#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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#1289: 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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#1139: When A Boy Falls In Love by Mel Carter
Peak Month: August 1963
9 weeks on Vancouver’s C-FUN-TASTIC FIFTY Survey
Peak Position ~ #9
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #44
YouTube: “When A Boy Falls In Love”
Lyrics: “When A Boy Falls In Love”
Mel Carter was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1939. As a child he was in a choir at New Prospect Baptist Church. In 1954, Carter began studying under jazz singer Little Jimmy Scott. Carter went to Chicago and met Sam Cooke when Cooke was part of the Soul Stirrers. Mel Carter was also part of a street corner doo-wop group. In the late 50’s and early 60’s, Mel Carter appeared on stage with Dinah Washington at Ciros. In 1960 Carter released his first single on Arwin Records titled “I’m Coming Home”. In 1961 he switched labels to Mercury and released “I Need You So”. Then in 1962, he released a duet with Clyde King titled “The Wrong Side of Town”, which was a minor hit in California and West Virginia. In the spring of 1963, Mel Carter released “When A Boy Falls In Love” on the Derby label.
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#149: This Little Girl Of Mine by the Everly Brothers
Peak Month: February 1958
8 weeks on Vancouver’s Red Robinson’s Teen Canteen Survey
Peak Position ~ #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #26
YouTube: “This Little Girl Of Mine”
Lyrics: “This Little Girl Of Mine”
Isaac Donald “Don” Everly was born in 1937 and Phillip Jason “Phil” Everly was born in 1939. Don was born in Muhlenberg County in Kentucky, and Phil was born in Chicago. Their dad, Ike, had been a coal miner who decided to pursue music as a guitar player. From the mid-40s Ike and his wife, Margaret, sang as a duo in Shanendoah, Iowa. Later they included their sons “Little Donnie and Baby Boy Phil,” on local radio stations KMA and KFNF. In time they were billed as The Everly Family. In 1953, the family moved to Knoxville, Tennessee. Family friend and musician Chet Atkins got a record deal for the Everly Brothers with RCA Victor in 1956. However, their first single release was a commercial failure and they were dropped from the label. Next, Atkins got them connected with Archie Bleyer, and the boys were signed to Cadence Records. In 1957, their first single on the label, “Bye Bye Love“, became a million-seller and launched their career.
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#151: Jenny Take A Ride! by Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels
Peak Month: January 1966
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG Chart
Wax To Watch ~ November 27, 1965
Peak Position ~ #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #10
YouTube: “Jenny Take A Ride!”
Lyrics: “Jenny Take A Ride!”
William Sherille Levise, Jr. was born in Michigan in suburban Detroit in 1945. He formed his first band, Tempest, when he was at Warren High School. The band gained some notice playing at a Detroit soul music club called The Village. Levise Jr. proceeded to front a band named Billy Lee & The Rivieras. Record producer and songwriter, Bob Crewe, saw the band and took them under his wing. Crewe renamed them Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels. The Detroit Wheels were John Badanjek on drums, Mark Manko on lead guitar, Joey Kubert on rhythm guitar, Jim McCarty on lead guitar (not to be confused with the Yardbirds drummer of the same name) and bass guitarist Earl Elliott.
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#152: Principal’s Office by Young MC
Peak Month: February 1990
16 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG Chart
Peak Position ~ #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #33
YouTube: “Principal’s Office”
Lyrics: “Principal’s Office”
Marvin Young was born in 1967 in London, UK. His parents, both Jamaican immigrants, left England when he was three-years-old. They moved the family to Queens, New York, when Marvin was eight. While he was a student at the University of Southern California, he rapped over the phone to two owners of an independent record label in Hollywood named Matt Dike and Michael Ross. After he performed his rap on the phone, Young was given a record contract while he was still talking to Dike and Ross. In 1989 he cowrote with Dike, Ross and Tone Lōc on the songs “Wild Thing” and “Funky Cold Medina”. These two rap rock singles crossed over from the Billboard Hot Rap Songs chart to the Billboard Hot 100, where they respectively peaked at #2 and #3.
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#153: Are You Gonna Go My Way by Lenny Kravitz
Peak Month: May 1993
13 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG Chart
Peak Position ~ #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Are You Gonna Go My Way”
Lyrics: “Are You Gonna Go My Way”
Leonard Albert Kravitz was born in 1964 in New York City. His mother was African-American and Bahamian, and a Christian. His father was descended from Russia Jews. Kravitz began banging on pots and pans in the kitchen, playing them as drums at the age of three. He decided that he wanted to be a musician at the age of five. He began playing the drums and soon added guitar. Kravitz’ father was a jazz promotor, and Duke Ellington played Happy Birthday for Lenny on his fifth birthday. The family moved to Los Angeles in 1974 when his mother, Roxie Roker, got cast as Helen Willis in the TV sitcom The Jeffersons.
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#156: Shy Guy by the Crystalettes
Peak Month: October 1962
12 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position ~ #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Shy Guy”
The Crystalettes initially recorded under the name The Dispoto Sisters. They grew up in Reseda, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. The sisters began singing at a very young age, and performed in the Wee Voice group in 1957. At the time Patty (born 1950) was 7, Diana (born 1947) was 10, and Tina (born 1945) was 12. They took part in numbers of choral events while, including at Whitney High School in Los Angeles. They performed with Martha Tilton and many others. They recorded their first single in 1959 on the Verve label, credited to The Dispoto Sisters. It was a two-sided Christmas disc: “Whistling Neath’ The Mistletoe/ Will Clause”. A local paper ran a photo with the byline “Pleasing Voices: The three young daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Carl Dispoto are well on the way to a career as a trio. Patty, 9, Diane, 13, and Tina, 14.”
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