#9: Mister Fire Eyes by Bonnie Guitar
Peak Month: October-November 1957
Peak Position #2
20 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #71
YouTube.com: “Mister Fire Eyes”
Lyrics: “Mister Fire Eyes”
Bonnie Buckingham was born in 1923 in Seattle. She was raised on a farm outside of Auburn, south of Seattle. She learned to play guitar at the age of 12 from her older brothers. At the age of 16, she began performing at the end of the Great Depression. Having taken up playing the guitar as a teenager, this led to her stage name: Bonnie Guitar. She later started songwriting. At the age of 21, in 1944 Bonnie Guitar married her former guitar teacher Paul Tutmarc. The couple performed together around the Pacific Northwest as bandmates with Paul Tutmarc and the Wranglers. She got several offers to audition for roles in Hollywood movies. However, as Guitar told the Seattle Times in 1986, “It never culminated. My first husband didn’t want me to have anything to do with the Hollywood scene. And I wasn’t ready to make the move at the time.” The couple had one daughter in 1950 named Paula. But the marriage collapsed in 1955, and Bonnie moved to Los Angeles.
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#14: Ebony Eyes by Bob Welch
Peak Month: April-May 1978
Peak Position #1
16 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #14
YouTube.com: “Ebony Eyes”
Lyrics: “Ebony Eyes”
Robert Lawrence Welch Jr. was born in Hollywood, California, in 1945. His father was a producer and screenwriter who produced the 25th Academy Awards in 1953. His mother, Templeton Fox, was an actress who worked with Orson Welles Mercury Theatre in Chicago. Welch learned to play the clarinet during his childhood, and picked up guitar in his teens. From 1964 o 1969, Welch was part of an L.A. band called The Seven Souls. From 1969 to 1971, he headed up a band in Paris, France, named Head West. In 1971, he joined Fleetwood Mac. After touring and contributing to five Fleetwood Mac studio albums, Welch left the band in December 1974. He formed a band called Paris, which released two albums. When that band dissolved later in 1976, Bob Welch went solo.
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#16: Lana by Roy Orbison
Peak Month: April 1962
Peak Position #1
14 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Lana”
Lyrics: “Lana”
Roy Kelton Orbison was born in Vernon, Texas in 1936. When he turned six his dad gave him a guitar. Both his dad, Orbie Lee, and uncle Charlie Orbison, taught him how to play. Though his family moved to Forth Worth for work at a munitions factory, Roy was sent to live with his grandmother due to a polio outbreak in 1944. That year he wrote his first song “A Vow of Love”. The next year he won a contest on Vernon radio station KVWC and was offered his own radio show on Saturdays. After the war his family reunited and moved to Wink, Texas, where Roy formed his first band, in 1949, called The Wink Westerners.
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#17: Fame And Fortune by Elvis Presley
Peak Month: April 1960
Peak Position #1
14 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #17
YouTube.com: “Fame And Fortune”
Lyrics: “Fame And Fortune”
Elvis Aaron Presley was born on in a two-room house in Tupelo, Mississippi, on January 8, 1935. His twin brother, Jessie Garon Presley, was stillborn. When he was eleven years old his parents bought him a guitar at the Tupelo Hardware Store. As a result Elvis grew up as an only child. He and his parents, Vernon and Gladys, moved to Memphis, Tennessee, in 1948. The young Presley graduated from high school in 1953. That year he stopped by the Memphis Recording Service to record two songs, including “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin”. Elvis’ musical influences were the pop and country music of the time, the gospel music he heard in church and at the all-night gospel sings he frequently attended, and the black R&B he absorbed on historic Beale Street as a Memphis teenager. In 1954, Elvis began his singing career recording “That’s All Right” and “Blue Moon Of Kentucky” at Sun Records in Memphis.
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#18: Caribbean by Mitchell Torok
Peak Month: August 1959
Peak Position #1
14 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #27
YouTube.com: “Caribbean”
Lyrics: “Caribbean”
In 1929 Mitchell Torok was born in Houston, Texas. His parents were immigrants from Hungary. Torok learned the guitar at the end of elementary school. A natural athlete, Mitch went to university in Nacogdoches, Texas, on a football and baseball scholarship. While at university he was hired to write a song to mark the one hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Cononco Oil Company. He also cut his first record in the late 40s while hosting a radio show in Lufkin, two hours northeast of Houston, and another radio show in the Houston suburb of Rosenberg.
