#1094: Tattoo Man by Denise McCann

Peak Month: January 1977
9 weeks on CKLG chart
Peak Position #13
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Tattoo Man”
Lyrics: “Tattoo Man”

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. He and his brother played for touring vaudeville acts that came to Shreveport 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 wrote this website to add “I actually spent the entire night with Jimi Hendrix the night of his guitar-burning performance at Monterey Pop!” McCann appears in the D.A. Pennebaker documentary Monterey Pop!

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#1417: Long Long Way by Ian Thomas

Peak Month: September 1974
7 weeks on CKLG chart
Peak Position #17
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com link: “Long Long Way”

In 1950, Ian Thomas was born in Hamilton, Ontario. Once he began to play piano at the age of six Thomas fell in love with the world of music. He later learned the guitar. By 1969 he was in a folk group called Tranquility Base which began to tour across Canada. They had a #3 hit in Hamilton in 1970 called “If You’re Looking”. This led to an album, but further success eluded them. Thomas became a producer at the CBC. By 1973 he got his own record deal with GRT Records and released “Painted Ladies”. The song climbed to #9 in Vancouver and #34 on the Billboard Hot 100. His self-titled album went Gold. Thomas won the 1974 Juno Award for Most Promising Male Vocalist and toured with April Wine. He got exposure on a number of TV variety shows in Canada which included both his musical and comedic talents.

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#1136: Disco Queen by Copperpenny

Peak Month: June 1975
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #12
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Disco Queen”

Vocalist Ken Hollis and keyboardist Rich Wamil were friends in high school in Kitchener, Ontario. They began playing music together in a garage in 1965. Inspired to form a band, they called themselves the Penny Farthings. The name was a reflection of the British Invasion with so many pop tunes by the Dave Clark Five, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Animals, Herman’s Hermits, Petula Clark, the Kinks and others. The Penny Farthings soon got a lot of gigs in the Kitchener-Waterloo area. They landed a record contract with Columbia Records who suggested a name change to Copperpenny. The name was taken from the B-side to The Paupers’ hit in southern Ontario, “If I Call You By Some Name”.

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#1142: Take It Slow (Out In the Country) by Lighthouse

Peak Month: February 1972
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CKVN chart
Peak Position #11
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #64
YouTube.com: “Take It Slow (Out In The Country)”
Lyrics: “Take It Slow (Out In The Country)”

The Paupers were a garage band from Toronto active from 1965 to 1968. Their drummer was Skip Prokop. They performed as opening acts for American recording artists like Wilson Pickett and the Lovin’ Spoonful who were visiting Toronto. Then the Paupers played as an opening act for the Jefferson Airplane at Cafe Au Go Go in New York City from February 21 to March 5, 1967. This was three weeks after Jefferson Airplane released their album Surrealistic Pillow, and a month prior to their single release of “Somebody to Love”. The Paupers were the second act performing on the opening night of the Monterey International Pop Festival in Monterey, California, on June 16, 1967, following the opening set by The Association. The Paupers also had a few singles that year. “If I Call You By Name” peaked at #6 in Toronto, #7 in Hamilton and #8 in Kitchener. “Magic People” made the Top 30 in San Francisco and Sacramento, California. In 1968 Skip Prokop left the band and by the following year co-founded Lighthouse.

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#1143: Give It Up ~ Colin James

Peak Month: February 1991
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #18
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Give It Up”
Lyrics: “Give It Up”

Colin James Munn was born in Regina, Saskatchewan, in 1964. He is a neo-swing artist who mixes swing, jump blues, rockabilly, ska and contemporary rock ‘n roll into his performances and recordings. In 1984 he was playing with a Regina. As luck would have it American rocker, Stevie Ray Vaughan, was in town to appear in concert. Vaughan was fresh from the releases of his 1983 album, Texas Flood, and his 1984 album, Couldn’t Stand The Weather. Vaughan had also been given a spotlight as a guitarist playing numbers of songs on David Bowie’s 1983 Let’s Dance album. The opening act for Stevie Ray Vaughan was unable to perform, and with just a few hours to prepare, Colin James Munn was asked to be the opener for the Regina concert with members of a local band called Flying Colours. James knocked it out of the ballpark and was asked by Stevie Ray Vaughan to join him for the rest of the tour as the opening act. James played the rest of the tour with his backing band, the Hoodoo Men. But it was Stevie Ray Vaughan who suggested that Munn drop his last name and just go by Colin James. Munn sounded too much like “mud” over the distortion from the loudspeakers at the concert venues.

