#1433: Freight Train by The Canadian Sweethearts
Peak Month: August 1963
6 weeks on CFUN chart
Peak Position #17
CFUN Twin Pick August 3, 1963
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com link: “Freight Train”
Lyrics: “Freight Train” (Paul James, Fred Williams, Christian Albertine)
Lyrics: Freight Train” (Elizabeth Cotten)
The Canadian Sweethearts were Bob Regan and Lucille Starr. Regan was born in 1931 and baptized as Robert Frederickson in the village of Rolla, twenty miles north of Dawson Creek, British Columbia. In his childhood he learned to play the harmonica, guitar, mandolin and fiddle. In 1938, Lucille Marie Raymonde Savoie was born in St. Boniface, Manitoba. In 1958, Regan had been performing in his brother’s band The Peace Rangers and had recorded an instrumental called “Teenage Boogie” Starr, now twenty, had performed in the French band Les Hirondelles and later as a solo singer. That year Starr and Regan met at a wedding and 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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#1095: Sun Goes By by Doctor Music
Peak Month: August 1972
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CKVN chart
Peak Position #12
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Sun Goes By”
Lyrics: “Sun Goes By”
Instrumental in bringing jazz to the pop world, Dr Music was the brainchild of Toronto native and Doug Riley, who first took piano lessons as a child as a means of coping through polio. Born in Toronto in 1945, he took lessons in classical piano at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto beginning at the age of four. In 1969, Doug Riley became the music director for the television show “The Ray Stevens Show”. He was asked to put together a group of musicians to play for the 1969-1970 season of the show when Ray Stevens was continuing his string of hits including “Mr. Businessman”, “Guitarzan” and “Everything Is Beautiful”. Riley’s 16-piece vocal and instrumental band became known as Dr. Music.
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#1156: With Your Love by Jack Scott
Peak Month: January 1958
3 weeks on Teen Canteen chart
Peak Position #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #28
YouTube.com: “With Your Love”
Lyrics: “With Your Love”
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 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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#1431: Hurry Up And Tell Me by Paul Anka
Peak Month: October 1963
6 weeks on CFUN chart
Peak Position #16
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Hurry Up And Tell Me”
Paul Anka was born in Ottawa, Canada, in 1941. His father was Syrian-American and his mother was Canadian-Lebanese. While growing up in Ottawa he was part of a vocal trio at Fisher Park High School called the Bobby Soxers. In the fall of 1956, Anka signed with the RPM label and released his first single, “Blau-Wile-Deveest-Fontaine”. It made the Top Ten in Smith Falls (ON). He had a #1 hit in 1957 titled “Diana”, and performed in concert at the Georgia Auditorium in Vancouver on October 23, 1957. Others on stage were Buddy Holly and The Crickets, Buddy Knox, Eddie Cochran, and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers.
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#1102: Boots or Hearts by the Tragically Hip
Peak Month: April 1990
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #14
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Boots Or Hearts”
Lyrics: “Boots Or Hearts”
In the early 1980’s bass player Gord Sinclair and guitar player Rob Baker were students at Kingston Collegiate Vocational Institute in Kingston, Ontario. They had performed at the collegiate’s Variety Show in a band they called The Rodents. In 1984 Baker and Sinclair were in their early twenties. The Tragically Hip formed in 1984 in Kingston, Ontario when the duo added drummer Johnny Fay and lead singer Gordon Downie. Their name came from a skit in the movie Elephant Parts, directed by former Monkee’s guitarist Michael Nesmith. The Tragically Hip added Paul Langois, a guitar player, to their line-up in 1986. When they performed at the Horeshoe Tavern in Toronto in the mid-80’s, they were sign to a recording contract with MCA after the company president, Bruce Dickinson, saw the band at the tavern. A self-titled EP (Extended Play) was released in 1987 with a couple of singles that got some airplay. The group was launched.
