#532: Poor Little Fool by Frank Mills

Peak Month: June 1972
11 weeks on CKVN’s Vancouver Charts
Peak Position ~ #3
1 week Preview
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #106
YouTube.com: “Poor Little Fool”
Lyrics: “Poor Little Fool”
YouTube: “Poor Little Fool” (Ricky Nelson version)

In 1942, Frank Mills was born into a musical household in Montreal, and grew up in Verdun, Quebec. His older sister and mother both played the piano. Young Frank learned to play piano by ear. He also learned to play trombone in high school and played in a school band. His parents both died of cancer by the time Frank was seventeen. Initially, he entered McGill University in pre-med. However, his marks weren’t good enough to continue. When he scored 98% on a Music Department entrance exam, his direction was certain.

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#761: Big League by Tom Cochrane & Red Rider

Peak Month: December 1988
13 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Charts
Peak Position ~ #13
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Big League”
Lyrics: “Big League”

Tom Cochrane was born in Lynn Lake, Manitoba, in 1953. When he was eleven he got his first guitar. In his late teens and early twenties, he performed in coffee houses across Canada in the early 70’s. His debut album, Hang On To Your Resistance, was released in 1974. Then Tom Cochrane made his way to Los Angeles. In 1975, Cochrane got work composing theme music for the movie My Pleasure Is My Business. This was a film about Xavier Hollander, the call girl and adult film star who authored her own memoir, The Happy Hooker, in 1971. Unable to get subsequent work in Hollywood, Cochrane returned to Canada for drive a taxi and work on a cruise line. At a concert at the El Mocambo for Red Rider in 1978, Tom Cochrane met the band. Soon after Cochrane was invited to join Red Rider.

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#767: Keep Our Love Alive by Patricia Dalhquist

Peak Month: August 1975
10 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Chart
Peak Position: #9
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Keep Our Love Alive”
Lyrics: “Keep Our Love Alive”

Patricia Dahlquist was born in the British Columbia town of Nelson in the Kootenay Mountains. She appeared in the film The Street in 1962. After high school she studied theatre, education, ballet, violin and voice in the years that followed. When she was in university in Vancouver, Dalquist accepted an opportunity to tour with Hagood Hardy and The Montage in 1970. She performed with him at the Playboy Club in New York City. She was also an opening act for Carmen McCrae.

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#768: Golly by The Four Lads

Peak Month: June 1957
16 weeks on CKWX’s Vancouver Chart
Peak Position: #14
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Golly”

The Four Lads are a Canadian male quartet from Toronto, Ontario. They were originally made up of Corrado “Connie” Codarini, James F. “Jimmy” Arnold, John Bernard “Bernie” Toorish and Frank Busseri. They met as members of St. Michael’s Choir School. Originally, they named themselves the Otnorots (made up mostly of spelling the place name Toronto backwards. They changed their name to the Four Dukes. But after they found out a group in Detroit had the same name, then they settled on the Four Lads. They got a break when Mitch Miller noticed them when they were recruited by talent scouts to go to New York. Mitchell had them sing back-up on Johnny Ray’s 1951 smash hit, “Cry”, and his big follow up, “The Little White Cloud that Cried”.
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#771: Hang On To Your Life/Do You Miss Me Darlin’ by The Guess Who

Peak Month: February 1971
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CKVN chart
Peak Position #8
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #43/did not chart
YouTube.com: “Hang On To Your Life”
Lyrics: “Hang On To Your Life”
YouTube.com: “Do You Miss Me Darlin‘”
Lyrics: “Do You Miss Me Darlin'”

Randolph Charles Bachman was born in 1943 in Winnipeg, Manitoba. When he was just three years old he entered the King of the Saddle singing contest on CKY radio, Manitoba’s first radio station that began in 1923. Bachman won the contest. When he turned five years he began to study the violin through the Royal Toronto Conservatory. Though he couldn’t read music, he was able to play anything once he heard it. He dropped out of high school and subsequently a business administration program in college. He co-founded a Winnipeg band called Al & The Silvertones with Chad Allan in 1960.

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#774: Save It by Shari Ulrich

Peak Month: January 1982
12 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #13
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Save It”

Shari Ulrich was born in 1951 in San Raphael, a half an hour north of the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Francisco Bay Area California. Born into a musical family, Ulrich started playing the violin at the age of four. She first appeared on stage with her two older siblings at the San Francisco Free Theatre. After the Kent State shooting of four unarmed university students by Ohio State National Guard on May 4, 1970, Shari Ulrich moved to Vancouver, Canada. The Kent State students had been protesting the Vietnam War. It was in Vancouver, at the age of 18, she became part of the coffeehouse circuit playing her folk inspired set at what was Vancouver’s new vegetarian restaurant, The Naam, which opened in 1968. In 1973, Ulrich became part of the folk trio Pied Pumpkin, along with Rick Scott and Joe Mock. On the two albums Pied Pumpkin released the next few years she was featured playing guitar, violin, mandolin, flute, saxophone and vocals. In 1976 she toured with another British Columbian folk star, Valdy, with his group The Hometown Band.

