#269: Itchycoo Park by the Small Faces
Peak Month: November 1967
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #16
YouTube: “Itchycoo Park”
Lyrics: “Itchycoo Park”
In 1947 Steve Marriott was born in London, UK. By the age of 12 Marriott had formed several bands and writing songs influenced by Buddy Holly. In 1960 he was cast as the Artful Dodger in the new musical Oliver! at a theatre in London’s West End. In 1963-64 his band, Steve Marriott and The Moments, were a back-up band to headliners The Nashville Teens, The Animals, Georgie Fame and others at concerts in London. Marriott played guitar and was his bands’ lead vocalist. After the group disbanded in July 1964 Marriott met bass player Ronnie Lane and drummer Kenney Jones at a club when they were playing with their band, the Outcasts. They added Jimmy Winston on keyboards and began releasing singles, including Sha-la-la-la-lee,” which went to #3 in the UK in 1966. The Small Faces were part of the British mod subculture, sharp-dressed and absorbed with looks and fashion. The word faces signaled as much, and small was a reference to all of them being no taller than 5’6″.
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#276: Yellow River by Christie
Peak Month: September 1970
9 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Charts
Peak Position ~ #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #23
YouTube: “Yellow River”
Lyrics: “Yellow River”
Jeffrey “Jeff” Christie was born in Leeds, England, in 1946. Mike Blakley was born in Greater London in 1947. Victor “Vic” Elmes was born in 1947 in Essex, England. Blakley was the brother of Alan Blakley who was with the Tremeloes. From the age of 18, both Elmes and Mike Blakley were part of a band called the pop band the Epics starting in 1965. They recorded a cover of the Chris Andrews hit single in the UK titled “Yesterday Man”. And in 1966 the Epics did a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Blue Turns To Grey”. However, they got little success on the UK pop chart. In 1967 they changed their name to Acid Gallery. By 1969 the band managed to chart one single in the UK titled “Dance Around The Maypole”. Throughout, Elmes played lead guitar and Mike Blakley played drums. Continue reading →
#279: Stairway To Heaven by Led Zeppelin
Peak Month: August 1972
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CKVN chart
1 week Preview
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Stairway To Heaven”
Lyrics: “Stairway To Heaven”
Robert Anthony Plant was born in 1948 in West Bromwich, six miles northwest of Birmingham, England. He became the lead singer of Led Zeppelin, along with bandmates Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and John Bonham. At an early age Robert Plant was interested in being a pop singer. He said in an interview in 1994 on the Denton Show in Australia, “When I was a kid I used to hide behind the curtains at home at Christmas and I used to try and be Elvis. There was a certain ambience between the curtains and the French windows, there was a certain sound there for a ten-year-old. That was all the ambience I got at ten years old … And I always wanted to be … a bit similar to that.”
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#283: Rain by the Beatles
Peak Month: July 1966
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #23
YouTube: “Rain”
Lyrics: “Rain”
Paul McCartney was born in Liverpool in 1942. He attended the Liverpool Institute High School for Boys and met fellow classmates George Harrison on a school bus. When Paul was 14 his mom died from a blockage in one of her blood vessels. In his early teens McCartney learned to play trumpet, guitar and piano. He was left-handed and restrung the strings to make it work. In 1957, Paul met John Lennon and in October he was invited to join John’s skiffle band, The Quarrymen, which Lennon had founded in 1956. After Paul joined the group his suggested that his friend, George Harrison, join the group. Harrison became one of the Quarrymen in early 1958, though he was still only 14. Other original members of the Quarrymen, Len Garry, Rod Davis, Colin Hanton, Eric Griffiths and Pete Shotton left the band when their set changed from skiffle to rock ‘n roll. John Duff Lowe, a friend of Paul’s from the Liverpool Institute, who had joined the Quarrymen in early 1958 left the band at the end of school. This left Lennon, McCartney and Harrison as remaining trio. On July 15, 1958, John Lennon’s mother died in an automobile accident.
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#284: Round Round by Jonathan King
Peak Month: May 1967
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #2
1 week Hit Bound
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Round Round”
Lyrics: “Round Round”
Born in 1944 in the West End of London as Kenneth George King, and was sent to pre-prep school from the age of three. When he was 8-years-old King went to boarding school. When he was nine, his father died of a heart attack. He became fascinated with live theatre and bought his first 78 RPM in 1956 which was Guy Mitchell’s “Singing The Blues”. He became enthralled with pop music as he listened to Buddy Holly, Adam Faith and others. King recalled later “Since ‘It Doesn’t Matter Anymore’ swept me off my feet, I had become a raving pop addict, desperate for a fix every few seconds. I kept thick notebooks packed with copies of the weekly charts, adverts for new products, pages of predictions of future hits, reviews and comments about current artistes. Looking at them now, there was no way I could ever have avoided a future in the music industry.”
