#16: Till You Come Back To Me by Patti Page
City: St. John’s, NL
Radio Station: VOCM
Peak Month: April 1966
Peak Position in St. John’s ~ #4
Peak Position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #130
YouTube: “Till You Come Back To Me”
Lyrics: N/A
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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#18: You You You by Mel Carter
City: St. John’s, NL
Radio Station: VOCM
Peak Month: August 1966
Peak Position in St. John’s ~ #7
Peak Position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #49
YouTube: “You You You”
Lyrics: “You You You”
Mel Carter was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1939. As a child he was in a choir at New Prospect Baptist Church. In 1954, Carter began studying under jazz singer Little Jimmy Scott. Carter went to Chicago and met Sam Cooke when Cooke was part of the Soul Stirrers. Mel Carter was also part of a street corner doo-wop group. In the late 50’s and early 60’s, Mel Carter appeared on stage with Dinah Washington at Ciros. In 1960 Carter released his first single on Arwin Records titled “I’m Coming Home”. In 1961 he switched labels to Mercury and released “I Need You So”. Then in 1962, he released a duet with Clyde King titled “The Wrong Side of Town”, which was a minor hit in California and West Virginia. In the spring of 1963, Mel Carter released “When A Boy Falls In Love” on the Derby label.
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#23: Memories Are Made Of This by the Drifters
City: St. John’s, NL
Radio Station: VOCM
Peak Month: April 1966
Peak Position in St. John’s ~ #8
Peak Position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #48
YouTube: “Memories Are Made Of This”
Lyrics: “Memories Are Made Of This”
Clyde McPhatter was born in the historic African-American district of Hayti in Durham, North Carolina, on November 15, 1932. Starting at the age of five, he sang in his father’s Baptist church gospel choir along with his three brothers and three sisters. When he was 10, Clyde was the soprano-voiced soloist for the choir. When his family moved to Harlem after he graduated, Clyde formed a gospel group, the Mount Lebanon Singers. In 1950, after winning the coveted Amateur Night at Harlem’s Apollo Theater contest, McPhatter returned to his job as a grocery store manager. He was discovered singing the choir in the Holiness Baptist Church of New York City by Billy Ward of Billy Ward and his Dominoes and was recruited into the group.
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#20: Too Little Time by Brenda Lee
City: St. John’s, NL
Radio Station: VOCM
Peak Month: April 1966
Peak Position in St. John’s ~ #5
Peak Position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #123
YouTube: “Too Little Time”
Lyrics: “Too Little Time”
Brenda Mae Tarpley was born in 1944 in Atlanta, Georgia. Her parents were poor. During her childhood, young Brenda shared a sagging iron bed with her brother and sister in a series of three-room houses. They had no running water. Here parents went from job to job. After the stock market crash in 1929, Brenda’s mother would recall “you could hardly buy a job.” The region was devastated by an infestation of the boll weevil. Brenda started singing solos each Sunday at the Baptist church where her family attended. In her 2002 autobiography, she wrote “I grew up so poor, and it saddens me to see the poverty that is still there. A lot of my family have never done any better. Some of them are just exactly where they were when I was a kid. And in a way, there is still something inside of me that is a part of that, the part that doesn’t expect much. Little things make them happy, and that’s the same with me.”
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#9: You Gotta Have Love by Robbie Lane & the Disciples
City: Saint John, NB
Radio Station: VOCM
Peak Month: September 1966
Peak Position in Saint John ~ #9
Peak Position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “You Gotta Have Love”
Lyrics: N/A
The Disciples were formed when Robbie Lane held auditions with members of various local bands in greater Toronto during the early sixties. By the summer of 1963 the lineup was Lane, Domenic Troiano on guitar, drummer Sonny Milne, Marty Fisher on piano, bassist Gene Trach, Bert Herriston on sax and flute, and William Cudmore on harmonica, sax and keyboards. After toiling away in the club scene their big break was when Ronnie Hawkins hired them in December of ’63 as a back up plan, since he knew his Hawks were intending to leave the nest.
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