#14: Some Day, One Day by the Seekers
City: St. John’s, NL
Radio Station: VOCM
Peak Month: May 1966
Peak Position in St. John’s ~ #4
Peak Position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Some Day, One Day”
Lyrics: “Some Day, One Day”
The Seekers were a group from Australia. Formed in Melbourne in 1962, it was founded by Athol Guy. He was born in a small city southwest of Melbourne in 1940. In 1958 he formed a group called the Ramblers. He attended Melbourne Boys High School and became friends with schoolmates Keith Potger and Bruce Woodley. Keith Potter was born in 1941 in Columbo, Ceylon. His family moved to Australia while he was a child. In the late 50s, Potger led a rock ‘n roll group named the Trinamics. Bruce Woodley was born in 1942 in Melbourne. He and Athol Guy formed the Escorts in the early 60s. By 1962, the Escorts morphed into the Seekers. There were several lineup changes before they got the right fit. Athol Guy played double-bass guitar. Keith Potger played twelve-string guitar. Bruce Woodley played guitar. While Judith Durham became the female lead vocalist. Born Judith Mavis Cock in 1943 in suburban Melbourne, she had a knack for music. In her late teens she began to have some professional engagements playing piano. She had classical vocal training as a soprano, and performed blues, gospel and jazz pieces. Starting in 1961, at the age of 18, Judith Cock took her mother’s maiden name, Durham, as a surname for her stage name: Judith Durham.
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#4: La La La by Gerry and the Pacemakers
City: St. John’s, NL
Radio Station: VOCM
Peak Month: April 1966
Peak Position in St. John’s ~ #1
Peak Position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #90
YouTube: “La La La”
Lyrics: “La La La”
In September 1942, Gerry Marsden was born in Liverpool, UK. His interest in music began at an early age. During World War II Marsden recalls standing on top of an air raid shelter singing “Ragtime Cowboy Joe”. Passers by applauded. Gerry and Fred Marsden’s father was a railway clerk who entertained the neighbours by playing the ukulele. With the vogue for skiffle music in the mid-’50s, he took the skin off one of his instruments, put it over a tin of Quality Street and said to Freddie, “There’s your first snare drum, son.” Gerry sang in a church choir by the age of twelve. In 1957 the brothers appeared in the show Dublin To Dingle at the Pavilion Theatre in Lodge Lane. Studies meant little to either of them. Freddie left school and worked for a candle-maker earning £4 a week, and Gerry’s job was as a delivery boy for the railways. Their parents did not mind and encouraged their musical ambitions. Marsden formed the group in the late ’50s, calling themselves, The Mars-Bars, a nod to the Mars Bar candy bar and the first syllable of Marsden’s surname. The band consisted of Marsden as frontman and guitarist, Fred Marsden on drums, Les Chadwick on bass, and Arthur Mack on piano. The latter left in ’61 to be replaced by Les McGuire (who also played saxophone).
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#16: Don’t Push Me by Hedgehoppers Anonymous
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 ~ #123
Peak Position on Australian Singles chart ~ #28
YouTube: “Don’t Push Me”
Lyrics: “Don’t Push Me”
Hedgehoppers Anonymous were a British band founded in 1963. The members were Mick Tinsley (born 1940 in Portsmouth, England), John Stewart (born in Kincardineshire, Scotland, in 1941), Ray Honeybull (born in 1941 in County Durham, England), and Leslie Dash. The rhythm guitarist with the group was Tony Cockayne. Tinsley was with the Electrons before forming the band in 1963. In 1963 they took the name The Trendsetters and settled on Hedgehoppers in 1964. The bandmates were Royal Air Force personnel at the RAF base in Wittering, England. “Hedgehoppers” was RAF slang for low flying aircraft. Jonathan King took over management of the band in 1965 and added “Anonymous” to their name.
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#18: 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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#20: 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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#25: 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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#22: 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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