#1322: Sweet Black Angel by The Rolling Stones

Peak Month: May 1972
5 weeks on Vancouver’s CKVN chart
Peak Position #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Sweet Black Angel”
Lyrics: “Sweet Black Angel”

Michael Philip Jagger was born in Dartford, Kent, England, in 1943, some 18 miles east of London. Though his father and grandfather were both teachers by profession, and he was encouraged to be a teacher, the boy had different aspirations. “I always sang as a child. I was one of those kids who just liked to sing. Some kids sing in choirs; others like to show off in front of the mirror. I was in the church choir and I also loved listening to singers on the radio–the BBC or Radio Luxembourg –or watching them on TV and in the movies.” In 1950 Mick Jagger met Keith Richards while attending primary school. They became good friends until the summer of 1954 when the Jagger family moved to the village of Wilmington, a mile south of Dartford. The pair bumped into each other at a train station in 1961 and resumed their friendship.

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#1335: Sweetheart by Marianne Faithfull

Peak Month: December 1981
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #15
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Sweetheart”
Lyrics: “Sweetheart”

Marianne Faithfull’s story has been well documented, not least in her insightful 1994 autobiography Faithfull. Born in December, 1946, in Hampstead, a borough of Greater London, Faithfull’s career as the crown princess of swinging London was launched with “As Tears Go By”. At the time she was 16 years old. Her 1964 hit single was the first song ever written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Two folk albums, two pop albums and a singles collection followed. Marianne Faithfull also embarked on a parallel career as an actress, both on film in Girl On A Motorcycle (1968) and on stage in Chekhov’s Three Sisters (1967) and Hamlet (1969) By the end of the Sixties personal problems halted Marianne’s career and her drug addiction took over.

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#1337: I Will by Billy Fury

Peak Month: July 1964
6 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #9
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com link: “I Will”
“I Will” lyrics

Billy Fury was born Ronald Wycherley on April 17, 1940, in Dingle, England. An impromptu audition in a Birkenhead dressing room of the Essoldo Theatre in 1958 resulted in Wycherley joining Larry Parnes’ management stable. The entrepreneur provided the suitably enigmatic stage name, and added Billy Fury to the bill of a current package tour. Fury enjoyed a UK Top 20 hit with his debut single, “Maybe Tomorrow”, in 1959. His first Top Ten hit was an Everly Brothers sound-alike tune, “Colette”, that peaked at #9 in 1959. The following year he completed The Sound Of Fury, which consisted entirely of the artist’s own songs. Some of these were credited to Billy Fury and others to Fury’s pseudonym, Wilbur Wilberforce. Arguably Britain’s finest example of the rockabilly genre, it owed much of its authenticity to the support from guitarist Joe Brown, while the Four Jays provided backing vocals.
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