#936: Wondering by Patti Page
Peak Month: July 1957
14 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX chart
Peak Position #17
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com link: “Wondering”
Lyrics: “Wondering”
Patti Page was born on November 8, 1927. The New York Times writes “She was born Clara Ann Fowler in Claremore, Oklahoma, the second youngest of 11 children of a railroad laborer. Her mother and older sisters picked cotton. She often went without shoes. Because the family saved money on electricity, the only radio shows Miss Page heard as a child were Grand Old Opry, The Eddie Cantor Show and Chicago Barn Dance.”
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#293: Next Plane To London by Rose Garden
Peak Month: November 1967
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #2
1 week Hit Bound
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #17
YouTube: “Next Plane To London”
Lyrics: “Next Plane To London”
In 1964, a couple of students at a local Los Angeles high school discovered their mutual interest in making music. All born around 1949-1950, John Noreen and Jim Groshong both played guitar. Bill Fleming played bass guitar and Bruce Bowdin was a drummer. They decided to form a band and named themselves the Blokes. A ‘bloke’ is British slang for ‘an ordinary guy, man.’ Noreen, Groshong and the others chose their name after a British slang word, hoping to get in on the musical craze surrounding the British Invasion in ’64.
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#296: Live by the Merry-Go-Round
Peak Month: May 1967
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #1
1 week Hit Bound
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #63
YouTube: “Live”
Lyrics: “Live”
Joel Larson was born in San Francisco in 1947 and learned to play drums at the age of 12. During high school he played in a number of bands who performed in clubs. When he was 18 years old, Larson joined a San Mateo band called The Bedouins who won a 1965 Battle of the Bands event in that city. The Bedouins were invited to audition at the San Francisco Whisky A Go Go. The nightclub owner, Elmer Valentine, had asked Dunhill Record owner, Lou Adler, to attend the audition. Adler was impressed and soon The Bedouins were renamed The Grass Roots and given a new folk rock sound. While with The Grass Roots, Larson’s band were the studio musicians playing back-up to Barry McGuire’s #1 hit “Eve Of Destruction”. In 1966 The Grass Roots had a Top 30 hit in the USA called “Where Were You When I Needed You”, which only got play listed below the Top 40 in Vancouver for the last week of May 1966.
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#297: Saturday Morning Confusion by Bobby Russell
Peak Month: September 1971
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #28
YouTube: “Saturday Morning Confusion”
Lyrics: “Saturday Morning Confusion”
Robert L. Russell was born in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1941. As he grew up Nashville was becoming a city known for country and pop music. In 1958, when he was 17-years-old, Bobby Russell recorded “The Raven”, backed with “She’s Gonna Be Sorry”. It was a rockabilly number backed with his group, The Impollos. It was not a hit. But his second release, “Dum Diddle”, another rockabilly number, made the Top 30 in Des Moines, Iowa, in the spring of 1959. In 1964 Russell recorded a cover of the 1956 R&B hit “Roll Over Beethoven” by Chuck Berry. However, it got little notice from DJs. Russell kept on releasing solo records and in 1966 his single, “Friends And Mirrors”, got airplay in several states across the USA and Australia. It also made the Top 40 in Edmonton (AB) and Montreal.
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#298: Dear John/Alabam by Pat Boone
A-Side: “Dear John”
Peak Month: December 1960
12 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX chart
Peak Position #5
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #44
YouTube: “Dear John”
Lyrics: “Dear John”
B-Side: “Alabam”
Peak Month: November 1960
5 weeks on CKWX’s chart
Peak Position #8
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #47
YouTube: “Alabam”
Lyrics: “Alabam”
Pat Boone was born in Jacksonville, Florida, on June 1, 1934. He was the son of Margaret Virginia (Pritchard) and Archie Altman Boone. The Boone family moved to Nashville from Florida when Boone was two years old. In a 2007 interview on The 700 Club, Boone claimed that he is the great-great-great-great grandson of the American pioneer Daniel Boone. Boone is a singer, composer, actor, writer, television personality, motivational speaker, and spokesman. He won a talent contest on the Ted Mack Amateur Hour. He became a successful pop singer in the United States during the 1950s and early 1960s. He has sold over 45 million records, charted 38 Top 40 hits between 1955 and 1962. Boone has also appeared in more than a dozen Hollywood films. He still holds the Billboard record for spending 220 consecutive weeks on the charts with one or more songs each week.