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#1110: All I See is Your Face by Dan Hill
Peak Month: October 1978
6 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #11
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “All I See Is Your Face”
Lyrics: “All I See Is Your Face”
Daniel Grafton Hill IV was born in 1954 in Toronto. He father, Daniel Hill, was s social scientist. Hill’s parents moved to Canada before he was born to live in a less racially charged setting where their interracial marriage would not be met with intolerance. Hill would later write about his parents exit from the USA in his song “McCarthy’s Day.” While young Dan was in his teens he learned the guitar and started to compose songs. When he was just 18 years old he got a songwriting contract with RCA Records. In 1975 Hill released his first album, but it would be his third album, Longer Fuse, that got the attention of deejays and record buyers. His #1 hit single from the album, “Sometimes When We Touch“, was co-written with Barry Mann, of Manhattan’s Brill Building’s songwriting fame. With the song came multiple Junos Awards: Composer, Male Vocalist, and Single of the Year. Hill also was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1978 for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance, losing out to Barry Manilow’s “Copacabana“.
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#1111: Why’d You Lie by Colin James
Peak Month: March-April 1989
10 weeks on CKLG chart
Peak Position #15
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Why’d You Lie”
Lyrics: Why’d You Lie”
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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#1176: Tell Me That You Love Me by Paul Anka
Peak Month: November 1957
8 weeks on CKWX chart
Peak Position #15
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Tell Me That You Love Me”
Lyrics: “Tell Me That You Love Me”
Paul Anka was 16 years old when he had a number one hit with “Diana” in 1957, a song he wrote about a girl in the church he attended. (Diana Ayoub, who inspired Anka to write the song, died in December 2022). He continued to have a string of Top Ten and Top 20 hits into 1963 in Canada, the United States, the UK and Italy. But with the British Invasion, Paul Anka was sidelined not to return to the pop charts until his #1 hit in 1974, “You’re Having My Baby”. The song was a duet with Odia Coates. The duo enjoyed a string of Top 20 hits in Canada and the USA including 1974’s “One Man Woman/One Woman Man” and 1975’s “I Don’t Like To Sleep Alone” and “(I Believe) There’s Nothing Stronger Than Our Love”.
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#1115: Down In The Alley by Ronnie Hawkins
Peak Month: March 1970
7 weeks on CKLG chart
Peak Position #9
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #75
YouTube.com: “Down In The Alley”
Lyrics: “Down In The Alley”
Ronnie Hawkins was born in Huntsville, Arkansas, on January 10, 1935, two days after Elvis Presley. Hawkins’ mother was a teacher; his father, a barber. Known affectionately over the years as “Mr. Dynamo,” “Sir Ronnie,” “Rompin’ Ronnie,” and “The Hawk,” Hawkins’ love of music started in high school. He formed the first version of his band The Hawks while studying at the University of Arkansas in the 1950s. Ronnie remembers, he’d commandeer an old gas station on Dickson street for rehersals. “We’d unplug their outside Coke machine and plug in our instruments,” Hawkins said. “They had the warmest Cokes in town.” In 1958, on the recommendation of Conway Twitty – who considered Canada to be the promised land for a rock’n roll singer – Hawkins came to Hamilton, Ontario to play a club called The Grange. He never left. Adopting Canada as his home, Hawkins became a permanent resident in 1964. In 1958 he released his first single, “Hey, Bo Diddley”. This was followed the next year by “Mary Lou”, which turned Hawkins into a teenage idol, along with “Forty Days”. In 1959, Morris Levy signed Hawkins to Roulette Records for five years. Levy tried to lure him back to the United States, but Hawkins had fallen in love with Canada and didn’t want to leave his new home.
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#1119: Your Love Gets Me Around by Ronney Abramson
Peak Month: June 1977
9 weeks on CKLG chart
Peak Position #13
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Your Love Gets Me Around”
Lyrics: “Your Love Gets Me Around”
Ronney Abramson was born in Paris, France. When she was two years old her family relocated to Montreal. With a musical aptitude, when she took a music degree with a focus on classical guitar at McGill University in Montreal, she started to appear in concert at coffee houses across Quebec and Ontario. Once she got known in central Canada she soon extended her appearances into New York state and Manhattan. Capitol Records signed her to a contract in 1971 and in 1972 she released a self-titled folk-rock album along with two singles. However, with flagging record sales, Capitol Records decided not to renew her contract. Nonetheless, Ronney kept on with her itinerary of concert dates at coffeehouses over the next few years. In addition, she made some freelance income from writing music for several made-for-TV movies.
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