#305: (Boogie Woogie) Dancin’ Shoes by Claudia Barry
Peak Month: December 1978
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
1 week Playlist
Peak Position #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #56
YouTube: “(Boogie Woogie) Dancin’ Shoes”
Lyrics: “(Boogie Woogie) Dancin’ Shoes”
Claudja Barry was born in Jamaica in 1952. At the age of six, Barry and her family emigrated from to Canada and settled in Scarborough, Ontario. From an early age she was inspired by the music of Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra and Nat “King” Cole. In her mid-teens she began to take vocal lessons and started dancing. In an interview on Extraordinary Women TV in 2013, Barry relates that after graduation from high school, she travelled to Europe to study classical voice. It was there that she got cast in the musical Hair. Subsequently, she was cast in in a production of Catch My Soul which toured Europe in 1974-75. The rock musical is an adaption of Shakespeare’s Othello. In the spring of ’75 she ended up in West Germany. That same year she signed with Hot Foot label and released a single called “Reggae Bump”. In 1976 she released her debut album Sweet Dynamite.
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#306: Jojo by Boz Scaggs
Peak Month: September 1980
13 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #17
YouTube: “Jojo”
Lyrics: “Jojo”
William Royce “Boz“ Scaggs was born in 1944 in Canton, Ohio, 60 miles south of Cleveland. His father was a traveling salesman, and the family moved to Oklahoma and next to Texas. While attending a private school in Dallas, Scaggs met Steve Miller while he was 12-years-old. Scaggs was learning to play guitar and was invited to join Miller’s band the Marksmen. In 1961-62 Boz Scaggs joined Steve Miller’s band the Ardells while the pair were studying university in Madison, Wisconsin. Scaggs followed Miller to Chicago in ’62-’63. Then he went to London and Sweden to perform as a solo artist in concert. While in Sweden, Boz Scaggs released his debut album, Boz, in 1965. The album only sold in Sweden and soon went out of print.
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#307: Flying Blue Angels by George, Johnny and the Pilots
Peak Month: November 1961
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #108
YouTube: “Flying Blue Angels”
George, Johnny and the Pilots recorded one side of a single 45 RPM record in 1961. Otherwise, there was no other record credited to them. It is plausible that “George” was George Paxton, the owner of Coed Records and one of the songwriters (going by the pseudonym George Eddy). I surmise that the “Johnny” providing backing vocals on the song could be Johnny Maestro. It was Maestro who recorded, as either a solo artist or a lead singer with the Crests, five of the 18 singles Coed Records released in 1961. Maestro was also a lead singer on the first two singles Coed Records released in January 1962.
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#1211: Deep Kiss by Mitsou
Peak Month: October 1992
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #19
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Deep Kiss”
In 1970 Mitsou Annie Marie Gélinas was born in Loretteville, Quebec. (The city amalgamated into Quebec City in 2002). She became a child star on French-Canadian television. Canadianbands.com states that she first began acting at age five. She began appearing in the soap opera Terre humaine, which first aired in 1978. The soap opera concerned the lives of the Jacquemins, a large farming family in rural Quebec. In addition to acting, Mitsou also started to explore singing as a vocation in the early 80s. In 1988 she signed a record deal with Isba Records. Her debut single, “Bye Bye Mon Cowboy” was an unusual French-language crossover into the English Top 40 radio market across Canada. The song spent five weeks on the CKLG Top 40 in the summer of 1989, after peaking at #2 in Montreal in 1988.
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#308: Ain’t That Just Like Me by the Searchers
Peak Month: May 1964
12 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #5
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #61
YouTube: “Ain’t That Just Like Me”
Lyrics: “Ain’t That Just Like Me”
The Searchers formed in Liverpool in 1959, after a skiffle band by its founders took the name. They were the a backing band for Johnny Sandon, a rockabilly singer who was an early contributor to the Merseybeat. They took their name from the 1956 John Wayne film, The Searchers. (The film starred Wayne cast as Civil War veteran, Ethan Allen, who searches for his abducted niece for five years to discover she has become one of the wives of a Comanche chief, and wishes to remain with her Comanche husband, Scar). The founders of the Searchers were John McNally and Mike Pender. Pender was born in Liverpool in 1941 with the birth name Michael John Prendergast. John McNally was also born in Liverpool that year. It was Western film buff, Pender, who dragged McNally to see The Searchers. Inspired by the film, Pender convinced McNally the film title was a good name for their new skiffle band. Johnny Sandon left The Searchers in 1961 to form the Remo Four. Tony Jackson, from Liverpool (born 1940) became The Searchers lead singer by 1962.
