#14: Waltzing Matilda by David Carroll & Orchestra
City: Hull, PQ
Radio Station: CKCH
Peak Month: January-February 1960
Peak Position in Hull ~ #1
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #112
YouTube: “Waltzing Matilda”
Lyrics: “Waltzing Matilda”
David Carroll (given the birth name Rodell Walter Schreier) was born in Taylorville (IL) in October 1913. There is very little to find in a search online about his background. By the time he was an adult, David Carroll was becoming an accomplished musician, able to arrange, direct and conduct music. In 1952, by the age of 28, Carroll conducted the orchestra backing Vic Damone on his #13 hit “Sugar”. Carroll was back in the recording studio the following year with Damone to craft the #10 hit “April In Portugal”. As well, he conducted two Top Ten hits in ’53 for Rusty Draper: “No Help Wanted” and “Gambler’s Guitar”. In 1954, he conducted the number-one hit, “Sh-Boom”, for the Crew Cuts. (The song was a ‘white cover’ of the original by the R&B group The Chords. Carroll was in the studio for the Crew Cuts subsequent mid-50s hits: “Earth Angel”, “Ko Ko Mo (I Love You So)”, “Gum Drop”, “Angels in the Sky”, “A Story Untold”, “Don’t Be Angry” and “Young Love”.
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#15: Love Is A Thing by Debbie Reynolds
City: Hull, QC
Radio Station: CKCH
Peak Month: July-August 1959
Peak Position in Hull ~ #2
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Love Is A Thing”
Lyrics: N/A
Mary Frances Reynolds was born in 1932 in El Paso, Texas. He father was a carpenter. Her mother took in laundry for income, while they lived in a shack on Magnolia Street in El Paso. “We may have been poor,” she said in a 1963 interview, “but we always had something to eat, even if Dad had to go out in the desert and shoot jackrabbits.” When she was seven, her family moved to Burbank, California. Attending public school, Reynolds recalled later, “when I started, I didn’t even know how to dress. I wore dungarees and a shirt. I had no money, no taste, and no training.” In 1948, Reynolds was a 16-year-old student at Burbank High School, and she won the Miss Burbank beauty contest. Soon after, she was offered a contract with Warner Brothers and was given the stage name “Debbie” by studio head Jack L. Warner.
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#17: Baciare Baciare by Dorothy Collins
City: Hull, PQ
Radio Station: CKCH
Peak Month: February 1960
Peak Position in Hull ~ #1
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #41
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #43
YouTube: “Baciare Baciare”
Lyrics: “Baciare Baciare”
Dorothy Collins (birth name Marjorie Chandler) was born in 1926 in Windsor, Ontario. She adopted her stage name in her mid-teens. From late childhood, she sang on radio stations in Windsor and Detroit. In 1940, at age 14, she and her family were introduced to bandleader/composer Raymond Scott in Chicago. Shortly thereafter, she became Scott’s protégée. In early 1942, at age 15, she became a featured vocalist with Scott’s orchestra, performing on radio and on tour. Scott groomed her for stardom, which included coaching her vocals (pitch, phrasing, and delivery) and mentoring her performance skills. In the late 1940s, she contributed vocals to the revived Raymond Scott Quintette, a sextet that released records on the bandleader’s own Master label and served as house band on the radio program Herb Shriner Time.
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#19: Starlight Starbright by Jimmy Dean
City: Hull, QC
Radio Station: CKCH
Peak Month: April 1958
Peak Position in Hull ~ #1
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Starlight Starbright”
Lyrics: N/A
In 1928 Jimmy Ray Dean was born in Plainview, Texas. His mother taught him to play piano. He dropped out of high school to work to help his mother. Next he joined the U.S. Air Force. He later and a professional entertainer around the time Dean married his first wife Mary Sue (Sue) in 1950. He had his first Top Ten hit on the Billboard Country charts in 1952 called “Bumming Around.” In 1954, Jimmy Dean became the host of radio program Town and Country Time on WARL in Washington D.C. Dean and his Texas Wildcats grew in popularity across the Mid-Atlantic region. Among the singers who got their start on the show were Patsy Cline, Roy Clark and Billy Grammar. He gained more fame with several more radio shows in Maryland and Virgina. In 1957, Dean had a minor country hit titled “Little Sandy Sleightfoot”. That year Jimmy Dean released the album Jimmy Dean Sings His Television Favorites.
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#20: Love Is Like Champagne by Jane Morgan
City: Hull, QC
Radio Station: CKCH
Peak Month: June 1959
Peak Position in Hull ~ #2
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Love Is Like Champagne”
Lyrics: “Love Is Like Champagne”
Florence Catherine Currier was born in 1924 in the suburbs of Boston. Her family moved to Florida when she was four-years-old. When she was five, Florence started taking voice lessons as well as piano. In the summertime, she was a child actor in theater productions at the Kennebunkport Playhouse in Kennebunkport, Maine. The Playhouse was founded by her brother. At the age of 17, in the summer of 1941, she was listed as the Treasurer of the Kennebunkport Playhouse. During her years at school, she competed in singing competitions with other students across Florida and the Southeast. Upon graduating from high school in Daytona Beach, she was accepted into the Juilliard School of Music in Manhattan. She had plans to become an opera singer, and studied opera at the school.
