#316: Wipeout by the Fat Boys and the Beach Boys
Peak Month: September 1987
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #12
YouTube: “Wipeout”
Lyrics: “Wipeout”
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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#322: The Day The Rains Came by Jane Morgan
Peak Month: Octcober 1958
15 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX chart
Peak Position #4
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #21
YouTube: “The Day That The Rains Came”
Lyrics: “The Day That The Rains Came”
Florence Catherine Currier was born in 1924 in the suburbs of Boston. Her family moved to Florida when she was four-years-old. When she was five, Florence started taking voice lessons as well as piano. In the summertime, she was a child actor in theater productions at the Kennebunkport Playhouse in Kennebunkport, Maine. The Playhouse was founded by her brother. At the age of 17, in the summer of 1941, she was listed as the Treasurer of the Kennebunkport Playhouse. During her years at school, she competed in singing competitions with other students across Florida and the Southeast. Upon graduating from high school in Daytona Beach, she was accepted into the Juilliard School of Music in Manhattan. She had plans to become an opera singer, and studied opera at the school.
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#323: Love Of My Life by the Everly Brothers
Peak Month: December 1958
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #5
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #40
YouTube: “Love Of My Life”
Lyrics: “Love Of My Life”
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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#325: Let Me by Paul Revere And The Raiders
Peak Month: July 1969
9 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Chart
Peak Position ~ #2
1 week Hit Bound
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #20
YouTube: “Let Me”
Lyrics: “Let Me”
A band called The Downbeats formed in Boise, Idaho, in 1958. Paul Revere Dick started the band originally as an instrumental group. They had their first chart single in Vancouver in 1960. It was an instrumental riff on the piano tune, Chopsticks, which they titled “Beatnik Sticks”. They changed their name to Paul Revere And The Raiders in 1960. Between 1960 and 1976 they released 41 singles. They charted five songs into the Top Ten on the Billboard Hot 100 in the USA. These included “Kicks”, and “Hungry” (1966), “Him Or Me – What’s It Gonna Be?” (1967) and their cover of Don Fardon’s 1968 single “Indian Reservation,” which peaked at #1 for the band in 1971. They were even more popular in Vancouver where they charted over fifteen songs into the Top Ten on the local charts here on the West Coast.
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#326: Biology by Danny Valentino
Peak Month: June 1960
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #95
YouTube: “Biology”
Lyrics: “Biology”
Vincent Pacimeo was born in 1941 in Flushing, New York. He was interviewed on the This Is My Story website by and Dik de Heer in 2016. Pacimeo first sang in public when he was five-years-old. Then his career as a musician was launched when he was nine-years-old and appeared “on the Ted Mack Original Amateur Hour television show playing the drums.” His musical influences were Al Jolson and WWII big bands (like Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman etc.). As he got better at drumming, Vince was invited to “play with older and seasoned musicians. By that time he was tap dancing and singing Broadway and movie musical songs.” Vince was inspired by the great singer and dancer, Gene Kelly. In the early 50s, singer and tap dancer Gene Kelly starred in numbers of musicals, including An American In Paris (1951), Singing In The Rain (1952), and Brigadoon (1954). Vince had a dream that he could be a great singer and dancer like Gene Kelly. In his mid-teens, Vince was captivated by jazz music. And he began to focus more on his vocal skills than his drumming.
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#334: He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother by Neil Diamond
Peak Month: December 1970
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CKVN chart
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #20
YouTube: “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother”
Lyrics: “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother”
Neil Leslie Diamond was born in Brooklyn in 1941. His parents were Russian and Polish immigrants and both Jewish. His dad was a dry-goods merchant. When he was in high school he met Barbra Streisand in a Freshman Chorus and Choral Club. Years later they would become friends. When he was sixteen Diamond was sent to a Jewish summer camp called Surprise Lake Camp in upstate New York. While there he heard folk singer, Pete Seeger, perform in concert. That year Diamond got a guitar and, influenced by Pete Seeger, began to write poems and song lyrics. While he was in his Senior year in high school, Sunbeam Music Publishing gave Neil Diamond an initial four month contract composing songs for $50 a week (US $413 in 2017 dollars). and he dropped out of college to accept it.