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Peak Month: June 1980
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #10
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
3 weeks Hitbound on CKLG
YouTube.com link: “Nyet Nyet Soviet (Soviet Jewellery)”
Lyrics: Nyet Nyet Soviet (Soviet Jewellery)”

Gabor Hegedus was born in Hungary in 1948. His childhood was spent in the context of the repressive Hungarian Communist regime as a satellite of Stalin’s USSR. The Hungarian Communist Party had received only 17% of the vote in November 1945 and 17% of the vote in national elections in August 1947. Hungarian Communist part leader, Mátyás Rákosi, forced the Social Democrats to merge with the Communists. Next, all the other political parties were declared illegal and many politicians were charged with “conspiracy against the Republic.” This included Rákosi’s main rival in the Hungarian Communist Party, László Rajk, the Minister of the Interior of Hungary who had established the State Protection Authority. László was executed after a show trial in May 1949. Under the regime as many as 1.5 million Hungarians were imprisoned at some point between 1949 and 1956, out of a population of 9.5 million. The highly unpopular Rákosi was removed from office in the July 1956, after a speech by Nikita Khrushchev on February 25, 1956, had begun a process of destalinization. Khrushchev had denounced the cult of personality that Joseph Stalin had established and Rákosi had emulated. Reforms and revolution were sparked in the fall of 1956 and László Rajk was cleared of all charges on October 6, 1956. On October 19, 1956, the new reformist Hungarian Communist Party leader, Imre Nagy, won concessions for a reduction of Soviet troops in Hungary. Students and others pushed for even more reforms and on November 4th Soviet tanks entered Budapest. The Hungarian Revolution ended on November 11, 1956. Gabor Hegedus and his parents fled to England. In a 1980 interview with Paul McGrath of the Globe and Mail, BB Gabor recalled that his family escaped Hungary just “one step ahead of the Russian tanks.”

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#776: Rockin’ Rollin’ Ocean by Hank Snow

Peak Month: April 1960
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #7
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #87
YouTube.com: “Rockin’ Rollin’ Ocean”
Lyrics: “Rockin’ Rollin’ Ocean”

Clarence Eugene “Hank” Snow was born in the small community of Brooklyn, Nova Scotia, on May 9, 1914. He was the fifth of six children, the two eldest died in infancy. His nickname growing up in his family was Jack. At age 12 he weighed only 80 pounds and was frail. It was at this time that his mother ordered a Hawaiian steel guitar advertised in a magazine along with free lessons and several 78rpm gramophone records.

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#781: New York Is Closed Tonight by Greenfield

Peak Month: August 1972
11 weeks on Vancouver’s CKVN chart
Peak Position #7
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “New York Is Closed Tonight”
Lyrics: “New York Is Closed Tonight”

Barry Greenfield was born in the UK in early 1951. He spent his childhood in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He moved with his parents to Vancouver in 1967. It was in Vancouver he soon attended his first rock ‘n roll concert featuring Herman’s Hermits, The Who and Buffalo Springfield. The concert was a catalyst for buying a guitar and Barry Greenfield soon began writing songs. Then in May 1968, he watched a telecast of NBC’s Tonight Show with featured guests John Lennon and Paul McCartney. On the show they spoke about their new Beatles’ record label, Apple. During the interview, young Barry Greenfield heard them say “Come to London! Come to Apple.” Greenfield took them seriously. He promptly bought a plane ticket to London, UK, and made his way to Apple Records at 3 Saville Road. As he tells it on his website, Barry Greenfield “met John Lennon and was told that his songs were special. Barry called his mom that night from a London payphone to share his joy at the reaction from Apple.” Things started to unfold quickly and he was given an offer off a recording contract with EMI. But Barry Greenfield turned it down. On his website, bio, Greenfield recalls the reason was “he felt that stardom was not a journey he wanted to apply for.” Back in Vancouver, he was focused on going into Law School.

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#785: We’re Here For A Good Time by Trooper

Peak Month: August 1977
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #8
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “We’re Here For A Good Time”
Lyrics: “We’re Here For A Good Time”

In 1967 Ra McGuire and Brian Smith played in a Vancouver band named Winter’s Green. The band recorded two songs, “Are You a Monkey” and “Jump in the River Blues” on the Rumble Records Label. “Are You A Monkey” later appeared on a rock collection: 1983’s “The History of Vancouver Rock and Roll, Vol. 3.” In the early seventies Winter’s Green changed their name to Applejack and added drummer Tommy Stewart and bassist Harry Kalensky to their lineup. Applejack became a very popular band in the Vancouver area, and began touring extensively in British Columbia. The band played a few original tunes such as “Raise A Little Hell”, and “Oh, Pretty Lady”, as well as Top 40 songs by artists such as Neil Young, and Chicago.

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