#22: Resurrection Shuffle by Ashton, Gardner & Dyke
City: Hamilton, ON
Radio Station: CKOC
Peak Month: August 1971
Peak Position in Hamilton ~ #1
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #11
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #40
YouTube: “Resurrection Shuffle”
Lyrics: “Resurrection Shuffle”
Ashton, Gardner & Dyke were a British rock trio. Anthony “Tony” Ashton was born in Blackburn, Lancashire, England, in 1946. At the age of 13, in 1959, he joined a local group, the College Boys, on rhythm guitar and piano. When Ashton left school at the age of 15 he was already an accomplished pianist. By 1961 he fronted the Tony Ashton Trio at the Picador Club in Blackpool. He was asked to join The Remo Four, managed by Brian Epstein (who also managed the Beatles). Among the quartet was drummer Roy Dyke (born in 1945 in Liverpool). The Remo Four were voted No. 3 Group in a 1961 Mersey Beat poll. While the Beatles travelled back and forth to Hamburg, the Remo Four began playing U.S. Air Force bases in France, building their stage and musical experience. Johnny Sandon joined the band as vocalist in 1962, and stayed for two years. Ashton and Dyke replaced others in the line-up in 1963. The Remo Four (including Tony Ashton and Roy Dyke) were an opening act for The Beatles on a fall 1964 tour in the UK, along with Mary Wells. The Remo Four released a debut album in 1966 titled Smile!
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#10: Mrs. Bluebird by Eternity’s Children
City: Guelph, ON
Radio Station: CJOY
Peak Month: August 1968
Peak Position in Guelph ~ #8
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #69
YouTube: “Mrs. Bluebird”
Lyrics: “Mrs. Bluebird”
Eternity’s Children was a sunshine pop group from Cleveland, Mississippi. They originated as a folk group known as the Phantoms. The Phantoms began in 1965 with two Delta College students, composed of vocalist/keyboardist Bruce Blackman and drummer Roy Whittaker (born in Biloxi, MS, in 1947). Soon, the group added lead guitarist Johnny Walker, rhythm guitarist Jerry Bounds, and bassist Charles Ross III (born in 1948 in Greenville, MS). The band played locally within the college and gained a sizable local following. They released a single titled “Workin’ Tired” on the local Flash label before relocating to Biloxi, Mississippi, in 1966. In Biloxi, the group became a house band in a basement nightclub of the Biloxi Hotel. The band, when they were not the lead performance, would back musicians like Charlie Rich and B.J. Thomas. In the same year, the band added folk singer Linda Lawley (born in Biloxi, MS, in 1949) and changed their name to Eternity’s Children.
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#48: For A Penny by Pat Boone
City: Ottawa, ON
Radio Station: CKOY
Peak Month: May 1959
Peak Position in Ottawa ~ #1
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #22
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #23
YouTube: “For A Penny”
Lyrics: “For A Penny”
Pat Boone was born in Jacksonville, Florida, on June 1, 1934. He was the son of Margaret Virginia (Pritchard) and Archie Altman Boone. The Boone family moved to Nashville from Florida when Boone was two years old. In a 2007 interview on The 700 Club, Boone claimed that he is the great-great-great-great grandson of the American pioneer Daniel Boone. Boone is a singer, composer, actor, writer, television personality, motivational speaker, and spokesman. He won a talent contest on the Ted Mack Amateur Hour. He became a successful pop singer in the United States during the 1950s and early 1960s. He has sold over 45 million records, charted 38 Top 40 hits between 1955 and 1962. Boone has also appeared in more than a dozen Hollywood films. He still holds the Billboard record for spending 220 consecutive weeks on the charts with one or more songs each week.
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#36: Planet Claire by B-52s
City: Ottawa, ON
Radio Station: CFGO
Peak Month: February 1982
Peak Position in Ottawa ~ #1
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #29
Peak Position on New Zealand Singles chart ~ #35
YouTube: “Planet Claire”
Lyrics: “Planet Claire”
Frederick William Schneider III was born in 1951 in Newark, New Jersey. He went to college in Atlanta and wrote a book of poetry for one class project. After college, he was a janitor as well as a Meals on Wheels driver. At the time the B-52’s formed, Schneider III had very little musical experience. The B-52’s got their start when the fledgling bandmates played an impromptu number after drinking at a Chinese restaurant in Athens, Georgia. The band played their first real gig in 1977 at a Valentine’s Day party for their friends. Ricky Helton Wilson was born in 1953, and learned to play guitar in the winter of 1972-73. In the summer of 1969, Ricky Wilson met Wilson met Keith Strickland at a marijuana shop. In the following months, Wilson quietly came out as gay to Strickland while the two were in their teens. During mid-1969, both Wilson and Strickland collaborated in writing and performing music, loosely calling themselves Loon, and aspired to perform live. From 1969 to 1971, Wilson and Strickland collaborated with two high school friends in the four-member band Black Narcissus.
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#40: Tell All the People by The Doors
City: Fredericton, NB
Radio Station: CFNB
Peak Month: July 1969
Peak Position in Fredericton: #10
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #57
YouTube: “Tell All the People”
Lyrics: “Tell All the People”
The Doors were a psychedelic rock band from Los Angeles featuring Jim Morrison on vocals, Robbie Kreiger on guitar, Ray Manzarek on keyboards and drummer John Densmore. In 1965 Morrison and Manzarek were UCLA film students. They met each other for the first time on Venice Beach. Morrison had graduated and was living a vagabond life, sleeping on the beach, taking drugs and writing poetry. Morrison told Manzarek, “I was taking notes at a fantastic rock ‘n’ roll concert going on in my head.” Then he sang “Moonlight Drive” to Manzarek. Discovering their addition interest in music, the two decided to form a band. Jim Morrison was born in Melbourne (FL) in 1943. He was the oldest child and his father was a U.S. Naval officer. Morrison suggested the name of the band. It came from the novel by Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception. Huxley’s novel, in turn, drew inspiration from poet William Blake’s “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.” In that poem Blake writes: “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.” The Doors signed a record contract with Columbia Records in the winter of 1965-66.
