#1447: River Deep-Mountain High by Ike & Tina Turner
Peak Month: June 1966
6 weeks on CKLG chart & 1 week Up ‘N Comers
6 weeks on CFUN chart
Peak Position #12 on CFUN
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #88
YouTube.com link: “River Deep – Mountain High”
Lyrics: “River Deep – Mountain High”
Izear Luster “Ike” Turner, Jr. was born in Clarkesdale, Mississippi in 1931. He was an American musician, bandleader, songwriter, arranger, talent scout, and record producer. When he was eight he started learning how to play guitar and piano. In his teens he established an R&B group named the Kings of Rhythm, as cited in John Collis’ book Ike Turner, King of Rhythm. The Kings of Rhythm became his backing band for the rest of his career. In 1951 his first recording was “Rocket 88”. The lead vocals were sung by the Kings of Rhythm’s saxophonist, Jackie Brenston. Ike Turner played piano on the recording. But Phillips Records sold the recording to Chess in Chicago, who released it under the name Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats. Though the record sold over half a million copies, Turner was paid $20. Relocating to St. Louis, Missouri, in 1954, Ike Turner built the Kings of Rhythm into a successful act on the local club circuit. It was in this setting Ike Turner met Anna Mae Bullock, who was working at a club where he performed. He would later go on to rename her as Tina Turner. Together, they formed the Ike & Tina Turner Revue and became a stars in both the soul music and pop charts.
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#1454: I Wanna Be A Flintstone by The Screaming Blue Messiahs
Peak Month: February 1988
7 weeks on CKLG chart
Peak Position #19
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com link: “I Wanna Be A Flintstone”
Lyrics: “I Wanna Be A Flintstone”
In 1980 Bill Carter and Chris Thompson were in a London, UK, band called The Small Brothers, with Tony Moon on vocals. They changed their name to the Motor Boys Motor and released a single in the UK called “Drive Friendly.” A line-up change followed with Tony Moon leaving the band and being replaced with Kenny Harris. By 1983 they billed themselves as The Screaming Blue Messiahs. Bill Carter played guitar and was the lead vocalist. Thompson was the backing singer and bass player, while Kenny Harris played drums. The group emerged in the wake of the pub rock and punk scenes that had been very predominant in London’s live music circuit from the late ’70’s into the early ’80’s. Pub rock was deliberately nasty, dirty and post-glam. Dress style of Pub Rockers was based around denim and plaid shirts, tatty jeans and droopy hair. The Screaming Blue Messiahs were a classic power trio. They performed in small venues and recorded three studio albums between 1983 and 1990. They toured extensively throughout Europe, North America and Australia and Asia. They were given stellar reviews by music critics throughout their years on tour and for their recordings. Critics especially liked the Screaming Blue Messiahs aggressive blend of rhythm and blues, punk and rockabilly. Bill Carter recalled later that the band’s name was arrived at when Ted Caroll, who played with Big Beat, gave the thumbs down to the band’s initial decision to bill themselves as The Blue Messiahs. Caroll felt the name sounded too pub rock.
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#1418: Footprints in the Snow by Jerry Fuller
Peak Month: April 1964
7 weeks on CFUN chart
Peak Position #18
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com link: “Footprints In The Snow”
In 1938 Jerry Fuller was born in Fort Worth, Texas. His father was a carpenter who had a voice like Bing Crosby, while his mom sang like Patti Page. As a musical family, at the age of eleven, Jerry and his brother Bill became were billed as The Fuller Brothers. His mother arranged for them to appear at school, churches, talent contests, minstrel shows and jamborees. Out of high school, Fuller wrote a rockabilly tune called “I Found A New Love” and got it recorded Lin records in 1958.
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#1375: Cradle Baby by Eddie Cochran
Peak Month: January 1958
3 weeks on the Teen Canteen chart
Peak Position #7
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Cradle Baby”
Lyrics: Cradle Baby”
Eddie Cochran was born in Albert Lea, Minnesota, in 1938. His family moved to the Los Angeles area in 1951 where Eddie attended Bell Gardens Junior High. While there he became friends with Connie ‘Guybo’ Smith. Smith was already a promising musical talent who played bass, steel guitar and mandolin. Eddie and Connie began to jam together and gave a concert at their junior high school. Connie “Guybo” Smith went on to become Cochran’s bass player and was one of the musicians heard on most records during Eddie’s brief professional career. In 1953, while still in junior high school, Eddie met another musician named Chuck Foreman. The two experimented with Foreman’s two-track tape recorder. The pair made recordings of a number of songs including “Stardust”, “The Poor People Of Paris”, “Hearts of Stone” and the “Cannonball Rag”. Cochran graduated from Bell Gardens Junior High in 1954.
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#1394: Bound To Fly by 3’s A Crowd
Peak Month: October 1966
5 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #9
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com link: “Bound To Fly”
On the Canadian West Coast there was a lot of experimenting with musical styles. Folk, pop and psychedelic rock were merging into a West Coast sound. In 1964, local comedian Brent Titcomb (born 1n Vancouver in 1940) also had vocal skills he was putting to use in small coffee houses. Another comedian with musical talents, Donna Warner (born Edmonton in 1946), was also interested in starting a music group. That August they began to write songs and became a trio when a coffee house audience member and guitarist, Trevor Veitch, became their third member. As part of the hipster scene at the time, the group took on an avant-garde name that was not indicative of who they were. Billed as the Bill Schwartz Quartet, their ironic name caused audience members to wonder what happened to the fourth person in the group, assuming their must be a fourth bandmate since they were billed as a quartet. More puzzling, there was no one named Bill Schwartz in the group. The oddity of their name grew tired fast and they next went by the name to 3’s A Crowd as early as the spring of 1965. In June ’65 the group was on the cover of the TV Times magazine in Vancouver.
