#128: Love Is Alright Tonite by Rick Springfield
Peak Month: February 1982
14 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #20
YouTube.com: “Love Is Alright Tonite”
Lyrics: “Love Is Alright Tonite”
Richard Lewis Springthorpe was born in 1949 in suburban Sydney, Australia. His dad was an Australian Army officer, and in his childhood, Rick lived on an army base. He was 13 when he learned guitar. Rick joined various bands in England, where his father was stationed from 1958 to 1963, and several more after returning to Australia. When he was still 14, in mid-June 1964, Rick saw the Beatles in concert in Melbourne at Festival Hall. In 1968, he was approached by bass guitarist Pete Watson to join his group Rockhouse. By the fall of ’68, Watson changed the band’s name to MPD Ltd and, in October when he was 19 years old, they toured South Vietnam to perform in concert for Australian troops. Another member of MPD Ltd was Danny Finley (drummer). Upon returning to Australia, they formed Wickedy Wak. By 1969, Springthorpe was in a band called Zoot. The band recorded a heavy rock version of the Beatles “Eleanor Rigby”, which climbed to #4 on the Australian pop chart in 1970.
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#131: The Power Of Love by Jennifer Rush
Peak Month: June 1986
13 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG Chart
Peak Position #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #57
YouTube.com: “The Power Of Love”
Lyrics: “The Power Of Love”
Heidi Stern was born in 1960 in Queens, New York. Her father, Maurice Stern, was an opera tenor and teacher. Rush studied violin at the Juilliard School and also learned to play the piano. The Stern family moved to West Germany for about a half dozen years. When he father got a position at the University of Washington, they moved to Seattle. In 1979, she released a solo album titled Heidi. The album did not chart. Heidi Stern worked with Gene McDaniels – 1961 hit singer of “A Hundred Pounds of Clay” and “Tower of Strength”. In 1982, following McDaniels’s persistence, Rush moved to Wiesbaden, West Germany, where her father was engaged as an opera singer. She recorded a second album, Tonight, which also didn’t chart. In 1984 in Munich, she provided backing vocals for synth-pop band Panarama’s album Protection, but under her original name Heidi Stern.
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#132: Hot Rod Lincoln by Johnny Bond
Peak Month: August 1960
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX Chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #26
YouTube.com: “Hot Rod Lincoln”
Lyrics: “Hot Rod Lincoln”
Cyrus Whitfield Bond was born in 1915 in southern Oklahoma. Prior to 1907, Pickens County had been part of the Chickasaw Nation in the “Indian Territory.” His parents were farmers. In school, Bond played in a brass band. While in high school “Johnny” bought a ukulele, and subsequently learned the guitar. Bond first performed on radio in Oklahoma City when he was 19 years old. In 1937, he began performing with Jimmy Wakely and Scotty Harrell in the Bell Boys trio, named after the Bell Clothing Company, which sponsored the group on radio station WKY in Oklahoma City. With Decca Records the trio recorded as the Jimmy Wakely Trio. And with Columbia Records they recorded under the name Johnny Bond & the Cimarron Boys. In 1940, Bond went on to join Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch. He also performed with his own band the Red River Valley Boys.
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#134: Wonderland By Night by Anita Bryant
Peak Month: December 1960
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX Chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #18
YouTube.com: “Wonderland By Night”
Lyrics: “Wonderland By Night”
Anita Bryant was born in 1940 in a small town in northeastern Oklahoma. Her parents divorced by the time Bryant was 18 months old. Her father left to join the U.S. Army and fight in the war effort. While her mother got a job at Tinker Air Force Base near Oklahoma City. When Bryant was two years old, her grandfather taught her to sing “Jesus Loves Me”. She was singing onstage at the age of six, at local fairgrounds in Oklahoma. She sang occasionally on radio and television, and was invited to audition when Arthur Godfrey’s talent show came to town.
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#317: Step by Step by the Crests
Peak Month: April 1960
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #14
Youtube.com: “Step By Step”
Lyrics: “Step By Step”
The Crests were a doo-wop group formed by J.T. Carter with Talmadge Gough, Harold Torres and Patricia Van Dross. With a group in place Carter chose Johnny Mastrangelo to be the lead vocalist and had his name on the billing as Johnny Mastro (later changed to Johnny Maestro). Maestro’s vocal style helped The Crests rack up five Top 40 hits on the national Billboard Hot 100 in the USA. Their first record was in 1957 with “Sweetest One“. Van Dross left the group after their debut single release. Their second single release, “16 Candles“, climbed up to #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in early 1959. Other Top 40 hits included “Six Nights A Week”, “The Angels Listened In”, “Step By Step” and “Trouble In Paradise”. the late 1950’s, The Crests performed on several national teen dance shows, including American Bandstand and The Dick Clark Show. The group was inter-racial: African-American, Puerto Rican and Italian-American.