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#285: Delilah by Tom Jones
Peak Month: May 1968
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #1
1 week Hit Bound
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #15
YouTube: “Delilah”
Lyrics: “Delilah”
Thomas John Woodward was born in Wales in 1940. His father was a coal miner. Young Tom began singing at an early age and was in a children’s choir. At age 12 he had tuberculosis. While convalescing he spent more time developing an interest in music and listening to records. In 1963 he was the lead singer for the Welsh band Tommy Scott and the Senators. They had a record made with Tornados producer Joe Meek. In 1964 Jones was heard by a manager in the music industry based in London. Jones was brought to London and renamed Tom Jones. This was a strategy to get his attention after the successful musical Tom Jones won four Academy Awards in 1963, including Best Director and Best Picture.
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#286: Turn To Stone by the Electric Light Orchestra
Peak Month: January 1978
11 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #13
Billboard 1978 Year-End #94
YouTube.com: “Turn To Stone”
Lyrics: “Turn To Stone”
Jeffrey Lynne was born in suburban Birmingham, England in 1947. His dad bought him a guitar when he turned twelve. In 1966 he formed a band that by 1968 called themselves the Idle Race. He left for another band by the end of the 60s named The Move. The latter development was a catalyst for working on a musical project combining rock with orchestration. Beverley “Bev” Bevan was born in Birmingham, UK, in 1944. He learned to play drums and in 1956 he joined a rock band named Denny Laine & the Diplomats. In 1965 he moved on to join Carl Wayne & the Vikings, and in 1966 The Move. Bevan went through the transition from the Move to Electric Light Orchestra with Jeff Lynne. By the end of 1970 the Electric Light Orchestra was born.
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#291: I Still Believe In Tomorrow by John and Anne Ryder
Peak Month: December 1969
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #3
1 week Hit Bound
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #70
YouTube.com: “I Still Believe In Tomorrow”
Lyrics: “I Still Believe In Tomorrow”
John & Anne Ryder were singers who grew up in Sheffield, England. While they both had separate careers, they dated, got married and became a husband-and-wife singing duo. There is almost nothing about them online. Searches for any interviews they may have given to the press, or bios are off the radar. However, more is known about the songwriters of their one notable hit. And thanks to some liner notes from their only album, there is something to report about this obscure singing duo from England.
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#292: Here Comes My Baby by the Tremeloes
Peak Month: May 1967
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #13
YouTube: “Here Comes My Baby”
Lyrics: “Here Comes My Baby”
In 1956 at Park Modern Secondary School in Barking, Essex, two school mates, Brian Poole and Alan Blakley, started a band. On family holidays together, they’d tell their parents about their dreams of being on TV. They learned a couple of tunes by Buddy Holly and Everly Brothers, got two acoustic Hofner guitars, and asked their saxophone and bass playing school mate, Alan Howard to join them. Once they started performing at local parties, they met drummer Dave Munden, who soon joined them. Soon Alan Blakley, Dave Munden and Brian Poole found that they could harmonise any song they wanted to and developed a style of their own, with all of them singing and playing and Alan Howard on bass guitar. At this time they did not have a name but soon opted for Tremilos after the sound on the new amplifiers which they could not yet afford. In time, the lead guitarist from Joe & The Teems, Ricky West (born Richard Westwood), was added to the band in 1960.
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#295: I Missed Again by Phil Collins
Peak Month: May 1981
13 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #19
YouTube: “I Missed Again”
Lyrics: “I Missed Again”
Philip “Phil” Collins was born in 1951 in Middlesex, England. From the age of five he began to play drums. He never learned to read and write conventional musical notation, and instead used a system he devised himself. He later regretted this, saying: “I never really came to grips with the music. I should have stuck with it. I’ve always felt that if I could hum it, I could play it. For me, that was good enough, but that attitude is bad. He formed a band at the age of 14, and was an extra in the Beatles film A Hard Days Night. Collins played one of the screaming teenagers in the audience for a concert at a TV station. In 1967 Collins played a lead role as one of Farmer Grant’s children in the film Calamity the Cow. Also in 1967, he acted in a scene in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, where children storm a castle, but the scene was cut to shorten the film.
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