#78: Cornflakes and Ice Cream by Lords of London
City: Toronto, ON
Radio Station: CHUM
Peak Month: August 1967
Peak Position in Toronto ~ #1
Peak Position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~did not chart
YouTube: “Cornflakes And Ice Cream”
Lyrics: N/A
On July 31, 1967, CHUM 1050-AM in Toronto had this to say about the Lords of London in their Pop Pix section. “The Lords of London are an assortment of kids from 15 to 17 and look it. Consisting of Sebastian Agnello (15), Danny Taylor (drums), Hughie Leggat (16), John Richardson (17), and Greg Fitzpatrick who is the songwriter in the group responsible for their first hit “Cornflakes and Ice Cream” rapidly rising on the charts.” The CHUM Hit Parade for July 31, 1967 showed “Cornflakes and Ice Cream” climbing from #34 to #26.
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#129: Beautiful Second Hand Man by Ginette Reno
City: Toronto, ON
Radio Station: CHUM
Peak Month: November-December 1970
Peak Position in Toronto ~ #6
Peak Position in Vancouver ~ #26
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Beautiful Second Hand Man”
Lyrics: “Beautiful Second Hand Man”
Ginette Raynault was born in 1946 in Montreal. She began singing in 1960 at the age of 14, and won the talent contest “Les Découvertes de Jean Simon” (Jean Simon’s Discoveries). With this success, three Montreal clubs – Café Caprice, le Café de l’Est and the Café Provincial – offered her a professional contract. Jean Simon suggested Ginette adopt the stage name Reno—a phonetic spelling of her real last name (as pronounced in Francophone). In 1962, Ginette Reno released her debut single “J’aime Guy”, a French version of the minor pop hit “Yessiree”, released earlier that year by American pop singer Linda Scott. The following year, Reno released “Roger” which was a hit on French-language pop stations across Quebec. The single was accompanied by a self-titled debut album in 1963. It included the track “Le Jour Viendra”, a French version of the Ruby and the Romantics number-one hit “Our Day Will Come”, and “Avec Toi” which was a French-language cover of Marcie Blaine’s “Bobby’s Girl”. The flip side, “Roger”, was a big hit in 1963.
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#23: French Song by Lucille Starr
City: Toronto, ON
Radio Station: CHUM
Peak Month: June 1964
Peak Position in Toronto ~ #2
Peak Position in Vancouver ~ #37
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #54
Peak Position on Belgian Singles chart ~ #1
Peak Position on Dutch Singles chart ~ #1
YouTube: “The French Song”
Lyrics: “The French Song”
Lucille Marie Raymonde Savoie was born in Saint Boniface, Manitoba, in 1938. During her childhood years in Saint Boniface, she first sang in church. When Starr was seven the family moved to Maillardville, a Francophone community in Coquitlam, British Columbia, where she learned to play guitar, bass and mandolin. In 1958, she met Bob Regan at a wedding. They began playing together in concert. They soon married and started playing and recording under the billing “Bob and Lucille.” They released two singles on the Ditto label recorded in Hollywood, California, in 1958. The first recording was “Eeny-Meeny-Miney-Moe”, followed up with “The Big Kiss”.
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#142: Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell
City: Toronto, ON
Radio Station: CHUM
Peak Month: July-August 1970
Peak Position in Toronto ~ #3
Peak Position in Vancouver ~ #19
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #67
YouTube: “Big Yellow Taxi”
Lyrics: “Big Yellow Taxi”
Roberta Joan Anderson was born in 1943, in Fort Macleod, Alberta. Her father was a grocer and her mother a schoolteacher. After the end of World War II, her family moved to North Battleford, Saskatchewan. When she was 9 years old, Joni and her family moved 85 miles southeast to Saskatoon. She took piano lessons as a child. In her teenage years, since she couldn’t afford a guitar, Joni taught herself to play the baritone ukelele which she bought for $36. In her teens Anderson listened to rock-n-roll radio broadcasts out of Texas where the radio signals were especially strong at night. She played at parties and also hung out at a local coffeehouse in Saskatoon called the Louis Riel. She later learned the guitar. In 1964 she began her professional musical career by playing clubs and festivals around Canada. Her repertoire consisted mostly of standard folk songs, many recorded by her idol, Judy Collins, until she began writing her own songs, starting with “Day After Day”, which she wrote while on her way to the Mariposa Folk Festival in 1965.
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#97: Oh Little One by Jack Scott
City: Toronto, ON
Radio Station: CHUM
Peak Month: June 1960
Peak Position in Toronto ~ #2
Peak Position in Vancouver ~ #8
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~#34
YouTube: “Oh Little One”
Lyrics: “Oh Little One”
Giovanni Dominico Scafone Jr. was born in 1936 in Windsor, Ontario, and spent some of his years growing up in the Detroit suburb of Hazel Park, Michigan. In 1954 he formed a band called the Southern Drifters. In 1957 he got a record deal with ABC-Paramount. He released two singles that year that sold little outside of Detroit and Cleveland. He scored four Top Ten hits on the Billboard Hot 100 and two more in the Top 30 in the USA. In Vancouver Jack Scott was a teen idol with his good looks and classic rock ‘n roll. He enjoyed eight Top Ten hits on the Vancouver charts including “What In The World’s Come Over You” and his most successful hit in town, “Goodbye Baby” that peaked at #2 and spent 17 weeks on the CKWX charts in 1958. At the time, Scott had more US singles in the Billboard Hot 100 (19), in a shorter period of time (41 months), than any other recording artist – with the exception of The Beatles, Elvis Presley, Fats Domino and Connie Francis. Scott charted twenty songs on the local record surveys in Vancouver between July 1958 and November 1962.