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#1391: I Don’t Wanna Forget You by Denise McCann
Peak Month: July 1977
6 weeks on CKLG chart
Peak Position #18
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com link: “I Don’t Wanna Forget You”
Denise McCann was born in 1948 in Iowa. Albert Hews McCann Sr., her grandfather, was a cornet player and singer in Shreveport, Louisiana. The McCann Family Orchestra included various children of McCann Sr. and one of his brothers who played with touring vaudeville acts between 1910 and 1930. Denise’s family moved to Castro Valley, California, while she was in her youth. During the Summer of Love, Denise moved up to San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood where she became a hippie. She got a job with the Magic Mountain Festival on Mount Tamalpais and also at the Monterey Pop Festival. At the festival she became friends with Jimi Hendrix. McCann appears in the D.A. Pennebaker documentary Monterey Pop!
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#1444: There’s Something I Like About That by Chilliwack
Peak Month: June 1974
6 weeks on CKLG chart
Peak Position #16
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com link: “There’s Something I Like About That”
Lyrics: There’s Something I Like About That”
Bill Henderson was born in Vancouver in 1944. He learned guitar and became the guitarist for the Panarama Trio that performed at the Panarama Roof dance club on the 15th Floor of the Hotel Vancouver. He formed the psychedelic pop-rock Vancouver band, The Collectors, in 1966 with Howie Vickers. After several local hits like “Fisherwoman” and “Lydia Purple” the band disbanded by 1970. Henderson (vocals, guitar), Claire Lawrence (saxophone, keyboards), Ross Turney (drums) and Glenn Miller (bass) were all Collectors bandmates. After Howie Vickers left The Collectors, they changed their name to Chilliwack. The name was a Salish First Nations name that means “going back up,” and is the name of a city in the Fraser Valley in British Columbia.
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#1449: Dancer by Ken Tobias
Peak Month: July 1977
6 weeks on CKLG chart
Peak Position #18
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com link: “Dancer”
In 1945 Ken Tobias was born in Saint John, New Brunswick. His family’s home was filled with music and young Ken was featured in a number of tap dancing performances. Though he dreamed of becoming a draftsman, out of high school he and his brother Tony formed the folk group The Ramblers. By the mid-60s Tobias lived in Halifax and was a staple in the roster of performers on CBC TV’s afternoon show, Music Hop. This led to his appearing several years later on Singalong Jubilee with other Canadian music stars Anne Murray, Gene MacLellan.Continue reading →
#1310: Lend Me Your Comb by Carol Hughes
Peak Month: January 1958
3 weeks on Teen Canteen chart
Peak Position #6
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Lend Me Your Comb”
Lyrics: “Lend Me Your Comb”
In 1942 Carol Hughes was born, likely somewhere in New Jersey. A local paper in West Orange, New Jersey wrote in the winter of 1956 that “…a 14 years old, sophomore at West Orange High School (NJ) (has been) singing since the age of 2. She’s had TV experience appearing on the Arthur Murray Dance Party and the Dean Martin Show….” Carol Hughes’ first single was “Fancy Dance” recorded in October 1956 while she was only 14 years old. She was one of a number of female rockers following in the tradition of Brenda Lee, of which there were very few. In October 1956 male soloists and vocal groups dominated the record charts. At the time Carol Hughes released her first single there were 39 songs in the Top 50 in the USA that were sung by male soloists or male vocal groups. Making up the the difference were three tunes by male/female duos like Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly and eight charted songs by female recording acts. All were traditional pop singers like Patti Page (“Allegheny Moon”), Doris Day (“What Ever Will Be Will Be”) and The Chordettes (“Lay Down Your Arms”).
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#1452: Tricia Tell Your Daddy by Andy Kim
Peak Month: May 1969
6 weeks on CKLG chart
Peak Position #17
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #110
YouTube.com link: “Tricia Tell Your Daddy”
Lyrics: “Tricia Tell Your Daddy”
Andy Kim’s father came from Lebanon to Pennsylvania and finally settled in Montreal, where Kim was born in December 1946. Around the age of 15 Andrew Youakimm became fascinated with the music business in New York City. He’d travel from Montreal to the Big Apple by bus or train and try to figure out how to break into the music industry. He bought copies of Billboard Magazine, Cashbox Magazine and other trade papers to see which record companies had hits on the pop charts. Kim recalls in an interview with Entertainment Week, September 21, 1974, “I figured those were the companies I would go to. I went to the A and R department of Paramount Records. I told the receptionist I had a meeting that afternoon but I just came by that morning to see the A and R man. She asked if I had a demo and I said yes. She sent me down a corridor to this man and I said ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t know what a demo is.’ He asked if I wrote songs or played an instrument. (I said) no. He said what the business involved and I should not trick my way into places.”
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