stu Mitchell and Doug Roberts recorded a duet titled “Say I Am” which charted in Edmonton. In 1967, Mitchell was in the recording studio while Wes Dakus and his band backed Barry Allen for his local Top Ten hit “Armful of Teddy Bears”.
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#13: Adam And Eve by Paul Anka
City: London, ON
Radio Station: CKSL
Peak Month: March 1960
Peak Position in London ~ #5
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #46
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #90
YouTube: “Adam And Eve”
Lyrics: “Adam And Eve”
Paul Anka was born in Ottawa, Canada, in 1941. His father was Syrian-American and his mother was Canadian-Lebanese. While growing up in Ottawa he was part of a vocal trio at Fisher Park High School called the Bobby Soxers. In the fall of 1956, Anka signed with the RPM label and released his first single, “Blau-Wile-Deveest-Fontaine”. It made the Top Ten in Smith Falls (ON). He had a #1 hit in 1957 titled “Diana”, and performed in concert at the Georgia Auditorium in Vancouver on October 23, 1957. Others on stage were Buddy Holly and The Crickets, Buddy Knox, Eddie Cochran, and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers.
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#27: I Want To Be Happy Cha Cha by Enoch Light and the Light Brigade
City: London, ON
Radio Station: CKSL
Peak Month: November 1958
Peak Position in London ~ #8
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #30
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #48
YouTube: “I Want To Be Happy Cha Cha”
Enoch Light was born in Canton, Ohio, in 1907. He was a leader of various dance bands, forming his first at Johns Hopkins University while he was a student. Light’s first dance band recorded as early as March 1927 and continuing through at least 1940. Light and his band primarily worked in various hotels in New York. For a time in 1928, Enoch Light also led a band in Paris, France. He also studied classical conducting at the Opéra-Comique (founded in 1714). In the 1930s, Light also studied conducting with the French conductor Maurice Frigara in Paris. Throughout the 1930s, Light and his outfits were steadily employed in the generally more upscale hotel restaurants and ballrooms in New York that catered to providing polite ambiance for dining and functional dance music of current popular songs rather than out-and-out jazz.Continue reading →
#15: The Dawn Of Correction by the Spokesmen
City: London, ON
Radio Station: CFPL
Peak Month: October 1965
Peak Position in London ~ #4
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #43
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #36
YouTube: “The Dawn Of Correction”
Lyrics: “The Dawn Of Correction”
The Spokesmen were a folk trio consisting of David White, John Madara and Ray Gilmore. David White Tricker was born in Philadelphia in 1939. In 1955 he joined a doo-wop group named The Juvenaires. In 1957, White, John Madara and fellow bandmate Artie Singer cowrote a song called “Do The Bop”. When they introduced the song to Dick Clark, he suggested they change the title to “At The Hop”. The group changed the lyrics a bit and also changed their name to Danny & The Juniors. “At The Hop” a number-one hit for the first seven weeks of 1958. It later was featured in the 1973 film American Graffitti. A followup Top 20 hit for the group was “Rock and Roll is Here to Stay”, cowritten by David White. With Danny & the Juniors, White appeared in Patti Page’s TV show The Big Record, Merv Griffin’s Saturday Night Prom, The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom, and Dick Clark’s Saturday Night Beechnut Show.
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#250: Fabulous by Steve Lawrence
City: Toronto, ON
Radio Station: CHUM
Peak Month: May 1957
Peak Position in Toronto: #6
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #71
YouTube: “Fabulous”
Lyrics: “Fabulous”
Sidney Liebowitz was born in 1935 to Jewish parents in the borough of Brooklyn in New York City. His father, Max, was a cantor at the Brooklyn synagogue Beth Sholom Tomchei Harav, and his mother, Helen, was a homemaker. During high school, Lawrence skipped school to spend time at the Brill Building in the hopes of being employed as a singer. In 1952 at the age of 16, Lawrence signed a contract with King Records after winning a talent contest on Arthur Godfrey’s CBS TV show. That year he had a #21 hit single credited to Steve Lawrence on the Billboard pop chart titled “Poinciana”. The next year, talk show host Steve Allen hired Lawrence to be one of the singers on Allen’s local New York City late night show on WNBC-TV, with vocalists Eydie Gormé and Andy Williams. The show was chosen by NBC to be seen on the national network, becoming The Tonight Show, and Lawrence, Gormé, and Williams stayed until the program’s end in 1957. Lawrence credited the exposure and experience he gained on Allen’s show for launching his career “I think Steve Allen was the biggest thing that happened to me. Every night I was called upon to do something different. In its own way, it was better than vaudeville.”
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#16: Making Every Minute Count by Spanky and Our Gang
City: London, ON
Radio Station: CJBK
Peak Month: September 1967
Peak Position in London ~ #6
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #30
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #31
YouTube: “Making Every Minute Count”
Lyrics: “Making Every Minute Count”
Spanky and Our Gang was a sunshine pop group led by Elaine “Spanky” McFarlane. She was born in Peoria, Illinois, in 1942. In 1959, she arrived in Chicago and began to perform in jazz clubs with Lil Hardin Armstrong (Louis Armstrong’s second wife), Earl Hines, and Little Brother Montgomery. She soon got involved with the burgeoning folk crowd and formed a trio with Roger McGuinn (future frontman of The Byrds) and Guy Guilbert called the Old Town Trio. The trio played in local Chicago area bars and coffee houses for a summer. In 1962, she joined the New Wine Singers. Fellow singer Arnie Lanza nicknamed her Spanky because of the similarity of her last name, McFarlane, to the last name of child actor George McFarland who played Spanky in the Our Gang (also known as The Little Rascals) comedies about poor neighborhood children and their adventures. The nickname stuck.
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#116: Jesse by Roberta Flack
City: Montreal, PQ
Radio Station: CHOM
Peak Month: November 1973
Peak Position in Montreal ~ #3
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #30
YouTube: “Jesse”
Lyrics: “Jesse”
Roberta Flack was born in Black Mountain, North Carolina, in 1937. Her family moved to Arlington, Virginia, when she was five. Growing up in a large, musical family, she often accompanied the choir of Lomax African Methodist-Episcopal Zion Church by playing hymns and spirituals on piano. She also attended a Baptist in her neighborhood to listen to contemporary gospel music including songs performed by Mahalia Jackson and Sam Cooke. When Flack was nine, she began to play the piano. Into her teens, she excelled at classical piano, finishing second in a statewide competition for Black 13-year-old students. In connection with the competition, she won a full music scholarship to Howard University.
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#17: Spaceship Superstar by Prism
City: London, ON
Radio Station: CJBK
Peak Month: December 1977
Peak Position in London ~ #6
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Spaceship Superstar”
Lyrics: “Spaceship Superstar”
In 1967 a new rock group appeared on the Vancouver scene called the Seeds of Time. They had several local hits including “My Home Town” and “Crying The Blues”. There were a number of lineup changes, but the bands personnel included drummer Rocket Norton, guitarist Lindsay Mitchell, and bassist Al Harlow. These three reunited after the Seeds of Time disbanded in 1974. After a brief stint as an R&B band called Sunshyne, they became Prism under Lindsay Mitchell’s initiative. In the band were new singer Ron Tabak, bassist Tom Lavin, keyboard player John Hall and drummer Rodney Higgs. Higgs was actually a pseudonym for Jim Vallance, the future songwriting partner of Bryan Adams.
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