#1328: Spaceship Races by Tom Northcott
Peak Month: June 1971
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CKVN chart
Peak Position #15
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Spaceship Races”
Lyrics: “Spaceship Races”
Tom Northcott is a Vancouver folk-rock singer with hits on the local pop charts from the mid-60s into the early 70s. He became known to a Canadian audience by his regular appearances on CBC Television’s Let’s Go music program in 1964-68. He was nominated as best male vocalist for a Juno Award in 1971. Later he co-founded Mushroom Studios in Vancouver and produced records. His hits are played regularly on Canadian classic rock radio stations.
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#1330: Baby Blue by Chilliwack
Peak Month: December 1977
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #19
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #110
YouTube.com: “Baby Blue”
Lyrics: “Baby Blue”
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 several local hits like “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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#1333: Diamond Mine by Blue Rodeo
Peak Month: May 1989
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #18
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Diamond Mine”
Lyrics: “Diamond Mine”
Blue Rodeo formed as a band in 1984 and had their first gig at The Rivoli in Toronto, February 1985. Blue Rodeo has sold over 4 million albums and won seven Juno awards. In 2012 they were inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. In 1989 the band consisted of co-founders Jim Cuddy, Greg Keelor, and Bazil Donovan, Cleave Anderson and Bob Wiseman.
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#1334: You Beat Me to the Punch by Charity Brown
Peak Month: February 1975
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #14
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “You Beat Me To The Punch”
Lyrics: “You Beat Me To The Punch”
Phillis Boltz was born in Kitchener, Ontario. After she graduated from high school she started singing in a band called Landslide Mushroom. By the late 60s she was a lead vocalist in another Kitchener band called Rain, who she remained with into the early 70s. From the outset her stage name with Rain was Phyllis Brown. Among the singles they released was a “Out Of My Mind” in 1971. It became a Top 30 hit in a number of radio markets between the spring of 1971 and the winter of 1972.
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#1343: I Cry and Cry by Bobby Curtola
Peak Month: September 1962
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #13
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com link: “I Cry And Cry”
Bobby Curtola was born in Port Arthur, Ontario, in 1943. (The town would become amalgamated into the city of Thunder Bay in 1970). His cousin Susan Andrusco remembers “”Bobby would always be singing at our family gatherings. The family loved him. And he loved being the centre of attention. He would sing Oh My Papa, and my grandpa would cry.” Oh My Papa was a number-one hit for Eddie Fisher in January 1954, when Bobby Curtola was still ten-years-old. In the fall of 1959, sixteen-year-old high school student Bobby Curtola went from pumping gas at his father’s garage in Thunder Bay, Ontario, to the life of a teen idol. Within a year he went from playing in his basement band “Bobby and the Bobcats” to recording his first hit single in 1960, “Hand In Hand With You,” which charted in Ontario, but not in Vancouver. After performing on the Bob Hope Show in 1960, the charismatic teenager, with his handsome boy-next-door looks was quickly finding himself within a whirlwind called “Curtolamania.”
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#1346: I’m Ready by The Hometown Band
Peak Month: January 1977
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #14
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com link: “I’m Ready”
Claire Lawrence was a member of local Vancouver group, The Collectors. That band morphed into Chilliwack. By late 1971 Lawrence left Chilliwack and founded Haida Records, with BC folk singer Valdy it’s marquee recording artist. Valdy’s music was featured in a 1972 Steve McQueen new film noir crime movie called The Getaway. Valdy appeared on a CBC TV show called The Beachcomber’s as the character Halibut Stu. Though he initially appeared on stage for the first few years by himself, Lawrence put together a touring back-up band for Valdy.
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#1347: Moonlight Desires by Gowan
Peak Month: May 1987
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #14
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Moonlight Desires”
Lyrics: “Moonlight Desires”
Lawrence Gowan was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1956. His family moved to Scarborough, Canada, a suburb of Toronto, when he was a child. He recalls that his “marks in high-school were of a caliber that left me no option but to pursue the occupation of Rockstar.” He practiced piano and was trained at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. He formed a trio called Rhindgold in 1976. As the lead vocalist and keyboardist, Lawrence Gowan also demonstrated acrobatics on the stage and dancing on top of his baby grand piano. Rhinegold was a progressive rock act in the mold of Supertramp, Electric Light Orchestra and Yes.
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#1348: Latromotion by Fred Latremouille
Peak Month: March 1965
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #13
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Latromotion”
Fred Latremouille was born on October 21, 1945, in Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. His father was a World War II officer with the Royal Canadian Air Force who trained new pilots on Tiger Moths. But Bruce and Margaret Latremouille were not getting along and they divorced when Fred was two years old. Margaret Latremouille next married Robert Harlow. He was the director of CBC Radio in British Columbia. Fred then was raised in West Vancouver. A household name in sportscasting, Bill Good, lived on their block. Bill Good Jr. and Fred cycled around the neighborhood. They became lifelong friends and both became familiar names to Vancouver radio listeners and then on TV. “We didn’t so much go to school together,” Bill Good Jr. said recently, “as skip school together.”
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#1355: Going Down by Tom Northcott Trio
Peak Month: May 1966
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #12
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Going Down”
Born in Vancouver in 1943. When he was still in his teens, Tom Northcott was gaining a reputation while making his rounds through the Vancouver coffeehouse circuit in the early ’60s. In particular, he frequented the Kitsilano area, the focal point of the hippie counterculture north of San Francisco.
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#1357: Tears of Misery by Pat Hervey
Peak Month: March 1963
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #12
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Tears Of Misery”
Lyrics: “Tears Of Misery”
At 5’3, Pat Hervey could belt out a tune with a style similar to Brenda Lee. Hervey was one of Canada’s early female singers who were successful in the early ’60s.
She grew up in Toronto and had her first public performance singing at the age of nine. She also sang in a high school choir and with a girlfriend who played guitar at social dances and parties. Toronto DJ Al Boliska heard her at an amateur Rock & Roll show and put her in touch with CBC Television. The network signed her and she appeared regularly on their Club 6, Country Hoedown, Music Hop, Parade, While We’re Young, and Holiday Ranch shows.
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