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#39: First Hymn from Grand Terrace by Mark Lindsay
City: Fredericton, NB
Radio Station: CFNB
Peak Month: August 1969
Peak Position in Fredericton: #9
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #81
YouTube: “First Hymn From Grand Terrace”
Lyrics: “First Hymn From Grand Terrace”
Mark Lindsay was born in Eugene, Oregon, in 1942. In 1958 Lindsay was working at a bakery. While picking up hamburger buns at the bakery cafe where Lindsay worked, 20-year-old Paul Revere Dick began a conversation and found they shared a fondness for music. At the time Revere owned several restaurants in Caldwell, Idaho. Lindsay . Within a year the two formed Paul Revere and the Raiders and released their first instrumental hit in 1960. In the group’s song, “The Legend of Paul Revere”, they sang about how they got their start.
In a little town in Idaho way back in sixty one,
a man was frying burgers, gee – it seemed like lots of fun.
But to his friend the bun boy, he confessed it’s misery,
I think I’d like to start a group, so come along with me.
The song was using poetic license as they group started in ’58 not ’61. But “fun” rhyming with “one” had more appeal then writing “way back in fifty-eight, a man was frying burgers, gee, it seemed to be real great.”
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#38: Doggone Right by Smokey Robinson & the Miracles
City: Fredericton, NB
Radio Station: CFNB
Peak Month: August 1969
Peak Position in Fredericton: #6
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #32
YouTube: “Doggone Right”
Lyrics: “Doggone Right”
William “Smokey” Robinson Jr. was born in Detroit in 1940. An uncle gave him the nickname “Smokey Joe” when he was a child. From the age of five he became acquainted with Aretha Franklin, who lived a few doors from his home in the Belmont neighborhood. In 1955 he formed a doo-wop group named the Five Chimes and renamed them the Matadors in 1957. Later that year they changed their name again to the Miracles. The other members of the Miracles were Robert Edward “Bobby” Rogers, who was born in 1940 in Detroit in the same hospital as Robinson. Bobby Rogers joined the Five Chimes in 1956. Born in 1942, Claudette Annette Rogers was from New Orleans and joined the Miracles in 1957. Ronald Anthony “Ronnie” White co-founded the Five Chimes with Smokey Robinson. Warren Thomas “Pete” Moore was born in Detroit in 1938 and was an original member of the Five Chimes. Moore and Robinson met at a musical event in public school in Detroit. Marv Tarplin was born in Atlanta in 1941. He became the Miracles guitarist in 1959 after the group had a dismal reception at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem in 1959. With a guitarist backing the five singers, they were headed for stardom.
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#66: My Mistake (Was To Love You) by Marvin Gaye and Diana Ross
City: Ottawa, ON
Radio Station: CFGO
Peak Month: August 1974
Peak Position in Ottawa ~ #3
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #19
YouTube: “My Mistake (Was To Love You)”
Lyrics: “My Mistake (Was To Love You)”
Marvin Pentz Gay Jr. was born in 1939 in Washington D.C. His father was a Pentecostal church minister who never held down a job for more than three years in a row. Marvin’s childhood consisted of “brutal whippings”, since Gay Sr. would strike him for any shortcoming, including putting his hairbrush in the wrong place or coming home from school a minute late. Marvin later stated, “It wasn’t simply that my father beat me, though that was bad enough. By the time I was twelve, there wasn’t an inch on my body that hadn’t been bruised and beaten by him.” He also said that “living with Father was like living with a king, an all-cruel, changeable, cruel and all-powerful king”. He later recalled, “if it wasn’t for Mother, who was always there to console me and praise me for my singing, I think I would have been one of those child suicides you read about in the papers.”
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#37: Truck Stop by Jerry Smith
City: Fredericton, NB
Radio Station: CFNB
Peak Month: August 1969
Peak Position in Fredericton: #4
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #71
YouTube: “Truck Stop”
Jerry Dean Smith was born in Bude, Mississippi, in 1933. His family moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, when he was an adolescent. He served in the Air Force, loaned to the Army where he would serve as one of the Transcribers at the Korean War Armistice Agreement. After his service, he returned home to Baton Rouge, marry and begin to pursue his music career. Moving to Nashville in 1961, he quickly established himself as a session musician and became one of a group of session musicians coined as “Nashville’s Perfect Six”. He was a member of the Nashville Musicians Union for 59 years.
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#35: Stay and Love Me All Summer by Brian Hyland
City: Fredericton, NB
Radio Station: CFNB
Peak Month: August 1969
Peak Position in Fredericton: #4
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #82
YouTube: “Stay And Love Me All Summer”
Lyrics: “Stay And Love Me All Summer”
Brian Hyland was born in 1943 in Queens, New York. In his childhood Hyland learned to play the guitar and the clarinet. In 1958, while he was still 14 years-old, he formed a group named the Delfis. Though they tried to get a record contract they were never signed. In 1959 Brian Hyland got a record deal with Kapp and released “Rosemary”. The song was composed by two songwriters who never wrote another tune. “Rosemary” had limited success, though it spent six weeks on the pop chart in Vancouver reaching #14 on May 7, 1960.
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