#37: 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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#62: 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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#67: 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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#69: 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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#67: 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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#68: 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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#121: Saturday Swing Out by Four Aces
City: Ottawa, ON
Radio Station: CFRA
Peak Month: May 1958
Peak Position in Ottawa ~ #6
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 Singles ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Saturday Swing Out”
Lyrics: N/A
Al Albertini was born in Chester (PA) in 1922. In his childhood, young al appeared on a radio show from Philadelphia called The Horn and Hardart Children’s Hour. Horn and Hardart’s slogan was “Less work for mother dear whose gentle hands, lead us so kindly through little folk lands. We’ll give her happiness, each kindness, each caress repaid with thoughtfulness. Less work for mother dear.” After high school graduation in 1940, he was drafted into the United States Navy after the nation entered WWII in December 1941. While he was in the navy, Albertini met Dave Mahoney, and the pair discovered a mutual interest in singing and music. After WWII, they added Rosario “Sod” Vaccaro and Lou Silvestri to become a foursome. By the late 40s they were billed as The Four Aces. They released their first single, “Baby, wha hoppen”, in 1949.
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#114: Everyday by Buddy Holly
City: Ottawa, ON
Radio Station: CFRA
Peak Month: December 1957
Peak Position in Ottawa ~ #4
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Cashbox Top 100 Singles ~ #51
YouTube: “Everyday”
Lyrics: “Everyday”
In 1936, Charles Hardin Holley was born in Lubbock, Texas. When he was five years old he won $5 when he entered a local talent show and sang “Down The River of Memories.” He listened to the Grand Ole Opry growing up and after trying to learn the piano settled on taking up the guitar. During his Junior and Senior years in school, Holley entered some talent shows with friends in duos and doing gigs with a band playing a blend of country & western and rhythm & blues. He had a band that performed live on the Lubbock radio station KDAV. After high school graduation Holly focused on making a career as a musician. He heard Elvis Presley in concert in Lubbock in 1955. Shortly after Hollry would appear as the opening act for Presley in concert three times in 1955. Owen Bradley, who would also produce records for Conway Twitty, Brenda Lee, Patsy Cline and Gene Vincent, became Holley’s record producer after he signed a record deal with Decca Records in February 1956. After signing the record deal, Buddy Holley dropped the “e” from his surname to become Buddy Holly.
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#113: First Anniversary by Cathy Carr
City: Ottawa, ON
Radio Station: CKOY
Peak Month: February 1959
Peak Position in Ottawa ~ #6
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #32
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #42
YouTube: “First Anniversary”
Lyrics: “First Anniversary”
Angelina Helen Catherine Cordovano was born in The Bronx (NY) in 1936. In her early childhood, Catherine became a regular on The Children’s Hour broadcast from both Philadelphia and New York City. The closing song was sung to the tune of “A Bicycle built for Two”: Childhood, childhood, sweetest days of all.
Children playing hide and seek and ball.
Tripping to school so merry,
The Golden Rule to study.
Oh, how we’ll miss, the years of bliss,
When our childhood days are gone.
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