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#1147: Something Better by Chilliwack

Peak Month: September 1977
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #12
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Something Better”
Lyrics: “Something Better”

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. After a half dozen local hits including “Looking At A Baby” 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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#1148: Rock ‘N Roll Lover Man by Northwest Company

Peak Month: June 1971
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CKVN chart
Peak Position #12
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Rock ‘N Roll Lover Man”

The Northwest Company was a band in the Fraser Valley from the town of Haney, about 25 miles east of Vancouver. The bands members were bass player Gowan Jurgensen, lead vocalist Rick McCartie, lead guitar and vocalist Ray O’Toole, rhythm guitar player Vidor Skofteby and on drums and vocals, Richard Stepp who was a teenager in Sicamous, British Columbia. Before moving to Vancouver in his late teens, Richard Stepp had been a paid musician in two Sicamous area bands called the Esquires and the Rebels. McCartie had been lead vocalist, and Richard Stepp the drummer, with the short-lived Vancouver band, The Questions, in 1965-66 (a group that won the Battle of the Bands in 1965 at the Pacific National Exhibition). The Northwest Company was originally named the Bad Boys. This was named after The Bad Boys Rag Shop, a trendy clothing store in Vancouver back in ’67. However, CFUN deejay Tom Peacock, encouraged the band to come up with another name that wouldn’t strike fear into parents of the groups female fan-base. It was Gowan Jurgensen who suggested to his bandmates the North West Company, based on the Montreal fur trading business founded in 1789. The band agreed, but distinguished themselves from the fur trading company with “Northwest” instead of “North West.”

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#1149: I Turn To You by Spring

Peak Month: February 1972
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CKVN chart
Peak Position #13
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart

After receiving his Bachelor of Music degree in Composition from the University of British Columbia, Terry Frewer did post graduate studies in ethnomusicology, specializing in the music of the First Nations, Japan and India. He also did advanced training in jazz orchestration at the Banff School of Fine Arts. He quickly launched into a highly successful career beginning with playing (along with drummer Ross Turney) as a late addition to the Classics, the CBC Let’s Go house band.* The Classics line-up was fronted by Howie Vickers on vocals, with reed player Claire Lawrence and bass player Glenn Miller. The Classics went on to become The Collectors who then morphed into Chilliwack. Meanwhile, in 1968 Terry Frewer helped found the Vancouver band Spring. This quartet scored a huge local hit in 1971 with “A Country Boy Named Willie”. The song peaked at #2 on CKVN for two weeks. Other primary members of Spring included Bob Buckley (vocals, keyboard, sax, woodwinds), Pete McKinnon (bass), and Kat Hendrikse (drums).

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#1397: Time For Everyone by Northwest Company

Peak Month: September 1968
5 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #17
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart

The Northwest Company was a band in the Fraser Valley from the town of Haney, about 25 miles east of Vancouver. The bands members were bass player Gowan Jurgensen, lead vocalist Rick McCartie, lead guitar and vocalist Ray O’Toole, rhythm guitar player Vidor Skofteby and on drums and vocals, Richard Stepp who was from Sicamous, British Columbia. Before moving to Vancouver in his late teens, Richard Stepp had been a paid musician in two Sicamous area bands called the Esquires and the Rebels. McCartie had been lead vocalist, and Richard Stepp the drummer, with the short-lived Vancouver band, The Questions, in 1965-66 (a group that won the Battle of the Bands in 1965 at the Pacific National Exhibition). The Northwest Company was originally named the Bad Boys. This was named after The Bad Boys Rag Shop, a trendy clothing store in Vancouver back in ’67. However, CFUN deejay Tom Peacock, encouraged the band to come up with another name that wouldn’t strike fear into parents of the groups female fan-base. It was Gowan Jurgensen who suggested to his bandmates the North West Company, based on the Montreal fur trading business founded in 1789. The band agreed, but distinguished themselves from the fur trading company with “Northwest” instead of “North West.”

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Peak Month: December 1966
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #13
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
Plus 3 weeks on the All-Canadian Top-Ten
YouTube.com: “Remorse”

Mike Campbell was born in Vancouver and attended Burnaby South Secondary School and graduated in 1960. He became a local teen idol on the west coast. During the 1960’s he made around a hundred television appearances on popular CBC shows Let’s Go, Music Hop and Hits A Poppin. He can be seen appearing in a summer 1968 installment of Hits A Poppin, hosted by Terry David Mullugan, singing “Two Bit Manchild” starting at 1:24 with Terry David’s introduction in the above link. Campbell released “Remorse” in 1966 on Tom Northcott’s recently established New Syndrome label. Like many long-forgotten seven-inchers of the time, though, this one bears the distinctive markings of the fab four, especially those silky harmonies and that taut, emotive songwriting.

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