#215: Rock ‘N Roll Love Letter by the Bay City Rollers
Peak Month: April 1976
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG’s chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #28
YouTube: “Rock ‘N Roll Love Letter”
Lyrics: “Rock ‘N Roll Love Letter”
Alan Longmuir was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1948. The family was poor and lived in tenement housing with no bath or bathroom. Alan recalls in his memoir, “to have a proper wash we used the Dalry Public Baths in Caledonian Crescent… I remember the Baths had a Brylcreem dispensing machine at a penny squirt.” In 1958 Alan went to the Scotia movie cinema to see Jailhouse Rock, starring Elvis Presley. He learned to play acoustic guitar. He had been hanging out with a rough crowd and was known by the teachers at school as a truant. He worked at a dairy, cleaning stables and delivering milk on a horse and cart before he left school in 1963 at the age of 15. He also sang in the Tynecastle School Choir before he quit school. Alan’s father worked as an undertaker, going to work in a top hat and long coat. There was often a hearse outside the Longmuir home. Alan recalls that his father “used to come along the street with the hearse and people would wonder who died, but it was just him coming home for his lunch.”
Continue reading →
#216: You’re The Voice by John Farnham
Peak Month: August 1987
12 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
1 week Playlist
Peak Position #5
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #82 (in 1990)
YouTube: “You’re The Voice”
Lyrics: “You’re The Voice”
John Peter Farnham was born in 1949 in Essex, England. He moved with his family to Australia in 1959. While in Grade Ten, in 1964 he began performing as Johnny Farnham a local Melbourne band called the Mavericks on weekends. In late 1965, he became the lead singer for Strings Unlimited. In 1967, Farnham was signed to the EMI label and recorded a novelty song titled “Sadie (The Cleaning Lady)”. It became a number-one single in Australia for five weeks in early 1968. He followed up with two more Top Ten hits on the Australian pop charts, including a cover of the 1930s pop standard “Underneath The Arches”. In 1969, Johnny Farnham’s cover of the Three Dog Night song, “One”, peaked at #4 in Australia. He returned to the top of the Australian pop charts later that year with a cover of “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head”. He had three more Top Ten hits in Australia in the 1970s, and a Top Ten cover of the Beatles “Help” in 1980.
Continue reading →
#217: Aladdin by Bobby Curtola
Peak Month: October 1962
13 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #4
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #92
YouTube: “Aladdin”
Lyrics: “Aladdin”
Bobby Curtola was born in Port Arthur, Ontario, in 1943. (The town would become amalgamated into the city of Thunder Bay in 1970). His cousin Susan Andrusco remembers “”Bobby would always be singing at our family gatherings. The family loved him. And he loved being the centre of attention. He would sing Oh My Papa, and my grandpa would cry.” Oh My Papa was a number-one hit for Eddie Fisher in January 1954, when Bobby Curtola was still ten-years-old. In the fall of 1959, sixteen-year-old high school student Bobby Curtola went from pumping gas at his father’s garage in Thunder Bay, Ontario, to the life of a teen idol. Within a year he went from playing in his basement band, Bobby and the Bobcats, to recording his first hit single in 1960, “Hand In Hand With You”, which charted in June ’60 in Ontario, but not in Vancouver.
Continue reading →
#1410: Don’t Go by Hothouse Flowers
Peak Month: December 1988
Peak Position #19
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG Chart
1 week playlist
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Don’t Go”
Lyrics: “Don’t Go”
Liam Ó Maonlaí was born in 1964 in County Dublin, Ireland. He grew up in suburban Dublin and in his teens he won an award for playing the bodhrán, an Irish drum. In 1979 he formed a punk rock band called The Complex, which he left in 1981. Fiachna Ó Braonáin was born in Dublin in 1965. Other original bandmates included drummer Jerry Fehily (born in Cork, Ireland, in 1966), saxophonist Leo Barnes (born in 1956), and bass guitarist Peter O’Toole (born in 1965 in Dublin). Fehily only began learning the drum at the age of 17. O’Toole left school when he was sixteen and got jobs delivering bread, making fiddles and working as a lumberjack. “We’d been in the same band before,” O’Toole says of O’Maonlai, “but we’d never actually met. It was that sort of band — there were loads of people.” O’Maonlai, Ó Braonáin, Fehily, Barnes and O’Toole made up the core of Hothouse Flowers when they formed in 1985.
Continue reading →
#218: Arc Of A Diver by Steve Winwood
Peak Month: July 1981
Peak Position #2
13 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN Chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #48
YouTube: “Arc Of A Diver”
Lyrics: “Arc of a Diver”
Stephen Lawrence Winwood was born in 1948 in suburban Birmingham, UK. Winwood began playing piano from the age of four, being raised in a musical family. He joined a boys choir and added drums and guitar to his repertoire. At age 14 he joined The Spencer Davis Group in 1963, with his older brother Muff. In 1965 the band had a number-one hit in the UK with “Keep On Running“. The single climbed into the Top Ten in Vancouver (BC) in 1966. A follow up single, “Somebody Help Me”, also topped the UK Singles chart in 1966, and was covered by Vancouver band the Shockers in 1967. Spencer Davis Group had two more notable hits in both the UK, Ireland, New Zealand and Australia, finally making the Billboard Hot 100 Top Ten with “Gimme Some Lovin'” (#7) and “I’m A Man” (#10) in 1967. “Gimme Some Lovin'” climbed to #1 in Vancouver, while “I’m A Man” peaked at #12. In each case, Stevie Winwood was the lead vocalist.
