#494: She’s Looking Good by Rodger Collins
Peak Month: April 1967
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN
Peak Position #5
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “She’s Looking Good”
Lyrics: “She’s Looking Good”
Rogers Collins Jr. was born in Santa Anna, Texas, in 1940. His family moved to California and while still in high school won a talent contest in Oakland, which included doing an Elvis impersonation. He was mentored by early rock era R&B singer Brook Benton, who encouraged Collins to sing his own material. Rodger studied drama in San Francisco at the Actor’s Laboratory. After graduation, he moved to Los Angeles and hoped to become a star in either film or television. But instead he ended up washing Rock Hudson’s silver Chrysler Imperial. and by 1963 got a contract as a recording artist. His first release in 1963 was a jazz-infused, blues-tinged single titled “The World Can’t Do Me No Harm”. It resembled a late 50s sound of Ray Charles. His B-side, “Working Girl”, was a Collins composition copying the sound of Chuck Berry. And in 1964 released “Give The Kids A Chance”. These two singles were both commercial flops.
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#495: Confidential by Sonny Knight
Peak Month: December 1956
6 weeks on Vancouver’s CJOR ~ Red Robinson chart
Peak Position #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #17
YouTube.com: “Confidential”
Lyrics: “Confidential”
Joseph Coleman Smith was born in 1934, in the western Chicago suburb of Maywood. His family moved to Los Angeles in the early 1950’s. In 1953 Joseph Smith signed with Aladdin Records and recorded a novelty tune he wrote titled “But Officer”. The song was a humorous response to police stopping young African-Americans back in the early 50’s. Do things ever change? Joseph C. Smith chose to record “But Officer” under the pseudonym Sonny Knight. Aladdin was interested in him after he penned “Vicious, Vicious Vodka”. The tune was one Amos Milburn went on to record in 1954. Sonny Knight went on to record a few records on the Specialty label in 1955.
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#497: The Actress by Roy Orbison
Peak Month: April 1962
13 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #8
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “The Actress”
Lyrics: “The Actress”
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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#498: Sunshine Girl by The Parade
Peak Month: May 1967
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #3
2 weeks Hit Bound
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #20
YouTube.com: “Sunshine Girl”
Lyrics: “Sunshine Girl”
Jerry Riopelle was born in Detroit in 1941, and raised in Tampa, Florida. He moved to Los Angeles after he graduated from high school. And he played drums for the Hollywood Argyles. He became a staff writer for Screen Gems. He was subsequently hired by Phil Spector as both a staff writer and producer. A number of the songs he wrote, and others he produced, made the Billboard Hot 100. He wrote songs that were recorded by Herb Alpert, the American Breed, Joan Baez, Brewer & Shipley, Rita Coolidge, Kenny Loggins, Meat Loaf, Leon Russell, Shango, John Travolta and the We Five. Riopelle also composed songs for both film and television. He produced a record titled “Home Of The Brave” for Bonnie & The Treasures in 1965 which peaked at #77 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song was also recorded by Jody Miller whose version was a Top Ten hit in Vancouver (BC). In 1966 he also produced a Top 40 hit for April Stevens and Nino Tempo titled “All Strung Out”.
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#504: Too Late To Worry by Babs Tino
Peak Month: July 1962
11 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #4
1 week Hit Bound
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Too Late To Worry”
There is next to nothing online to be found about Babs Tino. She was from Philadelphia and composed her debut single, on Cameo Records, titled “My Honeybun” in 1957. One of the few narrative threads is found in the liner notes from the 1997 Ace Records album, Early Girls Vol. 2. The liner notes reveal: “Babs Tino had the looks and the talent but failed to get the breaks and therefore barely qualifies as a footnote to a footnote in the history books. Having made a solitary single for Cameo Records in 1957, it seems she did not record again until 1961 when she signed with Kapp Records and had six singles released between then and 1963. Owner Dave Kapp was a pillar of New York’s musical establishment, a man with strongly held views on the linear alignment of musical notes in relation to pitch and tempo, and no-one got through the door at Kapp unless they could count bars and sing in tune. The best arrangers/songwriters (including Bacharach and Leiber & Stoller) were assigned to Tino’s sessions but only her third single, ‘Forgive me’, made any sort of impression ‘bubbling’ under the Hot 100 for one week in 1962 and gaining a UK release.”