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#137: Enter Sandman by Metallica
Peak Month: November 1991
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG Chart
Peak Position #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #16
YouTube.com: “Enter Sandman”
Lyrics: “Enter Sandman”
James Alan Hetfield was born in 1963 in suburban Los Angeles. His mom was a light opera singer and his dad a truck driver. Hetfield was nine years old when he first began piano lessons, after which he learned to play the drums and finally, at the age of 14, he started to play guitar. He graduated from high school in 1981. Lars Ulrich was born in 1963 in Denmark. His father was a professional tennis player. His paternal grandparents were persecuted in World War II by the Nazi’s since the grandmother was Jewish. This family history taught young Lars about prejudice, and how governments can scapegoat categories of people within its populace. When he was nine years old, his father bought tickets to a Deep Purple concert. in Copenhagen. Within a few years Lars was playing a drum kit. Lars was ranked in the Top Ten tennis players in his age group in Denmark. He moved to California in 1980 and planned to enter a seven-man competition in Newport Beach. But, since he didn’t make the cut, Ulrich switched his focus from tennis to music.
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#138: Let’s Have A Party by Wanda Jackson
Peak Month: August 1960
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN Chart
Peak Position ~ #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #37
YouTube: “Let’s Have A Party”
Lyrics: “Let’s Have A Party”
Wanda Lavonne Jackson was born in 1937 in Maud, Oklahoma. According to Wolf Kurt in his essay, “You Can’t Catch Me: Rockabilly Bursts Through The Door,” Jackson’s dad was a musician. In search of a better life, he relocated the family to Bakersfield, California, in the 1940’s. While in Bakersfield, her dad purchased Wanda a guitar and taught her to play. Tom Jackson also took his daughter to live concerts by Spade Cooley, Tex Williams and Bob Wills, which opened her eyes and ears to the exciting world of country and western music. It was when she was eleven years old that her family returned to Oklahoma in the fall of 1948. In 1954, while she was still sixteen years old, Wanda Jackson started to sing professionally in Oklahoma City. While in high school, Jackson had been discovered by country music recording artist, Hank Thompson, who heard Wanda singing KLPR-AM in Oklahoma City. Thompson asked Wanda to sing with his band, the Brazos Valley Boys. This led to her recording several songs with Capitol Records. Among those was a duet with the Brazos Valley Boys bandleader, Billy Gray titled “You Can’t Have My Love”. The song climbed to #8 on the Billboard country chart.
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#141: Blue Angel by Roy Orbison
Peak Month: September-October 1960
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN Chart
CFUN Twin Pick Hit ~ September 3, 1960
Peak Position ~ #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #9
Peak Position on Cashbox Singles Chart ~ #13
YouTube: “Blue Angel”
Lyrics: “Blue Angel”
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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#1286: Jimmy Love by Cathy Carroll
Peak Month: June 1961
5 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX chart
& DISCovery of the week
Peak Position ~ #8
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Cashbox singles chart ~ #79
YouTube: “Jimmy Love”
Lyrics: “Jimmy Love”
Wikipedia says Cathy Carroll was born Carolyn Stern in 1939. However, both Billboard Magazine and Radio Television Daily wrote in 1963 that Carroll was 17 years old at the time. Doing the math, that puts Carolyn Stern’s birth around 1946. Cathy Carroll seemed from the start to be aiming for an award for drama queen among girl singers in the early rock ‘n roll era. In the previous decade Johnnie Ray would tear at his hair and fall on the floor sobbing before his fans as he sang his 1951 million selling hits “Cry”and “The Little White Cloud That Cried”. From his histrionic performances Ray earned the nicknames the “Nabob of Sob” and “Mr. Emotion.” Cathy Carroll would later record “Cry” as well, perhaps as a nod to her musical soulmate.
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#145: Honky Tonk Hardwood Floor by Johnny Horton
Peak Month: March 1958
12 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX Chart
Pick Hit ~ February 16, 1958
Peak Position ~ #1 ~ Red Robinson’s Teen Canteen Survey
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Honky Tonk Hardwood Floor”
Lyrics: “Honky Tonk Hardwood Floor”
John LeGale Horton was born on April 30, 1925, in Los Angeles, born to migrant fruit pickers. He spent most of his life growing up in East Texas when the family wasn’t back in California picking fruit. A great athlete, twenty-six colleges offered him basketball scholarships after his graduation from high school. Horton chose to study geology for a while in Seattle. Then in 1948 he went north to Alaska to pan for gold. While there he began to write songs. Back in the lower forty-eight, Horton was a winner at a talent contest in Henderson, Texas. This prompted him to move back to California and seek a career in music. He was a guest on Cliffie Stone’s Hometown Jamboree on KXLA-TV in Pasadena. This spawned The Singing Fisherman, Horton’s own half-hour show. He got married to a girl he met in Hollywood named Donna Cook. In high demand to perform on the Louisiana Hayride, they relocated to Shreveport, Louisiana. Touring was hard on the newlyweds and Horton got divorced.
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