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#300: Sugar Plum by Ike Clanton
Peak Month: August 1962
11 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #95
YouTube: “Sugar Plum”
Lyrics: “Sugar Plum”
Ike Clanton was the brother of teen idol Jimmy Clanton, and was born in 1940 in Raceland, Louisiana. In September 1958, Ike Clanton was part of a band that backed then 17-year-old John Fred in Fred’s first recording studio. Fats Domino, who had just recorded “Whole Lotta Lovin'” was also in the studio backing John Fred. The setting was Cosimo Matassa’s J&M Studio in New Orleans. Nine years later in 1967, John Fred & his Playboy Band had a #1 hit with “Judy In Disguise (With Glasses)”. In 1958 Ike Clanton was in Duane Eddy’s band when they recorded “Rebel Rouser” and Eddy’s proto-surf-rock instrumental album Have ‘Twangy’ Guitar Will Travel. “Rebel Rouser” climbed to #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #2 in Vancouver. Ike Clanton was also part of Eddy’s band when the singles “Cannonball”, “Peter Gunn”, and “Forty Miles Of Bad Road” were recorded. The latter was a #9 hit on the Billboard Hot 100.
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#304: Mr. Songwriter by Connie Stevens
Peak Month: August 1962
12 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #43
YouTube: “Mr. Songwriter”
Lyrics: “Mr. Songwriter”
Concetta Rosalie Ann Ingolia was born in 1938 in New York City. Her father, Teddy Stevens, was born Pietro Ingoglia. Teddy Stevens was a jazz musician in Manhattan, and adopted an anglicized name. In 1950, at the age of 12, she witnessed a murder in Manhattan. Her parents decided to send Concetta to rural Missouri to live with relatives. Three years later in 1953, she moved with her father to Los Angeles, after her parents got a divorce. She enrolled at the Sacred Heart Academy for Girls, and later transferred to the Hollywood Professional School when her talents as an actress looked promising. In the mid-50s Concetta Ingolia formed a vocal quartet called “The Foremost” where she was joined by three men: Tony Butala, Mike Barnett, Dick Stewart. (Butala and Barnett and went on to form the close-harmony group The Lettermen which Barnett left after 1958). Concetta’s first professional acting job was early in 1957 when she was featured in a TV commercial for a local Los Angeles bakery.
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#306: Jojo by Boz Scaggs
Peak Month: September 1980
13 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #17
YouTube: “Jojo”
Lyrics: “Jojo”
William Royce “Boz“ Scaggs was born in 1944 in Canton, Ohio, 60 miles south of Cleveland. His father was a traveling salesman, and the family moved to Oklahoma and next to Texas. While attending a private school in Dallas, Scaggs met Steve Miller while he was 12-years-old. Scaggs was learning to play guitar and was invited to join Miller’s band the Marksmen. In 1961-62 Boz Scaggs joined Steve Miller’s band the Ardells while the pair were studying university in Madison, Wisconsin. Scaggs followed Miller to Chicago in ’62-’63. Then he went to London and Sweden to perform as a solo artist in concert. While in Sweden, Boz Scaggs released his debut album, Boz, in 1965. The album only sold in Sweden and soon went out of print.
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#307: Flying Blue Angels by George, Johnny and the Pilots
Peak Month: November 1961
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #108
YouTube: “Flying Blue Angels”
George, Johnny and the Pilots recorded one side of a single 45 RPM record in 1961. Otherwise, there was no other record credited to them. It is plausible that “George” was George Paxton, the owner of Coed Records and one of the songwriters (going by the pseudonym George Eddy). I surmise that the “Johnny” providing backing vocals on the song could be Johnny Maestro. It was Maestro who recorded, as either a solo artist or a lead singer with the Crests, five of the 18 singles Coed Records released in 1961. Maestro was also a lead singer on the first two singles Coed Records released in January 1962.
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#310: I’m Stickin’ With You by Jimmy Bowen
Peak Month: March 1957
8 weeks on Vancouver’s Red Robinson Teen Canteen chart
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #14
YouTube: “I’m Stickin’ With You”
Lyrics: “I’m Stickin’ With You”
James Albert Bowen was born in the mining town of Santa Rita, New Mexico, in 1937. The town later became a ghost town after it was abandoned in 1967. Bowen’s family moved to a small town in northern Texas in 1941. From early in his childhood, Bowen was very athletic. By the time he was in high school, he was a star athlete who received a scholarship to West Texas State University in Canyon, Texas. While Bowen grew to be an athlete, he also had a musical side to him that began in his teens when he was given a ukulele. He later acquired a guitar and eventually an electric guitar. At a high school assembly, Bowen and some of his classmates were asked to play a couple of songs. Bowen recalls, “the reaction from girls was the absolute proof that we should get in that [music] business.” In 1955, while at university, Bowen formed the Serenaders with singer and guitar player Buddy Knox, and lead guitarist Don Lanier. Lanier and Bowen had grown up in the same town and knew each other before going to university. Bowen played bass guitar and took turns with Buddy Knox as lead vocalist on the tunes in their sets.
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