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#505: Pledge Of Love by Mitchell Torok
Peak Month: May 1957
6 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX chart
Peak Position #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #25
YouTube.com: “Pledge Of Love”
Lyrics: “Pledge Of Love”
In 1929 Mitchell Torok was born in Houston, Texas. His parents were immigrants from Hungary. Torok learned the guitar at the end of elementary school. A natural athlete, Mitch went to university in Nacogdoches, Texas, on a football and baseball scholarship. While at university he was hired to write a song to mark the one hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Cononco Oil Company. He also cut his first record in the late 40s while hosting a radio show in Lufkin, two hours northeast of Houston, and another radio show in the Houston suburb of Rosenberg.
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#507: King Of The Whole Wide World by Elvis Presley
Peak Month: October 1962
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #4
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #30
YouTube.com: “King Of The Whole Wide World”
Lyrics: “King Of The Whole Wide World”
Elvis Aaron Presley was born on in a two-room house in Tupelo, Mississippi, on January 8, 1935. His twin brother, Jessie Garon Presley, was stillborn. When he was eleven years old his parents bought him a guitar at the Tupelo Hardware Store. As a result Elvis grew up as an only child. He and his parents, Vernon and Gladys, moved to Memphis, Tennessee, in 1948. The young Presley graduated from high school in 1953. That year he stopped by the Memphis Recording Service to record two songs, including “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin”, song #1196 on this Countdown. Elvis’ musical influences were the pop and country music of the time, the gospel music he heard in church and at the all-night gospel sings he frequently attended, and the black R&B he absorbed on historic Beale Street as a Memphis teenager. In 1954, Elvis began his singing career recording “That’s All Right” and “Blue Moon Of Kentucky” at Sun Records in Memphis.
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#510: (The Best Part of) Breakin’ Up by The Ronettes
Peak Month: May 1964
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #4
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #39
YouTube.com: “(The Best Part Of) Breakin’ Up”
“(The Best Part of) Breakin’ Up” lyrics
Veronica Yvette Bennett was born in Spanish Harlem in 1943, on the island of Manhattan. In the fall of 1955, at the age of 12 she began to sing with her sister Estelle Bennett, then 14. An older sister, Estelle was born in East Harlem in 1941. Veronica and Estelle sang in a trio with their cousin Nedra Talley, who was born in 1946, making her the youngest of the trio, at age nine. In 1957 Veronica, who had shortened her name to Ronnie, formed a group. It consisted of Ronnie, her sister Estelle, and their cousins Nedra, Diane, and Elaine. The five girls learned how to perfect their harmonies first at their grandmother’s house, and they became proficient in songs such as the Spaniels’ “Goodnight Sweetheart”. They wanted to have a Frankie Lymon sound-alike, so they coaxed their cousin, Ira, to join the group. They entered a Wednesday night amateur show at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem. Their appearance was a disaster and Ira, Diane and Elaine quit the group the next day. The original trio renamed themselves Ronnie and the Relatives. In August 1961 they released a single with Colpix Records on the May label titled “I Want A Boy”. They followed with another release in January 1962 titled “I’m Gonna Quit While I’m Ahead”.
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#513: Is It True by Brenda Lee
Peak Month: November 1964
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #17
YouTube.com: “Is It True”
Lyrics: “Is It True”
Brenda Mae Tarpley was born in 1944 in Atlanta, Georgia. Her parents were poor. During her childhood, young Brenda shared a sagging iron bed with her brother and sister in a series of three-room houses. They had no running water. Here parents were from job to job. After the stock market crash in 1929, Brenda’s mother would recall “you could hardly buy a job.” The region was devastated by an infestation of the boll weevil. Brenda started singing solos each Sunday at the Baptist church where her family attended. In her 2002 autobiography, she wrote “I grew up so poor, and it saddens me to see the poverty that is still there. A lot of my family have never done any better. Some of there are just exactly where they were when I was a kid. And in a way, there is still something inside of me that is a part of that, the part that doesn’t expect much. Little things make them happy, and that’s the same with me.”
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#516: No Souvenirs by Melissa Etheridge
Peak Month: December 1989
14 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #8
1 week Hit Bound
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #95
YouTube.com link: “No Souvenirs”
Lyrics: “No Souvenirs”
Melissa Lou Etheridge was born in 1961 in Leavenworth, Kansas. While in high school she was a member of several country bands. She moved to Boston after high school and while in college she performed at clubs in the area. She moved to Los Angeles and caught the attention of Island Records in 1986. In 1988 she made her first appearance on the Vancouver (BC) pop chart with “Bring Me Some Water”. The single peaked at #13 on CKLG in November ’88, and #9 on the Australian singles chart. It was from her self-titled debut album. The single won her a Grammy Award nomination in 1989 for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Female.
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