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#309: Killer Joe by the Rocky Fellers
Peak Month: April 1963
14 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #16
YouTube: “Killer Joe”
Lyrics: “Killer Joe”
The Rocky Fellers were a Filipino-American group comprised of brothers Tony Maligmat (born in 1944), Eddie Maligmat (born 1955), Junior Maligmat (born 1945), Albert Maligmat (born in 1953) and their father, Doroteo Maligmat (born 1924). The family was born in Manila, and moved to the USA in the mid-50s. On October 25, 1959, the Rocky Fellers appeared for the first time on TV on The Dinah Shore Chevy Show. They performed a cover of the Diamonds 1957 Top Ten hit “Little Darlin'”. The song was introduced by Dinah Shore who spoke of the exotic and primitive music of the Philippine Islands. Speaking of music, Dinah Shore said “And one of the richest and most exotic is the primitive music from the Philippine Islands,” Of course, “Little Darlin'” was rock ‘n roll and not a primitive song – so Shore was teasing her audience before they heard the song, setting them up to expect something, well “primitive.” Lead singer, Albert, told Dinah Shore after performing the song on her show that he learned to sing and play in the Philippines. From 1959, at the age of six onward, Albert Maligmat along with the other Rocky Fellers, opened for entertainers Bob Hope, Sammy Davis Jr., George Burns, Carol Channing, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Rich Little, Phyllis Diller, Joan Rivers, and Flip Wilson among others. A decade before the Jackson 5, The Rocky Fellers were example of what a family could do in the music business.
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#310: I’m Stickin’ With You by Jimmy Bowen
Peak Month: March 1957
8 weeks on Vancouver’s Red Robinson Teen Canteen chart
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #14
YouTube: “I’m Stickin’ With You”
Lyrics: “I’m Stickin’ With You”
James Albert Bowen was born in the mining town of Santa Rita, New Mexico, in 1937. The town later became a ghost town after it was abandoned in 1967. Bowen’s family moved to a small town in northern Texas in 1941. From early in his childhood, Bowen was very athletic. By the time he was in high school, he was a star athlete who received a scholarship to West Texas State University in Canyon, Texas. While Bowen grew to be an athlete, he also had a musical side to him that began in his teens when he was given a ukulele. He later acquired a guitar and eventually an electric guitar. At a high school assembly, Bowen and some of his classmates were asked to play a couple of songs. Bowen recalls, “the reaction from girls was the absolute proof that we should get in that [music] business.” In 1955, while at university, Bowen formed the Serenaders with singer and guitar player Buddy Knox, and lead guitarist Don Lanier. Lanier and Bowen had grown up in the same town and knew each other before going to university. Bowen played bass guitar and took turns with Buddy Knox as lead vocalist on the tunes in their sets.
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#312: All Over The World by Electric Light Orchestra
Peak Month: October 1980
11 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #13
YouTube: “All Around The World”
Lyrics: “All Over The World”
Jeffrey Lynne was born in suburban Birmingham, England in 1947. His dad bought him a guitar when he turned twelve. In 1966 he formed a band that by 1968 called themselves the Idle Race. He left for another band by the end of the 60s named The Move. The latter development was a catalyst for working on a musical project combining rock with orchestration. Beverley “Bev” Bevan was born in Birmingham, UK, in 1944. He learned to play drums and in 1956 he joined a rock band named Denny Laine & the Diplomats. In 1965 he moved on to join Carl Wayne & the Vikings, and in 1966 The Move. Bevan went through the transition from the Move to Electric Light Orchestra with Jeff Lynne. By the end of 1970 the Electric Light Orchestra was born.
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#313: No Ordinary Love by Sade
Peak Month: February 1993
13 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #28
YouTube: “No Ordinary Love”
Lyrics: “No Ordinary Love”
Helen Folasade Adu was born in 1959 in the city of Ibadan on southwestern Nigeria. At the age of four her parents separated, and she moved with her mother and brother to Essex, England. Growing up, she remembers three albums being played in her home in Essex: Dinah Washington’s Greatest Hits, Sinatra and Basie, and the soundtrack to Oliver. In the late 1970s she gained modest recognition as a fashion designer and part-time model, prior to joining the band Pride in the early 1980s. In 1988 she told Interview Magazine, “I don’t like fashion, but I do like clothes.” Adding, that she regards the fashion industry as more “cutthroat than the music business.” In 1982 Sade Adu formed her band, Sade, with bass guitarist Paul Denman; saxophonist, keyboard and guitar player Stuart Matthewman; keyboard player Andrew Hale; And drummer Paul Cooke.
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#314: Rasputin by Boney M
Peak Month: April 1979
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Rasputin”
Lyrics: “Rasputin”
Franz Reuther was born in 1941 in Kirn, Germany, in the Rheinland-Pfalz region bordering France. After graduating from school, he began to work as a cook. But in 1967 he released a single credited to Frank Farian. In 1974 he wrote a song titled “Baby Do You Wanna Bump”. In 1975 the single was released under the pseudonym Boney M. He got Marcia Barrett and Liz Mitchell to sing vocals for the debut Boney M. album. Barrett was born in Saint Catherine Parish in Jamaica in 1948. She moved to England in 1963 with her parents. In the late 60s, Barrett moved to West Germany and sang with Czechoslovakian singer Karel Gott who was known as “the Golden Voice of Prague.” Gott had three Top Ten albums in Germany between 1968 and 1971. Barrett also toured with the band of German singer Rex Gildo. After signing with a West German record label in 1971, Marcia Barrett toured with her German-language covers of “Son Of A Preacher Man” and “Oh Happy Day”.
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