#1: Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight by James Taylor
City: Fort St. John, BC
Radio Station: CKNL
Peak Month: February 1973
Peak Position in Fort St. John ~ #2
Peak Position in Vancouver ~ #21
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #14
YouTube: “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight”
Lyrics: “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight”
James Vernon Taylor was born in Boston in 1948. From the age of three, he lived with his family in North Carolina. Taylor would say later “Chapel Hill, the Piedmont, the outlying hills, were tranquil, rural, beautiful, but quiet. Thinking of the red soil, the seasons, the way things smelled down there, I feel as though my experience of coming of age there was more a matter of landscape and climate than people.” During his childhood he took cello lessons, and picked up guitar at the age of 12. James Taylor got to know people in the folk music scene on Martha’s Vineyard, where his family had a vacation home. In 1963 he was playing coffeehouses on the island as part of a duo named Jamie & Kootch. But in 1961 he was enrolled in a boarding school in Milton, Massachusetts. The pressures of the school were too much for the very sensitive James, even though he was doing well academically. Back in North Carolina he became depressed and by 1965 was sleeping for 20 hours a day.
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#4: Stay Away From Bobby by the Sherry Sisters
City: Fort St. John, BC (and Peace River, AB)
Radio Station: CKNL/CKYL
Peak Month: April 1963
Peak Position in Fort St. John ~ #12
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Stay Away From Bobby”
The Sherry Sisters were a vocal pop duo from Brooklyn, New York. They were two sisters, Lois and Karen Klein. Karen Klein entered a talent contest at the age of 16 when she was a counselor at the Catskill Mountain resort of the famous Concord Hotel in Kiamesha Lake, New York. Spotted by a booking agent, she and Lois represented the United States in the First International Song Festival in Bogata, Colombia. They released their debut single on the Okey label titled “Stay Away From Bobby”.
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#3: Knock Knock Who’s There by Mary Hopkin
City: Fort St. John, BC
Radio Station: CKNL
Peak Month: February 1973
Peak Position in Fort St. John: #8
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #92
YouTube: “Knock Knock Who’s There”
Lyrics: “Knock Knock Who’s There”
Mary Hopkin was born in May 1950 in Pontardawe, Wales. She took weekly singing lessons as a child and began her musical career as a folk singer with a local group called the Selby Set and Mary. She released an EP of Welsh-language songs for a local record label called Cambrian, based in her hometown, before signing to the Beatles’ Apple Records. The model Twiggy saw Hopkin winning the ITV television talent show Opportunity Knocks and recommended her to Paul McCartney. Her debut single, “Those Were the Days”, produced by McCartney, was released in the UK on August 30, 1968. Hopkin had competition from well-established star Sandie Shaw, whose own single version of the song was released that fall. But Shaw’s recording stalled at #51 on the UK chart. Meanwhile, Mary Hopkin’s “Those Were the Days” became a number-one hit in Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, USA, and West Germany. Hopkins smash hit also climbed to #2 in Argentina, Australia, Austria, and South Africa.
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