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#21: Love Me In The Daytime by Doris Day
City: Hull, PQ
Radio Station: CKCH
Peak Month: May 1959
Peak Position in Hull ~ #1
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #41
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #100
YouTube: “Love Me In The Daytime”
Lyrics: “Love Me In The Daytime”
Doris Mary Anne Kappelhoff was born in 1922 in Cincinnati, Ohio. For most of her life, Day stated that she was born in 1924, but on the occasion of her 95th birthday, the Associated Press found her birth certificate that showed a 1922 date of birth. She was part of a dance duo into the mid-30s, but an October 1937 car accident with a freight train resulted in her having a broken leg. As she recovered, she found herself singing along with variety songs on the radio. She took singing lessons. During the eight months when she was receiving singing lessons, Day secured her first professional jobs as a vocalist on the WLW-Cincinnati radio program Carlin’s Carnival and in a local restaurant, Charlie Yee’s Shanghai Inn. During her radio performances, she first caught the attention of Barney Rapp who was seeking a female vocalist and asked her to audition for the job. According to Rapp, he had auditioned about 200 other singers.
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#22: Belonging To Someone by Patti Page
City: Hull, QC
Radio Station: CKCH
Peak Month: March 1958
Peak Position in Hull ~ #1
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #25
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #13
YouTube: “Belonging To Someone”
Lyrics: “Belonging To Someone”
Patti Page was born on November 8, 1927. The New York Times writes “She was born Clara Ann Fowler in Claremore, Oklahoma, the second youngest of 11 children of a railroad laborer. Her mother and older sisters picked cotton. She often went without shoes. Because the family saved money on electricity, the only radio shows Miss Page heard as a child were Grand Old Opry, The Eddie Cantor Show and Chicago Barn Dance.”
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#23: Time And The River by Nat “King” Cole
City: Hull, QC
Radio Station: CKCH
Peak Month: February 1960
Peak Position in Hull ~ #5
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #44
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #30
YouTube: “Time And The River”
Lyrics: “Time And The River”
Nathaniel Adams Coles was born in 1919 in Montgomery, Alabama. His family headed by his Baptist minister father, moved to Chicago in 1923. Cole learned to play the organ from his mother, Perlina Coles, the church organist. Coles first performance was the Billy Jones chart-topping 1923 hit, “Yes! We Have No Bananas”, at the age of four. Cole began formal piano lessons at 12, learning jazz, gospel, and classical music. As a youth, Cole joined the news delivery boys’ “Bud Billiken Club” band for an African-American newspaper called The Chicago Defender. At the age of 15, Nat Cole left school to follow a path in music. In 1936, with his bassist brother Eddie, Nat Cole became part of a sextet named Eddie Cole’s Swingsters. Cole was married in 1937 and moved to Los Angeles. He formed a band called the King Cole Swingsters. They were named after the British nursery rhyme Old King Cole (was a merry old soul…). ” The name next was changed to the King Cole Trio in anticipation of making radio transcriptions, and recording for small record labels.
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#12: Happy Anniversary by the Four Lads
City: Hull, PQ
Radio Station: CKCH
Peak Month: January 1960
Peak Position in Hull ~ #1
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #36
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #77
YouTube: “Happy Anniversary”
Lyrics: “Happy Anniversary”
The Four Lads are a Canadian male quartet from Toronto, Ontario. They were originally made up of Corrado “Connie” Codarini, James F. “Jimmy” Arnold, John Bernard “Bernie” Toorish and Frank Busseri. They met as members of St. Michael’s Choir School. Originally, they named themselves the Otnorots (made up mostly of spelling the place name Toronto backwards. They changed their name to the Four Dukes. But after they found out a group in Detroit had the same name, then they settled on the Four Lads. They got a break when Mitch Miller noticed them when they were recruited by talent scouts to go to New York. Mitchell had them sing back-up on Johnny Ray’s 1951 smash hit, “Cry”, and his big follow up, “The Little White Cloud that Cried”.
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#24: Talk To Me by Frank Sinatra
City: Hull, QC
Radio Station: CKCH
Peak Month: February 1960
Peak Position in Hull ~ #2
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #32
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #38
YouTube: “Talk To Me”
Lyrics: “Talk To Me”
Francis Albert Sinatra was born in 1915 in Hoboken, NJ. Sinatra spent much time at his parents’ tavern in Hoboken, working on his homework and occasionally singing for spare change. After leaving school before graduating, Sinatra began performing in local Hoboken social clubs and sang for free on radio stations such as WAAT in Jersey City. In New York, Sinatra found jobs singing for his supper or for cigarettes. He got his first break in 1935 when his mother persuaded a local singing group called the 3 Flashes to let him join. Baritone Fred Tamburro stated that “Frank hung around us like we were gods or something”, admitting that they only took him on board because he owned a car and could chauffeur the group around. Sinatra soon learned they were auditioning for the Major Bowes Amateur Hour show, and “begged” the group to let him in on the act. With Sinatra, the group became known as the Hoboken Four, and passed an audition from Edward Bowes to appear on the show. They each earned $12.50, and ended up attracting 40,000 votes to win first prize—a six-month contract to perform on stage and radio across the U.S. Sinatra quickly became the group’s lead singer, and, much to the jealousy of his fellow group members, garnered most of the attention from girls.
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