#222: Lonely Teenager by Dion
Peak Month: December 1960
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #12
YouTube: “Lonely Teenager”
Lyrics: “Lonely Teenager”
Dion Francis DiMucci was born in the Bronx, NY, in 1939. His parents named him Dion in honor of the French Canadian Dionne quintuplents who captured the interest of millions around the world after the five infants were born in May 1934. Dion’s dad, Pasquale DiMucci, was a vaudeville performer and Dion accompanied him to see his dad on stage. As a child he was given an $8 dollar guitar by his uncle while he lived on 183rd Street. Dion’s childhood was set in the midst of conflict between his parents. In an interview with New York Magazine in 2007, Dion remembers “…There was a lot of unresolved conflict in my house… My pop, Pasquale, couldn’t make the $36-a-month rent on our apartment at 183rd and Crotona Avenue.” He was a dreamer, a failed vaudevillian, and sometimes Catskills puppeteer. He’d talk big and lift weights he’d made from oilcans, while Frances, Mrs. DiMucci, took two buses and the subway downtown to work in the garment district on a sewing machine. “When they’d start yelling, I’d go out on the stoop with my $8 Gibson and try to resolve things that way.”
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#226: You Showed Me by Salt-N-Pepa
Peak Month: April 1992
13 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position ~ #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #47
YouTube: “You Showed Me”
Lyrics: “You Showed Me”
Cheryl Renee James was born in 1966 in Brooklyn, New York. She later went by the stage name Salt. Sandra Jacqueline Denton was born in 1964 in Kingston, Jamaica. She moved to join her family in Queens, New York, in 1970, at the age of six. While she was a child she was sexually molested. Both James and Denton attended nursing school at Queensborough Community College in Queens. In 1985, James and Denton were working as customer service representatives at Sears. The duo recorded their first single “The Show Stoppa”, which was a minor R&B hit in ’85. The duos’ original name was Super Nature. However, they changed their name because in “The Show Stoppa” they rap the lines “Right now I’m gonna show you how it’s supposed to be ‘Cause we, the Salt and Pepa MCs”. This resulted in radio stations getting phone calls requesting “The Show Stoppa” by Salt & Pepper.
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#228: The Boy Next Door by the Secrets
Peak Month: January 1964
12 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #18
YouTube: “The Boy Next Door”
Lyrics: “The Boy Next Door”
The Secrets were a female vocal group from Cleveland, Ohio. The original members included lead singer Karen Gray Cipriani, (born 1943), alto and bass singer Carole Raymont McGoldrick, high dum-dee-dum singer Jackie Allen Schwegler, (born 1943), and soprano Patty Miller, (also born 1943). Karen told Spectropop, “My father was in a barbershop quartet back in the 1920s. I think that I got my singing ability from him,” Carole took tap dancing and ballet lessons. She also sang “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” at a recital at the age of eight. Patty sang in church and school choirs. The future Secrets met at Shaw High School in Cleveland. They also got to know Tom King, who later was a member of The Outsiders who had a Top Ten hit in 1966 with “Time Won’t Let Me”.
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#230: That’s What Love Can Do by Boy Krazy
Peak Month: March 1993
12 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #18
YouTube: “That’s What Love Can Do”
Lyrics: “That’s What Love Can Do”
Johnna Lee Cummings was born in November 1971 in Philadelphia. She moved to New York City in 1989 at the age of 17. She became a dancer and a singer in the music scene in Manhattan from 1989 onward. Cummings became the lead singer of a girl group called Boy Krazy after she successfully auditioned in 1991. Boy Krazy was put together through auditions of hundreds of young women by a management company in New York. In addition to Cummings, Boy Krazy featured female singers Kimberly Blake, Josselyne Jones, Renée Veneziale, and Ruth Ann Roberts (born Ruthann DeBona in Glen Rock, NJ, in 1976). Roberts was a former Miss Junior America and was 15 when she successfully auditioned for the band. She had already been doing a lot of auditioning for commercials on TV.
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#231: It Might Be You by Stephen Bishop
Peak Month: May 1983
15 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #4
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #25
YouTube: “It Might Be You”
Lyrics: “It Might Be You”
Earl Stephen Bishop was born in 1951 in San Diego, California. He remembers his growing up years as a “nerd” who the girls only wanted to be “just friends” with. Bishop moved to Los Angeles seeking to establish himself as a singer-songwriter. In his late teens and early twenties, Stephen Bishop was suffering from acute hypoglycemia. He recalls he was “paranoid and insecure all because I was the Twinkie king of Silverlake.”After eight lean years, he got a break when Art Garfunkel recorded two songs written by Bishop for his 1975 album Breakaway. The following year, Stephen Bishop got a recording contract with ABC Records. Soon after he recorded his debut album Careless. His first single, “Save It For A Rainy Day”, peaked at #22 on the Billboard Hot 100, and #20 in Vancouver (BC).