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#335: Mendocino by Sir Douglas Quintet
Peak Month: February 1969
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
1 week Hit Bound
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #27
YouTube: “Mendocino”
Lyrics: “Mendocino”
Douglas Wayne Sahm was born in 1941 in San Antonio, Texas. Sahm began singing at age five and learned to play the steel guitar at age six. He was considered a child prodigy on the instrument. By the age of eight, he had appeared on the Louisiana Hayride. And on December 19, 1952, at the age of eleven, Doug Sahm appeared onstage in Austin, Texas, at what would be the final concert performance by Hank Williams at the Skyline Club. [Williams would die on January 1, 1953]. Doug Sahm also performed in the early 50s with country stars Faron Young, Webb Pierce and Hank Thompson. He won a children’s talent contest on KMAC in San Antonio, where he performed regularly for two years. At age thirteen, he was offered a spot on the Grand Ole Opry. However, his mother declined the offer, wanting Doug Sahm to finish school. Meanwhile, he grew proficient in accordion, guitar and piano. In 1955 he recorded at the age of 14 as Little Doug and the Bandits.
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#337: I Could Be So Good To You by Don and the Goodtimes
Peak Month: May 1967
11 weeks on CFUN’s Vancouver Charts
Peak Position ~ #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #56
YouTube: “I Could Be So Good To You”
Lyrics: “I Could Be So Good To You”
Ron “Buzz” Overman was born in 1946 and was in a rock band from Walla Walla titled the Gems starting in 1960. In 1964 he joined a garage band in Walla Walla named Hawk and the Randelas. His Don And The Goodtimes bandmates knew Overman as a huge fan of Star Trek, as well as corn on the cob and watermelon. Joey Newman was born in 1947 in Seattle, and became a guitarist with Don And The Goodtimes. His guitar playing was credited on their 1967 studio album, So Good, with contributing to a “get-up-and-go quality” to the bands’ music. Before he was with the band he was known as a good pool player and winner of numbers of go-cart racing trophies. L’il Don Gallucci was born in 1947 in Portland, Oregon, and was a child prodigy. He was a member of the Kingsmen and was playing organ and keyboards on their 1963 hit “Louie Louie”. While he was with the Don And The Goodtimes, Gallucci was the bands’ musical arranger, known to lift weights “to keep muscles on his slender frame,” and in 1967 was expected to “set an Olympic Record for dating.”
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#340: One Minute To One by Ricky Nelson
Peak Month: October 1959
9 weeks on CFUN’s Vancouver Charts
Peak Position ~ #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “One Minute To One”
Lyrics: “One Minute To One”
In 1940 Eric Hilliard Nelson was born. On February 20, 1949, while still eight years old, he took the stage name of Ricky Nelson when appearing on the radio program, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. A child actor, Ricky was also a musician and singer-songwriter. who starred alongside his family in the long-running television series, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952–66), as well as co-starring alongside John Wayne and Dean Martin in the western Rio Bravo (1959). He placed 53 songs on the Billboard singles charts between 1957 and 1973.
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#341: Sometimes A Fantasy by Billy Joel
Peak Month: December 1980
Peak Position: #3
12 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100: #36
YouTube: “Sometimes A Fantasy”
Lyrics: “Sometimes A Fantasy”
William Martin Joel was born in 1949 in The Bronx. His father, Helmut “Howard” Joel, was born in Nuremberg, Germany, and sold his textile business at a fraction of its value to be able to move to Switzerland. From there his father traveled to Cuba and was able to enter the United States from the Caribbean. Billy Joel’s mother, Rosalind Nyman, was born in Brooklyn, also to Jewish parents. Young William was coerced by his mother to take piano lessons at the age of four. He kept taking piano lessons until he was sixteen. His parents divorced when he was eight, and in his later years in high school Billy Joel played at a piano bar to make some extra income to support his single mother, his sister and himself. Though his parents were Jewish, Billy Joel did not identify as Jewish and began to attend a Roman Catholic parish at age eleven.
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