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#19: Follow That Dream by Elvis Presley
Peak Month: May 1962
Peak Position #1
15 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ EP – did not chart
YouTube.com: “Follow That Dream”
Lyrics: “Follow That Dream”
Elvis Aaron Presley was born on in a two-room house in Tupelo, Mississippi, on January 8, 1935. His twin brother, Jessie Garon Presley, was stillborn. When he was eleven years old his parents bought him a guitar at the Tupelo Hardware Store. As a result Elvis grew up as an only child. He and his parents, Vernon and Gladys, moved to Memphis, Tennessee, in 1948. The young Presley graduated from high school in 1953. That year he stopped by the Memphis Recording Service to record two songs, including “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin”. Elvis’ musical influences were the pop and country music of the time, the gospel music he heard in church and at the all-night gospel sings he frequently attended, and the black R&B he absorbed on historic Beale Street as a Memphis teenager. In 1954, Elvis began his singing career recording “That’s All Right” and “Blue Moon Of Kentucky” at Sun Records in Memphis.
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#21: Ballad Of A Teenage Queen by Johnny Cash
Peak Month: March 1958
11 weeks on CKWX’s Vancouver Chart
Peak Position ~ #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #14
Billboard Top 100 Singles 1958 Year End ~ #81
BONUS REVIEW
YouTube: “Ballad Of A Teenage Queen”
Lyrics: “Ballad Of A Teenage Queen”
John R. “Johnny” Cash was born in Kingsland, Arkansas, in 1932. At the age of five he started working with his sharecropping parents and siblings in the cotton fields. During his childhood his family home was flooded twice. He began singing and playing guitar by the age of 12. He moved to Detroit in his late teens for work. He was drafted and served in the U.S. Air Force as a Morse Code Intercept Operator for Soviet Army transmissions at a base in Germany from 1950 to 1954. When he was discharged from the military he and his new wife, Liberto, moved to Memphis. Cash worked as an appliance salesman while trying to get a break in the music industry. Cash got to audition with Sun Records in 1954. He had his first charting single on the Billboard Country charts in 1955 titled “Cry! Cry! Cry!” Subsequently single releases, “So Doggone Lonesome” and “I Walk The Line” climbed to #4 and #1 on the Country charts. The latter hit also was his first debut on the Billboard pop charts where it made it to #17 in 1956.
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#24: Leah by Roy Orbison
Peak Month: October 1962
Peak Position #1
13 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #25
YouTube.com: “Leah”
Lyrics: “Leah”
Roy Kelton Orbison was born in Vernon, Texas in 1936. When he turned six his dad gave him a guitar. Both his dad, Orbie Lee, and uncle Charlie Orbison, taught him how to play. Though his family moved to Forth Worth for work at a munitions factory, Roy was sent to live with his grandmother due to a polio outbreak in 1944. That year he wrote his first song “A Vow of Love”. The next year he won a contest on Vernon radio station KVWC and was offered his own radio show on Saturdays. After the war his family reunited and moved to Wink, Texas, where Roy formed his first band, in 1949, called The Wink Westerners.
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#25: Oh Boy by the Crickets
Peak Month: December 1957
Peak Position #1 Red Robinson Teen Canteen chart
18 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #10
YouTube.com: “Oh Boy”
Lyrics: “Oh Boy”
The Crickets became a rock ‘n roll/rockabilly group in 1957. They are credited with influencing a whole range of recording artists including Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. In fact, the Beatles got the idea for their name as a riff off of another insect, cricket, just going up one letter of the alphabet from C to B for Beatles. Paul McCartney once told the press, “If it wasn’t for the Crickets, there wouldn’t be any Beatles.” The Crickets were initially the backing band for Buddy Holly and among their hits are “That’ll Be The Day”, Peggy Sue”, “Oh Boy”, “Not Fade Away”, “Maybe Baby”, “It’s So Easy” and “Rave On”.
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#1323: How Many Tears by Bobby Vee
Peak Month: May 1961
6 weeks on CFUN’s Vancouver Charts
Peak Position ~ #9
C-FUN Twin Pick Hit April 29, 1961
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #63
YouTube.com: “How Many Tears”
Lyrics: “How Many Tears”
Bobby Vee was born in Fargo, North Dakota as Robert Thomas Velline. He was part of a highschool band that was asked to step in and perform for the concert that was to be headlined by Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper. Each had died in a small plane crash the day before. And the concert was held in Moorhead, Minnesota, across the Red River from Fargo. Fifteen year old Vee and his band were a hit and he got a contract with Liberty Records. It was his fourth single release, “Devil or Angel”, that catapulted him into the Top Ten and teen idol stardom. The single topped the pop charts in Vancouver on September 10, 1960.
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