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#232: Swingtown by Steve Miller Band
Peak Month: December 1977
14 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #17
YouTube: “Swingtown”
Lyrics: “Swingtown”
Steven Haworth Miller was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1943. His parents were jazz enthusiasts, and were also good friends with Les Paul and Mary Ford, after the singing duo moved to Milwaukee in 1949. When his family moved to Dallas in the summer of 1950, Steve got to hear bluesman T-Bone Walker and jazz great Charlie Mingus. In 1955 Miller formed a band called the Marksmen, which included a young Boz Scaggs. He kept up his interest in music out of high school, forming the Ardells in 1961, while at college back in Wisconsin.
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#233: Ginny In The Mirror by Del Shannon
Peak Month: March 1962
11 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #117
YouTube: “Ginny In The Mirror”
Lyrics: “Ginny In The Mirror”
Charles Weedon Westover was born on December 30, 1934. He was known professionally as Del Shannon. Westover was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He learned ukulele and guitar and listened to country music. He was drafted into the Army in 1954, and while in Germany played guitar in a band called The Cool Flames. When his service ended, he returned to Battle Creek, Michigan. There he worked as a carpet salesman and as a truck driver in a furniture factory. He found part-time work as a rhythm guitarist in singer Doug DeMott’s group called Moonlight Ramblers, working at the Hi-Lo Club. Ann Arbor deejay Ollie McLaughlin heard the band. In July 1960, Westover signed to become a recording artist and composer on the Bigtop label. Westover changed his name to Del Shannon. It was a combination of Shannon Kavanagh (a wannabe wrestler who patronized the Hi-Lo Club) with Del, derived from the Cadillac Coupe de Ville, which Westover’s carpet store boss drove.
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#235: Susie Q by Creedence Clearwater Revival
Peak Month: October 1968
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #11
YouTube: “Susie Q”
Lyrics: “Susie Q”
John Fogerty was born in 1945 in Berkeley, California. He was raised in nearby El Cerrito. He learned to play guitar in his youth. In 1959 John Fogerty, Stu Cook and Doug Clifford formed a trio named the Blue Velvets. Based in El Cerrito, California, just north of Berkeley, they were joined in 1960 by John’s brother, Tom, who had been in a band called The Playboys. The Blue Velvets were influenced by Little Richard and other rock ‘n roll greats. They played a number of hits on the radio and their cover of Bobby Freeman’s “Do You Want To Dance,” was an audience favorite. In 1964 the Blue Velvets changed their name to the Golliwogs. They had a Top Ten hit called “Brown Eyed Girl” in San Jose (#7), Fresno (#3) and Miami (#8) in the winter of 1965-66. It was a blues infused tune, but not the same-titled song that Van Morrison would take up the charts the following year.
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#236: Mama Said Knock You Out by LL Cool J
Peak Month: July 1991
12 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #17
YouTube: “Mama Said Knock You Out”
Lyrics: “Mama Said Knock You Out”
James Todd Smith was born in 1968 on Long Island, New York. The Chicago Tribune later reported, “[As] a kid growing up middle class and Catholic in Queens, life for LL was heart-breaking. His father shot his mother and grandfather, nearly killing them both. When 4-year-old LL found them, blood was everywhere.” In 1972, Smith and his mother moved into his grandparents’ home in St. Albans, Queens, where he was raised. In 1978, after hearing the music of pioneering rap group, The Treacherous Three, Smith began rapping at the age of ten. By the age of 16, in 1984, he was making demos with two turntables, mixer and amplifier.
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#238: Don’t Worry Baby by the Beach Boys
Peak Month: June 1964
11 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN Chart
Peak Position #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #24
YouTube: “Don’t Worry Baby”
“Don’t Worry Baby”
Brian Wilson was born in Inglewood, California, in 1942. In biographer Peter Ames Carlin’s book, Catch a Wave: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, he relates that when Brian Wilson first heard George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” it had a huge emotional impact on him. As a youngster, Wilson learned to play a toy accordion and sang in children’s choirs. In his teens he started a group with his cousin, Mike Love and his brother, Carl. Mike was born in Los Angeles in 1941 and Carl was born in 1946 in Hawthorne, California. Brian Wilson named the group Carl and the Passions in order to convince his brother to join. They had a performance in the fall of 1960 at Hawthorne High School, where they attended. Their set included some songs by Dion and the Belmonts. Among the people in the audience was Al Jardine, another classmate. Jardine was born in Hawthorne in 1942. He was so impressed with the performance that he let the group know. Jardine would later be enlisted, along with Dennis Wilson to form the Pendletones in 1961. Dennis was born in Inglewood in 1944.
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