Continue reading →
#219: Goodbye Stranger by Supertramp
Peak Month: September 1979
15 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN’s chart
Peak Position #2 ~ CKLG
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #15
YouTube: “Goodbye Stranger”
Lyrics: “Goodbye Stranger”
Richard “Rick” Davies was born in 1944 in Swindon, England. By the age of eight, it was clear his only real interest in school was music. At the age of 12 he became a snare drummer with the British Railways Staff Association Brass and Silver Jubilee Band. Davies recalls, “As a kid, I used to hear the drums marching along the street in England, in my home town, when there was some kind of parade, and it was the most fantastic sound to me. Then, eventually, I got some drums and I took lessons. I was serious about it… I figured if I could do that – I mean a real drummer, read music and play with big bands, rock bands, classical, Latin, and know what I was going to do – I would be in demand and my life was set… Eventually, I started fiddling with the keyboards, and that seemed to go over better than my drumming, for some reason. So you’ve gotta go with what people react to.”
Continue reading →
#220: Substitute by Clout
Peak Month: November 1978
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #2
1 week Playlist
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #67
YouTube: “Substitute”
Lyrics: “Substitute”
Clout was a rock band from South Africa. It was comprised of lead vocalist and guitar player Cindy Alter, who was born in Johannesburg, South Africa (1977–1981), bass player and backing vocalist Ilene “Lee” Tomlinson (1977–1980), backing vocalist and drummer Ingrid “Ingi” Herbst (1977–1981), guitar player and backing vocalist Jenni Garson (1977–1981), keyboard player and backing vocalist Ron “Bones” Brettell (1978–1981), and guitar player and backing vocalist Sandy Robbie (1978–1981).
Continue reading →
#221: Ups And Downs by Paul Revere And The Raiders
Peak Month: March 1967
11 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #1 ~ CKLG
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #22
YouTube: “Ups And Downs”
Lyrics: “Ups And Downs”
A band called The Downbeats formed in Boise, Idaho, in 1958. Paul Revere Dick started the band originally as an instrumental group. They had their first chart single in Vancouver in 1960. It was an instrumental riff on the piano tune, Chopsticks, which they titled “Beatnik Sticks”. They changed their name to Paul Revere And The Raiders in 1960. Between 1960 and 1976 they released 41 singles. They charted five songs into the Top Ten on the Billboard Hot 100 in the USA. These included “Kicks”, and “Hungry” (1966), “Him Or Me – What’s It Gonna Be?” (1967) and their cover of Don Fardon’s 1968 single “Indian Reservation,” which peaked at #1 for the band in 1971. They were even more popular in Vancouver where they charted over fifteen songs into the Top Ten on the local charts here on the West Coast.
Continue reading →
#222: Lonely Teenager by Dion
Peak Month: December 1960
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #12
YouTube: “Lonely Teenager”
Lyrics: “Lonely Teenager”
Dion Francis DiMucci was born in the Bronx, NY, in 1939. His parents named him Dion in honor of the French Canadian Dionne quintuplents who captured the interest of millions around the world after the five infants were born in May 1934. Dion’s dad, Pasquale DiMucci, was a vaudeville performer and Dion accompanied him to see his dad on stage. As a child he was given an $8 dollar guitar by his uncle while he lived on 183rd Street. Dion’s childhood was set in the midst of conflict between his parents. In an interview with New York Magazine in 2007, Dion remembers “…There was a lot of unresolved conflict in my house… My pop, Pasquale, couldn’t make the $36-a-month rent on our apartment at 183rd and Crotona Avenue.” He was a dreamer, a failed vaudevillian, and sometimes Catskills puppeteer. He’d talk big and lift weights he’d made from oilcans, while Frances, Mrs. DiMucci, took two buses and the subway downtown to work in the garment district on a sewing machine. “When they’d start yelling, I’d go out on the stoop with my $8 Gibson and try to resolve things that way.”
Continue reading →
#223: Don’t Talk To Him by Cliff Richard
Peak Month: February 1964
12 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #4
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Don’t Talk To Him”
Lyrics: “Don’t Talk To Him”
Cliff Richard was born Harry Roger Webb on October 14, 1940, in the city of Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, India. In 1940 Lucknow was part of the British Raj, as India was not yet an independent country. Webb’s father worked on as a catering manager for the Indian Railways. His mother raised Harry and his three sisters. In 1948, when India had become independent, the Webb family took a boat to Essex, England, and began a new chapter. At the age of 16 Harry Webb was given a guitar by his father. Harry then formed a vocal group called the Quintones. Webb was interested in skiffle music, a type of jug band music, popularized by “The King of Skiffle,” Scottish singer Lonnie Donegan who had an international hit in 1955 called “Rock Island Line”.
Continue reading →