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#17: When It’s Over by Loverboy
City: Montreal, PQ
Radio Station: CKGM
Peak Month: May 1982
Peak Position in Montreal ~ #1
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #26
YouTube: “When It’s Over”
Lyrics: “When It’s Over”
Loverboy is a band formed in 1979. It has been stated by Mike Reno that their name was chosen due to a dream by Paul Dean. He had come up with the name after spending the previous night with some of the bandmates, including Reno and their girlfriends, before going to the movies. The girlfriends were browsing through fashion magazines, where the guys in the band saw a Cover Girl advertisement. Cover Girl became Cover Boy, and then became Loverboy in Dean’s dream later that night. After being told by Dean about the dream the next morning, Reno agreed to try it out and it stuck.
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#42: Lovers In A Dangerous Time by Bruce Cockburn
City: Regina, SK
Radio Station: CJME
Peak Month: July-August 1984
Peak Position in Regina ~ #12
Peak Position in Vancouver ~ #19
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Lovers In A Dangerous Time”
Lyrics: “Lovers In A Dangerous Time”
Bruce Cockburn was born in Ottawa in 1945. He has stated in interviews that his first guitar was one he found around 1959 in his grandmother’s attic, which he adorned with golden stars and used to play along to radio hits. Some of these included songs by the Beau Marks from Montreal. Later he was taught piano and music theory by Peter Hall, the organist at Westboro United Church which Cockburn and his family attended. Cockburn had been listening to jazz and wanted to learn musical composition. Hall encouraged him and, along with his friend Bob Lamble, a lot of time was spent at Hall’s house listening to and discussing jazz. After graduating, he took a boat to Europe and busked in Paris. Cockburn attended Berklee School of Music in Boston, where his studies included jazz composition, for three semesters between 1964 and 1966. That year he dropped out and joined an Ottawa band called The Children, which lasted for about a year.
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#153: Women Around The World At Work by Martha and the Muffins
City: Toronto, ON
Radio Station: CHUM
Peak Month: November 1981
Peak Position in Toronto ~ #10
Peak Position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Women Around The World At Work”
Lyrics: “Women Around The World At Work”
Martha Johnson was born in Toronto, Ontario, in 1950. Johnson worked in Toronto as a medical receptionist. She started her career playing the organ with cover band “Oh Those Pants”. She then was part of Toronto band the Doncasters in the early 1970s. Johnson joined David Millar, Mark and Tim Gane, and Carl Finkle to form the band Martha & the Muffins in 1977. Martha & the Muffins emerged from the early punk/new wave/art pop scene which was centered around various clubs along Toronto’s Queen Street West and the Ontario College of Art, where Millar and Mark Gane were students. Martha Johnson played keyboards, David Millar and Mark Gane played guitar. Gane’s brother, Tim, was the band’s drummer. And Carl Finkle played bass guitar. The band had their debut performance at the Ontario College of Art Hallowe’en party in October 1977. Some of the clubs they played at included the Beverly and the Rivoli. Regarding the name for the band, Mark Gane recalls “We decided to use it as a temporary name until we could all agree on something better.” They had wanted a name that was edgy, but not aggressive like the Sex Pistols.
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#171: The Swingin’ Shepherd Blues by Moe Koffman Quartette
City: Toronto, ON
Radio Station: CHUM
Peak Month: February 1958
Peak Position in Toronto ~ #4
Peak Position in Vancouver ~ #22
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #36
YouTube: “The Swingin’ Shepherd Blues”
Morris “Moe” Koffman was born in Toronto in 1928 to Jewish parents who ran a variety store. Koffman began to study violin at the age of nine. He later attended the Toronto Conservatory of Music. Koffman dropped out of school when he found work performing in dance bands. In 1950, he moved to the United States, where he played with a number of big bands, including with Sonny Dunham and Jimmy Dorsey. In 1955, he returned to Toronto where he formed a quartet and later a quintet.
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#186: If I Call You By Some Name by the Paupers
City: Toronto, ON
Radio Station: CHUM
Peak Month: January 1967
Peak Position in Toronto ~ #6
Peak Position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
Peak Position on the Canadian RPM Top 100 ~ #31
YouTube: “If I Call You By Some Name”
Lyrics: “If I Call You By Some Name”
The Paupers were a band from Toronto formed in 1964. Originally, they were called The Spats. The members were Skip Prokop, the former drummer with the Riverside Three (born in Hamilton (ON) in 1943), former Last Words guitarist Bill Misener (who also went by his alias Bill Marion), guitar-player Chuck Beal (born in Scarborough (ON) in 1943), and bass guitar-player Denny Gerrard (born in Scarborough (ON) in 1947). In 1965, the band released their debut folk-rock single titled “Never Send You Flowers”. The haunting tune got airplay in a number of radio markets across Ontario, and topped the CKEY Instant Five Survey in Toronto that showcased Canadian recording artists. This was followed by the British Invasion sounding “If I Told My Baby”, and “For What I Am”.
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